beekeeping/PermApiculture/Perone hive

Bees! May 18, 2015

/ thepantrybook / 2 Comments

Y’all, I am so excited to tell you that we have bees again! Kent built my Perone hive in the beginning of 2013, which we populated with two packages of small-cell commercial bees.  Those bees built a lot of comb, but were unable to build up enough honey stores to make it through the cold weather. Unfortunately, the entire hive died before the end of 2013. We wanted to try again with a prime swarm, but we weren’t able to get one. Then we moved, had a baby, etc. and another year went by – with no bees. Then, this spring, we had lots and lots of scout bees check the place out, but until two days ago, we hadn’t had any takers. I can’t believe we missed seeing a swarm moving in, but I’m still beyond thrilled! I wanted to wait a few days before opening the windows to let them settle in. Today, I opened the windows for the first time and got my first pictures of the new hive. I only had a few minutes so the pics aren’t that great, but you can be sure that there will be more pictures to come! P1060636 P1060638 P1060637

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Read all about our beekeeping adventures right HERE.

Why I haven’t posted any Perone Hive Updates

/ thepantrybook / 7 Comments

My hive died back in December. Homesteading FAIL!

I didn’t post about it right away because I got busy, then I just kept putting it off because I wasn’t excited about being a failed beekeeper. Of course, posting about it or not doesn’t change that facts of what happened – and I started posting about my hive because there just isn’t a lot of information about Perone hives available. I just really wanted it to work – and it didn’t! =( And I didn’t want my hive’s failure to deter other people from using Perone hives. Please understand that I’m no expert, and I’m not trying to be one, but this type of (hands-off) hive really seems to make the most sense compared to the more popular Langstroth-style of hive. I don’t think bees should be messed with and medicated like so many managed hives are. And, we can’t forget that A LOT of managed hives die too. Well, it is what it is. My beekeeping experiment failed. One thing I guess I just glossed over in reading about Perone hives is that Oscar Perone says you should start with a “prime swarm” and not commercial bees. So that’s what we’re trying to do this time around. We are “first on the list” for a swarm from my beekeeping mentor this year and hopefully we’ll be able to start this whole thing again. And, the new batch of bees will have the added advantage of all this comb already built, so they should be able to store a lot more honey than if we just plopped them in an empty hive.

So back to last December . . .

At first, I thought the dead bees on the bottom of the hive was just the hive’s way of cutting down to essential personnel only (fewer mouths to feed) – to get through the winter in the cluster. But, then, when we didn’t see any bees flying on the first warm day after a cold snap, I knew it was a dead-out. So sad. I felt like my pet had died!

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Once we took the bottom board off of the hive, we had an opportunity to photograph the beautiful comb from the bottom. My bees worked so hard to build this stuff! We wrapped the entire hive in plastic – hoping to keep wax moths out until we can put a prime swarm in here – in the Spring. P1050212 P1050213

This will give you an idea of the temperature here. In late December, most of the recently-fallen snow had melted, but this is the remains from a snow-man, so it was still on the chilly side.

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Perone hive Update 11/19/13

/ thepantrybook / 7 Comments

Derm Dad is a real beekeeper now! He still hasn’t been stung.

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So, you’re in for a real treat today because we opened up the hive and took pictures of the bees’ progress from above the comb grid! But first, some pics from the windows – the perspective you are used to seeing around here.

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In November, things look pretty desolate around here. The leaves are 90% off the trees, but there are a few green things hanging on. We even have a few blooms on our flowers in the front yard (butterfly bush and salvia).

And yet, we have bees bringing in pollen!

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So, here’s the top of the comb grid. I was so surprised that the bees hadn’t built their comb along the bars in the comb grid. It’s almost like they just built in between the grids, with just a few holes for access.

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This really blew my mind! The bees chewed/licked/sanded/dug out the wood to give themselves better access through the upper entrance. When Kent built it, the opening was a rectangle.

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Adele decided to take a few pictures too.  I was wiping some debris off the boards that were in the top part of the hive – some pincher bugs had taken up residence.P1040979  P1040978

So, my beekeeping mentor checked out the hive and said that everything looks good (no sign of hive beetles, varoa mites, or any other bad stuff). We put some really raw honey in a quart mason jar with a few very small holes in the lid.We set it on a few shims and inverted it on top of the comb grid, with the hive lid directly on top of that.

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Just a note on feeding bees. I think it is not good practice to feed bees sugar syrup or anything made with high-fructose corn syrup because the nutritional value to is so inferior to honey. They’re called honey bees, not sugar bees! And, it’s dangerous to purchase honey from the store because it could be infested with spores of something dangerous that you don’t want to introduce to your hive. And, you can’t even trust a label that says “raw” because you can legally heat honey up to to a certain temp and still label it as raw. Unbelievable, I know. But then again, the FDA has zero credibility with me, so I can believe it. We were blessed to get some really raw honey from a beekeeping friend of mine in California. Why, yes, I did bring a four gallon bucket of honey home on the airplane. =)

Our Bee Installation Video – April 7, 2013

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OK, I am not posting this as a how-to or because I think I am a beekeeping expert (because I certainly am not). But, I don’t think our beekeeping saga on this blog would be complete without it. Thus, I am willing to suffer the injury to my vanity by posting this extremely unflattering video of myself. We had Derm Dad’s parents from Connecticut on Facetime on my cell phone, which Derm Dad passes off to Adele partway through the video. We also had my Mom on Facetime on the iPad. My friend Melody was holding the video camera – and I think she was kind of afraid of being stung, so she heads inside when things get hairy =)

I was NOT spraying laundry stain remover on the bees – it was sugar syrup – and that was the only sprayer that wouldn’t clog with the thick syrup (I tried several). The main thing is that nobody got stung and everything turned out fine. But it was kind of stressful there for a few minutes.

I described the whole thing HERE.

You can read the rest of our beekeeping  adventures HERE.

Perone bee hive update – October 22, 2013

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It’s hard to believe this is the same hive as the one in the Oct 5th update, huh? It’s significantly cooler now (although plenty warm for bees to fly) and it looks like most of the bees were out foraging while the rest were keeping the brood warm (just a guess).

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It doesn’t look like this comb has had any honey, pollen, or eggs in it at all. The dark color is so strange. We recently saw some honey sold in the comb at a farm stand and the comb was SIGNIFICANTLY lighter than this brown color. P1040859

Since I have never fed this hive, I’m getting a little worried — I just ordered some early-Spring-blooming crocus and grape hyacinth bulbs to hopefully give the bees some food early if they can just make it through winter. Maybe I can make some sort of really raw honey patty in case they get hungry mid-winter. Any ideas or advice for me?

Perone Bee Hive Update August 2013

/ thepantrybook / 3 Comments

Although it’s hard to tell with this many bees in the hive, they have now built comb clear to the lone empty comb that was built next to the queen cage when the bees were first installed (about four months ago).

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Can you see the bees with pollen in this next one?

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So, my sweet friend A came over a few days ago and a bee got stuck in her hair and stung her on the scalp. It was so crazy! The bee was buzzing so loudly to try to get out of her hair. If anyone wants to keep track, this hive has now stung my beekeeping mentor twice, me once, Adele once, and my friend once. Kent is yet unscathed.

So, August is winding down and I still haven’t fed my bees (I would ONLY feed truly raw honey to my bees). I tried one day, but they weren’t interested. I figure as long as I can still find a bee or two with pollen, we are good. There has been a quite heated discussion among beekeepers in my area about the wisdom of “treating” and “intervening” with the natural habits of the bees. It seems like the people on the beekeeping board mean well and genuinely care about the bees, but they just can’t imagine not treating with chemicals and feeding sugar water. And they really get defensive when people suggest letting bees do what they want to do. I haven’t weighed in because I have no idea what I’m doing and my bees haven’t even survived one winter yet, but I REALLY want to.