State Fair

 We extracted 6 frames of honey so, I could enter it in the fair.  We drove to the fair grounds and entered 6 jars of honey and a picture I took of bees.  My honey took 1st in the Junior White Liquid Honey section.  My picture took 2nd in the bee photo junior section.  Thank you Furchner's for taking the pictures and letting me know the results.  We will extract all the remaining honey in a few weeks.

Farside Cartoon

Complements of Carl:

Mite Control and Busy Bees

Carl Noot and Dad helping me with the bees.  We added two Hopguard strips into each of the deep hives.  We will do the same thing for the next two weeks.  Carl and his family were up for the weekend and helped us out.

Carl, Dad, and me putting hopguard strips in.

Adding two more supers.

Added supers and strapped down the hive.

After we added two more supers the hive was getting really tall.  Dad strapped down the hive in case a storm comes through.  We will probably start collecting the honey in the next few weeks.

August 3rd

The bees have been hanging out by the pool and on the filter.  The bees use the water to mix with the honey and cool their hive.  We still swim in the pool because they don't both us.

Bees getting water that drips from the sand filter

The bees in the smaller hive were hanging out by the entrance.  They do this to keep the hive cool.

Bees at the entrance

Close up of some bees

Just hanging out

The two hives from our new Bee Cam that we put up.

Later today we are going to treat for varroa mites.  We plan to use Hopguard because we don't need to wear a respirator to use it.  It also doesn't mess up the honey.  We will need to do the treatment every week for three weeks.  The mites don't kill the bees but they weaken the bees and they are more likely to get diseases.  Also by treating now the bees will have a couple of cycles of healthy brood with less varroa mites.  That should make it more likely that they will survive over the winter.

I also earned my Insect Study Merit badge last Tuesday.  There were a bunch of requirements I had to do.  One of the requirements was to observe a beehive or an ant colony.  I also had to make a scrapbook of different insects I saw.  I learned a lot about bees and other insects. Like the order for bees ants and wasps is Hymenoptera.

Insect Study Merit Badge

Congratulations Zander on completing the requirements for the Insect Study merit badge!

Teaching my relatives about beekeeping

We had several relatives and neighbors over at the cabin this weekend.  They were interested in seeing what beekeeping was all about.  Mom had a good idea to put the screen tent up near the hives so they could see the bees without getting stung.  

Dad and I lifting frames out of the supers.

In the picture below you can see everyone watching from the screen tent.  They asked quite a few questions.  It was fun showing them the bees, comb, and honey they are making.

Relatives and neighbors watching.

 They asked about why the hive boxes are different sized.  We explained that the bottom two boxes are the deeps and they are used by the bees for raising brood and storing honey and pollen for winter.  The top ones are supers and they are used to collect honey from the bees.

Us showing them a frame full of bees.

 The bees are doing well.  In the one hive we have a lot of capped honey.  In the other hive they are not doing as well.  I found a drone and showed it to the audience and as I put it back I noticed a varroa mite on it.

The varroa mite I scrapped off the drone.

Capped honey (the white stuff)

Apiary Upgrade

We made a couple up upgrades to be bee yard this weekend.  Started with some cedar chips under the electric fence wires so we don't have to keep trimming the grass there.  The bees spent most of today and yesterday staying warm in the hive.  The high today was 55 degrees F and the low was 45.  

Amazon had a decent deal on a Wireless IP camera so we picked one up and decided to make it the new "Bee Cam".  The camera isn't outdoor rated so we got creative and made an enclosure out of the top to an old stereo that was in the shed.  The camera is powered by a 12 v deep cycle battery and an inverter.  We are going to try to add a link to the camera on the blog.  The camera can pan and tilt and so far it appears to take decent pictures.

Tomorrow we are going to inspect both hives to see how the bees are doing.  Zander is hopeful that the bees will have capped the honey in the supers.  We plan to setup a screen tent temporarily behind the hives to show our weekend guests what the bees are doing without worrying about anyone getting stung.  The bees have also found the pool. We have a steady stream of bees coming to and from the pool now.

The BeeCam setup

Night in the apiary