Honey time!

Well, it's been a while.  This season of bee keeping has been good.  We started off strong with all of the hives surving the winter.  We also added 2 hives bringing the total number of hives in our apiary to 10. 

Unfortunately, we lost one of the hives mid summer and have had 2 go queenless.  One of the queenless hives we are trying to requeen by putting a frame of eggs from a healthly queen from another hive into the queenless hive.  The bees in the queenless hive know they are queenless and will begin to prepare the open eggs and larva to become a queen by filling the open cells with royal jelly (hopefully). The other queenless hive we are combining with a weak hive that has a queen to try to make it stronger going into the winter.

We have pulled our honey for the year.  We harvested about 4 gallons of honey, and bottles are for sale for $8.00.  All of the honey money goes back into the bee program here at Mill Springs.  If you would like a bottle please send me an email madams@millsprings.org.

The next few months we will be preparing the bees for winter.  The Bee Stangs bee keeping club will also resume.  Honey bees!



After we are done scraping the honey we put the residuals outside. It takes about an hour for the bee from the field to find the residuals and another hour to clean any honey left over.













More Pictures from the 2014 Honey Pull

More Pictures of the Mill Springs Bees

Early Honey

At the last  bee club we were able to extract a little bit of honey (mainly so the kids could participate).  The lighter color is the newest batch.  Notice the difference will the late summer batch from last year.  Different nectar and pollen sources produce different colors (and flavors) of honey.



Sawyer preparing to bee keep!



More Pictures of the Mill Springs Bees

Arbor Montessori School Visit

About a week ago, our bees had a visit from some students from Arbor.  They had just finished up a unit on bees and wanted to see the inside of our hives.  They got suited up and right to work. 



At the end of the visit, we gave Arbor a frame of brood for their observation hive the school has in the library.  Right when we pulled the frame we noticed a queen cell.  Then one of the students noticed a high pitched buzzing sound.  The queen was about to emerge!  The students put the frame in to the observation hive and were able to watch their new queen be born (which is very rare)!  It was an amazing experience.









More Photographs from Arbor Visit

Mill Springs Bees Photographs

Newbees!

Well, its our 3rd season and we are getting bigger once again.  All 4 hives from last season survived the winter and are looking good.  We have also added 3 more hives to the apiary for Jessica, which is super exciting! 

Newbees



Survivors

Bee Club will be starting up after spring break.

Mill Springs Bees Pictures

Preparing For Winter

Winter time is close and the bees are beginning to prepare to winter over (for our second winter).

New brood (or baby bees) are hatching!  Which is an amazing site to see!  Little heads chewing their way out!



We have lost a hive this season.  It looks like Colony Collapse Disorder.  The hive appeared strong, and then all of a sudden the entire hive had disappeared.  Very sad.  However, we transferred the captured swarm from the spring to the CCD hive (that was in the  nuc before).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are looking forward to the spring.  As of now, we hope to have all 4 hives winter over successfully.

We are also looking foward to the release of the documentry More Than Honey.

http://www.ciber.science.uwa.edu.au/blog/

 

Summer Honey!

A couple of weeks ago, some Mark Trail Summer Camp campers and I worked with Mr. D and his family on our second honey extraction.  We were able to extract almost 5 gallons of honey (which works out to almost 60 bottles).

The honey is delicious!







We will be selling our honey for $8 a bottle. All the money goes back into the Bee Stangs experience for our bees, hives, students and members of the community.

If you would like to purchase honey please send me an email.

More Honey Havest Photographs

More Mill Springs Bees Photographs

First Honey Extraction

Our first round of honey! A couple of days ago we were able to extract a small amount of honey from the hive that survived the winter. It is delicious!

Such a neat process.

More photos below.

Honey Flow Photos

Bee Stangs (Mill Springs) Photos

Back in Bees Nest

After a short winter hiatus the Mill Springs bee keepers are back in bees nest. Over the winter, with the help of a winter learning construction seminar, we moved and expanded the Mill Springs Apiary. The new apairy is in the new garden down on the field.



In the new space we have added 3 new hives and a nuc(like a back up hive)! We now have 4 total hives! One from last year and 3 new.

The Novus hive survied the mild winter and is full of bees. It looks to be doing great.



The new bees arrived about a week ago. A few thousand bees arrived in a wire box on the back of a truck. Mr. D and I drove to pick them up. When we arrived, the bee deliverer handed us our bees and checked off our name. We loaded 5 boxes of bees(like the one below)into the back of Mr. D's highlander and drove about an hour to show them their new home.





The bees were very happy to be in their new homes. The process is pretty easy. Open the hive, pull out the queen and put her in the new hive, gentle dump a few thousand bees into the hive and let the growing begin!





The rest of the bee delivery photos, new bee delivery.

The old bee club photos, Mill Springs Bees.

Where is the queen?

We had our 3rd meeting of the Bee Stangs last Thursday. We inspected the hive, cleaned the hive and fed the bees.

We were able to look at almost every frame.

No stings!








New Pictures


Mill Springs Bees

Rule number 1: Don't freak out! (Bee Stangs)

Last Thursday was the first meeting of the Bee Stangs here at Mill Springs Academy. We had several students participate.



Everyone was very excited! They dressed up in the bees suits, pulled frames to look for the queen and fed the bees.

Rule number 1: Don't freak out! We had a couple of moments, but they were handled very well. It went something like this,

"Hey Michael."

"Yes"

"All of these bees are freaking me out."

"Okay. What's rule number 1?"

"Don't freak out."

"That's right. Just walk away slowly and go relax for a minute."




Enjoy the photos!


Mill Springs Bees Photographs

The Beard

Last night I attended the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association monthly meeting at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. It was very interesting and educational. The speaker came to the meeting from North Georgia. Check out her site, Mtn Honey.

Also check out the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association Site.

One item of discussion was the temperature of the hive. Bees work hard to maintain a certain temperature inside the hive. In the summer, when it gets hot, the bees work to cool the hive. They accomplish this a couple of ways. One way the bees cool the hive is by flaping their wings to act like a fan. Another, is by getting water and basically spitting it into the air while flapping their wings to act like an air conditioner.

A third way to cool the hive is called bearding. The bees go outside the hive and sit on the outside of the hive box to remove their little body heat and cool themselves off.

Ours are bearding.



Listen out for the buzz around campus this year. We will be starting our Bee Club this fall. More information coming!


Mill Springs Bees

Swarm Success

Yesterday we went out to check the hives. It looks like we now have 2 hives in our garden.

The old hive must have a new queen. We did not see her, but we did see where she had laid eggs.

The old queen is also laying eggs, in the new hive box.

Lots of little bees in both hives. And each hive has more bees than it did 5 weeks ago after the swarm.

Check out the swarm video below. Turn up the volume.




Mill Springs Bees

Swarm!

2 weeks ago we came to school to check on and feed the bees. When we walked out the door I called to Michael G, "come and look at this!" Bees were everywhere. Everywhere!

Mr. D came around the corner and said, "Fantastic. Its a swarm!"



Our bees had decided they needed more room to grow so they decided to leave the hive in search for a new one.



Right before the bees leave the queen gives out a signal. Some how within the hive 2/3 of the bees get chosen to leave and the rest get chosen to stay. The workers that are leaving then fill up on honey and prepare to fly to their new home.

The queen departs along with several hundred of the workers. Once they have left, the queen makes a temporary stop, alongwith the rest of the bees, to decide on a new permanent place to live. Scout bees fly around to look for a new house.

We got lucky. The departed bees stopped in the top of a close by tree.

It was an amazing sight. Thousands of bees flying around all gathered on a limb in a big group. Bees were everywhere, and then, all of them were together.

Mr. D said, "well, you have to go up and get them. We can start a new hive!"

So I did. Twice! The first attempt caused another swarm, to the same tree.





And now we have 2 hives. The old one with a new queen, Novus. And a new hive, which is actually the old hive with the old queen in a new box.




Mill Springs Bees

Sounds in the Hive!

A few days ago Michael Griffeth and I went in for another look. We were looking for queen cells and adding sugar water to the feeder.

I recorded the hive after we smoked them. This is what is sounds like.

Turn up the volume.

Mill Springs Bees

Queen Hunter

Earlier in the week we got an email from Mr. Durocher. He let us know that we needed to check for queen cells.

The hive already has a queen. Apparently, all of the bees in the hive are loyal to the already established queen. If a new queen is born, the hive will swarm and find a new place to live.



We looked at each frame for queen cells which look like a drooping peanut.



We weren't totally sure about a few of the cells, so we removed what we thought might be queen cells. Kind of a gooey white liquid is what we removed. Royal jelly?




More Pictures below.

Mill Springs Bees

Going in Alone

This is the first time we have opened the hive without the supervision of Don D. It went pretty good. We smoked the bees, added simple syrup and cleaned off the extra honey comb.

The comb was delicious.






We also had our first sting. Ouch!

Mill Springs Bees

First Look

On April 1 we opened up the new hive for the first time. The bees seem to be doing well. The queen was out and laying eggs. We added a feeding tray into the hive. We filled it with sugar water to be sure the bees had plenty to eat while they are getting used to the new area.





This was the first time I had been in the hive area with the bees flying around. It was nerve racking. We smoked the bees which is supposed to calm them down. They are still every where. Landing on you. Its wild.

I asked Don D if bees could smell fear?

He said, "oh definitely."





Mill Springs Bees