Enjoy and Happy Beekeeping!

-NVBeeGuy and NVQueenBee

This is one our hive boxes ready to accept a new swarm of bees.

In order to keep the bees in their new hive box, we place either a stick or wire mesh in front of the entrance to the hive box.

Here we are firmly attaching the entrance block to the front of the hive box.

We spray each hive frame with a mixture of sugar water, lemon grass oil, and spearmint oil to feed the hive while the bees are getting acclimated to their new home.

The inside of the hive box usually holds 10 large frames.  When we are relocating a new swarm, we remove 4-5 frames to make room for the new bee “swarm.”

Welcome to the Main Event: The Bee Swarm Removal!

Above is a photo of a normal size swarm of bees that was found in a sugar maple tree.

Before any bee swarm removal is done, it is recommended that you wear the proper bee “attire,” such as a bee suit, hat, and gloves, as shown in the photo.

Above is a close-up photo of thousands among thousands of bees that are holding onto each other to form the swarm.  The bees are protecting and keeping the queen bee warm, which resides inside the swarm.

Above is a photo of NV Bee Guy spraying the bees with a water bottle to keep the bees from flying away during the removal process.  The water weights down the bee’s wings to retard flight.

Above, NV Bee Guy is trimming the tree so the swarm can be gently lowered into the bucket to assist in transporting the bees from the tree to the hive box.

The bee swarm has now been captured and is ready to be moved to a safe and inviting new home.

Before we relocate the bees into the hive box, we add more bee feed to the hive box.  This gives the swarm food while they acclimated themselves into their new home.

The bees are transported from the bucket into the hive box.

The hive box lid is placed on the hive box.

After 2-3 days of acclimating to their new hive, the entrance block is removed so the bees can continue to pollinate and make honey.

This is a picture showing the head of a worker bee.

All worker bees are non-reproducible females.  Only the queen bee can lay eggs and reproduce.  The worker bee as the name implies, does the majority of the work in the hive.   This is no small task by any means, worker bees are responsible for rearing the new baby bees after the queen lays the eggs, collecting pollen and nectar, chief engineers for hive construction, and maintaining a constant temperature of approximately 90°F  throughout the hive using only their beating wings to control air flow, which are the next series of pictures.

Here you can see the honey bee’s wings.  The larger one is the forewing and the smaller one in the foreground of the picture is the hindwing.  Propelled by these amazing wings, bees can fly at a maximum speed of 15 mph.

A magnified view of hindwing.

Take a look at those antennae.  The honey bee uses these to sense the world around them.  These antennae, being segmented, have the ability to move all around to touch and feel all things of importance in the bee’s world.

These three pictures show the honey bee’s feelers and proboscis.  The small feelers appear to look like the fangs of Dracula.  Like the honey bee’s antennae, the feelers are used for the sense of touch.  The proboscis is the honey bee’s tongue.  It uses it’s proboscis to eat nectar and honey along with drinking water.  Think of the proboscis as a large straw.  Imagine trying to suck honey down a straw.

All the better to see you with, the honey bee’s eye is simply amazing.  The honey bee, however is not interested in seeing you, unless you are trying to steal its honey, but rather in seeing flowers, nectar, and pollen.  The honey bee has two compound eyes, which means that they have latterly thousands of small eyes that are looking in all directions.  Think your mom has eyes in back of her head, while she doesn’t even come close to honeybee’s ability to see in several directions at once.

Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.  Look at the whiskers on this honey bee.

Ouch!  Here is a close up of a honey bee’s stinger.  When a honey bee is agitated, it will do anything to protect its queen and the hive, and that includes dying.  When a honey bee stings something, the barbs on the end of stinger pull the stinger along with the poison gland and part of the bees abdomen off of the bee.  Without these body parts, the honey bee quickly dies.  Therefore, a honey bee can only sting one time compared to a wasp for instance with a smooth stinger who can sting several times and live to sting again.

Happy Beekeeping!

Lisa Drake, NVQueenBee

Bradley Drake, NVBeeGuy

Winter to Spring in the Bee Hive:

The bees keep the interior of the hive about 90 degrees F year around.  They continually hatch out brood to replace the bees that finally tucker out.  In the winter bees cluster up to maintain the interior heat of the colony; in the summer bees will form at the entrance and fan a flow of air into the hive so it does not over-heat the brood.

After the weather warms up above 55 degrees F, for two or three weeks, the queen-cells begin to hatch.  A new queen in the hive stirs excitement and she soon leaves taking a number of drones and some worker-bees with her.  The initial flight from the hive is usually not far with the swarm landing in a nearby tree or shrub.  The swarm follows the queen wherever she may go in looking for a new place to house her new colony.  Sometimes the new queen will travel a mile or so before she finds a place she likes.

How large is the usual swarm?

A good swarm will fill half of a five gallon bucket, some larger or smaller than others.  If the bees are congregating there is a good chance a new queen is around.

Swarms alarm people who are not familiar with bees.  A quick call to a beekeeper will assure the survival of the swarm.  A beekeeper can usually remove the swarm by spraying it down with water then sweeping it into a bag or bee-box.  Within a half-hour the captured swarm will be safely and securely in a new hive box.  Their are usually residual bees roaming around where the swarm was for a few days, but they will return to the original hive.

If you have a bee swarm, please contact a beekeeper in your area as they would love to have it for their hive.  Some pick up bee swarms for free, while others may charge.  We provide free bee swarm remove for the Reno, Sparks, Carson City area in Nevada, so contact us if we can help you!

-Bradley Drake, NVBeeGuy

Hello and welcome to Holcomb Ranch Honey’s website!!  We want to first thank you for checking out our website!  Some of the topics we will be blogging about are our personal honey bee experiences, honey health benefits, honey recipes, honey production tools, honey bee stories, fun facts, and so much more with each of you!  We look forward to sharing our love and joy of honey with others and glad you’ve joined us on this journey of the honey bee!

How did we get started?

Two local area families started with five hives each and started producing honey over 25 years ago as a neighborhood hobby/activity.  We would render honey each Labor Day weekend, with the assistance of fifteen to twenty volunteer friends.  The group grew over the years to include a neighborhood pot-luck get-together.  The first year’s production we were able to get about 750 pounds of honey and placed in the several glass jars that each person saved throughout the year between events.  Everyone went home with some good jugs of honey to share with their family and friends throughout the year.

Thank you for reading and we you’ll visit us again very soon to learn more about honey!

Lisa Drake, NVQueenBee