Bee Vacuum

Last year I started to get swarms and felt I'd like to use a vacuum for the process.  The first swarm I could not get to all the bees and wanted to make sure I had the queen.  My lovely wife, Sandi, went to Lowe's with the concept I described for a bee vacuum and this is what we used for the rest of the summer.

 The vacuum attaches to the silver hose on the right and the pick up hose just goes through a hole on the left.  The silver duct is held on with duct tape.

Here it is with the top on.

This worked well all last year for the swarm season.

This last winter I started to work on a better vacuum and had some parts made from a person that had a 3D printer.  The second version is here.  Notice the duct tape is still working here.  I had taken one of the vacuum attachments and tried to attach it to the plastic box.  It worked but not really what I was hoping for.

Here is a close up of the part I had made for the pick up hose.  Notice the thread on the outside.  This will fit a small mouth canning jar lid, also any mayonnaise jar lid.   This allows me to remove the hose and keep the bees inside.

Here is the last version that I'm now using.

This is the last part I had made that integrates the screen and makes it easier to attach the vacuum hose.










It works very well and I can adjust the suction with the holes I have drilled in the lid of the box.

The vacuum works very well but I do need to be near electricity to power the vacuum.  I am going to but a power inverter to run the vacuum off the car power.

In the end I spent about $250 on the vacuum but this should last for many years.

Honey this year!

Well it looks like we are going to get honey this year.  Usually a new hive that is started from a 'package' (a 3 pound box of bees and a queen) will just get going enough to survive the winter.  We were fortunate enough to get a swarm from a new bee friend and it has been going gang busters!  This is the hive we names Daphne.  We checked it last weekend and the honey super is about 2/3rds full after only 3 weeks!

Here is a picture of one of the frames almost full of honey.

This frame has about 7 to 8 pounds of honey in it right now and there are 10 frames in each 'super'.  This one is almost completely full.  We are going to add another super since the bees are doing so well.

Smoke and Sugar

Bees in general are pretty laid back.  They just want to make honey.  If you don't get in the way of this process you can live in harmony with them.  As a beekeeper you do need to see how things are going on in the hive and during the summer you have to open the hive about once a week to see how things are progressing.   This pretty much pisses them off and they want to sting  you.  To settle them down you 'smoke them'.  We use a smoker to do this.  When they smell or sense smoke nearby they think forest fire and they gorge themselves on honey ready to take flight or something like that.  It reminds me of my dad after a big meal and he is sitting in his recliner relaxing and digesting.  It's a great time to ask for money or the car or tell him of the new dent in the fender.  In any case the bees are more concerned about eating than us invading the hive.

So the following is a video on the smoker and smoking the bees.

Bees have a common problem in the US and that is the varroa mite.  This little blood sucker comes into a hive and attaches to bees and starts to recreate.  Not a great thing for the bee or the hive.  The way to reduce the infestation is to 'sugar' the bees.  We take powered sugar and dust the bees.   They get really angry when you do this but this helps them to reduce the mite problem.

When the bees are covered with sugar they start to clean each other off by eating the sugar.  Any mites that are on the bees are then pushed off or slip off most of the bees.  They fall to the bottom of the hive and die in a heap of sucrose.  Here is a short video of sugaring the bees.

Honeybee wrestling

We have named the hives. 

The one on the left is Athena,  the one in the middle is Persephone,  the one on the right is Daphne.  Not sure why but Isaac and I thought it would be fun to name them after Greek or Roman goddesses.

In any case we have been inspecting them each weekend to see how they are doing and it seems they are doing ok.  We noticed that Persephone is not doing as well at the other two.  It just was not growing at the same rate as Athena and they were started at the same time.

I went out and watched them for awhile and noticed a strange occurrence.  I watched as one bee grabbed another bee trying to enter the hive and started to wrestle with it.  Odd.  Do bees wrestle? Hmmmmm....

Later in the week Isaac came in after watching the hives and noticed a number of dead bees at the entrance of Persephone.  After some research we came to the conclusion that there was honey robbing going on!! Oh no..what do we do???

Okay, so here is what is going on.  It seems that Persephone is a little on the weak side as hives go.  Some feral hive has found them and has been going in and stealing honey.  Which seems to be easier than going out and just gathering nectar. (lazy jerks).  Well each hive has a set of guard bees at the entrance of the hive to inspect each bee to make sure it belongs to the hive.  It if is not, then the guard bees wrestle with it and eventually kill it.  This is the reason for the dead bees on the ground in front of P.  (Spelling out Persephone is a pain)  We were not sure what to do but we found a solution and may have stopped the robbing.

 What we need to do is make the entrance a little smaller to allow the guard bees to inspect each bee as it comes in.  So we stuffed some paper towels in the entrance to reduce the size to about half.  Here is a photo of P with a stuffed entrance.




























It seems to have cured the problem.  We are going to do an inspection soon and we'll see how everybody is doing.

Couple of weeks in

We inspected the Daphne hive and they seem to be doing very well.  Here is a frame with brood on it.

The center area is capped brood.  Each cell will produce a new worker this coming week.  There are about 1000 in this picture.  The worker will emerge and start working immediately.  The queen will lay about 1500 eggs each day which will turn into worker bees 21 days later.  So our hive will increase from about 25K bees to about 60K in the next 6 weeks.  So we may get honey from this hive this year!

Picking up bees and installing them

Isaac and I picked up our new packages this weekend and installed the bees in their hives.  Each package is 3 pounds of bees and a queen.  The bee breeders had about 2.5 million bees in 280 packages.

  This photo is just a portion of the boxes at the pickup point.

Here we are ready to start putting the bees in the hives.

Two Package of bees.

Dumping the bees

More Dumping

Finished dumping

Putting in the last frame

All Done

First Inspection of the new hive

Isaac could not contain himself until he took a look into the new hive.  He went out today and did the first inspection of the hive.  It's good to find a lot of comb being built, eggs, and larvae.  It's also good to find the queen so we know everything is going well.

Here are a couple of photos of the queen that he found on the first frame he pulled out of the hive.  The queen is twice as large as the worker bees and will lay over 2 million eggs in her lifetime (2 to 3 years).

Here is small video of him showing a frame with a bunch of stuff.

He is very excited!