Time to get assembling your equipment

Now is the time to get your equipment ready for those swarm calls, if your lucky, and a package of bees I ordered for March. Each piece requires wood glue and 4 nails that I have to predril. as soon as that is done my medicinal garden seeds will be ready to start Indoors. Back to earthly, grounding. Beeswax candle classes, chicken classes, herbal classes? salves, and tincture’s will be taught and for purchase. Oh one last thing. I have 18 packs of free range eggs for sale about once a week, more will be to had when the longer days. $8 to dozen. 678-431-5350 check out my FB account for pictires this platform no longer supports them cassandra lawson

Head on over to my Facebook page if your looking to buy new or used equipment.

Lyme disease and bee stings

Last year after feeling really crummy for several months, I was diagnosed with Lyme. I never had the first stage symptoms of rash and flu like symptoms. I do believe that my antibodies from being stung by bees regularly had something to do with my somewhat resistance to the bacteria.

One of the alments from the Lyme is my knees, especially my right one, becomes irritated and burns. It feels swollen, but never appears to be. Today while working bees for the first time this year, I was stung on my right knee. How did she know? It feels like more of a reaction then I usually get. Somehow I believe that the sting was beneficial and will help keep me feel less stress in my knee during swarm season

Ill report back and tell you my findings if apitherapy.

There is no one answer

Having a good time at the Oracle beekeeping conference, but wish I had a fellow ATL beekeeper here.

Instructors here seem to think defend that bees can just completely take care of themselves. Most speakers here don't live in a warm climate like ours. Small cell, zero chemicals and space management seem to be the only excepted topic at this conference for pests. Several times small hive beetles have come up from students, and they just get shut down. I won't even mention the thoughts on mites. It is stated, by Dee Lusby, that the bees here ARE NOT Africanized at all, since it's not a tropical climate. No documents were show to back that up. My family lives in AZ and I can assure you that their experience says otherwise. Most of the speakers are from much colder climate then ours and still shut the conversation down every time. I believe that being a southern, city beekeeper has lots a layers of un-natural circumstances. Lots of compost piles, herbicides, pesticides, neighboring hives that are mismanaged make the SHB invasion much harder for the bees to handle. Space management is the first line of defense, but in my experience, it's not enough anymore.

Sent from Cassandra's iPhone

External Nest

I thought I had seen about all things bee. Today at a client's house I got to see an external nest. It was very cool, but there is no way they will last the winter. If they weren't 40' up a tree and 5' out on a branch I would sure try.

click on picture to get a better view.

Bee Stings

I get asked a lot about what to put or do about bee stings. Personally I don't have a swelling reaction anymore, but it does still ouch when I'm getting punctured by the sting. Today my son, who has been quite a few times before, got stung and had a strong emotional reaction to the sting. I googled homeopathic remedies for bee stings and came up with this site. Good breakdown of the different needs for treating the sting. I gave him aconitum. It seems to be working, if only as a placebo.

Bee sting remedies

Watler T Kelly on SHBs.

Walter T Kelly enews on SHB.

I promise this is the last of the chick post, for awhile...

Last night when I went to close up the coop, I found Goldie and the chicks in the coop. At first I only saw two chicks, one on her back and one behind her on the window frame.



After climbing in the coop with my flashlight, I found the other two tucked under her wings.



I'm glad they have decided to sleep in the coop, since there has been a coyote/chicken incident right down the street last week. I'm not sure how the dog create would hold up to a hungry coyote. I'm sure they would be traumatized at the very least.

Time is now to do your Mite treatments before it reached 85f days

This method is, inexpensive, works and is approved by Certified Naturally Grown. I find it to be the kindest way to handle the mite issue when threshold has been reached. My bee buddy, John Jones, made my fume board for me and mixed my formic acid to 50%. It's good to pull the girl card sometimes. ;) I have about 15 hives to check and treat if needed. I find that once, every other year, takes care of it. Here is John's blog with more information on the treatment and pictures of the fume board.

Broody Hen in pool and Goldie's chicks update

My grandmother told me that my Aunt was a chicken fan as well, she always tried to save those poor colored Easter chicks, so I'm glad to partly blame my new found fondness of the girls on heredity. They don't really pay for themselves, I think I break even after food. I love my Buff O's, they are the big hipped Wallace and Grommet chicks, that crack me up when they run, but they sure seem to be broody. I quite honestly don't need more chicks, so after doing some looking around on the internet, it seems that the temp of the vent is what triggers broodiness. Why do I care if they go broody? First off it causes a traffic jam in the the nest boxes to have one just sitting. Secondly, she won't lay when broody. I'm starting to think that this might be kinda like my son's book, Click, Clack, Moo. The farm animals find a typewriter and start writing out demands to the farmer or they withhold milk and eggs. I think she actually enjoys the coolness, and wants a drink with a umbrella. Goldie and the chicks are doing fine. It's so much easier to raise chicks with a Mama hen. Last night they actually slept in the coop with all the rest of the hens and all is well in the coop-yard. Goldie does a great job of following them with the constant peculating sound she makes. Brent thinks that's her telling them about all about their world. The rest of the girls didn't want to be left out of the spotlight so they gathered for their picture to be taken as well.

Mothers day and baby chicks

I didn't plan for the chicks to hatch on Mother's Day, but it seems fitting. Yesterday, I could hear peeping coming from under Goldie, when I would listen carefully. I read that you could hear them before hatching, but was still surprised. Today I lifted her up (quickly and gently, and yeah I know I shouldn't) and found four hatched chicks. This one was already dry and didn't have a milk tooth. Maybe she had already hatched yesterday, and that is what I was hearing. Three more were brand new, wet chicks. One doesn't look like it's going to make it, but maybe it had just hatched and weak from the fight with the shell. It's been nerve wracking not being able to see what's going on.

Wild comb

I ran into this wild comb today when I was on a consultation job. The owner had put a quart feeder jar on the frames of the the deep below and then added 3 frames of foundation. The bees, for whatever reason, didn't like the frames and had only started to work one side of one frame. There was signs of a recent supersedure, no eggs were spotted, so I'm hoping that a virgin queen is there and just hasn't laid yet. I looked for her, but just didn't see her. The box below contained some capped brood and honey. Lots of empty, drawn comb they could have used.

Wylde Center apiary certification

Wylde Center apiary has just been accepted by Certified Naturally Grown. This really didn't change much as far as how the bees are being worked, it just means that I have to start keeping track of how old the brood comb is. It must bee changed out every 5 years. Dee Lusby said "the comb is the liver of the hive". That has always really struck me as an important truth. Some of the comb at the garden still has "nasty" written on it by Curtis Gentry. He knows more about bees then I ever will, and that was his system. I think brood comb shouldn't be in the hive longer then 3 years, but sight of how dark it is, is my system. So for our garden official system I'm going to mark the frames with the International Queen marking system. Different numbers of the year are assigned a color. White 1,6 Yellow 2,7 Red 3,8 Green 4,9 Blue 5,0 Two of the three hives were new last year with new comb, so that is easy. The hive that was pre-existing, I will start moving old comb out to the sides, and then replace with new foundation and, color coding. One of the other changes is to have two other beekeepers, that practice natural beekeeping, come and inspect the garden hives. In turn, I must do inspections of other Certified Naturally Grown apiaries if called upon.

How to extract honey the easy way, Crush and Stain.

For some reason I can't get the slide show to go forward to back no matter how I arrange the pictures. So here is the info, backwards!

Goldie, the broody hen

Goldie is a big, buff orpington hen.  When she runs it's like a Wallace & Gromitt character.  Her genetics that give her those wide hips and fluffy backside, are also why she's become broody.  Broody is when a hen just sits, and sits on eggs waiting for them to hatch.  This started about 4 days ago.  She even slept in the nest box.  I called my chicken mentor, Allen Goodwin, and asked some questions about this process.  I decided it would be fun to hatch some chicks the old fashioned way, broody hen.  I don't have, nor want a rooster, so Allen donated fertile eggs for my cause and said I could bring him the roos and he would make soup, er take them from me, since we live in city limits.

First, Goldie had to be moved from the nest box into her own space.  If I had left her in the next box several things could have happened.  First, she was causing a traffic jam for laying.  Second, when she left the nest box to eat or drink, she might get confused and sit on the wrong eggs, and let her eggs get chilled.  Third, when the babies hatch you don't want them to be raised off the ground so they wont fall.

The process takes 21 days, so 3 weeks from now we will see how many hatch.

Goldie sitting on 8 fertile eggs

Biggest swarm ever, 40' up in my tree

Late in the season last year, I made a split, which I wasn't even sure if it would make it through the winter in one deep. This spring it has surprised me by taking off with great speed. I have added 3 boxes on to it and just checked the other day that they still had storage room. What I have been doing since I have been so darn busy is checker boarding my brood. Checker-boarding is freeing up brood space by inserting empty frames. BBEBBEBEBB. B=brood, E=empty frame. I heard the noise and wondered which hive was going. To my suprise, once again, it was this hive, not the hive that is bearding and 7 boxes deep, so you know I haven't dug all the way down into the brood.

Off they go!

WAY up the tree right next to the hive.

It took me a while but I managed to hoist a hive with some drawn comb up the tree to try and entice them to move in before it rains (fingers crossed, knock on wood, ect) tomorrow. I didn't put any stores in there and that was a mistake. I'm not doing redoing the hanging of that hive so I will have to hope that the drawn comb is enough lure.

Look for the orange strap lower right and bees upper leftish. Long ways apart.

Sugar Mixes

I don't have a formula for mixing sugar, nor do I do a different ratio for different times of year.
Here is a slide show of mixing sugar.  It's super easy.

Click Here for slideshow

Beekeeping task that I detest

One of the things I can't stand about beekeeping is the equipment clean up.  Assembly can be boring, but cleaning out frames for new foundation is just the worse.  I was complaining talking to my bee buddy, John, about how flimsy the frame cleaner is.

My hand was so sore after just a couple of frames.  I hate to say, but my solution has been to just keep buying more frames since my bee yard keeps growing.  

John asked about my solar wax melter.  I do have one, but it's a Styrofoam cooler painted black and can't hold actual frames.  It's for crush and stain comb.  John built a wax melter that I thought was awfully big.  The kicker of this is that, if you put your frames in the wax melter, it cleans all those places that I would have to scrape with the frame cleaner.  That sold me, big or no, scrape free is too good to not do.  So now I'm waiting on the off season free shipping special. 

Walter T. Kelly Care and Installation of Packages blog post.

https://kelleybees.com/blog/2012/03/care-and-installation-of-package-bees/

Here is a video of my preferred method, number two.

Swarms and hurt feelings

Yesterday I received 4 swarm calls in 2 hours! The first one was in downtown Stone Mountain.  When I was en-route to the swarm the St. Mt. police called to tell me that the swarm had moved apparently found a better home and left.

While I was on my way to St. Mt. Daniel called from Oakhurst Garden to say that those bees swarmed as well and would could I come get them.  I turned around after the call about the St. Mt. bees leaving and headed to the garden.  It was a nice sized swarm that was about 25' in a tree.  After several attempts, with the John Jones famous bucket, I got the queen and the workers were fanning Nasonov pheromone to say 'hey everybody, the queens in here'.  I left them at the garden to let everybody get in, since I needed to go meet my son's bus.

Leaving the garden, I checked my email and had a email from another beekeeper about some bees in John's Creek.  That is quite a trip for me, so I passed them on to a friend in that area and it turned out to be a cut out.  So she called another beekeeper with lots, and lots of experience is going to do that one.  Whew!

After getting Max off the bus I got another call about a swarm in Grant Park.  I packed up more gear.  Stopped at ace to buy a new pole.  The pole I was using was collapsing on me. Daniel put a screw in the one at the Garden, so I could use it.  I hate technical difficulties. The bees were about 17' up a tree and easy to retrieve.

I stop back at the Garden to pick up that swarm.  Drive to my house to put the Oakhusrt swarm in a 10 frame with the three frames of drawn out comb I used during the removal and 7 frames of new wax foundation.

Then I drive to my friends to install that swarm, since I'm out of space in my yard.  All seems well.

This morning I checked the hive from OG in my yard and they are gone!  Just gone!  I think, what was not to like?  Drawn comb and new foundation, good view of the chicken coop in my yard, nice neighbors.  This is only the second time I have had a hive abscond. The first time was in a TBH that I never could get to work out.  My feeling are a little hurt.  I wonder why they didn't stay?  What could I have done different?