Another year, another start

Whenever someone talks to me about their desire to start beekeeping and what they need to do, I always advise an early start. Get your orders in months in advance, don’t wait until spring is upon us. But I find that I have a hard time following my own advice. Here we are in March, and I’m already behind. We have had a very mild winter here in Texas. Regardless, the winters in Texas are rarely of enough consequence to harm a decently strong hive with good stores. The trees all over town are putting out leaves, and the blooms are everywhere. This is the time that bees make their living.

One major goal for this year was to do a better job of providing water for my bees, so that they do not congregate in other less desirable places where they could potentially be a nuisance. I had originally planned to buy a large concrete water fountain. But I settled on a different option. I bought a galvanized steel stock tank in the hopes that the bees might use that.

The floating logs are there to allow the bees to land on them and better approach the water. Eventually I plan to have a lilly plant and other water plants. I have added four small comet goldfish to keep mosquito larvae down. So far the bee traffic has been sparse. I added lemongrass oil, but that didn’t make a difference. I may add aeration as it is my impression that bees are attracted to the sound of moving water. Bees are still making the trip to the pond/fountain in my front yard. Part of this is just habit. I need bees to come to this stock tank and get in the habit of obtaining water there.

Moving on to the next task: you may recall from the last blog entry that I had two hives at Paul’s house. That one was raided and attacked by other bees. Paul had confirmed that there was no bee activity from this hive, but there was from the other hive. So it had been in my mind that I needed to collect this empty hive and put it into storage to prevent the destruction of the comb from various critters. Yesterday I finally came by and opened up the hive. When I removed the lid, I was greeted by the site of a small dehydrated gecko. Previously crushed? Came up into the hive and died? Regardless it was mummified. There were no bees and appeared to be no activity in these supers, which I took as a good sign. After I had returned to my home, I inspected the comb more closely by removing frames. At first I noticed nothing unusual. Then I noticed what appeared to be fungus. But then I realized it was not fungus, it was webbing from an insect. Ah ha! Just what I had feared and suspected. Wax moths had invaded. In some of the frames, there appeared to be tunnels in the comb, and in one of the tunnels I could see a long white larvae moving. That’s the wax worm, i.e. the wax moth larvae having a grand time eating pollen and wax. Based on what I have heard about wax moth infestations, this one was very light, and I had caught it in the early stages. I put both of these supers into a large garbage bag and placed them inside my chest freezer. Over the next three days these larvae will freeze and die. The plan is to return these supers onto two of my strong hives and have them clean them up and use them. Bees are enterprising fixer-uppers, they will clean out any mess. Quite clearly, I would have been much better off to have acted at least a week or two ago. Had I waited another week, I think all of that comb would have been destroyed.

I did pop the lid on the still-alive hive in Paul’s backyard. It consists of just one medium super. Seven of the ten frames had bees on them, and the bees looked vigorous, having placed some honey stores about the frames on the underside of the inside cover. The amber goodness spilled over the frames as the cells broke. I love the sight of pure honey. I think this hive is going to make it. I plan to requeen it, but it will be another month before a queen is available for purchase. The hives in my backyard are very active. I have not opened any up. Maybe this week I will do so. I want to make sure they have enough room to expand, which probably decreases the chance that they will throw off swarms. And increases the honey yield.

I wouldn’t be myself if I wasn’t thinking about buying some additional equipment. I would love to have a motorized extractor which would greatly decrease the time and effort involved in harvesting the honey. I feel a little like many farmers must have felt–the desire to have better equipment, contrasted with the notion that if you are always pouring more money in, then you’re never going to make a “profit.” Although this is just a hobby, and certainly not a moneymaker in any sense, a beekeeper can’t look at the buckets of honey he has harvested and not feel wealthy.