Starting a Beehive

Hive Beetle

2009-11-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered that my beehive had hive beetles in it. These pests are foreign to Australia and can eventually force the bees out of the hive. To remedy this I used two methods:

The first was to put black plastic underneath the hive. The beetle larvae need to bury themselves in the ground to complete their life cycle and this prevents them doing so.

The second method was to lay traps for the beetles. I put diatomaceious earth inside some little black traps that only the beetle could get inside. I can use these to get rid of the adult beetle.

You place the traps in-between the frames.

Beehive inspection and feeding

2009-11-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

I inspected the beehives on Tuesday the 10th of November but have been working on improving my website (I'll update it soon) so I only just got around to creating this post. The purpose of this inspection was to see how the bees were doing, put another frame of foundation in each hive, bringing the total to eight, pit a protein patty in the hive, and finally to put a feeder frame in each hive with 1 kilogram of sugar dissolved in 1.4 litres of water.

As you can see on the picture of the frame below, there was plenty of brood in the hive which I was quite happy about.

Below is the picture of me putting a frame of foundation in the hive.

Finally how the hive looked after the frame, feeder, and protein patty were in place.

One thing that I did notice which I was concerned about was the fact that I found hive beetles in my beehive. You can see some of the ones I squashed in the picture below.

I went inside and called up the bee supplier to order some hive traps. In my next post I'll show what I did to get rid of them.

Hive inspection

2009-11-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

I inspected my beehive last Thursday on the 5th of November, but only just got around to writing this post about it. I found quite a bit of honey stored in the outer frames and the queen had been laying brood in my new frames. I removed the two frames of sugar water which the bees had completely consumed, and then closed up the hive. I'm going to do another inspection this afternoon and give them some more sugar water, so I'll post some pictures up of the inside of the hive.

Bee Activity

2009-10-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

I noticed a lot of activity around one of my beehives today - they were swarming all around the hive and crawling over the brood chamber. I posted some footage on youtube which you can see below:

A couple of hours later I decided to give the bees some sugar water, since they had consumed the last amount that I had given them two weeks ago. I gave each beehive about a kilogram of sugar and 1.5 litres of water in a feeder frame.

I quickly inspected some of the new frames of foundation I had put into the beehive and was pleased to discover that the queen had already started laying eggs in them.

First week nucleus colony inspection

2009-10-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

I inspected both my beehives today and added an extra frame of foundation to each hive. The I found a lot of brood on the frames which indicated that the queen was laying well and there was also some honey stored. I removed two feeder frames which were now empty then closed up the beehives. I plan to give them some more sugar-water this Friday or maybe on the weekend. Below is the footage I filmed of my inspection:

Feeder frames

2009-10-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

I inspected both my beehives today after leaving them alone for a week. All of the sugar water had been completely consumed by the bees and they had started to build a bit of wax in some areas on the outside of the frame. I only found a couple of dead bees at the bottom which most probably drowned so that meant that the pieces of wire I had inside the frames to help them out were more or less doing their job.

I plan to add some more sugar water on Friday to the beehives in order to help them grow in numbers.

Website available

2009-10-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

I now have my website up and ready at startingabeehive.com.

A lot of information from this blog is now up there, and I will be adding heaps more as it is a continual work in progress. The website is to serve as a resource for anyone wanting to learn more about beekeeping, while this blog will act as a journal of my beekeeping experience.

I'm going to inspect my nucleus colonies this Sunday afternoon so I hope to have a new post and some video footage on youtube ready by that night.

When should I add a super to my beehive?

2009-10-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

When the bees start to hang out the front of the beehive in large numbers and there are a lot of bees under the lid when you inspect the hive, it is time to add a super. Remember to place a queen excluder between the new super and the brood chamber below. This is done in order to prevent the queen laying eggs in the super, which is where you want the bees to store the honey.

If you do not add a super then you run the risk of the bees becoming so overcrowded that they will swarm. This phenomenon involves the queen leaving with half of the bees in the hive. The remaining bees will try to build emergency queen bee cells in order to rear a new queen for the colony. Therefore, while swarming does not necessarily mean your hive will cease to function, it however it does mean that you will not get as much honey from the beehive that year.

How much honey can one beehive make?

2009-10-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

If the beekeeper knows what he is doing, then s/he can average 90-150kg of honey in a year per beehive. There have even been cases of beekeeper's recording averages of up to 225kg of honey in a good year.

How often should I check my beehive?

2009-10-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

If you can, try to inspect your beehives every one or two weeks. Do not try to bother the bees too often, since smoke from the smoker disorganises bees and it can take them several hours to get back to their normal work patten.

What happens if I put too many frames of foundation in my beehive?

2009-10-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

If you put too much foundation in the beehive for the bees to use then they will chew up the wax, resulting in you having to embed more foundation into the frame later on.

How do I stop cane toads eating my bees?

2009-10-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

It is usually a good idea to put your beehives on a stand or some blocks instead of just resting it on the ground. This way cane toads cannot sit outside the front of the beehive and consume your bees as they come and go.

Does it matter what type of sugar I feed my bees with?

2009-10-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

YES!!! Only feed your bees white or castor sugar. Brown sugar will give the bees dysentery which will weaken or even possibly kill your bees.

Beehive activity

2009-10-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting thing today whilst observing the entrance to a beehive. One of the bees was dragging another bee out of the hive. The bee was struggling against the other one and trying to get back in but for some reason neither of the bees were using their stings against the other. After several minutes the bee succeeded in pushing the other one off the bottom board and onto the ground where I lost sight of it. I wonder whether this bee was from a different hive and was being expelled or it was sick/old and was being disposed of.

Sunflowers

2009-10-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

I have planted some sunflowers in pots and sprinkled some seeds in the area around my beehives. Even though the sunflower only has an 18.5% amount of crude protein for the bees, it will be convenient for the bees to have so many flowers so close to the hive.

New Website

2009-10-20T21:49:00.001-07:00

I am currently building a website at www.startingabeehive.com

I will continue to use this blog for updates on my beekeeping activities, but I will place most of the information I have learned about beekeeping on this website

Youtube account

2009-10-18T23:19:00.000-07:00

I now have a youtube account called bees4beginners. I plan to set up the video camera on the tripod when I inspect the beehives and upload the content to this account. I'll also embed each video here on my blog.

The first video I filmed today of the beehives is embedded below. It's a little bit shaky as I'm walking around but in the future the tripod should fix this problem.

The beehives today

2009-10-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

While I wasn't intending to open the beehives up today, I decided to add one more frame of foundation to each hive in order to give the queen some extra room for her to lay her eggs.

I had a look at the frame of foundation that was added only two days ago when I originally had the nucleus colony put in my brood chamber. Already the bees have started building comb on the wax. It must be a bit over two centimetres thick now.

One of the frames of foundation I added on Saturday

I gave the hive a quick inspection: I could see new brood on the frames which tells me that the queen was laying but I could not find the queen bee during my hurried inspection of the frames.

Finally I used a metal grill to block off most of the entrance to the beehive. This way the bees should find it a lot easier to defend their home.

Feeding and inspecting the beehives

2009-10-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I decided to open up the beehives in order to check how the bees were going and to give them some protein patties and sugar-water. Note the pieces of wood blocking half the entrances to both hives – this makes it easier for the bees to defend the smaller space. I think I will block off more of the entrance tomorrow.

Although there were quite a few bees buzzing around me, they were still very calm. I smoked the hive entrance and under the lid before completely taking it off. I removed the nails holding the middle frames in place during the journey last night and then proceeded to add the sugar-feeder frame and protein patty to both beehives, as you can see in the pictures below. The protein patty is the brown bar that the bees have swarmed over.

I then closed up the hive and left. I think I will leave the bees alone for most of the next week. In about 5-7 days I plan to add a couple more of frames of foundation to each beehive.

Should I get Australian native bees?

2009-10-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

In terms of honey production, the Australian native bee does not even come close to the European honeybee. While you can get anywhere up to 225kg from a single hive of European bees, most native hives only produce a kilogram of honey a year. The only reason so far I have heard for keeping native bees is as pollinators for the native flora.

My beehive situation

2009-10-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

I currently have two beehives with the four frames of bees in each from the nucleus colony I bought yesterday. There is an additional frame in each of plain foundation which I supplied. This frame is located in the middle of the others and from what I could see when I briefly opened the hive today to feed the bees, they were already working to build comb on it.

To to sum up, I have five frames in each hive as well as a sugar-water feeder frame and a protein patty. I'll leave the bees alone for the next 5-7 days, and then I'll open it up and probably place another two frames of foundation in the middle of each beehive.

What flowers are good for bees?

2009-10-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

In order to achieve a satisfactory level of honey production, the pollen of the flowers that the bees visit need to have a crude protein level of around 25%. Below are some of the common pollen types in Queensland and New South Wales and their crude protein content:

Wattle: 25%-28%

Daisy family: 14.5-24.5%

Bottlebrush: 30%

Spear thistle: 31.8%

Pumpkin: 26.4%

Sandalwood: 25.2-29.6%

White box: 17.2-17.9%

Hill gum: 20.5-26%

Grey gum: 24%

Cotton: 19-20%

Wedge pea: 29.5%

Sunflower: 18.5%

Macadamia: 19-20%

Thistle: 25%

Tea-tree: 25-36%

Pine: 7%

Bush pea: 31-33%

Bush pea: 14-15%

Got two nucleus colonies today

2009-10-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

Today I bought two nucleus colonies from a queen bee breeder. He put four frames of bees in both of my hives along with one frame of foundation in the middle. We found the queen bee and gave her a green mark on her back. After he had put the frames in the beehive the beekeeper then banged the nucleus box on the ground and then tipped the rest of the bees into my hive. Below is one of the beehives we put the frames in today.

We taped the lid shut and put a metal grill over the entrance to prevent the bees getting out. We did this at dusk when all the bees had returned to the hive. When I got home I placed the bees on some besser blocks under a mango tree to give them some shade. I placed a strip over the entrance to make it a bit smaller so the bees can defend it more easily. Tomorrow I'll check the hive and start giving them some sugar water. After that I think I will leave the bees for the next 5-7 days.

What race of bees should I get?

2009-10-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

The European honeybees are subspecies of varieties of Apis mellifera L.

The European, German, Dutch, black, brown, or dark bee - Apis mellifera var. mellifera L.: This race originated in central europe north of the Alps. It is not a very popular bee type since it tends to resent interference, is particularly susceptible to wax-moth infestation and is generally less prolific than other races.

Caucasian bee - Apis mellifera var. caucasica Gorbatschev: Originally from the southern part of the USSR, this bee is good natured and has a very long tongue. It is very good in colder climates as it is tolerant of of severe winters. The bee is also prolific and industrious. The main disadvantage of this race is the large amount of propolis this bee creates in the hive, which hinders the easy removal of frames.

Carniolan bee - Apis mellifera var. carnica Pollmann: This bee is from the province of Carniolan in Austria. It is slightly smaller than the other races. Advantages include: The bee is gently, breeds prolifically and overwinters well. A disadvantage is the fact that these bees have a tendency to swarm.

Cyprian or Syrian Bee - Apis mellifera syriaca or Apis mellifera cypria Buttel Reepen: This bee originated in Asia minor. It is industrious but unfortunately also very vicious.

Italian Bee, Ligurian or leather-coloured bee - Apis mellifera var. ligustica Spinola: This is the race that I have. This type of bee is native to the Appenine Peninsula. This race breeds prolifically but are very poor at wintering.

Information from "The Bee Book" which was released by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries in Australia.

Getting a nucleus colony

2009-10-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I am buying two nucleus colonies of bees. I have prepared two beehives and two frames embedded with foundation for each one.

I am buying four frames of brood with the bees and a queen bee for each hive. This is costing me $65.00 per hive. This is cheaper than buying your normal nucleus colony as I am supplying my own box and equipment.