The Beauty of Pollinators

This beautiful video is by filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg who shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film "Wings of Life," inspired by the vanishing of one of nature's primary pollinators, the honeybee.

Record Keeping

Keeping track of your hives is an important aspect of successful beekeeping so after utilizing a pad of paper for the past year and a half, I finally elected to go high-tech with Beetight.com online record keeping.  I found it to be less clunky and more intuitive than the popular Hive Tracks.

The basic version is free for up to 6 hives. The Pro version is $15 per year and comes with an iPhone/iPad or Android app. The big plus for me is that you can export your data into excel so that you can keep a local backup.

So far, I'm impressed with its ease of use, allowing you to

• Easily record details of inspections and manipulations
• Record treatments and feeding
• Track colony temperament
• Record honey harvests, including records of nectar sources and batch codes.

Fondant Recipe

Making fondant for winter survival feeding is one of the most important skills you could have as a beekeeper. The bees cannot use fresh, uncured sugar syrup from a feeder or in the honeycomb during periods of cold to generate heat, but they can with fondant. I've followed this recipe supplied from Scott Seccomb of BUMBA with much success thanks to his excellent notes included as red text.  

Aluminum foil with a bit of
Mega Bee ready to go.

Have ready a sheet of unwrinkled aluminum foil with the shinny side up. I place mine on a cookie sheet that has been spread with a bit of Mega Bee that then gets incorporated into the fondant.

To feed a medium strength colony for 5 to 10 days:

Add 2 Cups sugar, 1.5 Cups water and 1/8 teaspoon Cream of Tartar to a small pot Stir only to dissolve the sugar. Use a small pot that allows for the thermometer to be submerged into the mixture for an accurate temperature reading and also makes it easier to scrape out the mixture.

Boil to 238 degrees (soft ball stage.) (This takes about 30 minutes for my stove.) Do not stir during the boil. Eventually you will tell by the could of the boil when its getting close to the desired temperature. Use a good candy-making thermometer. Boiling to 238 degrees is critical for the proper final consistency and sugar absorption.

Remove the pot from the heat and let cool to around 140 degrees. (This also takes about 30 minutes for me.) You can hasten this by a short period of refrigeration but it can cause the mixture to gum up around the edges of the cooling pot, requiring heavier mixing/scraping when stirring.

Stir until you can no longer
 see the bottom of the pot.

Once the mixture has cooled to 140 degrees, stir in 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup (Never use dark colored corn syrup) or up to 1/4 Cup of honey (bees will really devour the honey fondant) and stir until the mixture begins to turn white and you can no longer see the bottom of the pan.

Pour onto aluminum foil and cool.  If you dump too early, as soon as the mixture turns opaque, it may never firm up. If you stir too long, it will look like cake frosting and will harden like a rock. I stirred this batch just a bit too long from trying to take a picture of it with one hand while stirring with the other and ended up with it thickening way too fast! I flattened it before it cooled but it still turned out thicker than I prefer.

Once the fondant is cool you can break it up into pieces about 3-4" in diameter. Place it on the top bars of the frames, leaving room for air flow between them.

As you can see by the photo, the bees don't mind that this wasn't a perfect batch. :-)

Important to note: 

• Doubling the recipe doesn't always work. You could end up with goo or rock hard cement.
• Store extra fondant in a sealed container. Place a piece of aluminum foil on top and a wet piece of paper towel on top of that to keep it moist.
• If you use honey in your fondant do not use store bought honey which has been heated and possibly altered with who knows what, and may have Foul Brood spores in it. 

Last Inspection of 2011

Was a beautiful 62 degree day and the bees were flying so took advantage of it to inspect the hives and check on their honey stores. Since our temps have ranged from 45 to 65 degrees thus far this winter, the bees have remained up in the top box of both hives instead of clustering lower. With so many bees up top, it was impossible to see between the frames so had to pull one to check on the honey.

Can you spot the queen?

The OV bees were quite feisty! The one frame I pulled had just a few cells of honey so will begin feeding them fondant. And wouldn't you know it, but this frame also had the queen on it! I took a quick pic before slowly and carefully replacing it. No wonder the guard bees were after me! Last year I didn't begin feeding until the 25th of January but they were clustered in the bottom box until then.

I've mentioned this before but the Sasha hive is so very different from the OV hive and the differences are quite noticeable. Not only are the Sasha bees gentler than the OV bees but they are smaller and lighter in color. Only one guard bee flew up to check me out. They still have a fair amount of honey on the frames so will hold off feeding them for a bit.

Already planning for 2012 and adding the 3rd and final hive to our apiary. Need to inventory the supplies on hand and order the wooden ware.

The Lore of the Honey-Bee by Tickner Edwardes

Am the delighted recipient of The Lore of the Honey-Bee by Tickner Edwardes (1865 - 1944). He had always wanted to be an author from childhood and wrote a number of romantic novels. This 1908 book is full of information that is still pertinent today and will be great winter reading.

When the First World War broke out he applied to join the army as a fighting soldier but was told that at the age of 50 he was too old. However he did join the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private, and worked his way through the ranks to become a Captain particularly involved in entomology – the study of insects.

Following his enlistment he decided to enter the priesthood and subsequently became vicar of Burpham. It was during his time there that another of his books was to achieve fame - Tansy 1921. It was made into a silent film on location in the village and was highly successful, starring some of the most popular stars of the era.