Splits with Daughters help

While the rest of my family loves their sleep-ins on the weekends..............

.......(just dont understand it!).............

Thankfully, my youngest daughter wakes up early, crack of dawn, ready to go - like me -- and as not allowed electronic devices before lunch, she gets a bit toey early in the morning with no one else out of bed but me - i am usually in shed, or working with my show chooks, or in the vegy patch or working with the bees. if not the next things to occupy my time I am working on currently - aquaponics and bonsai

 

And this morning she said to me "can we do something with the bees?"

- why not, indeed!

All a Dad needs is an enthused child to pass on his "wisdom of life and the world" onto rather than as a captive audience or as my only son would say - "slave labour"

 

So the youngest daughter and I wiggled into our bee suits - quietly so as not to wake the sleeping dragon (Mum) and then headed off down the back of our block with the sun just creeping over the horizon to the east. We got the smoker working and then gloved up, hooded up, zipped up - we are ready to do some bee keeping. 

A bit of context and reasoning first about the work today ---

 

I have one last long TBH being used (10 of them unused in the shed) that was full of bees, brood and honey and I was going to split next week but with the youngest daughter's enthusiasm high, I was keen to take advantage of the situation (she hasn't been keen since getting her first bee sting through a glove 9 weeks ago)

 

I have been over the last few months taking splits out of my long Top Bar Hives (TBHs) placing them in the new Langstroth hives I made from scrap timber in July 2020 , with 7 out of 9 walk away splits having worked really well, all 7 producing their own queens, this from four - five frames of brood and honey placed in the new langstroth hives.

 

My longer TBHs have 30-32 top bars so are equivalent to 3 box high 10 frame langstroth hive, I have been getting 3-5 kilo of honey out of the TBH hives, however the method of extraction renders the comb not being able to be used again by the bees (crushed and squeezed), any brood is wasted too  - the used comb no use except for extracting the wax for other uses. 

 

So the reason for the change to the langstroth style hives from TBHs has been more honey wanted - in particular without brood being in the same comb. You can add a queen extruder into a TBH, placed vertically about 10 top bars in, rather than horizontally like in langstroth style hives between brood box and super box above, - but not why I originally made the TBHs which was for just the fun of keeping bees

 

However with personal and career timing influences, I am wanting to turn the bees into more of an income focus - with honey, honey in the comb wax, queens and NUCs the main products  

 

I still need the larger longer TBH as I feel they produce what I feel is the perfect comb for walk away splits (that is don’t need new queen purchases or raised) - filled with honey and brood all in a single frame, but eliminating my last two long TBHs is needed to help me shift the bees to a better location on my block. If moved long distance - TBHs don't travel well, as the comb is not fully supported on all sides, unlike a langstroth frame with all the comb surrounded by timber, a TBH frame only has timber at the top.

 

I have shifted hives across the block before - using the 'Place tree in front of hive in new location " method but alway a few forager bees that get lost - and a large longer TBH full of comb, honey, bees etc is super heavy and awkward to move about - and then add in the unstable comb issue - fraught with dangers. So taking splits out and leaving behind just a brood box in the original location was my solution for today. I will restart the longer TBH off (3-6 of them) from the three short TBH I now have once they mature

 

back to the real beekeeping action .......

 

So the daughter and I take the lid off TBH and start shifting top bars with hanging comb absolutely packed with bees, pollen, and honey. Some into the langstroth brood box I was going to put back in the location of the TBH but also into a couple of short TBHs (each hold 15 top bars). So with 8 or so top bars with comb in each box empty of frames and top bars added respectively.

 

There were no actions taken to find the queen, just even out the comb between the three boxes I had - then leave the langstroth where the long TBH was and take the two short TBHs over to new location - The foragers in the two short TBHs would return to original location but the nursery bees would remain with brood etc. Then as they mature and start foraging they would orientate themselves to this new location none the wiser - also hoping before that, that they will take a young fresh laid egg and turn it into their own new queen.

 

I had thought maybe I would get only one walk away split from the TBH this morning, as I had already taken out comb for two other walk away splits four weeks ago. But with the amount of comb and bees this morning in the long TBH I would need another box - so used two short TBH boxes instead of the one intended

 

We (well me as too heavy for a 7 year old) placed the short TBHs in the new area I had set aside for the racks to hold the bee hives. 

The middle hives are short TBHs, the far right a langstroth, the far left a flow hive base section

Number 9 was a walk away split from 4 days ago from my second last long TBH

Numbers 12 & 13 were from the work today by my daughter and I

Number 11 is a swarm I captured from a school in Marlow Lagoon, I think 2 weeks ago

The Flow hive base section you can see above - is a split I am attempting for a member of a FB group for Darwin beekeeping

 

Number 10 is the final product for todays efforts of transferring the TBH to Langstorth 

Number 2 is a split from two months ago, just added a shallow super due to hive numbers 

See the blue string at rear in gap on left - that was where one of the failed walk away splits was

We placed two shallow supers on the new langstroth brood box - not needed except for space for the older bees to settle into, that can be removed one in a week or so if needed, as you dont want too much free space in a hive.

 

The cloud of bees outside the new hive's entrance was intense - but given disruption and a hive that didn’t look like the old one - understandable.

 

Next weekend I will take the two hives above and two more, making four hives in total, currently not in ideal locations, to the inlaws farm out past Fogg Dam for a week or two and then bring them back to the new location on our block.

 

As we tidied up, I asked my littlest daughter how she went today, but she was unable to talk to me as she was intently talking to a little bee crawling around her gloved hand. Then after their conversation she gently placed it back on the hive, asking it to tell her family to relax, chill, and enjoy their new hive box.

What an awesome daughter I have!!!

 

Next on the game plan is to make 10 or so, 5 frame NUC boxes - which I intend to sell off to pay for all the hobbies I have that are draining my savings.  I have already used CAD software to create the 3D printable NUC entance. After that I want to make an attempt at some queens in the new year.

So exciting times ahead!

Wild hive collection from Daughter's school

When picking up daughter from school monday afternoon, a teacher mentions a beehive was spotted during the day in the top of a tree

Now her husband is a bee keeper too, but was working rural till weekend and due to students already trying to kick soccer balls into the small hive at the top of the tree  - I suggest I grab the hive!

So had to chat to admin staff to ensure Ok with me grabbing it - but told had to wait til after school care students and staff left for the day - for saftey concerns

I then rushed the 25 minutes back to home to get all the gear I would need - I planned to climb tree take hive down in one peice and place in top half of a double hive. Bottom box with frames, top box with no frames so I could to place the removed hive as a whole in to it - then they could migrate into lower box - removing old comb in a couple of weeks - here's hoping.

My 10 year old daughter was super chuffed at being involved - and like a mini version of her mother had me orgnaized, nibble food sorted and as a priority got her bee suit and gloves ready to help me out

On arrival back at the school we placed all the equipment in all the right places and I climbed the tree 

I cut a few lower branches to ensure I could get the four or so combs out of the tree as a whole, this then to place in top of hive box with as little disturbance as possible

Then came the scary key limb sawing the one main branch with the hive was on 

- dont drop it!

I dropped the saw a couple of times but my helpers passed it back to me - saved me getting out of tree twice! thanks

Once I started lowering the hive attached to the limb - a problem - an unseen tip of a nearby limb was incorporated into the hive cause it to be damaged as I lowered it

First one comb falling to the ground, this followed by two more 

- bugger! 

       bugger 

                bugger!

Once I climbed down, I placed the comb pieces between frames and placed these in lower portion of the double hive 

Amazingly the bees were quite calm through all this disturbance

Bees were in clumps on the ground having fallen off the comb-  I delicately scooped up the bees and placed them in hive box as best I could

I placed the box entance right next to a large clump of nursery bees (given their size?) and hoped they would move into the hive attraced by the scent of the comb filled with capped larva

I luckily spotted the queen and her fat elongated butt in another clump of bees on the grass and quickly placed her in the hive - further encouragment for bees to go into the hive - after queen being found I placed lid on hive boxes and hoped.

I saw a large mass of bees were back up at top of tree on branch next to where the hive originally was before my interferance. might have to get them eventually - these would most likely be older foraging bees used to that spot high in the tree 

So thought to leave the hive there and come back an hour or two after dark once the rest had made their choice to use nice new hive or go back to their tree 

So back home for dinner and once family settled in for the night, I head back to pick up hive and hopefully all the bees had taken up residence in their new home.

On arrival, I saw a couple of guard bees out front hive entrance - couldn't see the clump of bees that had gone back to upper branch of tree. I took a quick look into the lid and saw a large mass of bees in the frames with fallen comb of larva etc. So looks like it had worked!

I placed tape over the entrance and secured hive to transport home. Once home, placed the newly filled hive boxes on the hive stand and removed the tape from the entrance, so that at first light the bees could reorientate themselves in their new location

Next day - an early look at hive showed bees reorientating at hive entrance. Will check for queen activity in a couple of weeks. Here's hoping!

At the school next day they found a smallish lump of bees in top of  tree again - about 300 - hopefully I still have queen in my hive box and those that are just left behind are just the older foraging bees that will eventaully disperse or die off with no hive (sad!) - might get my bee vacuum set up with extension tube and try to get them (???)

So the daughter took photos and video - was  a great help overall - thanks Bub!

I put together a video of her media work - hope you enjoy her commentary!