Alaska Bee Keeping

[riverbee]

jeff,

thank you for your great pix! the honey looks awesome! if i were closer, i would most definitely trade you for a jar!

also, sugar bricks really are the best for winter feed rather than mountain camp style, just my HO.... the bricks just need a shim......(sorry lee!) you don't need another super, just the shim for the bricks, pies, squares or whatever shape you form them in so they fit under the inner cover over the frames. it really does work well for me. not saying mountain camp won't, but i do like the sugar bricks much better. it's whatever works for you. any feed we can provide the bees with for overwintering is always a good thing irregardless of the method used.

looks like you are doing well in alaska, and thanks again for your pictures and posts, i really enjoy reading your posts.

[Lburou]

I enjoy the pictures too Jeff. 

Jeff, I keep recommending a sugar board or mountain camp method of feeding for your winter because I still have a clear memory of your pictures with the excess moisture in the top of your hives last winter.  And the hives going through their smallish sugar bricks before you knew it.  Either of the methods mentioned above will give your bees a much larger food reserve.  A reserve that won't be gone before you know it. 

More than a food reserve, granular sugar or sugar boards above the colony in winter can absorb and release excess moisture as the winter drags on.  I don't know another beekeeper with winters as long as ours Jeff, so all our local knowledge from living south of you does not apply there.  I remember the Alaska sun peaking over the horizon in the East and floating along the horizon to the West at sundown.  I remember driving with a sun visor at high noon, (a noon that still sees the sun near the horizon).

You were successful with two hives over last winter, here is hoping you double the number next spring!   I'm rooting for you! 

[yukonjeff]

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate the feedback.

Well we are having a warm, very wet  fall here this year. I just made up my quilt boxes and put in the shim. I will winter the same configuration as last year. IMO it works great. In fact I would recommend it to any beekeeper reading this that winters in a cold climate.

The set up is three deeps. (top one is honey) with a innercover with a 3" screened feed hole to vent moisture up into the grass filled quilt box above, A three inch shim, then the quilt box, a lid with a 1" foam board in it.
Also a small top entrance.



Its important to open it up after the fall rains and honey drying, to swap out the inner cover, and lid to a dry one. The lid will be soaked this time of year from moisture, and the inner cover can be moldy and damp. We get a lot of fall rain here. 



Its a good idea during the winter to open the quilt box and dry out the grass once in awhile on any sunny days, or swap out the grass. And dry the lid.The moisture goes up through the 3'' feed hole in the inner cover, into the quilt box and condenses on the lid. The grass stays dry, pretty much. Just a little dripping on top, it it cant get past the inner cover so the hive stays nice and dry.

I have a bunch of sugar bricks from last year so will use them up, I wont use a single brick, but a jumbled pile of broken pieces Works better IMO. and will soak up some moisture as well.

I will wrap again , and mouse guards of course.
last year after my hive starved out, when cleaning the dead out just a few days after it died, I noticed the inside walls were smooth shiny ice. not frosted like it should of been, so I assume they were using it for a water source, so must be important to have some moisture in the hive. In the right places of course.

I also watched on a warm spell, water literally running out of the entrance from the walls thawing out.( I don't turn my entrance reducers up like some suggest.) And wont after seeing that.

I am in much better shape than last year. I finally figured out open feeding and that helped put on the weight fast. I have been trying to jar feed them up to weight in the past, they just wont take enough like that.

[Bakersdozen]

Thanks for the detailed description and pictures.  I think you are getting the details worked out.

[riverbee]

credit to you jeff, and thanks for sharing your beekeeping adventures with the great pictures! i appreciate it!

"I just made up my quilt boxes and put in the shim. I will winter the same configuration as last year. IMO it works great. In fact I would recommend it to any beekeeper reading this that winters in a cold climate.

The set up is three deeps. (top one is honey) with a innercover with a 3" screened feed hole to vent moisture up into the grass filled quilt box above, A three inch shim, then the quilt box, a lid with a 1" foam board in it.
Also a small top entrance."

i am in a cold climate as well. i have tried the 3 deep configuration in the past. this is a university of minnesota thing here that dr. spivak and gary reuter teach on. there can be a great deal of intensive management on this, especially come spring. if it works for you, that's great.  lots of pros and cons to this method (as with any method). again, it is whatever works for us in our environments and climates.

my setup is double deeps, a two inch shim in place with sugar bricks, inner cover, inner cover hole screened, a comb honey sized box on top of that with 2" of pink insulation, (inner cover screened so the bees don't get up there and chew the insulation cuz they do......... ) then the outer cover.  top deep is normally heavy with honey. i do use an upper entrance in the inner cover, and also i do use reducers with hardware cloth over them to keep the mice out or from chewing the reducers, cuz they will........

i have used straw in the past on top, it was a pain to exchange out when needed so went to using the foam. works good for me.

also i jam as many sugar bricks in there that will fit, just insurance even when the top deep is filled with honey stores.

[yukonjeff]

Thanks again, and I appreciate you all sharing your ideas and methods. Helps us all make better decisions with our setup.

We have had a warm fall, its just freezing at night now and sunny warm 40ish afternoons and drying out a little. My bees were flying today.
So I took advantage of the last of the nice days and added my sugar bricks and wrapped and did a OA treatment.





These are the wraps I use, cant remember the name of them but they worked good and still in new shape.



I think its important to leave it partially unwrapped as well. let it breath and get some solar gain on cold days.

 

I have not seen one of my queens for a couple months now. Her mark was wearing off and she did this too me last year, but was there in the spring. So fingers crossed, and hope I have at least one live hive in the spring.

Good luck with your bees

[Lburou]

Have you seen that bear lately Jeff? 

[yukonjeff]

No Lee, I put a little lead under his feet once and he never came back. I have three dogs below the hives that put up a racket whenever anything comes around. So my place is spared most of the bear drama, thanks to them.

[Lburou]

Good news.  I'd hate to think of living that close to grizzly bears.  We had a cow moose and her young one around the stream in our back yard in Eagle River.  We were eye to eye as we peered off our 1.5 story patio out back. You can live too close to nature. 

[riverbee]

"These are the wraps I use, cant remember the name of them but they worked good and still in new shape."


'colony quilt' jeff, these are the same ones i use. if you are careful above removing the staples in the spring, (if you staple them on) they last a long time and can be reused year after year. i will sometimes have to wash them down a little (cleansing flights), wipes off easily.

"You can live too close to nature.  "

my hunter sent me a cam pic of a cougar wandering around and  a  young black bear strolling around, about 50 yards from the hives. now we know who's been 'crashing' the garden all season. can't get to the bees, but the fencing i have had to straighten a time or two.

[yukonjeff]

I live on the edge of the village out of town, so get a lot of wandering critters go by ,but a few very noisy dogs seams to discourage them. People here shoot them when ever they come near town , so the bad ones are genetically eliminated so we only have good ones left.

Well got my hives wraps and loaded with sugar just in time.

[riverbee]

all i can say is brrrrrr.............

that stuff is coming too soon here. great photos.

[Lburou]

Jeff, I can't wait for the next installment of your Tundra Beekeeping Experiment. 

[yukonjeff]

Well I hope you all are doing good. I just got back from a few weeks in the Philippines and had awesome time. Spent a night Anchorage right after the quake and felt a 5.0 aftershock. That's always un-nerving  Things were pretty much normal there Anchorage has strick building codes and it paid off. Not much damage and no lives lost.

We are having a real Alaska winter this year. snow and now cold temps,  -12 now.
Had to walk up and check my hives today, not easy. lol





I cleaned the frost/ ice out of the top entrance.



Kamikazes.




Put my ear to the hives and have loud buzzing in both. So that's good.
Debating when to crack the top and add more sugar. Don't want to be late like last year.

Hope your bees are alive, and Happy Holidays.

[Bakersdozen]

Great pictures, Jeff!  Thanks for posting and good luck.  You are definitely going to have a white Christmas.

[apisbees]

Good to hear you are all OK. Did you get to look at any of the Asian honey bees while you were in the Philippines?

[yukonjeff]

Thanks.

I did get to see some local Asian bees and also sampled quite a bit of honey taken from the jungle. At almost every market there would be someone with a five gallon bucket, half full of honey with some comb floating around. Some with brood in it, also usually a few dead bees and ants as well.
They sell it in reused whisky pint bottles. I bought one bottle of local honey at the store without tasting it and it was terrible tasting, I mixed it with my tea and it was not bad then.

The others I sampled at the markets were great tasting, must of been a better flower bloom than the one I bought. I asked the guys how they got it, they described under a branch of the tree. I hope to go on a trip someday to see it when I go back

[Lburou]

snip...They sell it in reused whisky pint bottles. I bought one bottle of local honey at the store without tasting it and it was terrible tasting,...

Jeff, it is quite surprising how the taste of honey varies so much from place to place.  I have a neighbor who travels the world and brings honey back for us.  Some honeys I wouldn't eat twice, others are pretty good.  We have grown to appreciate the dark honey with many flavorful notes we produce here.

Glad your hives are still alive.  Honey reserves are used more quickly as the brood nest expands in spring.  I think of your mite situation quite a bit.  If only you could kill every mite in your hives...Then, you wouldn't have a mite problem from then on.  Just a pipe dream I know. 

[apisbees]

Lee brings up a good point. Newfoundland - Labrador on the east cost of Canada is the only place that is still mite free. But with talking with a beekeeper from their there are some that want the ban on importing bees lifted. Some have the idea that other bees may be better. Not understanding all the other crap they will be bringing in with them.

[efmesch]

Lee's suggestion needn't be just a pipe dream.  At this time of the year I would assume that your hives don't have any sealed brood.  If that is true, it would be the ideal situation for making a real effort to get your hives %100 mite free  That possibility might be reachable by giving a variety of treatments using two or more methods of control-  ("Slugging with the left and following with the right"). You could use Oxalic acid vapor which by itself is a real whopper against mites and then use another of the standard treatments.  If you could succeed at this, you would not only do yourself a great favor but you would also be very encouraging to beekeepers like yourself, who are isolated from re-infestation