I found this amazing video showing bees working in a top bar hive. It starts with the colonisation of the empty beehive, then shows 3 months (condensed into 2 minutes!) of activity. You’ll notice the number of bees suddenly drops – this is because they swarmed.

Fascinating!

When you find queen cells which are close to sealing (containing larvae or royal jelly), you can create an artificial swarm. If they are already sealed, you are too late! As with all things beekeeping, there are several ways to do this, but here is one of the simplest methods.

To do this you will need a spare hive, including hive stand, floor, brood box, frames, crown board and lid. (If you are not sure what these all are, see components of a modern beehive.) Be sure to have them ready before you start.

1. Move the original hive to one side onto another hive stand
2. Put your new floor and empty brood box on the stand on the original site
3. Open the original hive, find the queen and place her and the frame she is on in the centre of the empty brood box. Make sure that there is plenty of unsealed brood on this frame, and NO queen cells
4. Fill the new box with frames of foundation, and put on the crown board and lid
5. Replace the frame you removed from the original hive with a frame of foundation, and replace the supers (if there were any), crown board and lid

Your artificial swarm has now been created. The queen is in the new hive, but as it is on the original site, all the flying bees will return to it. This mimics what happens naturally in a swarm, as the queen leaves the original hive with the flying bees.

The original hive, in its new position, is full of nurse bees, brood and stores, but is queenless and has no flying bees. But it has several queen cells which will (hopefully) soon produce a queen. Because it now has no foraging bees, it is a good idea to feed sugar syrup to this colony  for the first few weeks. This should get it off to a good start, and hopefully you will have 2 strong colonies before the winter sets in.

To understand how to do this, you need to know a bit about the timing of the swarm.

If bees decide to swarm, they will build queen cells – these are easy to spot as they are built on the face or bottom of the frame, point downwards, and are about the size of an acorn. To help prevent swarms, it is important to know the life cycle of the honey bee – and in particular of the queen.

The queen will lay an egg in these queen cups, and when they hatch (at 3 days old) the worker bees will feed the larvae with royal jelly. It is one of the fascinating facts about bees that the egg which grows into a queen is no different to one which grows into a worker bee – the only difference is the diet it is fed on (royal jelly rather than pollen and nectar).

The queen cells are sealed on day 8, and the new queen will emerge on day 16. On the day the queen cells are sealed, the bees will swarm – remember this fact! This is why it is important to open your hive and inspect your bees once per week during the swarm season. If you wait longer than this, you might miss the swarm. So, if there are no queen cells, then there will be no swarm for at least 8 days.

If there are queen cells, and they have eggs or larvae in them, then they will swarm when these are sealed – and you must take action right away.

How To Prevent Swarms

One of the main reason bees will swarm is because of overcrowding. If the brood box is too full of brood and stores (honey & pollen), then there will not be enough room for the queen to lay eggs – remember she will lay up to 2,000 eggs per day at her peak, one in each cell, so she needs plenty of room.

If there is no room left in the brood box, you have several options. You can remove 1 or 2 frames of honey, and replace them with empty frames, so that the workers have comb to draw out and the queen has somewhere to lay.

If there seems to be too much honey and no room for brood, then add a super – the bees will start to store honey in this, leaving room for the brood in the brood box. Remember to put a queen excluder between the brood box and the super.

Another option, if you have a very strong colony, is to simply add another brood box. Some beekeepers recommend using a super instead of a full brood box, so that there is not too much space – this is known as ‘a brood and a half.’

Unavoidable Swarms

Swarms gather in the unlikeliest of places!

Sometimes, rather than being an ‘overcrowding’ swarm, bees will have a ‘reproductive’ swarm. If this is the case, their minds are made up to swarm and nothing you do will prevent them from trying. But all is not lost – you can create an artificial swarm, and effectively fool them into thinking that they have already swarmed.

Or of course you can just let them swarm, and then collect them when they do & put them into a new hive. The difficulty with this is that you might miss the swarm, and also in built up areas a swarm of bees can cause problems – especially for non beekeepers!

So, in the interest of nature, should you not let the bees swarm? Well, no – for several reasons.

Firstly, mainly because of varroa mites, honey bees will not survive for long in the wild. Without treatment, varroa will eventually kill of the new colony – and this is obviously not in the best interests of bees as a species.

Also, if you are an urban beekeeper, it is obviously doubly important that you prevent swarms – a swarm of bees is not very welcome in a populated area, and if they set up home in the roofspace of someone’s house, they can cause real damage.

And of course, if your bees swarm it will seriously affect honey production – you lose about half of the bees, and the rest of the season is generally spent building up the numbers again, so you will be unlikely to get any surplus honey.

If your bees do swarm, they need to be collected (by you or by someone else) and put into a beehive of their own. Normally they will gather on a branch or gate post close to the hive, while scout bees go looking for a suitable new home. They will stay here for between 12 and 48 hours – this is your window of opportunity to collect them and put them into a new hive.

This is of course the positive side to swarming – that is provided you don’t lose them – you now have 2 colonies instead of one. Or if you are just starting beekeeping, getting someone elses swarm is a great way to get your first bees. And provided it is still early in the season, the new colony should be productive.

Remember the proverb – A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly!

Swarm Image courtesy bushfarms.com

1. Honey bees are the only insect that produce food eaten by man.

2. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

3. A hive of bees will have to fly a total of 55,000 miles to get enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey – equivalent to flying twice around the planet earth.

4. Bees will fly up to 6 miles from their hive to collect pollen and nectar.

5. Bees have 2 pairs of wings, which move incredibly fast – about 200 beats per second. This is what makes honey bees buzz!

6. At its peak in the summertime, there will be about 60,000 worker bees in a colony, 2,000 drones and just one queen. The worker bees are all female, and do all the work.

7. Drones are the male honey bees. They are noticeably larger than worker bees, have no stinger and do no work at all. Their only job is to mate with a queen bee. Only one drawback – after they mate, they die.

8. The queen bee only leaves the hive once to mate, with up to 20 drones. When she returns to the hive, her only job is to lay eggs – up to 2,500 eggs per day when the colony is at its busiest in the summer months.

9. The queen controls the colony by releasing pheromones which get passed from one bee to another through contact. If these pheromones become too weak, it is taken as a signal that the queen needs to be replaced (or ‘superceded’).

10. The new queen comes from exactly the same eggs as worker bees – but because she is fed a different diet (of ‘royal jelly’) she develops into a queen rather than a worker. Definitely a case of “you are what you eat!”

Why not experience these fascinating creatures for yourself, and start beekeeping today?

Of course, all backyard beekeeping is natural, in a way that commercial beekeeping is not. For commercial beekeepers pollination is often the biggest earner, so bees are transported thousands of miles to pollinate huge swathes of mono culture crops. This excessive transportation, the lack of biodiversity, and the associated heavy chemical use - little wonder that scientists are increasingly citing stress as a likely cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

But some forms of hobby beekeeping are seen as more natural than others – particularly top bar hive beekeeping and it’s close cousin Warre hive beekeeping. Both of these are arguably less invasive than traditional beekeeping with Langstroth hives, and the bees allowed more freedom to act as they would in their natural environment.

Build Your Own Top Bar Hive

One of the real advantages of top bar hives is their simplicity. If you have even basic carpentry skills, building a top bar hive is really simple. You can get top bar hive plans from the Back Yard Hive shop for just $9.95 (and they also supply materials if you need them). If you are interested in building your own top bar hive, the video below should also help.

Buy a Top Bar Hive

Alternatively, if you do not have the time or inclination to build your own beehive, the Back Yard Hive also has hand crafted top bar hives for sale. This is definitely a more expensive option, but their hive does include a full length viewing window making it easy to inspect your bees without disrupting them, and it is beautifully made.

Whether you make your hive yourself or buy it ready made is really a personal choice. And of course so too is the choice between top bar, Warre or Langstroth – they all have their own merits.  The important thing is to pick one, and start beekeeping – you won’t regret it.

You can of course buy a honey extractor, although there are quite expensive – depending on the model, from about $250 up. And because you will only use it for a few days a year at most, it is difficult to justify. Alternatively, if you have a good local beekeeping association, you can usually rent or borrow their honey extractor. This is a much better option, but one drawback is that you may have to wait your turn, particularly if there are a lot of hobby beekeepers in your area.

So, if you are a hands on type of person, there is another solution – build your own honey extractor.

What materials will you need?

• 1 large steel drum
• 2 bicycle wheel rims (of smaller diameter than the drum)
• 1 thick threaded metal rod (at least a meter long)
• 10 nuts for the metal rod
• 2 pieces of wood (length equal to diameter of the drum)
• 1 meter of 2-3mm fencing wire
• 4 40cm lengths of 8mm threaded rod
• 16 8mm nuts
• 8 coach screws
• 1 self centering bearing
• 1 pillow block bearing

Note: Make sure that the metal drum was never used to store potentially toxic materials.

What tools will you need?

• an electric drill
• a welder (and preferably some welding experience)
• a socket set
• a hack saw

Instructions

Bottom of the honey extractor drum

Remove the end of the drum that does not have two pouring holes. The newly opened end will be the top of your honey extractor. Use the coach screws to attach one of the pieces of wood across the bottom of the inside of the drum (making sure you do not cover the pouring holes). The wood length should be the full diameter of the drum. Then screw the pillow block onto the centre of this piece of wood.

Insert the threaded rod through the center of the first bicycle rim, holding it in place approximately 10 centimeters from the end of the rod with a nut on each side. Screw another 2 nuts on together about 15mm from the end of the rod (this is the end which will sit in the bearing). From the opposite end of the rod, screw on a nut for the other wheel - the second wheel will rest on this nut, and is again secured with another nut on top. The distance between the 2 wheels should be about 35 cm.

Completed extractor basket

When both of the wheel rims are in place, drill holes in four spots around each wheel at the 3, 6, 9, and 12 o’clock positions, and use the 8mm rods to lock the wheel rims together, using 4 nuts on each rod. Make sure that 2 cm of rod protrudes.

Thread another nut down the central rod until it is about 15cm from the top wheel. Put the self centering bearing above this, and secure with another nut above.

Cut a slit 10mm deep and 3mm wide into the end of the rod using the hacksaw (in other words, make it into a screw head – this is where you’ll use the drill to spin the extractor). Then screw on another 2 nuts at this end of the rod. Now put a spot of weld on all the nuts to permanently lock them into place.

Extractor basket with wire in place

Next, fasten the wire to the the spokes of the bottom wheel rim, approximately 5-8cm in from the rim. This will stop the frames falling out of the basket. You have now successfully made the basket of your honey extractor.

Place the extractor basket into the drum, with the rod in the pillow bearing. Now position the second piece of wood diagonally across the mouth of the drum and in line with the self centering bearing. Attach it to both the drum sides and to the bearing with coach screws.

Your honey extractor is now complete!

Honey extractor, complete with frames

Honey extraction in action!

To use it, place you uncapped honey frames in the extractor basket (between the spokes of the top wheel, and resting on the wire on the bottom wheel) and turn it using a drill with a screwdriver bit in the chuck. Gradually build up speed (although not too fast, or you will damage the honeycomb).

When you are finished, the honey can be drained out of the outlets at the bottom of the drum, and strained as usual.

Building your own honey extractor is obviously for the more adventurous beekeeper, but it is a real money saver, and equally as effective as a bought extractor.

Photo credits Garth Chambray www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2005/september/honeyextractor.htm

Your supers are full of honey, now is the time to reap the rewards of all your (and your bees!) hard work. Harvesting honey is really exciting, but can be a bit difficult if you are not sure what to do or are ill prepared.

So to make sure you are on the right track, here is another great video from David Meldrum of the Essex County Beekeeping Association showing exactly how to harvest honey using a centrifugal honey extractor.

Most candles that you will buy are made of paraffin or petroleum based wax, but beeswax candles are much more natural. They give a light warm glow, have a lovely scent, and do not emit any toxic fumes. And, with your own wax from your beehive, they are of course much cheaper!

If you keep your bees in top bar hives, you will have much more wax than in Langstroth type hives, and the perfect way to make use of this is by making beeswax candles.

So, where do you start? There are 3 ways to go about candle making with beeswax.

1. Rolled candles.

Rolled beeswax candles

This is the simplest way to make your candles, and is easy to do if you are taking your beeswax straight from the honeycomb. You simply place a wick on the edge of the flat sheet of beeswax (extending the wick about 2 inches on either side of the sheet), fold the sheet approximately 1/8 of an inch over the wick, and then slowly roll up the beeswax sheet, keeping gentle pressure when rolling.  

After you have rolled the entire sheet, press the edge down so it does not unravel. Remove the wick from one end, and that’s it – your first beeswax candle!

2. Molded candles

The second option is to make candles using a mold. The wax needs to be melted down first, so this is a great way to use the wax cappings left over from your honey harvest. 

Use a double-boiler (or a pot inside a pot). Do NOT try to melt the wax in a single pot – it is highly flammable and will go on fire! Put the solid wax in the smaller pot, and place this in the bigger pot partly filled with water. Put this on the stove until the wax has melted. At this stage you can add any scented oils or dyes you require. Place a wick in the centre of the mold, and then pour in the melted wax. Be careful - melted wax is hot! 

3. Dipped candles

Dipping is the third way to make beeswax candles. After melting the wax as above, dip the wick in it. The wick will then be coated with wax. Allow the wax to cool between dippings for about one minute, then dip it in the melted wax again for the second layering, and so on. Keep doing this until the candle is the thickness you want. Then, once it is totally cooled, use a sharp knife to trim off any excess wax and make a straight edge for the bottom of your candle.

Candle making is a really enjoyable hobby, and a great way to use that surplus beeswax from your hives. Beeswax candles are very popular, so it can also be a great way to generate some extra cash from your hobby.

Pollination in action!

By doing this foraging, they carry out a very large proportion of all the insect pollination needed by plants and flowers to reproduce (up to 80% of all insect pollination is by honey bees). Over 100 crops are pollinated by bees, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. It is estimated that honey bees are is responsible for one third of all the food we eat.

So the honey bee is an incredibly important part of the natural food chain. But it recently has seen a serious decline in numbers, most notably in North America. Up to one third of honey bees have mysteriously disappeared, in a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (or CCD).

It is not known exactly what is causing these losses, but ironically some of this decline is probably caused by is the relentless transportation of bees around the country to pollinate crops.

Beehives being transported for pollination

Sharing bees in an effort to boost crop production is big business today. Many farmers and growers are totally dependent on commercial bee farmers bringing in large numbers of colonies to pollinate their crops. These bees are left for a few weeks, and then transported on to the next orchard or plantation. This process continues throughout much of the season, with bees being transported thousands of miles every year.

Such intensive production methods are increasingly coming under scrutiny, both in terms of the monoculture and its effect on the local environment, but also in terms of the stress placed on the bees.

Scientists are now studying the full effects this regular transport has had on the bees. Many are worried that the stress might leave them open to infection and disease. It certainly does seem to have coincided with the massive drop in bee numbers. And recent research suggests that a likely cause of CCD is a combination of the varroa mite (a parasitic mite that infests bee colonies) and nosema (a disease caused by a parasite in the bee gut). Bees are much more prone to both of these problems when subject to stress.

The full causes of CCD are not yet known, and maybe never will be. But it is likely that the industrialization of agriculture is at least partly to blame. No reports of CCD have yet been recorded among natural beekeepers, and this tells a tale in itself.

Pollination image courtesy Gustavo