Several people asks how we raise such nice, successful bees here in Healdsburg, California.  For your success! I hope some of the following suggestions will help you.

 

1. Your beehive should be placed on blocks, or a hive stand with open space under the hive, not a solid table top, utilizing a screened bottom board.  Debris can then fall down and away from your bees. Your bees from us are clean, however, should your bees come in contact with other bees with mites while foraging they may return to your hive with mites, your bees can perhaps scratch some of the mites off and the mites are dropped through the screened bottom board away from your bees.

 

2.  Place your hive over dirt, not over concrete nor over gravel (too hot), approximately 18 inches off the ground.   The opening of the hive should face the rising sun (East), and the hive should be located in full sun, contrary to what is reported in most outdated books.  Using our have stands (attractive and for sale here) or two 2×4’s on 4 concrete blocks waste fall through the screen bottom board to the ground, away from your bees.  Your bees, to survive, need to be spotlessly clean and this will help them maintain a nice, healthy environment.  18 inches off the ground gives your bees a chance to defend themselves from animals.

 

Some books and teachers indicate a little afternoon dappled shade is ok, but remember, your bees are trying to keep the inside of their hive at 93-98 degrees! In our opinion, dappled shade or any shade equals a dead out hive.   So go for full sun.  If you do not have full sun, ask a neighbor or friend and locate your bees there.  Some wind block from the back is helpful if you are in an extremely breezy location or on a hilltop (not a good hive location choice).

Leave your plexiglass or cardboard observation board in (provided with the screened bottom board) for the first month and a half, then leave it out all summer, except when you do your 24 hour inspections, unless you are in a constant wind location, then leave it in.

 

3.  If you have purchased up and running hives, set your hive on the stand and immediately remove the duct tape from the entrance or reducer, opening the entrance.  A four inch opening is nice for a new hive.  I run mine wide open with no entrance reducer unless you see yellow jackets.  The bees can protect their hive with the small  4 inch opening. If you see bees backing up at the hive entrance, you should  fully open the entrance so there isn’t a traffic jamb and the air circulation is increased.

 

4.  If you see one yellow jacket, you have a serious problem.  Bait immediately.  Reinstall the entrance reducer to the four inch opening.  I like the Rescue water yellow jacket traps.  Even if you don’t see yellow jackets, bait for the queen in early spring and continue baiting all summer.  The yellow jacket problem is at epidemic proportions in our area of California, so bait and catch, no matter what.  If you are on a tight budget, you can use a quart cola plastic jug. See U-Tube.  Drill or poke 8 holes about 2 inches up from the bottom, a little bigger than the size of a pencil.  Put a piece of steak, cat food,  tuna or salmon every 4 days into the jug, replace the lid and hang (some people use a little apple juice in the jug,  too).  Keep it fresh and you will see just how many yellow jackets are in your area waiting to eat the young larvae of your honey bees.  Alarming!  Remember, if you see a single yellow jacket below your hive or trying to enter or even fighting going on at the entrance to your hive, those insects are trying to rob out your hive.  Immediately use the entrance reducer at the one inch opening and bait.

 

5.  Hives can only be moved one foot per day… or five miles….nothing in between.  The bees orient themselves to the sun, and unfortunately, even though you move your hive just a short distance, your bees will go back to the old location, wait there and die.

 

6.  PACKAGE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:   If you have purchased a package, remove the can of sugar syrup by turning the screened carrying box upside down, then remove the queen cage by carefully sliding the silver tab toward the opening and pull your queen cage out. Hint:  I put one frame over the opening of the package, loosely,  while you work on the little queen cage.  It doesn’t matter if a few bees fly out.  They will again find their queen!  Take the cork plug out of the queen cage, using a knife, pin or ice pick.  Be careful not to harm your queen. Immediately cover the queen cage hole with your finger.  The queen will not sting.  Insert the sugar cube tube (provided) into the hole. Carefully put your queen in your pocket – not in the direct sun.

 

7.  Pour your bees into the hive box.    Pull four frames out of the center of your hive, so you have somewhere to pour the majority of the bees.  Empty the bees in the package into your hive by shaking them vigorously, even banging the box hard and then pouring the bees into the hive.  You will have to shake and bang the screened box several times to get the majority of the bees out.  You can then set the screen box down in front of the hive (with the hole up, after getting the majority of the bees inside the hive).  The few bees that are left inside the carrying box will rejoin the other bees inside the hive.  Do not worry if there are dead bees left in the bottom of the carrying box or now on the bottom of the hive.  Bees generally live just 30-40 days, and so some will have died naturally each days, but there are plenty provided to keep the queen warm, fed and to draw out enough comb so she can start laying eggs amazingly at  approximately 1,000 -1,500 per day!  The undertaker bees will carry the bees out and deposit them outside the hive. (note:   After the bees have been introduced to the hive, you can temporarily and gently cover the top of your hive with two or more of the frames you initially removed.  This gives the bees a chance to work their way up onto the frames.  After ten minutes, the bees will have moved mainly onto the frames inside the box.

 

8.  Hang the queen cage with the tube facing down and the screen to the side so the bees can feed her through the screen between two center frames. Do not smash the screen into the wax on the frame.  The metal strip can be fastened over a center frame or onto a shish kabob stick placed across the top of several frames so that the queen is down into the hive between two center frames.  Alternatively, you can use a rubber band to fasten the queen cage to a center frame. The bees will feed the queen through the wire mesh of the queen cage.  Those bees flying around outside will find and follow your queen inside her new hive box before nightfall.

 

Note:  The bees and the queen will eat thru the sugar cube tube, usually within one to three days, releasing your queen slowly and quietly.  After a giggly ride home, you want your hive to become calm and adjusted to their new home, thus the sugar cube allows for a slow and quiet release.

 

9.  Please do not spray your bees with anything!  Not sugar water, not honey with water – nothing! You can then slowly move the frames in the hive together, towards the center,  and replace the removed frames you used on top to cover the hive for l0 minutes,  back into the hive into the outside positions filling up the hive with 9 or 10 frames or 7 frames and two follower boards.  Put your filled and rinsed out feed tray on top of your hive, with the fresh 50-50 sugar mixture and the cork floats, then add the thicker inner cover (screen down and to the back), then place your metal telescoping lid on top of it all.

 

10. Congratulations, you have just finished installing your bees! It is good not to disturb your bees for three or four days, at which time you will only have to remove the queen cage and make sure the queen has been released and you can sweep off the dead bees from your bottom screen enlisting a friend to lift your boxes.  (worker bees move in and out of the abandoned queen cage, this is not your queen – shake those bees into the hive to be sure and then remove the cage). Close up your hive and leave your bees alone.  They know what they are doing.  In 35 days you should have a lot of brood, nectar, pollen and honey deposited on the frames.  In fact, this is a good time to check to see if an additional hive box with l0 frames needs to be added at this time.  Your new bees can build up quickly.

 

11. For people who pick up ‘nucs’ and up and running hives, some beekeepers place three little blades of grass (that have not been sprayed with any chemicals) on the entrance or landing board, so when the bees come out in their new location, they crawl across something unusual, notifying them they are in a “new” location, and  they need to acquaint themselves with their new home in relation to the sun.  Do not ‘Block” the entrance with grass and do not keep the front of the hive closed.  Open the hive immediately upon placing in it’s new location at your home, garden or farm!

 

12. Sugar Notes:  Use C & H Sugar from Costco or Safeway C and H .Stir your sugar and water –  do not boil!  Let stand for 15 minutes until clear.  Then use.  ORGANIC and other sugars may have  molasses added, which causes dysentery (poops your bees to death).

Note: It takes 9 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax.  You can see there is a lot of work to be done by the bees before they can get up to full speed and to provide ample space for the queen to begin laying 1,000 – 1,500 eggs per day.   Other brands contain molasses, causing dysentery in honey bees.  Do not boil the water and the sugar together.  Simply stir the sugar and water together until it dissolves or almost dissolves.  It is a good idea to purchase an extra entrance reducer and designate this as your “stir stick”.  (Do not use a kitchen utensil with microscopic food particles or oil on it – dedicate  a newly purchased wood spoon or a special entrance reducer for this task exclusively).  If you are on city water, (with chemicals), fill your new, clean (preferably food grade) water bucket dedicated just to your bees the night before.  By morning, your water will be fine to use (most of the chlorine and chemicals etc. have dissipated, hopefully), then mix your sugar-water mixture.  Do not mix a whole bunch and reserve in the refrigerator, it does not hold. Mix fresh each time.  If they take it all in one day, then give more. Remember, there should be nothing in your bucket or on your stir stick EVER except bee sugar and water.

 

13. I bait for yellow jackets all year long. No matter what anyone says, they are your bees’ enemy.  At first, I thought, how lovely, the yellow jackets and quail are cleaning up the dead bees – isn’t nature just wonderful!  However, beware, once the dead bees are eaten, and the yellow jacket population has built up while enjoying a great protein source (your dead bees), they start to eat your live bees and baby bee larvae.  It is disheartening to hear a bee scream as it is being hauled away by a yellow jacket. It may even be your queen!  A sure sign you have a yellow jacket problem is a single yellow jacket in the area, down low, around the front of your hive.  Also, you can watch for bees legs and small chunks of wax on the screened bottom or observation board.  This is a sure sign of robbing and/or yellow jackets.  Yellow jacket traps with the liquid pheromone from the hardware store, the Rescue Water Yellow Jacket Traps or the screened box with a piece of chicken are all good traps.   If you bait early (March and April) and get the queen, you really save yourself a lot of heartache.  Be sure to refresh each two weeks.

 

14. It is hard to discipline yourself, but do not open your hive for the first four and a half weeks, except to feed your bees from the top and after 3 days to remove the queen cage.  When you remove the queen cage from the hive, quickly replace the inner cover and top. You don’t want to chill your brand new brood.  I know it is difficult not to open your hive, but enjoy watching your bees work from outside.

 

15. After the initial period, when it is necessary for inspections, always open your hive mid-day between 1 pm and 3 pm, the warmest part of the day, when it is well over 65 degrees and there is  no wind.  Do not stand in front of the hive and break the flight pattern of your bees.  Stand to the back or side.  Before even opening your hive, watch it to see what is going on from the outside.   Check out the observation board or put on your bee suit and look from under the box.  It is exciting to see orange pollen on your bee’s hind legs entering the hive.  Pollen signals your queen to start laying a lot of eggs as, together with nectar, her workers can effectively feed the new baby bees. By the fourth or fifth week, there should be capped brood in your boxes.  It is quite possible you may need to add another box.

 

16. We have great quality bee hive boxes, frames, inner covers, feed trays and all sorts of equipment here, both medium and deep and hope you will obtain your beekeeping equipment from us!  Be prepared, as your bees can boost up quickly.  We will discuss how to add your next box soon.

 

17. If you wish to do something wonderful for your bees, plant Sedum Autumn Joy and any herb or flower that produces pollen “in mass”.  Two or three flowers of one kind are not of great interest to our honey bees.  The Sonoma County Master Gardeners website (www.sonomamastergardeners.org), and Kate Frey has a nice listing of terrific pollinator plants.

 

18. After the first five weeks, once true summer heat gets here,  please remember to remove your observation board and leave it out.  This observation board is only for inspections  on a 24-48 hour basis. If you wish to check your bees for mites, I suggest you do so in August.  The first year, there is a good chance you will not have very many Varroa mites, if any at all!  The bees you acquired from us are clean and usually stay that way until the August, two years after you purchased them.

 

19.To inspect your bees for mites, cover your observation board with 1/8 inch of Crisco, not spray oil. Slide it carefully into the hive, under the screen. Then powder sugar with C and H powdered sugar (using a kitchen sieve) each frame of bees (lightly).  Do not put powdered sugar directly into the cells with eggs or larvae. Quickly powder both sides of all frames attempting to coat the bees.  The bees love this and think it is a gift from Heaven.  They lick and scratch each other, knocking any mites loose and down into the Crisco.  Check your observation board after one hour and then again after 24 hours. Count how many mites you see. More on the mite count later.

 

This Powdered Sugar treatment reduces the number of Varroa mites.  While bees are  out and about on flowers they come into contact with other bees.  Varroa Mites will transfer from an older bee to a younger bee with a longer projected life span. Varroa mites multiply quite rapidly in the hive too.  They will place four Varroa destructor mite babies in one single drone cell! If you find mites, you may wish to use powder sugar on your bees 2 x per month as a Varroa mite treatment starting in August, and 4x per month in September.  Continue this practice as long as you are seeing over seven mites on your observation board, which you  have coated in Crisco to trap the mites within  a 24 hour period.   I keep the treatment up until i have greatly reduced any mite count.  This probably will not be necessary at all for the first year, however, it is always good to check.  (I always check in August of the second year).

 

20. Note: If you are contemplating bringing a swarm into your apiary, I strongly suggest powder sugaring heavily all swarms with C and H powdered sugar and keeping them separated from your”good”, clean bees.  When you use the powdered sugar method for mite control (usually in August or September) , if you see 6 – 7 mites in the Crisco, that is not anything to worry about.  If you see more, or like 40-70, then consider using the powdered sugar method again each 10 days until your count is down to a reasonable number (6 -7).  Some people believe we should let the bees that are strong try to survive the mite infestation we are suffering in California, that way ensuring the bees in our area are more mite resistant.  I am not of the same belief.  I can’t stand to see good bees infested by other bees, no fault of their own,  and like the organic method of mite control with powdered sugar.  I  find it quite effective, with no harm to your bees.  Each beekeeper will develop their own beekeeping philosophy. Mites look small, but can be seen with the naked eye.  They are shiny and coffee/caramel colored, and sort of oval shaped.  Try not to sift the powdered sugar down into the cells, but at an angle so you are just making your bees ‘white’.  The bees are thankful for the free gift of ‘powdered sugar from heaven’ and lick each other frantically, knocking the mites off. (about ¾-1 cup per 20 frames).

 

Another mite control method:   In September, some beekeepers place a frame with no foundation in the hive, let the bees draw it out mainly with drone cells, but  you MUST remove it after 14 days. This is called drone trapping.  The bees build out drone cells and the mites are so smart, and have evolved to such a level, they   know to move themselves and/or their babies onto a drone in a drone cell, which lives so much longer than a worker bees.  The drone cells are what get drawn out on the frame without foundation.    Can you believe how clever those mites are?  You have to be even more clever.  You remove the frame of drones before the drone bees hatch, and either freeze the frame or disposing of it a long way away from your bees. Some feed the whole frame  to the chickens. This cuts way down on the amount of Varroa mites in your hive, if you have any.  Don’t forget to get that frame out of your hive  before the 18th day when the drones would normally emerge or – eeek you have just increased your Varroa Mite count!  Varroa mites can move extremely fast.  One can scoot from one bee to another in just two second, not quite jumping like a flea, but very fast.  They know when a bee is aging (dying) and know when to move onto new larvae, into a drone cell or onto  a younger host bee. If the world ceases to exist, I believe cockroaches, crab grass and Varroa mites will survive! So be vigilant.

 

21. Candles and Wax:  You can use your wax melter or double boiler to make lovely real bees wax candles that do not smoke, out of that extra wax.

 

22. Center up your bees.  If your bees build to one side of your hive, then remove a few of the empty frames from the less populated side and center up the bees, not changing the order, but just slide the frames over, then on the outside of the crowd, place the unused frames, so the bees are in the middle.

 

23. Time to add a box?  When you see bees and a bit of wax on the second to the last frame on either side of your hive body, it is time to add another box.

 

Here is the set up for the new box – You are going to pull two frames from each side (the outside) of your original box (the frames next to the wood) and put those four frames into the center of the new box you are about to add to the top of your hive.

 

Where you have removed the four frames, fill that space with four brand new frames.  In other words, you are pulling two frames from each side of your original box, and putting them in the center of box number 2, your new box.

 

You then fill the empty spaces you have created by using some of the brand new frames from box number two, and are going to place them in the outside positions where you have created space in your original box. You can run either 8 frames with follower boards, 9 or

 l0 frames in each box, just make sure it is the same in all boxes.  Be sure to push the frames  together so the frame  “shoulders” touch.  By doing so, you avoid big humps in your drawn out honey and wax.

 

Fill in the new box (box 2)  with new frames on the outside of the good smelling, walked on, four frames you have moved into then center of the  new box (box 2).   Add your follower boards, if you are using them, so they match in number and position with the original box.

 

Why do we do this?  These older “good smelling frames” you have just removed from the sides of your original box and placed in the center of your new box are used to bait your bees up into the new box.  The bees have already walked all over them and they smell “right to your bees”. This helps the honey bees immediately accept the new box and immediately go to work filling it!  The follower boards should line up on the outside of the 8 frames, if that is the set up you choose.  That means the follower boards in the lower box and the upper box will be in the same positions with the same number of frames in each box in the center. Put the new box on the hive.  Then put on the feeder tray, then the inner cover with the screen down and to the back, then the metal telescoping lid. Make sure you slide the metal telescoping lid a bit back, so air can escape through the screen. (never remove or rearrange the middle 5 frames in any of your boxes!!!) Congratulations!!  You have completed adding your second box.  Use the same method for adding additional boxes in the future.  Yes you do remove two frames from the sides of EACH box and place those in the center of the new box (box 3 or box 4) to be added.

 

23. A word about SMOKE! Please SMOKE YOURSELF, NOT YOUR BEES!  Go ahead and light your smoker.   Use a piece of newspaper in the bottom and some smoker fuel, pine needles, dry grass, or the commercially available cotton discard which is available from us as fuel.   (Be sure nothing you put in the smoker is chemically treated).  After lighting your smoker, smoke your gloves and smoke yourself under your chin, right by your throat.  Set your smoker to the side. I always carry a can of coke. If a small fire starts, you can shake the can vigorously and then poke a small hole in the can with your hive tool.  The carbonation shoots the coke right out in a strong stream and allows you to, hopefully,  put out the fire quickly.  Remember, the bees think you are a bear, raccoon or skunk and are there to steal their honey.  These honey eating animals have a lighter growth of hair right under their neck.  So that is where the honey bee attempts to sting to make the thief go away.That is why we smoke ourselves at the throat.  That may be all you need to do,  and find it is not necessary to actually smoke your bees.

 

If you must smoke your bees, just a few quick puffs under the hive might do the trick, and then a tiny bit after you remove the feed tray and inner cover.  Hint:  I do not lay the inner cover or the feed tray on the ground, i lean them against the stand or a tree it at an angle, and the l,000 bees that are on the back of it, will just remain there or fly back to the hive, unharmed.  Harming a bee by squishing it,or laying down l,000 bees in grass is what causes your bees to releases a pheromone resulting in the bees reacting a bit.

 

24. WORKING YOUR BEES:   If you remove the lid and quietly lift the inner cover letting a little air into the hive,  then replace it immediately and then walk away, waiting  two minutes, then return and  lift off thinner cover which then makes no noise,  and, if you do not squish bees and you treat your honey bees gently and move quietly, more than likely your bees will just go about their business and not even notice you are there, performing an inspection, removing a frame or two, etc. (This is hard to do for a beginning beekeeper, so wear your bee suit, gloves and veil… have faith, you will get better at this with time.)   Enjoy observing your bees, but don’t leave your hive open too long. A ten minute inspection is a long time to allow outside cold air into your hive, chilling the brood and bees.   And always wait until the temperature is well over 65 degrees and there is no wind. I like to work on my bees between one and three pm, the warmest part of the day.  Too, that way, half the bees are out foraging and the other half are very busy.  The good temperature is less disturbing to the bees (no dead brood due to exposure) and you will enjoy the bees quietly working and not so very interested in you.  You will notice, bees become a bit more protective going into winter as the survival of the colony depends on protecting what they have worked so hard to store all during the spring and summer.   Don’t try to work your bees in your shorts without protection as a new beekeeper.  Black makes you look like a bear, so avoid fleece, fuzzy black socks, etc).