Honeybees – Witten Creek Beez

Here I am now approaching my third year in beekeeping. I’m amazed at what these little creatures have taught me. They helped me rehabilitate from surgery, got me off my duff and moving. They engaged my mind through observation, reading and listening. The amazing people met has been a joy.

In summary of 2021, a swarm from one of my big Spring hives was retrieved. The other two robust hives were split multiple times. The colonies raised new queens and I had to only purchase a couple. A virgin queen I was given was successfully introduced into a hive and accepted, the colonies were treated for varroa mite control and fed to help enable them to get through Winter. It wasn’t a good year for gathering honey but 2022 should be much better.

I have attended beekeeping classes and rubbed elbows with fellow area beekeepers I have met. YouTube has been a helpful resource for learning and being introduced to reputable teachers in the field. Learning to do Oxalic Acid treatments for the control of varroa mites was an experience. I have the smaller wand vaporizer. It has to be hooked up to a battery. Thankfully two batteries were on hand because it takes a lot of ‘juice’ to get the powered oxalic acid to vaporize. After treating 14 hives I can now say I have mastered the technique. ha,ha,ha

Now I find myself giving back to my community by helping to restart a beekeeping association from the ground up in our county and surrounding area.

Sights are set on queen grafting to make my apiary more self-sustaining and perhaps produce enough extra to help out local beekeepers who are considering re-queening their hives. A new friend has offered a location to place a couple of hives on. This will allow for more hive management options. Starting nucleus colonies are in the plans as well. Then there is the honey!

If you are willing to develop your dreams and visions and take the action upon them, it truly is amazing what doors open as you take the steps to walk through them. It’s scary at first because you haven’t proved anything. The proof comes in the doing. Sometimes in the form of tripping and tumbling but that just means you are learning. In the end the reward outweighs the stutter steps.

Spring 2022 will take on a whole new meaning! Thanks for following and supporting my adventure.

I haven’t had my bees for a complete year just yet. I still have two weeks to go. So Spring presented a whole new set of experiences. I went from being an enamored newbie beekeeper; happily feeding my bees, treating for mites and doing the Winter prep to a full fledged beekeeper in the speed of light.

The mindset of the bee colony coming out of survival mode in Winter is reproduction. This Spring, the weather became extremely warm at the onset and really flipped the switch to trigger the reproduction cycle which in bees is manifested in swarming.

The residing queen will lay eggs in queen cups. They develop into cells made on the face of the comb or toward the bottom of frames and as they mature resemble a vertical hanging peanut. Therefore upon inspection of a hive this is an observable sign the hive will begin making preparations to swarm. Just prior to the new queen emerging the resident queen will deliberately leave the hive with approximately half of the hive population.

My bees made it through Winter successfully in a robust way. So the combination of a large crowded population of bees in the hive and the warm weather along with an abundance of pollen and nectar provided the optimum conditions for swarming. I was fully aware of these conditions and as a beekeeper began to apply the management portion of beekeeping. This is known as splitting the hive. It is a controlled swarm by the beekeeper.

I successfully split one hive into a deep and a nuc. The other two hives were on schedule to have the same procedure done to them. But the gals had their own time table. I had one hive decide to do a dramatic swarm. I was out talking with the neighbor and I could hear the familiar buzzing sound. I passed it off as flies sunning themselves on the side of one of the outbuildings. When the conversation ended I headed toward the apiary and that’s when I went into frantic mode. I was literally standing in the midst of a full on swarm. Thousands of bees were swirling around the entire apiary. Thankfully they landed on an old fence post ten feet from the bee yard on the apiary side of the creek. I had already placed empty woodenware in the yard. I was pretty hyped as I had never retrieved a swarm before. But my desire to get my bees back took over and my focus kicked in. I successfully got the bees in a single deep hive and transported them away from the bee yard. Whew!

Spring is an exciting season as all of God’s creation awakens with life once again. Regeneration and bountiful hope of an abundant harvest. These amazing bees have taught me so much allowing me thankfully to become a better beekeeper.