Oprah's Bee Giveaway

In other news, I gave some bottles of mead to Santa Claus for distribution so if the boys and girls reading this blog are very good, you may get a bottle.

I Heard Some Bees

I put my ear to the side of the hive and heard them inside murmuring to each other.

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Winter at the Hive

On thursday the 18th I went out to visit the hive and found a massacre or something had happened. there was an unusual amount of bee parts scattered on the landing board. Had they been raided?

As temps have been steadily dropping and its been rainy/windy I decided to close the opening of the upper box with a little plastic plug:

Saturday Nov 20 after a night of snow:

Maybe 25-30 dead bees on the landing board and in the snow around.

The mead is all bottled and mellowing in the wine cellar.  For thrift and convenience sake it was put into beer bottles of various sizes, 36 bottles in all.

Just 2 sample bottles were taken and the results are quite professional tasting imo. Left for a month or 2 in the cellar, the remaining bottles will only improve.
It is potent stuff!  I wish I had taken a hydrometer reading at the beginning to get an idea of the  %alcohol, but I didnt. Anyway its some pretty good stuff and will provide many opportunities to toast the bees. Thank you bees!
Jah bless them and keep em warm and safe through the winter.

Orange Pollen and Traffic Report

During the past weeks many bees were seen going into the hive carrying large amounts of orange pollen. Traffic is slower. Outside night temps have dropped below 10C. There has been heavy rain and periods of sun.
i havent done any inspection thingking to leave well enough alone to let them do as they  think best.

Sugar Shake and Skunk

There seems to have been a skunk attack. On Monday morning there were a few dead bees on the landing board and digging marks in the dirt in front of the two bottom corners. So, I put up a fence with sharp pokey parts on the top and some blackberry vines for barbed wire, and i thought it was unlikely a skunk could climb over. the next morning there was a bit of digging around the bottom of the fence, and the next morning a hole that almost went under, but there was a sharp pokey wire sticking down into the hole so i hope the skunk got discouraged and didnt actually make it under. Last night Danna shoved a paving stone into/over the hole and i put a nail board to guard the ground beside it. this morning there was a little disturbance in the dirt in front of the stone/nailboard but it looks like not much effort was made. i hope the skunk (im assuming it was the skunk) is discouraged enough to give up.

I opened the hive today and everything looked ok to my inexperienced eye.I looked at all the open brood for any sign of mites and didnt see any.  I did a sugar shake test but i dont know if i had a large enough sample of bees. I sprinkled the sugar onto a piece of white paper and looked for mites but i could not find any.

blurry pic of powdered sugar on white paper

less blurry

 

 

 

 

 

I wasnt sure what to look for in the sugar, because i didnt have a clear idea of what size the mites are. I thought they were tiny tiny little things, and when a saw more than twenty little specks in the sugar i began to despair. When I began to look more closely with a magnifying glass, and then with a microscope at the little dark specks in the sugar, my hope returned, because I could not find anything that looked like a mite at all.
Danna found this pic http://picsdigger.com/keyword/varroa%20mite/   to give a better idea of the size we were looking for and there was certainly nothing that big in the sugar. So to make a long story short, i could not find any mites. If theres no mites, then theres no reason to treat for them.

1 more thing: there is one frame in the top box on the outside wall that doesnt have anything in it. it has only a little comb drawn out but nothing stored in it. im thinking that one could be taken out and a feeder put in, if it is a good time to start feeding.