We have a real bear problem in our town with bears, and bears really like to tear apart beehives. So to hedge our bets, we decided last year to start a second beeyard in another part of town. Our second beeyard is near the center of town, right next to the cemetery. The honeybees and their hives are on the edge of a large hayfield, where they are protected by the prevailing winds and get excellent daylight throughout the day.
We hived two new packages, using medium supers on these hives. I put our hives on small tables. The height of the table makes it much easier to work the hives, and we can grease the legs of the tables to keep carpenter ants and other insects from entering the hives.
We use a few techniques to bear proof our beehives. First we have a solar powered electric fence made by Premier 1 Supplies. Premier 1 gave us the electric fence they sell to protect beehives from bears. So far it has worked. Its also very easy to set up and move. You can watch our how to bearproof beehives video here.
Second we use a ratcheting strap to strap together the beehives. The thinking here is that if a bear does get to the hives, the straps may keep the hives together despite the bear trying to take the hive apart. I’ve read where this has worked for a few people, so it doesn’t hurt, I don’t think. We may need a heavier ratchet strap, the kind used on semi trucks.
Newly hived beesSolar powered fence from Premiere 1 SuppliesI like the rectangular net pattern of this electric fence. wide view of the hayfield where the beeyard is
I’ve heard from more than one person, be them beekeepers or just people who think they know something about honeybees and beekeeping, that you should only use cane sugar to feed your bees sugar syrup in the spring or fall.
sugar and cane sugar
I haven’t read this in any of my beginning beekeeping books, nor was it mentioned in my beekeeping class.
White table sugar, which is what we use to feed our honeybees in the fall and spring, is made primarily from sugarcane or sugar beets
I looked at sugar packages at the grocery stores in my town, I noticed one brand did say cane sugar on the package.
So, why do some say feed your bees only cane sugar?
It may be that sugarcane has not been genetically modified (yet). But there are GMO sugar beets:
“Genetically modified (GMO) sugar beets are already planted on more than one million acres of farmland, spanning 10 different states from Michigan to Oregon. In fact, the Roundup-resistant gene is present in 95-percent of U.S.-grown sugar beet plants.” Treehugger Federal Judge Bans Genetically Modified Sugar Beets
So it seems prudent not to feed your bees GMO sugar if you can. Yet GMO sugarcane is on the horizon:
Commercial utilisation of GM sugar cane is possible in the near future in the USA and Brazil. GMO-Compass
Now my head starts spinning. All we want to do is feed our bees some sugar to get them thru the winter and early spring, and we have to contend with global GMO issues.
I have a bad cold, and my microphone picked up the sounds of me having a cold. sorry bout that… Bedbugs, The Common Cold, Pork Shoulder, Cooking for French People, Lifecasters, Hackintosh, Colony Collapse, Dry Rubs, Crab Cocktail in San Fran, and Viewer Mail! More cool stuff: www.GardenFork.TV
I wear Carhartt work pants. Whether I am in the city or in the country, I’m wearing Carhartt’s black canvas work dungarees. ( I do own one tan pair )
Yesterday, we worked the bees, our plan was to powder sugar the bees to treat for varroa mites, and add new grease patties for tracheal mites.
Before we left the house, The Camera Operator looked at me and said, “Do you want to tape up the hole in your pant leg before we go?” I had torn a hole in my dungarees dropping some pine trees. ( I should really wear the double front Carhartts )
The hole in my pants
Me, being me, said no.
So, in the middle of taking apart our largest hive – the hive that gets a little more agitated than our other calm hives – I felt something crawling up my thigh.
Then I felt the pinch. All this occurring while I have a 60 lb deep brood box in my hands.
The Bee Sting
I realized once again who is the smart one in our family. Lesson here, tape up any holes in your pants before going to the beeyard. Or better yet, wear pants that don’t have holes in them.
Duct Tape Works
What knucklehead things have you done when working? Let me know below…
We are going to start a second beeyard at another farm. We wanted to have a second beeyard as a hedge against the chance that a bear will destroy our existing honeybee hives.
Our hives in their current location are surrounded by a traditional electric fence, three strands, and is part of a larger electric fence to keep beef cattle in their pasture. Bill, who owns the farm where our hives are, thinks the local bears are already aware of his electric fence, and have not tried to get to our beehives.
But if the bear ever did, we would lose all our hives. So we decided this year to put a few hives at another friends farm, on the other side of town.
The Electro Net fence protecting a beeyard, photo from Premier 1
I started to look in to bear proofing and saw an ad in Bee Culture magazine for a bear proof electric fence that will protect beehives from bears. I contacted the company, Premiere 1, and they sent me an ElectroNet 9/35/12 electric fence and a PRS 50 Solar Energizer at no charge to use in our new beeyard.
The solar Energizer, which contains the battery and electronics to zap bears, is housed in metal box that looks like it was engineered for space travel. Its pretty bulletproof.
The electric fence and solar powered energizer for our beeyardInterior of the solar powered energizer
We’ll shoot a GardenFork show about starting a new beeyard and installing this fence, and I’ll report back on how it works with our local bears. Thanks for Premier 1 for sending me this.
We pulled the inner cover on our biggest hive, and it was not easy this time. The honeybees had sealed it pretty tight with propopolis, a waxy resin that bees collect from trees.
bees seal shut the inner cover with this waxy resinthis stuff makes it take some work to open the top of the hive
We’ve added a third hive to our beehives, and our package of bees arrived on Saturday. The weather was not great, cold and windy, so we thought we’d wait until the next day, Sunday. We kept our bees in the basement to keep them from overheating.
Sunday arrives with wind and 32F. Not good. But we waited until 1 pm and the temperature rose above 50F, and it was time to hive the package. Hiving the package went really well. The worker bees stayed close to the queen in the new hive.
The bees in the package are surrounding the queen cage and the sugar feeder in the boxOpening the top of the package reveal the queen cage and the sugar feeder canRemoving the queen cage from the bee packageThis is the queen cage, the fondant on the left is pierced with a small nail and the worker bees will eat thru this to release the queen once this is put into the hive. Two bent nails are inserted into the queen cage, with the fondant candy facing up, this queen cage then sits between two frames in the middle of the new hiveAfter the queen is placed in the new beehive, the bees are added to the hive by shaking the hive packageYou have to move the package back and forthThe worker bees cluster around the queen cage that was placed in between the frames.I tear open the screen of the package to allow the last of the bees to exit to the hive.An entrance reducer allows the young hive to defend the entrance from robber bees and yellow jackets. I did not have one of those wooden reducers, so I used a mouse guard.
In late winter, when you have a warm day, say 44-50 F, its a great opportunity to quickly check your honeybees and beehive. In this beekeeping 101 video, we show how we open the hive and place some fondant and a grease patty in the hive to get the bees through the last bit of winter. Links to more of our beekeeping videos at end of this post.
Note: Since making this video, we have changed our methods and are no longer using the styrofoam outer covers or fondant, but its still a good video on caring for your bees in winter. Watch our dry sugar feeding videos here.
Your honeybees may or may not have enough food stores to make it thru this last part of winter, but I am of the mind that it pays to put in some fondant. Other beekeepers will have differing opinions on this and many other practices related to beekeeping. It is too cold to feed your honeybees sugar syrup in late winter, feed them fondant.
We have produced this series of Beginning Beekeeping Videos to document our first years of beekeeping to show people how fun it really is and to demystify it, and to spread the word on raising honey bees. We are not beekeeping experts, we are still learning. Tell us your experiences below and we can all learn more.
Bee fondant and Grease Patty recipes are based on information from Cass of WVBeekeeper’s Blog and the BeeSource forums . A big thank you to Cass for his writings.
Fondant bee candy can be fed directly to the bees once cooled. Fondant is a good food source for mini-mating nucs because there is no drowning involved when you have a small amount of bees. It is also common to use this recipe in small quantities to plug the hole on a Queen Cage.
> 4 parts (by volume) white sugar
> 4 parts (by volume) 2:1 Syrup or HFCS
> 3 parts (by volume) water
Boil water and slowly add the syrup and sugar until dissolved. Continue heating until the mixture reaches 238°F (114°C). Without mixing allow the solution to cool until it is slightly warm to the touch. Then begin to mix and aerate the solution. As you do this the color should lighten. Pour into shallow dishes or mold and save for later use. I prefer to make the fondant thin enough to where I can work it into an empty frame of drawn comb.
Grease Patties:
I made my own based on reading thru the Bee Source forums and WVBeekeepers blog.
2 cups vegetable shortening – NOT butter or other flavored shortening
4 cups white sugar
10 drops of food grade pepperment oil or wintergreen oil
1/4 cup mineral block – this is a mineralize salt lick you can get at a farm – ag supply store. break off a chunk with a hammer.
mix this together and form into 4″ wide patties, they have to be thin enough to be placed between hive supers.
you can wrap these patties in wax paper , put in a freezer back and freeze for future use.
Why do we like to wander around hardware stores? Find the answer to this and life’s questions on this week’s Gardenfork Radio. Today Eric and Mike talk about windmills, bees, home water damage, and snow. And more stuff. You just have to listen.
I’m pretty sure this is the wind farm we drove through. I don’t know if I said this, but the red lights on top of the wind turbines flashed in unison. It’s a really amazing thing to see at night:
http://www.earlparkindiana.com/windfarm.html
This is a short video explaining computer virtualization. It’s a little commercial but it’s the simplest explanation I’ve seen of virtualization: http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/esx3i.html –> Click “Watch Demo”
Harold McGee’s NY Times Article: Better Bread with less kneading
After reading a glowing article in Bee Culture about Jennifer Berry and her excellent queen rearing program, we have decided to replace the queens in both our hives with queens from Jennifer Berry.
Why requeen? What is most important to me is the bees display what is called hygenic behavior. This means they keep the hive clean, and because of this hygenic behavior, the varroa mite population is lower.
Many beekeepers requeen every year or every two years. Queens don’t last much longer on their own. The BeeAnonymous blog lists a few reasons:
* Older queens are more prone to swarming
* Replacing a failing queen
* Better stock traits like pest and disease resistances
* And in my case, improving bad attitudes
Our hive at the Maple Knoll Farm did amazing for its first year, giving us a few frames of honey to harvest. We opted to leave the majority of the honey in the hive, and also fed both our hives a lot of sugar syrup to get them through the hard winter we have up here in NW CT. Our bees are not aggressive, but we do want a to improve the stock of our bees, as we don’t want to have to use miticides to combat the varroa mite and tracheal mites.
Feeding bees sugar syrup in the fall to prepare them for winter
The hive that is in our yard, which is in a shed to protect it from bears, did not do nearly as well last year as our hive at Maple Knoll Farm. I checked on them last month and I think I heard them in the hive. This hive will benefit from a new queen.
The hive in our shed, wrapped with a insulating blanket and a polystyrene outer cover
Our hive at Maple Knoll may not need a new queen. The hive was great last year, and we saw them doing cleansing flights in 38 F degree weather. And whenever we went to check on them, the hive was alive with energy, tons of bees coming and going.
So I am thinking that we may split this hive. A split is where you take some of the bees from a healthy hive, some frames of brood, eggs, and pollen, and place them in a new hive with a new queen. A split allows you to populate a new hive without buying a package of bees, and it allows you to choose where your queen comes from. I’ve been reading up on how to divide or split a hive and I think we can do it.
Maple Knoll bees on cleansing flights
I do believe the queen in the Maple Knoll hive has been replaced by the bees. This may be a natural thing, or it may have been due to us being clumsy when working the hive. We weren’t always good at pulling out the first frame, making room to pull the other frames up and out. We may have killed the queen, as we did find what we think were opened queen cells on a few frames in the middle of the summer. Finding this queen will be a challenge, since she was not raised by humans, she is not marked on her body for easy identification.
Finding the queen in thousands of bees can be hard
To requeen a hive:
• Find and remove the existing queen.
• Wait a day if you can.
• Put in the new queen ( in her queen cage) in the hive between 2 frames, make sure the sugar plug is pointing up so no dead attendants can plug up her exit, poke a small hole in the sugar plug to get the bees to eat through it.
• Leave the hive alone for a week.
Our new queens arrive in May, we’ll make a GardenFork Show when we do the re-queening. Jennifer Berry’s Queens are only available through Brushy Mountain Bee Farm.
Beekeepers: what can you add to this post? Please comment below.
I wear 
