By: Suzanne D. Cohen
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
I’m a fretter, from a long line of fretters. So, I can absolutely understand people worrying over every aspect of beekeeping, and especially over the survivability of their bees. There is limitless information out there about bees and beekeeping, contradictory and seemingly contradictory advice from beekeepers, and all the other sources for help to choose from. There are online videos, books, magazines, websites, classes, bee clubs, conferences. It can be overwhelming. But, one thing to remember is that there often isn’t only one correct answer. There are a few basic absolutes necessary to keeping your honey bees healthy and productive. But, beyond that there is lots of wiggle room…or should I say waggle room?!
Dust Bunny gets all excited when I climb down off the roof Maybe he thinks I’m a giant white rabbit!
As a customer service representative in a busy bee company, I spend a lot of time answering people’s questions about beekeeping. Plus, I have had my own hives for the past four seasons. I have three hives, which was my goal and is my maximum, as they are up on our back roof. And, to answer the concerns of readers who have worried about the stability of our roof, it is very stable and we are very careful!
So, I have been living and breathing beekeeping for the past six years (although it really seems much longer), surrounded by a multitude of brilliant and experienced beekeepers who have been keeping bees for many, many years, and who patiently share their knowledge. Plus, I regularly hear of the beekeeping successes and failures of friends and customers. I congratulate new and old beekeepers on their successes, and I even sometimes cry with new beekeepers over their losses. For many, including myself, their bees are like their children, and they want to see them healthy and happy! In my four seasons of beekeeping I have only had one colony of bees die, and I have only had one hive swarm. My hive dying was devastating. My hive swarming I thought was kind of exciting. Swarming is a natural thing colonies of bees do, that helps multiply their species, and it was pretty cool taking a few minutes off the phone, when I was still working from home, to look out our upstairs window at the frenzy happening over one of my three hives.
Anyway, I thought I’d use this space to help sort through some of the basic decisions a new beekeeper has to make in getting started, and what I believe is most necessary to keep those bees alive. I’m not going to go into any of the later stuff, like extracting honey or cleaning your wax for use. This is just about getting started, and helping your bees survive their first Winter.
So, the first question is, do you really want to have bees? If your main question as a new beekeeper is, “How much honey can I expect to get my first year?” you might not want to be a beekeeper. If you’re stressing over how to get started by spending the least amount of money possible — say, starting with just one hive body, and a solid pine bottom board with no Varroa tray — unless you’re expecting to get a major inheritance from a rich aunt very soon, you probably don’t want to get into beekeeping. Having honey bees is expensive. And, by my way of thinking, you’re going to have to paint the exteriors of all your bits with latex paint to prevent sun damage, both wood and polystyrene hives. So you might as well take the plunge and get a kit that comes with two deeps and two medium supers. It’s just nice to have it all painted and available when you need it, as your bees start filling their way out of one box and into the next. That way you’re not sweating it, maybe having to wait for an order to arrive, worrying that the bees are too crowded and likely to swarm.
I should interject here that my experience with hives has been pretty much exclusively with wooden and polystyrene Langstroth hives. And I’ll go into more details about the various choices to do with these later. I can’t advise you on any of the multitude of other humanmade hives out there. And I am impressed by the many functional bee homes people have created. I am wary, however, of any hives that are marketed in a way to make beekeeping look simple and easy. It isn’t. I have had a few questions on the long hives, of late, and those look really intriguing. But, I don’t have room in my tiny yard, and I don’t think my roof would be stable enough to try one there!
Climbing down off my roof I usually climb out of the upstairs window, and then climb down the ladder when I’m done.
Question two, should I start with one hive or two? New beekeepers are often advised to start with two hives. The advantage is that every colony has its own unique personality, and it is fun to be able to see the differences and similarities in their behaviors. You may also feel that having two hives increases your chances of having one survive the Winter. And that may be true. But, it is as easy to kill two hives as one. And even if you do have the financial security to keep bees, you have nonetheless wasted a lot of money and a lot of bees have died. But, if you are going to be a hands on beekeeper, and follow a few basic steps to keep your bees alive and healthy, you can start with either one hive or two. I started with one, and I found that one hive was plenty to keep me occupied my first season, and to get used to handling and managing my bee friends.
Question three, should I get a wooden hive or a polystyrene hive? The decisions to be made about the type of hive and equipment to purchase are relatively easy, and one thing is as good as another. A lot simply depends on what YOU like to work with. Assembled or unassembled…do you like putting things together, or would you rather someone else do that? Do you like all the whistles and bells, or do you prefer simplicity? Are you a purist, preferring to do everything the traditional way, or do you prefer to do things the least expensive, most practical, and/or easiest way. The bees don’t care. What would make your beekeeping experience more pleasurable for you?
I love my two 10 frame polystyrene hives for the fact that they keep my bees more toasty in the Winter, and cooler in the Summer. They also naturally prevent moisture from building up in the hive. But, I recognize that traditional wood hives seem more appealing to many for the fact that they are wood, and seem more natural. And when I wedge my hive tool in between my 8 frame boxes and lift one off the lighter box feels heavenly after lifting one of my full 10 frame boxes. And simply inserting a piece of foam board up inside my telescoping outer cover solves the moisture problem, without having to mess with putting together a quilt box. A polystyrene outer cover also prevents potential moisture problems, but they are very light weight so they need something heavy to keep them from blowing off during storms. Again, there are other choices, but these are the ones I am most familiar with and have had positive experiences using.
My eight frame wooden hive, with added hive wrap, and one of my polystyrene hives, self insulated without a wrap.
I remember the first time beekeeper Tim Banfield asked me to pick up a medium super full of honey, with a twinkle in his eye, so I could see how heavy they are. It was like picking up a medium super of solid LEAD! And I was still a young thing in my 50’s! So, more and more beekeepers are opting for 8 frame hives, or all medium hives, or other similar options, to save their bodies some strain. I have some lower spine and arthritis issues now, so if I had it to do over I might have gone all 8 frame. But, thankfully, I have my honey Dennis as my sidekick these days.
Question four, what type of frames and foundation should I use for my hive? Do I want to use crimp wire foundation and wire my frames, the traditional and most labor intensive by far, or do I want to use wood bound plastic frames, or solid plastic frames? If you have a very available, involved mentor who uses crimp wire foundation, you might want to go for it. But, if you use plastic frames or foundation you definitely want the heavy wax option, or paint on extra beeswax if you have some kicking around. The bees prefer to have the extra wax to move around as they choose. I have seen with my own hives, when I put in a plastic frame or foundation that only has a regular wax coating (all plastic frames/foundation come with at least a thin coating of wax) the bees leave it alone until it is their very last option. I, personally, started off with wood bound plastic and am gradually switching out for the solid plastic frames with heavy wax. And different types of frames can commingle. The bees don’t care. I’m rough on things, and I’m constantly breaking the wooden frames when I pry them apart. Then you have this mess of a broken thing sort of dangling in your hive, and difficult to remove and then extract. Dennis can usually repair them, but…
Dennis checking a frame in our polystyrene hive that swarmed earlier in the season. (You can tell from these photos that Dennis and I both need smaller gloves! Haha! Gloves should fit snugly, so you have maximum dexterity.)
Question five, what sort of bottom board should purchase? Now, this is very, very important. The polystyrene hives I’m familiar with automatically come with a screened bottom board and Varroa mite tray. And that’s what you want. I’ll harp on this more in a minute, but you absolutely want the Varroa monitoring system from the beginning. Because then when all else fails, as it did for me this Summer, you still have an easy way to check your mite levels. It may not be as accurate as some other tests, like the sugar roll or the V-Check, but it’s EASY.
Last question, do I really have time, with my already busy schedule, to have honey bees? Well that, I believe, is pretty much always a yes. Then again, I’m a person who likes to stay busy! Haha! But, bear in mind that you don’t have to have twenty hives. You can start small and stay small. And there is a fair amount of work involved in the Spring, Summer, and Fall, but then you pretty much get your Winter off to ski and prepare wonderful holiday dinners…although you want to do periodic checks to make sure your bees haven’t been gluttons, and eaten through their stores and need feeding. Or maybe you took just a wee bit too much honey, and that’s why they’ve eaten through their stores and need feeding. Again, each hive has its own characteristics, so this hive may require feeding while that one does not.
But, talk about lack of time, my mother died this past July, at the age of 90. She took a major turn for the worse just before her 90th birthday, so we were all glad we at least got to have a small, pandemic aware, informal celebration with her four children, several grandchildren, and the two great grandchildren by video, in June. My mother was very fortunate to die in her own home, with a wonderful staff of home helpers. But, needless to say, with all the months of having one foot out the door to help my mother, and then the last few weeks of her approaching death, my bees kind of took a back seat! I had planned on doing alternating sugar rolls throughout the Spring and Summer, one of my three hives per week, to keep an accurate, steady mite count. Well, I did do one sugar roll early on, anyway! I did, however, check my Varroa trays with some regularity. And I couldn’t have done that if I didn’t have screened bottom boards and trays on all my hives. My mite numbers started very low this year, but then gradually increased. I ended up treating with formic acid three times throughout the Spring and Summer.
Treating with formic acid is easy and inexpensive.
The morning my mother died I treated my hives with formic acid before we left for the Adirondacks. Yes, I am that dedicated! We had been driving back and forth (just over an hour) to sleep at home each night, and my siblings texted that she had died in the wee hours of the morning. To me she had been gone for days. To add to my sadness we had a heatwave that day, and my beloved chinchilla Lilly died on my lap, shortly after we got home from my mother’s that night. It was a very bad day. But, at least not for my honey bees.
My girls seem to be doing great, now as we head into the Winter. The hive that swarmed back in May did not produce their own queen (or I was too impatient to let them), so I had introduced a new queen thereafter. They have been putting as much honey on as the other two hives, and we extracted over 60 pounds of honey this Summer. My mother was my biggest customer, so now what am I going to do with all this honey?!
So, now for the harping. The primary goal for us tree hugging, granola eating (with an obligatory spoonful of irradiated bee pollen), back to nature beekeepers is to keep our bees healthy and alive, especially through the long Winter. Our secondary goal, which results from keeping our honey bees alive and healthy, is to have some honey to extract and enjoy…and maybe even share and sell.
A bee friendly garden allows our bees to forage into the Fall months. I love seeing the pollen collecting on their legs!
The three most essential management practices for a beekeeper to achieve these goals are:
1. Monitoring and treating for Varroa mites…and the lesser threat from other pests and diseases.
2. Feeding as needed to avoid starvation and boost production.
3. Avoiding excess moisture in your hive(s)/providing ventilation.
My girls enjoying their new upper entrance, with the plug removed from the shim for later Winter feeding. If they feel it is too large a hole they will propolize it into a smaller one.
I understand that new beekeepers, and even some long term beekeepers, are reluctant to “disturb” the bees. Sometimes I feel that way myself. But, it’s a choice between a little periodic intrusion and dead, or certainly unproductive, weakened colonies. I often talk to beekeepers in the Fall who are seeking advice for treating for Varroa mites who haven’t treated all Spring and Summer. And hand in hand with that they are often complaining that there is hardly any capped honey in their hive(s). Or they’re stressing over the brood pattern in their hive, and should they replace their queen for a better one, when they haven’t monitored and treated for Varroa mites all season. Or it is October and they treated back in June. They didn’t see any mites. And should they feed them more, maybe, or add some sort of supplement? Well, more often than not the problem is Varroa, Varroa, Varroa. How productive would you be with a giant rat feeding up under your armpit? Not least withstanding there are the diseases that are caused by the mites. A healthy hive will usually be able to fight off such nuisances as wax moths or hornets. An unhealthy hive is in a downhill spiral to disaster.
I don’t fret the small stuff. Bees are natural creatures, and as long as we do our part to keep them healthy they will gather in what they need to survive, and even provide a little extra for us. I, personally, usually only feed sugar syrup in the Spring until the first honey super goes on, and some Winter patties if they need them in the late Winter. I don’t lose sleep over brood patterns and I rarely use supplements. If I find signs of a laying queen I’m happy. And if I don’t, I check again in a week or two. The one hive I lost was because I hadn’t been as on top of my Varroa checks as I’d meant to be. Varroa, Varroa, Varroa. And it is an awful feeling when we know we could have done more.
Dedicated to Lilly Langtree, the sweetest chinchilla that ever lived…and also my mother, Doris Darlington Cohen.
