A Few Famous Beekeepers

I stumbled across a listing of famous beekeepers, most of whom are famous for discovering something about bees or developing something pertaining to beekeeping, but I was most interested in those who were just beekeepers:

Henry Fonda - A hobbyist who gave away away his jars of honey labeled Henry's Honey. As a youngster, her earned his Eagle Scout's merit badge for beekeeping.

Peter Fonda - Actor, activist and son of Henry Fonda, starred in Ulee's Gold, about a fictional Florida beekeeper.

Brigham Young - His interest in bees led to Utah being called the Beehive State with skep hives as emblems.

Leo Tolstoy - Mentions beekeeping in War and Peace, describing the evacuation of Moscow: "Moscow was empty. It was deserted as a dying, queenless hive is deserted."

Lord Baden Powell - Founder of the Boy Scouts in England.

Maria von Trapp - Kept bees on her Vermont Farm.

Martha Stewart - A beekeeper for over twenty-five years.

Sir Edmund Hillary - A commercial beekeeper from New Zealand before scaling Mount Everest.

Thomas Jefferson - Third president of the United States as a avid beekeeper.

Beginner's Guide to Reading

As a new beekeeper, I was careful to keep my go-to reference materials limited to a trusted few as there are so many ways to accomplish the same end and just as many opinions on how to do it. It can be more confusing than helpful and am grateful for some of the mentors at BUMBA that help new beekeepers decipher it.

Now that I am completing my first full year, I find that I am more capable of digesting the information and have been reading all that I can, from vintage books to e-zines. Here are a few (besides those talked about elsewhere in the blog) that I find extremely helpful as a new beekeeper:

1. The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum.

2. BUMBA's Yahoo Group where you can search past posts, read uploaded files and browse links to recommended sites.

3. Kim Flottum's email newsletter, The Buzz.

4. Brushy Mountain Bee Farm's webinars, which are available for viewing in their video library.

5. Google's free ebooks on beekeeping.

I hope that you, too, will continue your bee education and find some of these sites just as helpful.

We Have an Heir and a Spare!

Was very pleased to find one queen cell and a second queen cup in the nuc today!

Upgraded them to a medium super and now will let them be for a few weeks while the queen hatches, takes her maiden flight and starts laying eggs.

The donor hive is looking good. We are expected to get a bit of snow tomorrow and then again later in the week but both hives have a small amount of fondant to help them get through the coming weather even though they both have abundant nectar and pollen already.

Like Daughter, Like Mother

My mom came to visit over the summer and was excited for a chance to get to know the bees.


Inspecting a frame full of honey.






Experiencing the fun of holding a drone.

Rotating hive bodies.

Mom is very excited about the nuc split and making our own queen. She said she's just as excited as if we had a grandchild on the way!

Bloom Chart for Plants

A very useful tool for predicting the honey flow is knowing when plants in your area are in bloom. The following chart was provided to us at the BUMBA Short Course and I refer to it often, such as why we were seeing pollen being brought in when the bees were flying in February. :-)

Blooming Date Chart for Northern Maryland Wild Plants (Native or Introduced) FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV Skunk Cabbage Red Dead Nettle Common Dandelion Field Mustard Red Maple Redbud Bush Honeysuckle White or Dutch Clover Black Raspberry Blackberry Tulip Poplar Black Locust American Holly Common Motherwort Vipers Bugloss Privet Poison Ivy Canada Thistle Intermediate Dogbane Butterfly Weed Common Milkweed Mountain Mint Smooth Sumac Shiny Sumac Jewelweed Japanese Knotweed Goldenrod White Heath Aster

The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping by Richard Taylor

I borrowed this wonderful book from fellow beekeeper Jonathan. It is such a great read and full of useful information but sadly, it is now out of print. And the demand for it has driven the used book price way out of my league!

If anyone would like to offer their copy to a good home, I would be willing to pay $20 and a jar of honey for the kindness.

Nuc Action

When a hive is queen-right, there is a certain rhythm to the activity. The bees are contently doing their jobs. But when a queen is not present, that rhythm is disrupted. By pulling a couple frames of brood to create a nuc, I certainly disrupted the rhythm of the hive for those queenless bees and they spent Sunday setting things right again. There was no activity in or out of the nuc. Those few forager bees that departed on Saturday probably returned to the donor hive.

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day of warm sunshine after overnight rains and the bees in the donor hive were busily coming and going. I was pleased to see that many bees from the nuc were doing the same. Some were clearly taking orientation flights. Others were returning from foraging. I wonder if the foragers were of the right age to now be doing so or if they were suddenly promoted because the hive needed foragers. Whatever the reason, the hive did seem as though it was now set to right. I'm certain they have selected a few new queens and rhythm has been restored to the hive.

First Full Inspection of 2011 and Split the Hive

The daytime temps have been in the upper 50s to mid 70s but the nights can be still quite cool. Have been feeding fondant since late January. With today in the 60s I planned to do my first full inspection to see how the bees are doing after the winter.

I knew that I would split the hive this spring for a number of reasons but mainly for the learning experience instead of installing another package of bees. The easiest way to split a hive is to move brood and introduce a new queen but as I am so pleased with my Russian bees I decided to let them make their own queen. You do this by moving frames containing eggs, larvae and capped brood along with food. The bees will quickly figure out they are without a queen and decide which of the eggs or young larvae is to be the new queen.

With not having been in the hive since last fall, I wasn't sure what to expect with this being my first year with my one hive. So, I decided to reserve the decision to split once I checked in on the bees. Boy, did I receive a very pleasant surprise when I opened the hive today!

The hive had more bees than I was expecting with lots of brood AND capped honey!

Russian bees tend to increase hive population a bit later than other bees yet the first frame I pulled out was heavy with nectar and capped honey. This frame shown here is full of brood and other frames were just as lovely with drone cells along the bottom.

The top box of the 3 medium supers had 2.5 frames full of pollen and nectar and 3.5 frames of brood!


The queen was easily spotted in the middle box which contained as many frames of pollen, nectar, capped honey and brood. While she is not in this picture, just admire that awesome brood pattern!

With so many good things going on in the hive, I decided the time was right to make the split today! I moved over 2 frames of brood (containing more eggs and larvae than capped brood) along with a full frame of food from the top box of the donor hive (I didn't touch the middle box that contained the queen.) I rounded out the 5-frame nuc box with an empty from on each side that is not yet drawn out as honeycomb.

In the donor hive, I slid the frames together and added empty frames to the outside. Then I rotated the boxes, bringing the empty bottom box up to the top.

The bees in the nuc will quickly figure out there is no queen. They will decide which egg or young larvae will be the new queen and will feed her royal jelly. In 16 days she will hatch - I estimate that will be around April 4th. It could take another 5-7 days before she is mated and begins to lay her eggs. Twenty-one days later, (I am estimating around April 30th) her first brood will emerge and the new hive will start to grow and forage and make honey.

I sat for some time today watching the nuc as bees would leave. I am expecting some to return to the donor hive as they know that hive to be home. Soon, the house bees in the nuc will become forager bees and will learn that this new location is home. But today I did observe a few foragers leave and return to the nuc. I am excited about this new hive on so many levels!