Beekeeping: Our First Year, 2011

My first time wearing the beekeeping equipment.

2011
February

When our beekeeping supplies arrived in the mail, we were eager to get started.  We had spent many unsuccessful hours searching the Internet for bees to purchase.  We didn't know when we'd find some, but we wanted to be ready when we did! 

For the "new-bees" out there, a hive is basically a wooden box called a "hive body", if it's where the bees live and raise babies, or a "super", if it's strictly honey.  Honey is like the bees' winter pantry.  They work hard storing it all year, so they'll have plenty to eat in the winter.  Fortunately, they usually produce more than enough, so there is plenty to share with us!

Eric had a bright idea to assemble the frames with an air compressor.

The assembled hive, ready to be painted.

March

Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long.  Our friend, John, a fellow beginner beekeeper, captured a swarm of bees in his yard.  He and his son, James, brought them over and set them up in our new hive.

John and James setting up our hive with a swarm they caught.

We fed the bees with sugar water for the first couple weeks to give them a strong start.

Within just a few weeks, the bees had already filled several frames with comb and honey.

A few weeks later, we received a response to our Craigslist wanted ad for bees that we had posted several weeks earlier!  We purchased a second colony from a wall cut-out in South Austin.  (Good thing we bought an extra hive box!)

Our second colony was a wall cut-out from South Austin.  Eric got stung taking this picture!

Who says a beehive has to look boring?

This hive was a challenge to set up.  Since the bees were cut out of a wall, the honey comb wasn't in frames.  The pieces of comb were stacked and melted together in a plastic storage tub.  What a mess!  I don't recommend taking on this project as a beginner beekeeper.
The bees were pissed as I tried to break apart and organize the melted comb.  I stood up the pieces of comb vertically inside the hive box.  Eric got stung on the forearm while taking this picture.

At the local beekeeper's meeting the next week, a member recommended rubber-banding the pieces of comb into frames. 
Eric bravely took on this project. 

The bees attached the broken comb to the empty frames and eventually discarded the rubber bands.

We had a terrible drought the entire year of 2011, but both colonies managed to grow strong, despite a shortage of food-bearing plants.  We tasted the honey, but ultimately we didn't want to weaken the colonies, so we decided not to harvest the first year. 

We also learned a valuable lesson this year:  Eric is not allergic to bee stings, but I am.  Fortunately, we both survived and made it through the year with only 1 sting for Eric, and 3 for me.  I now have an epipen, just in case of a severe reaction, but as long as I take oral steroids shortly after being stung, the discomfort is minimal.

2012
February

Our hives struggled through the winter, and at one point, I panicked, fearful that the queen had died, after not seeing any eggs during my winter inspection. The population of the first hive dwindled to a small cluster the size of my fist.

Upon recommendation from a fellow beekeeper, I provided the bees with supplemental sugar water and a few protein cakes from Dadant.

We had the opportunity to purchase additional packages of bees through our beekeeper's association, so we ordered 3! A package of bees is roughly 3 lbs of bees, plus a queen bee -- a whole colony, in essence, and enough to start a new hive. By the time the packages arrived in March, I had talked a friend into buying one of ours to start her own hive, so we ended up with just 2 new hives.

Once again, we got a little creative with the paint job.  Don't "mess" with these bees!

We had a fantastic, rainy spring, which resulted in an abundance of wildflowers.  We added a 30' x 5' bee garden, rich in nectar plants, like Agastache and Salvia, and got the two new hives setup.  The new hives have been doing well, and our original beehive has been growing by the day.  The colony from the wall cut-out has been battling pests, like awful moth larvae that burrow into the comb, but they've still managed to fill up the original hive body.

July

The first hive from 2011 has grown so much that we decided to make our first honey harvest.  Unfortunately, we don't own much equipment, like a centrifugal extractor, so we had to do this the old-fashioned way:  crushing the honeycomb and then straining the honey.

One must have strong hands to squeeze all the honey from the comb.

This filter, which is made especially for filtering honey, is fine enough to filter out wax and debris, but coarse enough to allow pollen and other natural goodies to remain in the honey.  The size of the holes is similar to that of an inexpensive paint strainer.

Not bad for our first harvest.  This isn't even all of it!

The process of harvesting with little equipment was a tedious task.  Next time we'll probably rent the extractor from our local beekeeper's association.  
When all was said and done, we had 7 pint jars, 9 half-pints, and 27 tiny, 2-oz bear-shaped bottles.

We added a little piece of natural honey comb to each jar.

The honey looked beautiful in these classic canning jars.

We hope to sell some honey to fund additional bee projects.

Aren't these cute?  They're tiny, 2-oz plastic jars.

Would you like to purchase some of our sweet, delicious honey?

Your purchase helps fund additional bee conservation projects on our property, such as expanding our bee garden, and purchasing additional colonies and equipment.

Our honey is unheated and natural -- just like the bees made it. 

Please contact Jenée or Eric for prices.