Information for the Beekeeper - Articles - Page 2 of 4

Ten Gift Ideas for the Beginning Beekeeper

Looking for gift ideas for that new Beekeeper? Here are ten gift ideas for the beginning beekeeper. What better thing to give than the tools for a new hobby? Check out our ten gift ideas for your beginning beekeeper. These are based on things I use or have received as gifts in the past. (Affiliate Links below) Continue Reading

Five Essential Beekeeping Tools for the Beginner

Are you thinking about getting into beekeeping? What are the five essential beekeeping tools for the beginning beekeeper? Below we provide you with what we feel are the five essential beekeeping tools. We have included some key things to look for when buying these tools. We really recommend buying quality tools when you get started. Nothing is worse than having a tool break or fail in the middle of working your bees.

Bee Escape Review of Three Styles

We hope this bee escape review will help you narrow your choice of bee-escapes. To conduct this review we tested three different bee escapes this summer. Our hope was to find the best bee escape in this review. The ranking was based on ease of use and how quickly the bees cleared out of honey supers would be our two main results to evaluate. The cost was another, though a lower priority evaluation point of the three bee escapes. The cost was a lesser concern because we really were after the quickest and easiest way of getting bees out of our honey supers without out using smoke or aromatic repellents. We felt paying a little more for ease and quick and effective evacuation of bees was potentially worth the extra cost to us.

Bee Escape Review Overview:

We started with three different kinds of escapes. We had used the wooden inner cover with a triangular “maze” before.

The other two plastic ones were new to us. One of the plastic styles was a diamond shape with entrance holes on each end. The was a round one with multiple entrances distributed around the escape. Both styles are about the same height.

One note is that the two plastic versions do require that you use an inner cover with them.

Since they do not come with one that is an added expense and time to install the escapes onto the inner cover. So if you do not have ones you wish to attach the bee escapes to, then you also need to buy new inner covers. Since we are working on replacing many of our well used inner covers this was not necessarily an unwelcome added cost.

The simplest way we found to attach escapes was to use screws. We used short four hex head screws on each one to attach them to the covers. This will allow us to remove the escapes should we need to replace them or the covers.

There are several sources for these bee escapes we used in our review. Many local bee supply equipment stores carry one or more of these styles.

Amazon is another source for all three and where we purchased the round style from. Mann Lake is where we sourced the diamond-shaped style. That style is also available from Amazon but we found the pricing direct from Mann Lake to be a better deal. Ultimately, we purchased all of the woodenware and the diamond-shaped escapes from Mann Lake. Shipping is free if your qualifying order is over $100.

Testing Process:

Initial Placement

I would love to say we did a very scientific study of the effectiveness of the bee escapes. You know, one of those studies with a control subject and then several test subjects. Nope, not this time. Purely an observational evaluation of how well each escape worked compared to the others. So how did we do it you ask? We had three hives all set up next to each other. Each hive had visually about the same number of bees in each super on top of the hives. This was based on the number of bees covering the top of each super when the inner cover was removed. We then placed the bee escapes under the top super on each hive and closed the hives back up. So the three hives each got a different style of escape.

Hive Visits

We visited the hives two, four and ten days after installation and checked to see how many bees were in each super. At the two day mark, we really could not see any significant differences between the three hives. On day four it was clear two of the three escapes were showing progress in clearing out the supers. The day ten inspection led to similar observations. One bee escape, the round one clearly was not getting the job done. There were fewer bees in the super but at this rate, it likely would have taken another month to clear out the bees. The other two escapes had pretty similar results. The wooden triangular “maze” style seems to be the most successful is clearing bees from the super. However, the diamond-shaped plastic escape showed results that were close to the wooden one. Since our analysis was based purely on observational inspections (read no complete bee count) we cannot declare a true winner. Both styles seem to be effective in helping to clear bees from the supers.

Bee Escape Review Results:

At the end of our evaluation, it was clear we could not declare a winner in this bee escape review. Both the wooden “maze” and the plastic diamond seem to work well. In the equal time being on the hive, both styles showed similar results in clearing bees from the supers. The diamond shape ones did require installing them on an inner cover using short screws. That did take some time and add a little complexity to their use. And also increased the base cost of the escape since we purchased new inner covers to go with them. The wooden “maze” style came ready to use right out of the box.

As for the round plastic one? Now that is a different story. I guess I have five “Frisbees” to use next spring when the weather dries out. Maybe they work well for others but our experience was disappointing when compared to the other two bee escapes in our review. Add to that the need to install them on an inner cover and we do not think we will be adding more of these to our hive equipment inventory.

Here is our ranking:

In the end, it comes down to personal opinion and preference as to which is best suited for your use. We would recommend either the wooden “maze” style or the diamond-shaped plastic one. The round one, though pretty cheap, was simply to slow and clearing the bees from the super for our needs. For us, we will continue to use both the plastic diamond escapes as well as the wooden “maze” style.

If you use bee escapes what is your preference and experience? You can share your experiences below or head over to Facebook and comment on this post on our page or in our Facebook group.

Sugar Syrup: The Alternative to Smoking Your Bees

Leave Your Bee Smoker at Home:

Why would you want an alternative to smoking your bees? Do you hate packing your smoker around? Would you rather leave your smoker at home? Are you tired of smelling like smoke? Forget to bring any fuel or matches with you when you headed out to inspect your hives. Or are you just tired of fighting to light and keep your smoker lit? There is another way to calm your bees. Continue Reading

Home Brew Honey Bee Healthy

Want to make home-brew syrup supplement similar to the commercial product. Please read on. Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of “Honey B Healthy” and have used it for several years. I have gotten wonderful results with it. But last spring I found myself in need of some and short on time to order it and have it delivered. I had seen recipes for a home-brew version on the web several times so I thought, why not give it a shot. I am calling this my home-brew Honey Bee Healthy or “H-B-H-B-H.” I will probably continue to use the commercially available product for my bees. But this recipe makes more than enough to last a while, so I will be using my home-brew this spring. Since I like to avoid using smoke as much as possible, this solution can be a great addition to your syrup for calming bees.

What it takes to make your home-brew

You should be able to find nearly everything you need locally, especially if you have a health food store nearby. If not all the ingredients are available on the internet from a variety of suppliers. I prefer to shop locally when I can and have a great small health food store in the next town. Finding the essential oils was not that difficult of an issue. Several stores nearby carried high quality food grade essential oils. So picking up the Spearmint and Lemongrass oils was not too hard. The Lecithin Granules were another story. That local health food store was closed when I wanted to pick up my ingredients and the other stores I checked did not have them. A stop the next morning in at the local health food store proved successful and finally I had everything I needed to try my home-brew recipe.

Since you are feeding this to your bees you definitely want to use quality ingredients for this project. Don’t go cheap on this one. Your bees deserve the highest quality and you want the benefits of using this in your bee feed.

The recipe I used is listed below. Let me give you one hint to make your life easier and the concoction better. The Lecithin Granules do not dissolve very easy. In fact I tried several different ideas to do so. I added them to boiling water and tried to crush them into a powder like substance. After that did not work there were other ideas to try to get them to dissolve. All with no luck. The trick is to let them soak in room temperature to warm water for at least a couple of hours. Over night would be even better. This should help to get them to dissolve and give you a good end product. At the end of the “brewing” process you can blend the solution in a blended to make sure everything is mixed well.

The Recipe

“Home Brew Honey Bee Healthy”

5 cups Water
2 1/2 pounds Sugar
1/8 tsp. Lecithin Granules (used as an emulsifier)
15 drops Spearmint Oil
15 drops Lemongrass Oil

Bring the water to a boil and integrate the sugar until dissolved.
Once the sugar is dissolved remove the mixture from the heat and add the lecithin and the essential oils.
Stir until everything is evenly distributed.
Let solution cool
Place in a blender and blend for 2 to 4 minutes

The completed solution should have a strong scent and not be left open around bees.

Makes 2 quarts of solution.

Recommended mixing rate in syrup:

For syrup feed: use 1 tsp per quart
For smoke substitute: use 4 tsp per quart

Good Luck and Happy Beekeeping

How to Use Evernote for Keeping a Hive Inspection Journal

There are a lot of good reasons to keep a record of hive inspections. And there are probably just as many or more versions of hive inspection forms available on the internet. Paper handwritten forms are available for download from many websites. There are lots of different kinds available. When we redesigned this site we actually took our PDF version offline. But suppose you want to go electronic and want flexibility in what you record and you do not want to break the bank to get started. Well, today we are going to explore how to use Evernote for keeping a hive inspection journal.

The great thing with Evernote is you can get started keeping an electronic hive inspection journal almost for free. The basic version of Evernote is available for free and there is a paid subscription service that adds some more bells and whistles. For this exercise, we will use the basic free account.

I personally use Evernote for a variety of note-keeping tasks, as well as writing blog posts. I even wrote this post in Evernote. Though not as consistent as I should be, I use it for keeping notes about my hive inspections as well. With Evernote, I can create a standard template (get a copy here) of the information I wish to collect but can also tailor individual records as needed. This helps to maintain consistency in the information collected during each inspection but allows for some variation if I need it.

Let’s get started with Evernote

Evernote is available as a stand-alone app (iOS, Android, and Windows) or via web access. It also comes in a free and premium version. For many users, the free version will be adequate, but the paid version has some useful features. To get Evernote you can follow this link. If you use the link and are new to Evernote, once you register, install, and sign in, you can get a free month of Evernote Premium. I will earn points for credits towards a premium account. So we both win.

I think the app version has some more flexibility and tools than the web version but both work very well. The free version does limit the number of devices you can install the app on. So if you are new to Evernote, you need to decide what works best for you, web versus the app. Because of the device limit, one suggested tip for free version users is to use the app on your mobile device and the web access for your computer.

Setting up your Notebooks

Once you have your account, you will need to set up your structure of notes. I would suggest creating a notebook for your hive inspection notes. If you have multiple bee yards you could create sub-notebooks for each bee yard. In Evernote, the collection of subnotebooks is called a stack.

Find the create notebook icon and click to create a new notebook
Give your new notebook a title (Hive_Inspections for example) and click create
Optional Step: Create notebooks for each yard and create a master hive inspection notebook by creating a stack.

Setting up your Notes

After you set up your notebook(s) you will need to create your hive inspection template. This is simply a prebuilt note with the information you want to collect on your inspections. You can use a naming convention that works for you but I recommend something along the line of hive_inspection_form_template. When you are ready to do an inspection, you will duplicate this note and rename it. (You can get a copy of my template here. Note you must have an Evernote account) Give the note a name unique to that hive. I like to include the date in the name. Another option is to create individual tags for each hive. Then you can add the hive specific tag each time you inspect that hive. This way you can sort on the tag to review your inspections.

Create your inspection template or use ours
When ready to do an inspection simply duplicate your template inspection form and give it a unique name. For example hive_inspection_05_21_2018 #1 (One note: the web version of Evernote does not allow for easy duplication of notes. The easiest workaround is to open your template, do a ctrl-a and then paste that into a new note.)
You can also create a tag or two that are specific to the hive and/or apiary. Add the appropriate tags to the note for sorting and searching later.
Head to the apiary

Now you are all set to go out and do your inspections. Grab your tablet, smartphone, or if you are worried about getting your devices sticky, print out a form and then enter what info you record into Evernote after you have left your apiary. Happy inspecting.