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Berkey Bee Honey FarmHome of the Best Local Honey and Hardest Working Bees!The Seasons in the BeeyardSummer 2008 - Grafting Queens  Winter 2007 - 8   Fall 2007   Bee EquipmentI like to make much of my own bee equipment. Here are some hive ventilation boxes my friend Mitch and I made over Christmas break. The plans are on Tim Tarheit's web site. The ventilation box takes the place of the inner cover and provides good ventilation for the bees on hot days. In the winter I put styofoam or other insulation above. We made them 5 inches high so you can put a medium super on top and have room for a 1 gallon feeder jar. It took two of us 2 days. We have not yet made the upper entrances in these pictures. The upper entrance is one of the best things about these.
 Close up view  I also made some Excelsior hive covers from the plans Peter Seiling published in Nov. 2006 Bee Culture. I love these hive covers. The design goes back 100 years.    Still finishing up the swarm box for making next year's queens. Why do hives die in the winter?Below you can see how the dead bees were clustered together. To the left of the top frame you can see capped honey. But the bees would not move to the honey because if they did so the brood in the center of the cluster would freeze.
  Below are two frames. The bottom is full of honey. If there is no brood, the bees can move easily to the honey. Or if the weather is warm, they can move the honey to the cluster. Here in Northwest Ohio we leave about 80 pounds of honey on each hive to give them enough food to get through the winter. Each box holds about 40 pounds of honey.  To help them get through the winter I am working on new designs for what we call "nucs" (nuclear hives). Nucs are small hives that hold a cluster of bees with fewer frames and stores.  The above is from 1 1/2" and 3/4" foam board. The one below is a standard medium with 5/16"strips on the bottom and a foam divider board. .jpg) |
Do you have CCD?This is the question we get asked the most. The answer is no.
Last year about 50% of the hives in Ohio survived the winter. In spite of what you hear in the media, there was only one confirmed case of CCD (Colony collapse disorder) in the state (near Chillocothe). CCD, formerly known as "disappearing disease", as been reported sporadically over the past 100 years or more. The bigger problem for Ohio beekeepers are varroa mites, and, like all who work in agriculture, the weather. The 2006 - 2007 winter was particularly hard on the bees. There was an early cold snap in December, followed by a mild January. This warm spell fooled some of the hives into a false sense of security and they started to expand by raising brood. Then in February it got very very cold. The bees form a tight cluster in the cold and keep the brood and the queen at 90 degrees. To do this they must consume honey. But even though there were honey stores close by, they could not reach them because the bees refused to abandon their brood. At the bottom of this page are pictures of what one of the dead hives looked like. The bees were in a cluster surrounding their brood, with their heads deep in the cells as they tried to find the last bits of honey. There was plenty of honey left in these hives at the edges of the frame and on nearby frames. Fortunately we did have 8 hives make it through the winter. We are going into 2008 with 15 hives. Check back in April to find out how many make it through! |
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