Robo's World » Beekeeping

Christopher Stowell – A Scout doing a beekeepers job

Robo — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:13:51 +0000

A few years ago, I read a statistic that said the average age of a beekeeper was 60. I must say I wasn’t at all surprised, yet I fully understood the consequence of such a statistic. I know CCD is not good for the bees, but could it be the savior of beekeeping? Because of the national coverage of CCD, there has been a tremendous influx of beginners and hobbyist who have been bitten by the beekeeping bug. Yes, all puns are intended It is great to see so many hobbyist getting back into beekeeping after varroa pushed a vast majority of them to leave in the early 90s. BUT…… Although the number of beekeepers may be up, and the average age may be more in the high 40s, the future is still not bright. We need more youth involvement.

My son just bridged from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts this past February, and imagine my disappointment when I discovered the beekeeping merit badge had been discontinued. Along comes Christopher Stowell, a Boy Scout in Troop 250, Skiatook, OK who has taken on the mission to get the beekeeping merit badge reinstated. Here is a young man taking on the task of getting more youth involved in beekeeping, something that we as a beekeeping community should have been years ago. I’m sure this has been and will continue to be a positive life changing event for Christopher’s which is one of the great aspects of Scouting. It is so refreshing to see a young man take on what could be seen as a momentous task for more than just self-gratification. Especially in these times where society is all about entitlements.

It took a young man to start this ball rolling. Now it is our turn, as beekeepers, to help him make it happen. Everyone that is reading this can make a difference. I have been fortunate to connect up Neil Van Dalsem, a beekeeper and neighbor of Christopher Stowell, who has made available some petitions and letters that can be used to show our support. Christopher has set a goal of July 15, 2010 to approach the Council with his proposal, so we must work fast.

What we need to do!

Everyone needs to sign the Online Petition at a minimum, but please try to do more as suggested below.

General Public

If your not a beekeeper or a scout, but are a concerned citizen and want to help out, please print out the following petition, get as many friends and family to sign it and mail it to Christopher Stowell. Remember, his goal is July 15th, so please allow time for the postal system and for Christopher to manage the incoming mail.

General Petition
(26.4 KB) (Downloads - 125)

Scouts

If you are a Scout, please print out the following petition and get as many of your fellow scouts that would be interested in earning the beekeeping merit badge to sign it. This is very important. The BSA wants to be assured that there is sufficient interest for the merit badge before they will reinstate it. Oh yea, if your up for it and want to really support your fellow scout, Chirstopher, print out the previous petition as well and get all your non-scout friends to sign that.

Scout Petition
(26.84 KB) (Downloads - 117)

Beekeepers

If your a beekeeper, you are where the rubber needs to meet the road. One of the bigger concerns that the BSA has is merit badge councilors. It seems that one of the reasons the Beekeeping merit badge was discontinued was due to the lack of merit badge councilors. For the BSA to reinstate the beekeeping merit badge we need to demonstrate that we, the beekeeping community, will support it. I can’t think of a better way to get youth involved in beekeeping, then a nationally, well defined program. Let’s all take the effort to make this happen.

If you are aware of any beekeeping clubs in your area, print out the first file and approach the club to commit to supporting any scout in the area that would be interested in earning the Beekeeping merit badge. Next, print out the second file and get as many of your beekeeping friends to commit to be a Beekeeping merit badge council. Those two steps are the most important, but if your still up for more, contact your local BSA council to get the word out and get a scout interest petition going in your area.

Club Support
(27.43 KB) (Downloads - 46)

Beekeeper Support
(17.55 KB) (Downloads - 183)

Updates

Christopher was our special guest on the May WpN Beekeeping Podcast. We had a great conversation with Christopher and got an update on how the campaign is going. I strongly recommend listening to the recorded podcast below. It is very reassuring to see such a determined young man of 13 and the dedication and effort he is putting forth. He has definitely grown and matured, and will continue to do so, through this effort and will make a great leader some day.
- Listen now

I have created a forum at Beemaster dedicated to this effort -> BSA Beekeeping Merit Badge Forum

Coverage of Christopher’s Effort

Portable Double Nucs

Robo — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:59:41 +0000

I just finished building 20 double 5 frame nucs that can be disassembled for storage and/or transporting. I used polystyrene deeps as they can be knocked down and reassembled in about 1 minute. I built a simple bottom board out of 1/2″ plywood with 3 inch entrances on opposite sides.

The cover is also made out of 1/2″ plywood, and a coroplast divider separates the 2 colonies. The bottom board, hive body sides, and cover where all dadoed for the coroplast divider. I have long haul transportation in mind, so I wanted the coroplast supported on on four sides, and it also keeps the bottom board, hive body and cover all aligned. I also cut small vent holes in the bottom board in the back of each nuc. Small blocks where also added to the corners of the bottom board to allow for ventilation when the nucs are stacked for hauling.

The cover has screened vent/feeder holes for each nuc away from the entrance to reduce the chances of robbing. A ratchet strap is used to hold the whole thing together when moving. A sheet of coroplast is placed over the cover for protection when out in the field.

The last photo shows a stack of 17 knocked down double nucs (34 nucs total) with an assembled deep in front for comparison. Each double nuc weighs 12.5 pounds without frames.

Making Products from the Hive with Monica Warner

Robo — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:29:58 +0000

December’s Wildlife Pro Network Beekeeping podcast will be a discussion on Making Products from the Hive with our special guest Monica Warner.

Monica Warner is the co-owner of The Carolina Bee Company. She and her husband, Todd have been keeping bees since May of 2004. They are a small beekeeping operation located in Franklin County, North Carolina (about 20 miles north of Raleigh).

This little enterprise was started with just two hives of honey bees. Over these handful of years, the Warner’s slowly expanded the number of hives as well as their experience.

Today, The Carolina Bee Company still remains a small company that produces high quality, chemicalfree, raw honey; and offers limited pollination services to the surrounding gardening and farming communities. Now, they have also expanded their small company to include the production of fabulous all natural, slow-cured, hand-crafted and handmade soaps, lip balms, and body butters.

All of their products are made from scratch with the very best all-natural ingredients to include, of course, the blessings of The Carolina Bee Company honey bees: honey and beeswax. Their products have been a resounding success.

Monica entered the soaps, lip balms and body butters into the 2008 and 2009 NC State Fairs, and won 1st and 2nd place ribbons for them respectively. Feedback on the products has been so positive, that they are expanding the product line further by selling in a couple local (Raleigh area) businesses, in addition to selling them on their website, www.carolinabees.com.

- Listen now

Recordings of other beekeeping podcasts can be found here.

Wildlife Pro Network Beekeeping Podcast

Robo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:25:13 +0000

I have recently teamed up with Robb Russell from the Wildlife Pro Network to coordinate and co-host the WpN monthly beekeeping podcast. The podcast is on the 2nd Thursday of the month at 8PM EST. You can check out the upcoming podcasts and listen to the recorded podcasts here.

I’m always open for suggested topics for future podcasts and if you know someone that would be a great guest, please let me know.

Can you afford emergency queens?

Robo — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:49:29 +0000

It’s springtime and a lot of folks are eager to expand their apiary by doing splits. Splits are very popular since they are “almost free”. Problem is, a good portion of those doing splits use the “walk away” method because it’s easy and cheap without thinking it through.

Bees will rear queens in three different circumstances. Swarm queens, supersedure queens, and emergency queens. Swarm queens are reared when a colony is booming, resources are plentiful, and the colony is ready to initiate a natural split. Swarm queens are reared out of desire and not out of need, and are also reared vertically in queen cups. Since swarm queens are initiated by bee when conditions are optimal, the results are quality queens.

Supersedure queens are reared when the colony is unhappy with the performance of the queen and decide to replace her. Supersedure does not consider availability of resource or drone population for proper mating. Supersedure queens are reared from eggs of an unacceptable or failing queen, therefore results are marginal at best. You will find some folks that say supersedure queen are perfectly fine. Just keep in mind, that although young supersedure queen may seem just fine, come Fall when the weather starts getting tougher is when the poor quality shows up. This also, coincidentally, is the worst time to have to try and requeen.

Emergency queens are the worst case for the bees. They have no laying queen and the colony will perish if the situation is not rectified. There is no current queen so one is raised from eggs laid in worker cells. What differentiates a queen from a worker is the food that is fed to the larvae on or around day 3. This happens to coincide with the bees needing to get the larvae from the horizontal cell to the new vertical cell they build on the face of the comb. To get the larvae to the correct position, they float it out on thinned out royal jelly. Does this thinned out royal jelly have the same nutritional value? Right at the critical time of a larvae being either a worker or a queen. There may not be an abundance of resources for the bees to produce quality royal jelly and they just do the best they can. Out of necessity, they will attempt to raise multiple emergency queen in hope that one is successful. Any larvae that may be a little older (more than 3 days and didn’t continue to get feed straight royal jelly) will also be the first to hatch and kill all the younger, perhaps better quality, unhatched queens. Out of desperation, bees will try and rear a queen from a non-fertile laying worker larvae, so wouldn’t it be plausible they would attempt to rear from a slightly older than prime larvae? Are “good enough” queens OK, or do you want the best queens?

So next time you plan to do a split, either wait until you have some nice swarm cells, or truly think through the long term costs before you write off a $20 quality queen as too expensive. Any beekeeper trying to deal with a late Fall/Winter queen failure would gladly drop $20 if given the chance for a do-over.

Frames and Frame Assembly

Robo — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:23:20 +0000

It seems like frames and frame assembly is something that the beginners on Beemaster forums often have questions about. So with the help of my son, I’m working on putting together a series of short videos. Here is the first session which is an overview of frame types, frame sizes, and frame styles. I will do additional segments on frame assembly and frame wiring.

Overview

Foundation & Wiring

Eyelets & Assembly

Jigs & Air Nailers

Jig plan available in download area.

Frame spacing tool

Robo — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:02:24 +0000

I don’t like to put frame spacers in my supers because I like to start new un-drawn frames 10 to a super to get the comb drawn correctly. Once the frames are drawn, I reduce them to 9 per super to make extracting easier. I’ve tried putting 9-frame spacers in some and no spacers in others, but it always comes down to having a super with spacers when I need one without and vice versa. So I have settled on no spacers and manually spacing frames when setting the super.
You can spend close to $20 for a frame spacing tool that some of the dealers sell. By the way, it is about the size of a regular hive tool, and we know how easy they are to loose. One supplier even recommends using two of these tools to make it easier. So you can spend close to $40 or built one for just a couple of buck on your own.

All you need is a scrap board, 2 frame spacers and a cheap handle. I know, it looks like a fancy handle, but it was the cheapest one Lowe’s had. It was in the “clearance” pile and was less than $1.
Six frame nails and two screws, a wa-la! a $2 frame spacing tool.

Cut-out Frames

Robo — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:55:58 +0000

Anyone that has done more than one cut-out knows what a pain it is to try and tie the comb into frames. Yes rubber bands may be easier, but they bring there own challenges too as they can sag with heavy comb. My preferred method is to use cut-out frames which are just regular frames cut down the middle, hinged on the bottom and have embedding wire strung around the outside. You simply open them like a book, install you comb and close the frame.

I start by cutting the side bars and top bars in half on a band saw. By using split bottom frames, I don’t need to cut the bottom bars. I then assemble them like I would a normal frame. By making a loop around the bottom bars with embedding wire creates the hinge. I put one on each end. I then string 3 rows of embedding wire on the outside of each side of the frame and hold it with staples.

Building Honey Supers

Robo — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:38:33 +0000

Another crappy weather day gave me the opportunity to build some more medium supers. I buy rough cut 1×8 lumber from a local mill. I plane the boards down to 7/8″ so the supers are a little bit tougher that the normal 3/4″ commercial supers. Then using the table saw, I cut the boards to size, cut the hand holds and dado the frames rests. From there the sides go into a half-blind dovetail jig and after four passes with the router, they are ready to be assembled. I can get 10 supers from 8 boards.

New York City beekeepers need your help.

Robo — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:29:27 +0000

You may not have known, or even cared, but beekeeping is illegal in NYC.

This became a problem for a number of different efforts to raise veggies in various community gardens and urban farming experiments.

Suddenly, beekeepers were in demand, but we were considered to be slightly less socially acceptable than skateboarders.

There is now a bill before the NYC City Council to legalize it, so we (a formerly somewhat low-profile set of people) have filed a non-profit registration, formed a Co-Op, and put up a web site.

http://GothamCityBees.com

We are soliciting signatures on an web-based “petition”. We’d love a mention, as we are trying to get some support.

We are also teaching 45 novices in free classes held every Sunday. The classes started in Jan, and the students will start working rooftop hives when weather (and the law) permits.

The cooperative approach is not new. Sue Bee is a very large co-op that has been around for decades and made a name for its brand of honey. Our co-op has no delusions of grandeur, and is more of an attempt to band together to save on liability insurance, share honey extraction and packaging facilities, and buy gear as a group in bulk to save some money.