Saturday, June 9, 2012

Adventures in Beekeeping: Installing a Nuc

Here are some pictures of the hive as well as an overview of some things we've learned about bees!

On Saturday, June 2 we traveled to Fruitport to pick up our nucs.  When you buy bees by the nuc you're buying five frames of bees and a queen. They've already built some comb, some brood, and a bit of honey.  They come in a box like this:

So you take your box of new babies home, set them next to their hive and open the plug. They'll spill out and fly around getting the lay of the land:

If you ever have a chance to watch bees coming out of a hive, you'll notice that they come out they'll fly a figure eight before leaving, that's the bee setting is GPS, so to speak.  Now that they've been here a while, we notice several fly straight out and away - they're experts! They'll always return to their queen so you don't have to worry about them flying off and never returning.

After an hour or two, you want to transfer the frames from the nuc box to your hive. You have to do this carefully so as not to smush any and so as not to jostle and lose the queen. No queen = no colony and that makes this $500 venture pointless.  You don't want to smush bees because (1) you care about bees and (2) when one is injured/killed it inspires the others to begin stinging.



At this point, you're in the midst of around 10,000 bees! It's pretty amazing actually. The first time I did it it was exciting and terrifying and made for a definite adrenaline rush.  I've been out four times in the past week and it is less terrifying, but still pretty intense!

Today my husband and I went out (he finally got a bee suit) and cleaned the hive up.  They'll build comb over the tops of the frames and hanging down under and you have to scrap this off.  This can then be made into candles, soap, lip balm, etc, but I have no idea how! ... yet!


In this picture (above) you can see a bit of comb that's been built underneath the frame (the frame is upside down in this picture). That's what needs to be scraped off.


You can't see it too well (above), but in the bottom of this comb (near Chris's thumb) are some shiny, wet cells that are being filled with honey!


Here's a better picture of excess comb that needs to be shaved off.  You can't see it in the picture, but when you see the bees up close, some have bright yellow legs because they are full of pollen! So cute!

Other things that you're looking for:

     - When you look at your comb you're looking for brood (babies) so that you know your queen is alive and well.  These look like tiny will curled up white caterpillars - also super cute!

     - You're also always looking for the queen. We haven't seen ours yet, but we have lots of brood so we know she's in there.  The queen has a "court" of 10 bees who stay with her (around and on top of her) which makes it hard to find her. These workers bring food to her. The food that the queen eats is called royal jelly... haha. The queen lays all the eggs and secretes a pheromone that keeps the other females sterile - now that's power!

     - We're still trying to figure out who's who. The hive is made up of the queen, the workers (also females), and the drones (males).

     - Drones are male bees whose only job is to mate and then die (sorry guys).  In fact, they don't even have stingers so they can't even defend the colony. In the winter, the workers will keep the drones from entering the hive (which means they'll starve to death) so that the workers can save the precious honey for their own survival.

     - The worker bees are crazy busy. They tend to the queen and larvae, build the comb, clean the comb, collect pollen and nectar, produce the honey, defend the colony, and even clean up and remove the dead. They also decide when the hive is too crowded and then they swarm and leave (something we would NOT like to happen).

Why raise bees?

We might get honey in a year or two, but this isn't our primary reason for raising bees. They are fascinating and incredibly important to our survival as a species so we're doing it mostly for a hobby.  We might collect comb and do something with that.

You can also make money in bee world by taking your bees to fields to pollinate, building and sell bee boxes, raising and selling nucs and queens.  Right now, we're just trying to keep them alive!

Oh, the fashion is also a bonus:









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