Beekeeping at Three Legged Dog Honey Apiary

The 2009 Honey Crop Is In !!
The bad news is that the last few years have been tough ones for Northwest beekeepers. Stories abound of Washington and Oregon crops that were half of what they were last year... or worse. I know a beekeeper who got 20 pounds of honey this year from hives that produced 300 pounds only a couple of years ago.

The good news is that at least we're still here at Three-Legged Dog Honey.

My crop was quite small this year because once again I had to start up all four of my hives from scratch in April. None of my hives survived the winter due mostly to mites. So my girls were occupied this summer just building up their new homes. (All worker bees are female ... unlike the misconceived "boys" of Jerry Seinfeld's BEE STORY.)

And 2009 has been quite a summer for the beekeeper as well!

This year I built a Honey Hut in the backyard. That was one heck of a job, but it's sure nice to have a place to store stuff. And we've been able to reclaim all that space in our garage!

Also for the first time I now have my own Honey Extractor as well. Since 1998 I've had my friends and fellow beekeepers Al Stedman and Roy Barton extract my honey for me. But this year, since my crop was only a few supers it just wasn't worth bothering them. I'll still go to Roy whenever I have large crops of 9 to 15 suppers of honey, but it's great to know that I can extract my own honey now when I need to.

Ever wonder how we beekeepers determine what flavor to label our honey? Well, we actually go out there and take note of the blossoms that we see them working on. Honey bees are very "nectar specific" whenever there is a sufficient supply available. The bees returning to the hive communicate this to their fellow foragers, and the guard bees at the door have even been observed turning away bees with the wrong stuff.

Finally, we study the amount, taste, and color of the actual honey we end up with. My bees often run out of their usual sources early, and they may end up the summer going to quite a variety of other sources - dandelion, butterfly bush, lavender, blue mist, oregano, etc. And, while my blackberry and fireweed honey is usually a very light, white color, it can sometimes take on a distinctly amber cast. Basically, the bees make their honey from pretty much the same sources every year, just not in the same proportions. Finally we use an instrument to grade our honey by it's clarity and purity before we determine that it is indeed Grade A honey.

Requeening for Fun and Recreation!
Requeening can be a critical part of beekeeping. It's certainly exciting. Here I've just received two new Carniolan queens (an Eastern European strain) from Haitkum queen breeders in Orland, CA. They arrive in these little queen cages along with a small retinue of attendant female workers to keep them company.

Mail.JPG (47159 bytes)

After some time queens may fail and begin producing spotty brood clusters. The hive as whole gets several clues that his is happening, most importantly if her pheromones are weakening. The workers will then begin moving fertilized (female) eggs laid by this queen into special peanut-shaped cells where they get the special treatment that will allow then to pupate and emerge as queens in a couple of weeks. When they do there is always the chance that the new queen will be superior to the old one. The biggest problem with this for us beekeepers is that it's a pretty haphazard thing.

For one thing, the emerging queen will possibly have to do mortal combat with the old queen. And anything can happen then.

And for another there is the question of the nuptial flight. This only happens once for a queen just a day or so after emerging. And it lasts her entire life -- which, unlike that of a worker-female, could last up to two or three years. During this flight she will hopefully be impregnated by several drones (males). The mix is important since the quality of these genes pretty much determines how well the resulting hive will do. And hopefully she'll be able to avoid being impregnated by her own offspring males.

Anyway, to make a long story short, it's best just to buy honey bee queens from reliable breeders whose job it is to ensure that they are the best and the brightest queens possible.

In this case we've split one of our strongest hives (see above) that we had somehow managed to successfully discourage from swarming this year. One of the new queens went into the new split colony. I painted her with a spot of enamel so I can recognize her whenever I inspect the frames. Then I trimmed one of the wings on her right side so she won't be able to join a swarm should I get one next spring.

You may just be able to see her in the picture above in her new queen cage that I've just pressed into some brood comb. The 50+ workers that will emerge during the next week will immediately accept her as their queen and will help impress the rest of the colony with the validity of her (pheromone) credentials, when she is released in 7-8 days.

The other queen went into a colony that had a failing queen where the workers had started to act pretty desperate about the whole situation. The colony was soon "queenrite" and much happier. You can actually sense the enthusiasm in there when you open up a hive like this for a frame check.

Hopefully they will both be big honey producers.

WHAT'S NEW AT THREE-LEGGED DOG HONEY APIARY