Ordering equipment lesson

After waiting and waiting for my items from Dadant I called Friday to be told that it hasn't shipped and would be ship out Monday.

Apparently when you order on line from them they ship out of their IL branch instead of routing orders to the branch closest to the person ordering. This is bad for two reason first shipping cost is more than if I had ordered from the FL branch and second because of the flood in the Midwest the IL branch is way behind. Bad planning.

The lesson in this is to not just place a on line order with a company, but to pick the branch closest to me and call them so it is shipped out of THAT branch.

Country rubes screened bottom board and a beetle trap

I'm so excited! I ordered a country rubes bottom board today.

This is a small hive beetle trap that sits in between two top bars. You fill it with veg oil and the beetles drown. I ordered one as well. I have only spotted one beetle this year, but I thought it would be fun to try out.

Is there a bottom board made to do it all- shb, mites and ventilation?

Things living under my screended bottom board

Yesterday when I pulled out the sticky board I found the usual wax cappings, pollen, bee parts, one small hive beetle and on the bottom of the board several wax moth larvae.

I think I need to redo how my hive it set up, it doesn't seem to be working if all the debris is hanging out inviting critters and pests.

Mites?

Here a paper towel w/ mineral oil and thyme oil.


I don't see much in the way of drone cells and I'm not sure what to make of my findings on my board so I treated just in case.

Hive pictures from today

Here is a picture of my cattle dog Tang. He likes to snap at the bees to defend me, so he must wait outside of the apiary fence while I do inspections.







I caught a bee coming out of her cell in this picture.









This comb has some issues so I'm working it to the side of the hive in the hopes I will be able to pull it out and do crushed honey with this frame.











Nice frame of capped honey and brood. Not a lot of frames with brood, but it seems to be a good solid pattern.

Mite check and sea salt

I have been needing to do a mites check so today I purchased a corrugated plastic sign from Ace hardware and cut it to size and sprayed it w/ pam cooking spray on one side. I only had garlic pam, I hope the bees don't mind. You can see the white board sticking out from under my screen board. I'm hoping this will upset the black widow as well and that she will leave. I think a piece of screen is needed to keep further yucky things out after her eviction.

Tomorrow I will remove it and see what has fallen in a 24 hour period.

Also I put a piece of 250 million year old sea salt on the landing board yesterday. I did this because my good friend, chiropractor and mentor of sorts, she doesn't keep bees though, said she thought they would like some salt. It rained yesterday so some of the salt crystal leached onto the landing board. They seem to like it. The top picture is of my landing board w/ a crystal and the pink 250 million year old salt.

The second and third picture are of the bees sucking up some of the salt the leached on to the landing board.

The last picture is of two bees bringing in pollen. If you look closely you will see the bee entering the hive has a light grayish yellow pollen and the bee flying in has a brighter yellow pollen. I wish I knew more about what was in bloom here now.

Black widow spider under screened bottom board YIKES

I don't really like spiders, but can mostly ignore them. I'm afraid that a black widow isn't one of them. I have lots of kids that play in my yard and she had two large egg sacks as well. My daughter is my apprentice and I'm just not comfortable w/ the black widow hanging out around my hive.

I think I will have to get a coat hanger and have my husband help squish her when she come out and break the egg sacks.

I know that she is probably eating a lot of insects that I don't want in my hive, but the advantage just isn't there in my mind.