The Death of a Hive

I lost my last 5 frame nuc this past week and I thought I would share some pics and maybe a little about what I learned in the experience. I started out the fall with a couple of 5 frame nucs. Some experienced beekeepers suggested combining for the winter but I couldn't bring myself to kill off the queens and consolidate the hives so I set out to figure out how to keep them from freezing the the unpredictable North Georgia winter. I first tried moving them indoors like you see on some of the websites out there. The bees went straight back to their old spot and just hung out there until I moved the nucs back into place. I then tried stacking and bunching them together until finally I was down to just 1 nuc. My final attempt was to build a box around my last nuc and drop a 40 watt light bulb with a timer into the box. On warm days I would shut it off and on cold days I would override the timer to maintain a constant temp. To my surprise my last nuc made it through to spring! Well almost to spring. A few weeks ago we had one of those warm pre-spring days that gets you dreaming of longer days and blooming flowers. I was excited to see activity around my hive and I decided to do my first pre-spring inspection. I was pleased to see that my nuc appeared to be healthy. There were a decent amount of bees and the queen was laying a small amount of eggs with sealed brood and honey all around. I realized that they had set up shop in the opposite corner from where the light bulb was placed and probably did that to avoid getting too warm. The day was beautiful and there was 60 degree temps in the 10 day forecast! I decided not to put my outer box back on but rather buddy up an empty nuc with the light bulb inside it to provide that final source of heat of the season. A few cold nights later I realized there was no more activity around my hive and something was terribly wrong. One warm afternoon I cracked the lid open and saw a few bees milling around but the once robust hive was far too quiet. This past Saturday with temps in the low 60s, I did a full inspection and this is what I found. It appears that with the outer box no longer over the nuc, the heat from my little 40 watt bulb wasn't enough to keep the cluster from freezing. All that was left was a cluster of dead molding bees and the remnants of sealed brood that is never going to emerge. I learned a couple of things from this experiment: first, if you can consolidate weaker hives in the fall, do it. One hive making it through the winter is better than none. Second, your bees need strong numbers to survive those cold winter days, If you decide to try to provide a heat source, it's best to find a way to fully cover your nucs and find a way to provide enough heat but not too much. A 40 watt light bulb was probably too much in my case and hard to regulate leading the bees to cluster on one side of the hive rather than the middle. And lastly, any time you have a weak hive it is going to be vulnerable to fluctuating temps, do what you can to avoid adding to the volatility of a weak hive. If you find yourself doing something that seems to be working, keep it up, manipulating your hive too much creates a lot of work for your bees and in the late winter/early spring, these guys need all the rest they can get. Its about to get real busy!

Sustainable

My friends at work know that I have bees. They also know that my bees are probably as close as I'm ever going to get to any type of sustainable lifestyle. Today one of them shared this Sustainable comic from the guys at xkcd.com. We thought it was funny and you might too!

Oh no! Well that's annoying...

…You can say that again. For Christmas my wife and kids ordered me a package of bees. They were set to arrive in late March. We are lucky enough to have a local supplier and so we have plans to go pick them up when they are ready and we are looking forward to going as a family to pick them up. This weekend I spent the better part of two days tinkering with some of my equipment and making preparations. Today I got an email from our supplier saying our bees won't be ready till the first week of April. Bummer. Well I guess that gives me another week or two to get my act together. I better get on with it. So much to do and so little time.

My Backyard Bees

In the Spring of 2012, we accidentally started beekeeping...

My wife and I were helping a friend who had some pesky honey bees taking up residence in her home. Through our research we quickly became fascinated with the world of the honey bee and decided, if we're going to go to all of this trouble to help rid our friend of her bees, the least we could do was put them in our backyard and see if we could get some honey!

Ok, so all those "we's and our's," I might be stretching the truth a little, the fact is my wife has been supportive of my little honeybee experiment from the beginning but sometimes when I turn my back I think I hear her eyes rolling around to the back of her head. My wife keeps me grounded, and without her I would probably be, eating sardines from a can and living out of homeless shelters, moving from one job to the next eking out an existence.

My wife and I and our three kids live in a community just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee called Flintstone, Georgia (aka Chattanooga Valley). Our neighborhood is one of those quite cul-de-sacs were we know all of our neighbors and the most exciting thing that has happened in the last few years was when the "cat lady" painted her house pink. I like to mix things up a little and so last summer we got some bees. 

For some time now, we've talked about getting a couple of acres with a goat and a cow and a couple of chickens. But we like our little neighborhood and so we have had to get creative. 

Last year, I got an old Langstroth hive from a local beekeeper, and with the help of  a couple of friends,

I rescued some bees from the floor of another friend's house where these bees had taken up residence. I spent the summer trying to figure out how to keep bees. I had mild success and I learned a lot along the way.

This summer we have decided to ramp up our operation and start a few more hives. We have ordered some bees from a local supplier and in April we are expecting our first packaged bees.  

We will be documenting our adventure on this blog, I have a few friends that I've roped into helping me along the way and I am hoping that they might contribute some of their experiences too. Thanks for checking us out.