Napa Valley Bee Company

And while your at it...

Check this out:

A little pixelated, but not bad for starters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qrIafNZRfg

 

A still photo from just before the movie was made.

For lack of time...

Short on time, but wanting to post something new...

Here are a few recent pinhole images I have been making at my various apiaries around Napa. Don't know about you other beeks out there, but this spring has been amazing for keeping bees. The continual rainfall has made for busting colonies throughout the valley -- one day last week I had 13 swarm calls! Between that and keeping on top of my own colonies I'm at capacity, but always find time to make new pictures.

A 30 second thumbnail sketch of the pinhole camera:

 

A pinhole camera is a very simple camera with no lens and a single very small aperture. Simply explained, it is a light-proof box with a single pin sized hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The human eye in bright light acts like a pinhole camera.

A pinhole camera's shutter is usually manually operated because of the lengthy exposure times,  mine were extended because I was using photographic paper not film. The shutter consists of a flap of some light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole. Typical exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and sometimes days. Most my exposure times ranged from 45 seconds to a minute in length.

HERE ARE A FEW OF MINE:

 

Three hives - Indian Creek Apiary, St. Helena CA.

 

Two and three quarter hives - Indian Creek Apiary, St. Helena CA.

 

Mark Griffin showing off his Phacelia at The Napa Valley Reserve.

Me and my splitty at the Indian Creek Apiary, St. Helena CA.

 

Two hives at an undisclosed location in the city limits of Napa.

 

The same two hives at the undisclosed location, where I spend A LOT of my time... in the city limits of Napa.

PINHOLE PORTRAITS OF MY THREE SMOKERS

 

Bee how to

Hey there, this is Clay Newton. I'm Rob's web/social media guy. I help Rob get online and preach the bee gospel, and in exchange, he's hooked me up with a hive and makes sure the ladies are happy. We're drinking coffee, rapping about art, and making some updates.

We're creating a new section called "Bee How To" which will help you tackle some of the sticky issues in bee keeping. Keep coming back for some tasty knowledge.

A day in the week of a Napa beekeeper - Day II

Bee day II - 3/27/10

* Met with John early to discuss the bees I'm keeping at his Carneros place. We mostly talked about art and drank coffee while Davis ransacked their toy cabinet. However, I did give him some of the honey from the bees that is absolutely amazing. On the Bonick Family Farm the bees first get eucalyptus in early February, then the organic Asian pears come into bloom, and lastly the blackberry bloom under the eucalyptus canopy -- a feast! 

* Met with Roger to look into the hives I am managing for him. One of his hives kind of circled the drain this winter so I married a colony of mine from a fan division I did last week. The teak hives look gorgeous, even after going through a wet winter. The observation hive is also just busting -- it's wonderful to be able to see into the life of the bees without opening the lid. I love that hive!

* Got a call from my sister-in-law KT. She lives in Oakland and was having an early Easter party when a swarm arrived. It appears the bees are moving into a PG&E box on the ground,,, how random is that? Curious, because both my wife and son were at the party too. I'm not assuming the bees knew that and were there looking for me..

* While at Roger's I got a call from a lady named Anette who was doing the Good Sam bee thing and looking after a swarm across town. I guess she called Luke who refereed me. Super excited because I have been watching the oak trees this swarm came from for about 5 years now. Patience will be rewarded, or...something like that...!

*  I got a call from Susan, her bees swarmed earlier today. I went by her place thinking we would dive into her colony and harvest some of the queen cells but got there a little late. Plus, her colony is so monsterous we'd probably be at it for hours. So we went for a walk around her block and happened to find an abandoned house with a feral colony living in the walls.

Hew-weee! Now that's some honey.

Johnny checking out his yum yum - Oh, incidentally, the back lit  honey photo was MY idea.

 

Crazy mustard out there at the Carneros apiary.

 

Edward Emery's hive drawing after a winter.

Roger's teak hives

Roger's bees. You don't see many in this image but they're loaded with varroa

My favorite - the observation hive

I love how the rusted metal compliments the wood

 

and you can see inside...

Here is the picture KT sent me of the swarm that interrupted her Easter party. My guess is they are going in the small hole of that cover. But what do I know? I'm no scout bee.

My car - Annette's bike

The Bees left this hole in the oak tree.

The bees ended up on this sign where the road splits on Trower about 15' away from their mother hive.

 

 They looked like this when I left.

Annette is a sweet as honey, but I'm not getting her shirt..?

Forest and Annette

 

Me and Susan in her gazing ball

 

Susan's monster hive

 

The abandon building with the bees

 

Perfect bee house

Lianne to Beeanne

A photographer my wife works with, Lianne Milton, took this image of Cameo Wood for the NY Times.

Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/dining/26sfdine.html

It's a good article but I'm more drawn to the photo. Great job Lianne!

Here, my two cents are free...

Obviously a new colony Cameo is looking at here but she really needs to get follower boards. Not sure how they'd shake out in those 8 frame hives, but follower boards will definitely help that colony regulate the temperature and with air convection in the hive. That's a lot of protective gear for such a small colony. I can't stand wearing all that stuff, it's way too hot. Sure, I get stung a lot!

A day in the week of a Napa beekeeper - Day I

 

3/26/10

Okay, here's the deal. My intention was to chronicle each day's beekeeping adventure, but here I am 3 days later. So, I'm not getting off to a great start since I still haven't posted from yesterday-- oops, make that two days ago.  Working in flashback, here's what's going on..

* Met with Michael after dropping our kids at the Waldy School --  discussed trading bee work in exchange for Davis going to Spring and Summer camp at Connolly (flash forward to today when he actually was at the camp, when he got in trouble one time during the day and my wife was late for pickup -- good exchange). 

* Received a call from Anita on White Hall lane about a swarm, her husband Dave was a great help.

* Went by a "trap out" I am working on, also on White Hall Lane in Saint Helena.

* Cleaned out the bee stuff in the back of my truck.

* Hived the swarm from White Hall lane.

* Met  Nate regarding bees he has had on the property he manages. The bees have been there roughly 6 years now. They look really good considering they have not been managed in years. The weird thing is I pulled out the monitoring tray and there was drawn comb and nectar on the bottom. The hive stands are for sided wooden boxes on end, so it would make the perfect place for a second colony to live. Curious, more later...

 

Football sized swarm in an olive tree on White Hall Lane,  Saint Helena

TOUCH DOWN!

As a reference, I put football sized swarms on three frames. I offer some drawn comb. I do my best not to offer swarms honey and pollen unless I absolutely have to, not to say that you can't spread disease from sharing just drawn comb. I'm sure there are pathogens bees can pick-up from sharing any part of the hive that is sanitized by heat. I know in the last post I was going on and on about the "goodies" I offered the storm swarm but sometimes drastic times call for drastic measures. The two extra frames in the above picture are plastic foundation being used as follower boards. Not only is the hive body beat-up, but I'm needing followers too. Hey! It's all I had around alright?..

I cut and removed the entire limb the swarm was hanging on and lowered them in a 5 gallon bucket perfed with 1/16 holes. I easily slid the entire colony and the olive branches out of the bucket into the hive.

I added an empty deep on top of the bees giving them the space and privacy to get started on their wax production.

About 7 hours later the bees shifted to the far right side of the hive -- most likely the side the queen decided to go towards. Tomorrow I'll go in and gently move the bees to the center. So much for my theory that bees will automatically jump on drawn comb. 

In this "trap out" we are trying to re-route the bees from coming around the post. Their hive is behind the pole occupying the space between two interior walls. The owner, Tom, has made a plywood cover that will act as a hallway for the bees to go an extra 4' towards a hole closer to the end of the porch.

Steel wool helps to fill the space around the pole and the plywood. Think of the steel wool as our propolis filling the space we don't want the bees to occupy.

The hole the bees will be using as their new hive entrance. I may even end up running a piece of PVC from the hole to route the bees even further around the corner.

 Cleaning out the back of my truck meant taking my bike out. Check out my rack...

More later on our zero emission honey bee tree removal last week.

Nate and Davis hangin' by his hive. You can see how a swarm might move under the existing hive, maybe?..

Check out this salamander we caught by Nate's bees. Gorgeous but slimy, Davis loved it.

Swarm in a storm isn't the norm...

Pinhole Image of the bees at College Ave. made with Montessori kids documenting their farm project

My swarm experience this year has been interesting so far. I've gone out on four calls already, which -- compared to my notes from last year -- is about a month early. Three calls concerned bees in very close proximity to massive oak trees, and you could still see the bees were occupying two of the oaks.

The strange thing about these early swarms is that once on site I would find one large cluster and two or three smaller clusters close by, obviously from the same original colony. I find that generally <  +/-  > the initial swarm doesn't fly too far from the mother hive. If you have ever seen it in your own apiary, the bees don't go farther than about 30-50', so I'm confident they were all from the same family. The first swarms were from just west of the old Red Hen Cantina in North Napa. I worked them with Michael Lauher from Connolly Ranch. We both worked for days trying to get the bees to go into a nuc box that had drawn comb, some pollen, a little capped honey, and nectar. In my experience if you offer a new swarm drawn comb,let alone all the other goodies, they'll march right in to their new home, no banging or sweeping needed. These girls wouldn't go in the box to save their lives, literally it was freezing and raining and they still held up outside on the fence post. We covered them in a plastic shelter thinking they'd move into a warm dry hive with a lil' yum yum over night. To both our surprise the next morning, coffee in hand, not only did they not take us up on "leaving the light on for them" but most of the bees had moved out. Because the bees were so entwined on the fence post with chicken wire it wasn't an option to brush them, but banging them was, and I did, with muscle truck force. I hit the top of the fence post with a 4x4 knocking about 80% directly onto the landing board of the hive. We went home that night sure we had 'em. Funny how one should never second guess a bee, since the next morning most the bees were still there sitting on the landing board. At that point I figured the best, most gentle way to get the bees would be to rest a frame of drawn comb directly on the cluster and see if they'd jump on that, and they did.... slowly. We stacked as many frames of drawn comb around the post, covered the bees back up because it was still raining and went home, less confident than the night before.

If you're wondering about where I’m talking about, stop sometime and look out behind the old Red Hen (the now defunct Ziare) compound in North Napa towards the western hills. You'll see that monster Valley Oak, that’s the one I’m talking about here. Because of the way they kept swarming, my guess is that there must be a massive colony way up in the oak. I made the mistake of keeping two of the three clusters separate on this rescue. Then we found that the third cluster was sans queen. We initially saw the queen in the biggest swarm and married it with the closest cluster w/o a problem or fighting. In retrospect, we should have put all three clusters in the area together in the same hive. I think a portion of the mother colony in the oak tree must have absconded. Why...? I don’t know. After Serge’s bee tree lecture at the 2010 Bee Symposium last week, I’m speculating that the above average precipitation we had this spring may be the culprit. But then again you know what they say about assuming....

Another thing that leads me to believe that the bees just buggered off is that they left with out any provisions. From the get-go the bees were really aggressive. Not just the ol’ "we don’t want you sticking your hand in our cluster" aggressive, but  really assertive about their space. Basically acting like a “dry swarm”, or a swarm that has been sitting without finding a new home too long and used up a lot of their food stores. They tend to get a little grumpy. The two colonies we married together with the queen are now residing at Connolly Ranch doing fabulously. It’s been about 2 or 3 weeks and the bees are booming. The queenless colony I took upvalley and offered them a fresh frame of brood at David Abreu’s Madrona Ranch Apiary,  and they have since created their own queen. It’s amazing how well the bees can adapt if you offer them all the necessities to grow. The colony I married the queenless hive to had a very difficult winter. Their queen was failing and the colony was suffering from that. The nice thing was that because the colony didn’t have a ton of brood there was plenty of leftover honey, and more importantly for raising queens, an abundance of  mixed floral pollen. I also offered them a pollen patty just to be sure they had more than enough pollen. I am curious to see how the genetics shake out on this one. The queen is a beautiful banded blonde.

 The second swarm I collected with Jason Grace was out on West Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena. It too was in an old growth oak grove and there was one main cluster and two smaller groupings of bees. In this case, because it was a call on the fly we didn’t have all the gear we needed to keep the swarms separate. Initially we captured them individually but ended up marrying them all together in two medium supers at the College Ave. Apiary. They were also very hard line and not particularly grateful for their new home. I stopped counting but I’m sure I got stung a half dozen times. After my first experience with the Red Hen swarm I quickly hit them with a little (quart) of  biodynamic  1:1 sugar water (I’ve been calling it Rudy juice) and a fat pollen patty. Today when I checked on them they hadn’t really chilled out much but they ate and stored up a lot of the pollen and drank all the BD 1:1. There is a beautiful jet black queen that is laying uniformly and they are starting to build a their own wax. 

The third swarm I picked up, again with Michael, was out on Bell Ave. off Monticello. It too came from an oak tree but this time it appeared more like a swarm. Clustered under a red Napa Register paper box, the bees were much more calm, not as jumpy, and much easier to work with. At one point I even tried using an electric drill right next to them with little or no objection. I offered them the same BD 1:1 pollen smorgie as the Zinfandel bees -- they ate less pollen but  consumed more 1:1. Interestingly enough they have a virgin queen, so very European...

I’m doing my best to be more observant, and through that become a better beekeeper. Mark Griffin said it best.. “It’s the year of more eyes and less hands”.

Trying to keep 'em dry

Zero interest in going in the box

Hanging on the post sheltered by the rain

Post hangin'

Wire hangin'

Overview

Small swarm in a tree

Bees in a bucket

Michael on bucket patrol

Stuck to the lid

Splitty waiting to transport bees

West Zinfandel cluster in a bush

 

College Ave. Apiary with newly planted Bottlebrush

 David Abreu’s Madrona Ranch Apiary

Queen from West Zinfandel swarm

Meg went to Vegas so I was rollin' with the bees in the benzo

 

Even the bees love the Napa Register

 

Thinking we'd unscrew the box - but didn't need to

 

Gary Hall called me on this swarm. Great guy, really into the bees.

 

Taking a break from bees on our Northern Empire Brewery Bike Tour.

Check out the seed packet Micheal found at Beekind 

 

 

2010 Symposium coming down the bee pike.....

Laughing with Rudy

Big news!

The  2010 Bee Symposium has just been announced for Sunday March 7, 9-5 pm and it looks pretty damn good. For the last three years I have been attending and I always have a fabulous time. It's great seeing all the beeks in the area come together. I'm curious about the new location, the SUBUD Center  in Sebatopol -- in the past it was held at the Summerfield Waldorf School. I'll miss the beauty of Summerfield but really we're not there for the Waldy experience, we're there to be educated on bees. Seriously, the symposium is one of the things I really look forward to every year besides my birthday, the Turkey Trot, and the Sea Otter.

Some of the highlights from past symposiums were when the Waldorf beekeeping ladies got all up on Eric Mussen for doing AI's (artificial insemination) on queen bees, Angelo's tri-tip sandwiches one year for lunch, or last year Serge and Eric tag-teaming Gunther Hauk about his hive management techniques. Perhaps that's why the symposium wasn't invited back to Summerfield this year, maybe we bagged on the big BD beekeeper too hard. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about Gunther and that crazy BD beekeeping, it's just in my opinion some biodynamic management techniques make he and his bees part of the problem. My fundamental belief is that if you're routinely medicating your bees then you're interfering with natural selection (even if Rudy said it was cool). Other than the medication part I can get behind a lot of the BD hub-hub. Why, just last night I secured a source for BD 501 preparation (horn-silica). The silica prep made from powdered quartz (packed inside a cow horn and buried in the soil for six months through spring and summer) meant to be applied as a foliar spray to stimulate and regulate growth. I think I'm going to experiment misting it on my bees, although the BD freaks say to feed it to your bees too, but that sounds sketch to me. I'll just spray 'em. If you know me, I'm sure you are laughing inside, but why not try it? Especially since I found a great source that is pure and legit and he'll trade for honey. What...? Just because you can't back it up with science, doesn't mean biodynamics are quackery? Remember what Rudy said just before the Christmas lectures: He Who Laughs Last Should Remember Who Made Him Laugh... or was that Muller? Really, I don't know much about that, but what I do know is that if you miss this symposium you'll bee very sorry.

The speaker lineup is amazing:

Robbin Thorp, Ph.D., UC-Davis, Emeritus, bee biologist confirmed

Randy Oliver, Grass Valley, Biologist and forward thinking commercial beekeeper-confirmed

Serge Labesque, 2006 Western Apiculturist Society's (WAS) “Innovator of the year”-confirmed

Kathy Kellison, PFSP Executive Director-confirmed

Dr. Eric Mussen, Entomologist, UC Davis “2006 Beekeeper of the Year”-invited

I'll be excited to see all the speakers - funny how Eric hasn't confirmed yet. I don't know much about Robbin Thorp but Randy, Serge, Kathy, and Eric are all amazing speakers, you'll definitely learn something from all of them.  After a quick gooogle search it appears Robbin is big into the bumbles. Doing research at UCD, Robbin is apparently looking to the government to impose regulations on the movement and health of commercial bumble bees to protect the declining native bumble bee population. He and Kathy are going to compliment each other really well. All I ever hear about is the "honeybees are dying - the honeybees are dying", but all the native bees are under extreme environmental stress as well, so it sure is nice to have people like Kathy and Robbin out there going to bat for the bumbles.

Here are the stats on the symposium. Please do yourself a favor tell a friend and attend.  

Check out last year's post about the symposium:

http://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d8345175ae69e200e55220bc148833/post/6a00d8345175ae69e2011279484e1228a4/edit

 4th Annual Bee Symposium
  Proceeds to Benefit PFSP
                                Sunday, March 7, 9-5 (Lunch on Own)
                                SUBUD CENTER, 234 Hutchins Ave, Sebastopol, CA

$25 ‘Early Bee’ until March 1-$30 after March 1 (including if register at the Symposium)

 ***** NOTE:  $10 DISCOUNT for PFSP Members-A Great Time to Join! *****

 
To Register by Mail (must be received by March 4):
2010 Bee Symposium
ATTN:  Alice Ford-Sala
1088 Badger Ct
Santa Rosa CA  95409-2795
Check payable to PFSP, reference ‘Symposium’
 
We encourage you to register, attend and participate!  The PFSP leadership team is working to put together an outstanding lineup of speakers and panels, with time scheduled for interactive discussion between participants and speakers.
 
Additional Background:
This one-day symposium will be packed with speakers and information offering information updates and new perspectives on honeybees and native pollinators, beekeeping practices, innovative approaches and ecological strategies for beekeepers, and actions that can be taken by beekeepers, growers and other interested supporters who wish to help our bees.
 
Speaker Lineup to date includes:
Robbin Thorp, Ph.D., UC-Davis, Emeritus, bee biologist-confirmed
Randy Oliver, Grass Valley, Biologist and forward thinking commercial beekeeper-confirmed
Serge Labesque, 2006 Western Apiculturist Society's (WAS) “Innovator of the year”-confirmed
Kathy Kellison, PFSP Executive Director-confirmed
Dr. Eric Mussen, Entomologist, UC Davis “2006 Beekeeper of the Year”-invited
 
Updates on the Symposium Program will be posted at http://pfspbees.org.
 
If you’d like to volunteer to help out at the Symposium or with advance promotion, or have questions or suggestions, contact PFSP member-volunteer and Symposium Coordinator and Moderator Kathy Lanterman at symposium@pfspbees.org.
 
You can also help spread the word by forwarding this announcement to your contacts in the area!
 
Best, Kathy

PFSP Executive Director

Randy Oliver speaking on his knees.

Serge Speaking at Beekind.

Eric speaking at the WAS convention.

Eric speaking at SCBA.

Kathy speaking at Beekind.

Kathy speaking with Serge in the background.

Serge Speaking with Eric in the background.

Eric speaking with Serge in the background.

Serge speaking with Randy in the background AND some cat in the foreground wearing my t-shirt design.

 Eric, Serge, Kathy, and Doug all speaking.

pollen callin'

Just goes to show that when varied pollen sources call, the bees listen. Eric Mussen was all up on that theory ages ago.

Read this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8467746.stm

Then read Randy Oliver's Fat Bee articles:

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=59

Makes sense to me........

Pollen detail

Pollen full frame

Pollen in new wax

Picking it up

Bringing it in

Varied pollen

Microscopic pollen

Queen on pollen?  She has no business out there....

Michael Pollan - My new hero.

Pollen source - In my area Black Berry is one the last pollen sources of the year , and the saving grace for our bees. In years past Black Berry has gotten us out of many a sticky sitch during severe nectar/pollen dearths. It's very easily identified by the gray nondescript color.

Wax moth want that pollen too, everyone needs a little protein.

Pollen, amongst other things, on a monitoring tray.

Winter Hive Checks Shouldn’t Be a Pain In the Neck

Well, at least not for your bees ...
Hopefully while reading this your bees have been all buttoned up and been put to bed for about 2 months now. Personally, I always seem to get a late jump on it, but apparently that’s the way it’s going to shake out with my bees. I was helping everyone else check their colonies and finally got to my own gals round mid-November.  In retrospect, with all the rain I found there was very little hive manipulation needed this winter. Under the right conditions, the bees prepare for over-wintering on their own. As I become more in-tune with the species I realize my part as a beekeeper is becoming less about hive manipulation and more about providing the bees with a clean, well-ventilated home that has space to expand in the spring and then adjusting that extra space in the fall. Last year was an exception with the incredible nectar dearth we experienced in Napa, but for the most part I am keeping a close eye on my bees but doing continually less-invasive procedures that tend to throw the bees off their game.

This time of year is slow in the apiary. My bees are prepared with all the necessary stores of both nectar and pollen to optimistically get them through the next few months of cold weather. A couple of things I am doing a little differently in my winter protocol is going back to monitoring trays and physically weighing each hive every visit. Not sure what the hell I was thinking, but for the last few years I quit using my monitoring trays. Probably because they got misplaced in the bee yard over the summer so I just figured oh well, the bees can live without them. Of course I would always use trays with those smaller colonies I felt may be compromised by the cold temperatures. However, with my big mammas I figured ahhh, we live in California they’ll be fine, and luckily they were.  Protection from the elements is only one of the functions of the monitoring tray. Since this year I am accountable for a lot more bees than just my own, I have been watching the trays very closely; they can tell you volumes about what is happening in the hives throughout the winter. Sure, the tray will also shed a little light on your varroa loads, but really, what can you do about varroa this time of year anyway? Actually, what can you do about any of it this time of year anyway…?  I guess you could pull some sort of major heroics and drop formic or thymol on your bees if you see a heavy mite load. That’d be foolish.
A) Those medications won’t work in colder temps as thymol needs to be at least 59 degrees and formic 55.4 degrees minimum. Highs today were 55 degrees. I’m not even going to spend the time discussing apistan,. If you are using apistan, or ANY medications prophylactically, you ARE part of the problem. 
B) You’re going to let all the heat out of your hive and most likely the bees will not be able to regain temperatures and will freeze at night. Remember, if the cluster temp drops much below 50 degrees you’ll start to see reproductive problems with your queen in the spring. 
C)  You should be seeing an increased mite drop this time of year. Significantly less brood leaves fewer cells for the varroa to reproduce in.  So, either way, you’ll kill the mites but you may kill your bees too. It’s the down time of the year for bees,  so give ‘em a break. Bottom line is DON’T OPEN YOUR HIVE this time of year!

When it comes to weighing my hives I use a proper scale. I guess the one I'm using is some sort of big game hunting scale with an L-bar I slide under the back side of the hive. I don’t presume I’m getting an accurate weight,  only a number I can quantify and watch decrease in the winter as the bees eat through their stores.  I haven’t had the scale long enough to see the weights increase again in the spring, and I’m less concerned with that. In the spring I just open the hive to see what’s going on inside. I don’t think one necessarily needs a hillbilly backwoods deer scale like mine, you can just very gently and slowly lift the back of your hive to get a good sense of the honey stores. However, don’t be getting all Arnold on your hives from over lifting, just every once in awhile. I’m sure it must be a little annoying to the bees to have their house upturned too often.

There are two final things I do before I leave my winter bee apiary.  First I have a good look around the front of the hive for discarded bees. During the winter the mortuary bees have a difficult time breaking the warm cluster to clean any dead bees that may be left inside the hive. If you look closely you’ll see dead, deformed-wing bees, normal die-off, and even in the case of those ultra-hygienic bees there may be a few larvae that are infected by varroa. Watch the entrance for bees bringing in pollen and nectar. Most the bees I see this time of year with pollen are foraging on the early mustard. Something Toucan Serge bought up at our last meeting is you should follow your nose. I haven’t done it yet, but makes perfect sense to take in a big fat huff of that beautiful bee-ness. One can tell a lot about the health of a hive by the smell. That sweet golden amber smell of love --  it by and large means to me the hive is productive and free of the more invasive brood diseases. If while huffing your hives you get a waft of funky old gym shoes a red flag should go up. Foul brood is called “foul” for a reason -- it smells dank. Problem is that if by the time you can smell brood disease it’s pretty far along. Far enough along that you could very quickly become part of the problem, a big problem. We’ll save that for later.

Lastly, you can take all the mental notes you’d like but to learn the most from your observations you have to record them someplace. I do both old school hard copy, pencil to paper and digital. Not to say I’m transcribing all my field notes but I always carry my little Cannon Powershot SD1100is digital Elph. I shoot everything.... and more. The beauty of these new digi cameras is they track the time and date of images. Currently in my iphoto library I have 3,147 bee images I made in 2008 and closer to 4K in 2009. I also keep an old analog negative binder, which is just a glorified 3-ring binder with all the sides enclosed. I use it to record the hive activity in my apiaries and store my pencils. Of course I could be better at record keeping, and I will be in 2010, I feel it is a key priority in keeping track of the health and genetic lines of my bees. I believe it sets the real bee players aside from the rest. If you are going to substantiate bee fact let’s see it in record, at least that’s my opinion.

Here is all you'll need minus your nose and eyes for a complete winter hive check. Some sort of scraper to clean your monitoring tray, if you decide to clean them, some prefer not to regularly. A hillbilly hunting scale, a binder or some other means of recording notes, writing utensils, and I carry an iphone for emergency low res images and a way to get an exact location on the GPS.

      Close-up of my notes and the hillbilly hand scale, as seen on Deliverance.

Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be an average cluster size for this time of year.

Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be a small cluster for this time of year.

Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be a pretty big cluster for this time of year.

A cluster that is really front and center - moldy pollen too, yuck.

Beautiful BD 2:1 sugar water - I generally try my best not to feed my bees, but if I have to, I'll use the Rudy recipe including chamomile, comfrey, and a pinch of salt. Not sure it's any better for my bees but it's got to be better than a bunch of empty calories.

Sometimes if I don't have a top feeder I'll use a boardman style feeder placed on the top bars of the hive inside an empty hive body to discourage robbing. Some guys (Serge) I kinow use the large yogurt containers with 1/16th holes drilled in it in the same manner. Either way try to keep food contained and away from those rouge bees.

Hive roof ruuuusted......

One nation under a grove - One hive stand covered in goo. This year I tried Tangle Foot as a way to get a knock down on those pesty ants.

Take more pictures of bees

Toucan Serge

Lastly, here is my gift to you.... A copy of my hive records. Feel free to duplicate them, however, one might just use my copy as a springboard for a much better version that is more compatible with their work flow. I have sort of gone off this whole page for each colony every visit type of record, why else would I give it away for free. Really though, come up with a record system that works for you, is easy for you, and makes it convenient to keep better records.

Download Bee Hive Records