California Trip to Prepare for Almonds

This weekend, I flew down to California to prepare my hives for the Almond Pollination.  The day started out with rain but quickly the sun came out and made the afternoon a delight!  It was beautiful.

Prepping for Almond Bloom

DFM with Power Sugar Feed

I applied the DFM probiotic to the bees again this year.  Last  year, this helped with the build up

A blessed day for sure!

First Post of 2020!

We are getting ready for an exciting year with our Bees.  I made it in to our main yard this afternoon to check on the bees and to work on boxes in my shop.  I saw a single bee flying outside of her home and she quickly went back in!

Trailer Bees Overwintering at our Home Yard

I prepped some materials for making more deep boxes next month.  This helps keep them straight and dry before I run them through the joint machine.  The strap really works!

Drying Rack Setup

Next week, I will be flying down to California to prep the hives there for the oncoming Almond Bloom that starts first week in February.  I am excited to see how they over-wintered in Sunny California!

The Year in Review - Moose Meadow Bees 2019!

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our customers, family and friends for making this year the best one yet for our Apiary!  We grew quite a bit, made lots of boxes/equipment, raised queens and Nucs and harvested lots of delicious honey!  We even took 41 hives to California for overwintering in the Almonds.

We are excited for the new  year and are hoping to raise 200 nucs this April.  Please check back early next year - if you are interested in signing up for Nucs.  We would love to help you too!

Final Winter Preps for the Colonies staying here - at our Farm in Eastern Washington

This weekend, I put my hives to 'bed' up here on our farm in Eastern Washington.  The weather is about to turn pretty cold so I want to do my final preps to give them the best shot of surviving our long winters here.  

The first step is to provide a 'sugar box' for emergency feed.  Bees like to move up in the supers and this seems to work well.  This is just simple dry table sugar you can get from a store.  I use one sheet of newspaper that they can chew through it.  The sugar will crust over a bit from the hive moisture and new 'dry' sugar is exposed as they eat their way through it.

The 'sugar box' is a simple box with 3 or 4 inch walls with a 1/2 inch screen mesh. 

Sugar box placed on brood chambers

Once the sugar box is placed on the hive, I use another box that is filled with burlap.  This acts in two ways:   It insulated and removes moisture.  The key to winter survival is for the hive to be dry and well feed.  Moisture is the real problem here.

Simple box with stand offs

Burlap scraps

 This insulator box is a simple thing - just a an old box with some stand offs to support the burlap.  This burlap can be removed later in the winter - if it gets too moist.  The point here is to trap the moisture here - and away from the bees.

Here's the setup for a different perspective:

All Set for the Winter!

Colonies successfully delivered to California!

Some of my hives were setup in an almond orchard in Central California for the winter.  This is quite amazing in that it was almond 80 degrees F every day while I worked there.  The bees 'woke up' from being pretty cold here in Eastern Washington.  They were hungry so I provided them with extra syrup and pollen patties.

Beautiful Almond Orchard

Placed Hives with Nuc Boxes

The "Nuc Boxes" in the foreground are for next years new colony starts.  We should do great here with lots of drones and sunny weather in April!

Pollen patties - they loved these!

When the bees 'woke up' they were extremely active and hungry.  I fed lots of syrup and pollen patties to each hive.  They seemed to enjoy this!

An old memory...

This picture brought back some great memories of my youth.  I spent quite a bit of time on the

Toluomne  River hunting and fishing.  It is so exciting to come back to this area - doing something different with my bees.  This Spring is going to be great!

It turns out that there are many beekeepers who overwinter their bees here. This yard had hundreds of hives near a place called "Dry Creek" just about 20 miles away.

Other bee yards

Prepping Colonies to go to California for Winter and to Pollinate the Almonds!

Over the past few days, I've been working on setting up my trailer for my annual trek to California.  Its a long drive, but always fun and interesting.

This year I will be taking down 43 colonies to overwinter and to work the Almond pollination.  From these colonies we will raise new queens and build Nucs for sale as well.  In April, I will be picking them up and bring them home for a 'second round' of Spring.

I put my little 'hive lift' to work today and it is a serious back saver!  It works great!

If you are interested in this - leave me a comment and I will go into more details on this.

Thanks!

I will post pictures of my trip and where they will spend the Winter next week.

Prepping Trailer for the Trek. 

Hive Lift in Action!

Hive Lift in Action

Using homemade 'Bee Escapes' to clear bees from supers

For several  years now, I've been trying to find an easy way of clearing Bees from my honey supers.  I've tried the 'Bee-Go' and hand brushing them, but nothing seem to work very well.  

I saw how many Bee equipment makers offer these 'Bee Escapes' and I was a bit skeptical.  However, I decided to build some following their design as close as possible, and gave it a try last year.  You know what?  They worked PERFECTLY.  I was amazed that coming back the next day - all of the Bees moved down to the lower supers, leaving the ones above the super - absolutely clear!  

Simple plywood Bee Escapes with 3/4" entrance hole

The theory behind this is that the bees move down during the day and evening to be close to the queen.  When they go down through this little hole - they have no trouble doing so.

Here is the 'unpassable' maze!

However, when the bees try to get back up they are confronted by a 'maze' of sorts that confuses them.  They can't figure it out for some reason!  They get 'stuck' underneath this barrier and are excluded from the honey super above.

This year, I left quite a bit of honey supers on and didn't harvest it.  I wanted to makes sure I had plenty 'banked up' for this coming spring when I raise our Nucs.  Nothing feeds a colony start better than a simple frame of honey - right next to the brood chamber!  They really 'explode' on this.  It is exciting to see for sure so this practice of saving a bit back for the following spring is a great way of managing new colonies.

Giving them syrup in the spring up here is problematic and besides... Honey is the best food for them anyway! 

The top green honey super will be 'cleared' in 24 hours