keep bees and process honey

WHY KEEP BEES?
• Increase the yield of your fruit trees and vegetable gardens
• Healthy and safe food supply
• Clean and sustainable
• Educational for all ages
• Therapeutic and relaxing hobby
• Enjoyable and rewarding experience
GETTING STARTED
1. Choose a dry, level location with southern sun exposure
2. Purchase a Harvest Lane Honey Hive Kit
3. Purchase protective clothing
4. Assemble your hive
5. Find a supplier and order your bees
6. Get the bees into the hive when they arrive
7. Feed your bees as soon as they’re moved in and
     until they are able to produce their own food.

CHOOSING YOUR BEES



So you are interested in being a backyard bee keeper? Two bee types should interest you:
   
Carniolan Bees are a favorite among new beekeepers because they are hardy and have a large foraging
range. They thrive in urban areas and adapt quickly to changes in the environment. They originate from the Danube
River Valley in Eastern Europe and its geographical heritage makes it better suited for colder northern climates. They
are exceptionally docile and are known for early spring population explosions at the first sign of pollen.
   
Italian Bees are less able to cope with the hard winters of the northern latitudes. They are relatively
gentle and calm and are therefore a favorite in highly populated, highly trafficked areas, but are prone to robbing
neighboring hives. Italians are excellent housekeepers, which some scientists believe is a factor in their ability to
resist disease.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Q: How much time do bees take?
A: Bees are less time consuming than most domesticated pets or livestock. Bees should be checked no more than
once a week. After they are established, they can go two weeks between checks. Once winter comes, they shouldn’t
be opened to check until spring to avoid chilling the hive.
Q: where are bees kept?
A: If you plan to keep bees in a residential area, face the entrance away from any play, work, or lounge areas. If your    
yard is fenced, put your hive in a corner, forcing the flight pattern to go up and out. Always have a water source for
your hive to help keep them from becoming a nuisance. Also, face the hive entrance opposite of the wind direction.
Q: How small of an area can I keep bees in?
A: Bees can be kept on very small lots and very small areas. There are many beekeepers in urban areas that keep
bees on roofs or porches. Check your local and state codes for any laws regarding space.
Q: How much honey will a new hive produce?
A: Honey production can range from 0-50 lbs, even in the first year. If you are worried about too much honey, let
your friends and family know you have honey and you will be their new best friend.

What Are Carpenter Bees?

People often mistake carpenter bees for bumblebees, which look quite similar. Bumblebees (genus Bombus) nest in the ground, usually in abandoned rodent nests, and live in social communities. Carpenter bees (genus Xylocopa) are solitary bees that burrow into wood. If you see a bee that looks like a bumblebee emerging from a hole in your porch, it's a carpenter bee, not a bumblebee. You can differentiate the two by examining the dorsal (upper) side of the abdomen. If it's shiny and hairless, it's a carpenter bee. A bumblebee, by contrast, has a hairy abdomen.
Carpenter bees usually spend the cold months tucked inside their empty nest tunnels, protected from freezing temperatures and winter weather. In spring, they emerge ready to mate. The female carpenter bee excavates a tunnel for her offspring. In each brood chamber, she stores food and lays an egg. By late summer, her young emerge as adults. The new generation of carpenter bees will visit flowers briefly in August and September, before settling in for the winter.
Carpenter bees are excellent pollinators. When a carpenter bee lands on a flower, she vibrates her thoracic muscles to shake the pollen loose. Because carpenter bees are beneficial insects, you should only eliminate them when necessary.

Do Carpenter Bees Sting?

Most people encounter carpenter bees during April and May, when they've just emerged to mate. During this time, male carpenter bees tend to hover around nest openings, looking for receptive females. It can be rather unnerving being around them, as the males will also hover aggressively around people who approach the nests. They may even fly right into you. Despite this tough act, male carpenter bees cannot sting. They are completely harmless. Female carpenter bees can sting, but almost never do. You would have to provoke a female, perhaps by trying to cup her in your hands, to get her to sting you in self-defense. So carpenter bees pose almost no threat to people at all.

How to Identify Carpenter Bee Nests

Obviously, if you observe carpenter bees coming and going from holes in your fascia board, deck posts, or other wood structures, that's a sure sign that those holes are carpenter bee nests.
If you haven't seen bees, but suspect they may be burrowing in a fence or other structure, look at the entrance holes. A carpenter bee makes an entrance hole slightly bigger than her body, or just about ½ inch in diameter. The first inch or two of the tunnel is usually made against the wood grain. The bee will then make a right turn and extend the tunnel another 4-6 inches in the direction of the wood grain. Carpenter bees will often eliminate their waste before entering their nest, so you might see yellow stains on the surface of the wood, just below the entrance hole.
Though they burrow into wood, carpenter bees don't eat wood like termites do. Since their nest tunnels are limited in size, they rarely do serious structural damage. However, because such excavation requires a lot of energy on her part, a female carpenter bee will often prefer to refurbish an old tunnel to digging a new one. If carpenter bees are allowed to tunnel in the same structure year after year, the cumulative damage could be significant.

How to Control Carpenter Bees

When it comes to carpenter bees, your best defense is a good offense. Carpenter bees prefer to excavate untreated, unfinished wood. You can discourage, if not prevent, carpenter bees from nesting in a wood structure by painting or varnishing the lumber.
If carpenter bees are already a problem, you will need to use an insecticidal dust to treat the nests. Insecticidal dusts are usually applied with a puffer that allows you to coat the interior surface of the entrance holes with the insecticide using a gentle burst of air. Contact your local extension office to find out which insecticides are effective and legal for use on carpenter bees in your area.
For the insecticide to work, the bees much come in contact with it as they crawl through the entrance hole of the nest. Apply the appropriate insecticidal dust in the spring, just before adults emerge to mate. Once you see the bees emerge, wait a few days before filling in the nest holes with wood putty or filler.
If you didn't apply the insecticide before the spring adults emerged, you will need to treat the nests twice – once in the spring, and again in late summer, when the next generation of adults is foraging. Because bees will be active during the day, it's preferable to apply the pesticide at night. This will reduce your chances of being stung by females trying to defend their nests. In the fall, seal the nest holes with putty or filler.

You will also require bee-proof clothing - a bee suit or veil, boiler suit, gloves. Tuck your trousers in your socks and  cover your head when near a hive. Smoke the colony prior to disturbing it in any way. However, you should expect to receive some stings as part of the hazard of bee keeping.  In addition, you will require a smoker and a hive tool.

Once set up you need to introduce the bees.  You can purchase bees as a complete colony or part colony, or you may wish to obtain bees from a local bee keeper (check they are free from disease first). You should select bees which produce good yield, are docile and free from disease.

Inspect the hive weekly or fortnightly. Monitor for mites and Varroa, which will be in every colony. You will need to spend a hour a week during the summer maintaining the hive, checking the health of the bees and ensuring the hive is clean.  You should understand the life cycle of the queen bee and look out for signs of a swarming colony. It is advisable to speak to your local Bee Keepers association or enrol on a college course to study bee keeping in more detail. The British Bee Keepers Association website is ideal to get further information on the subject.

Bees make honey as food for themselves and for their offspring. It provides
them with the energy they need for their flights to a field, and heat to keep their
bodies and dwelling warm; and for the secretion of wax for comb building.
Bees store surplus honey for a rainy day and feed on this honey all year round
for their survival, particularly during the cold winter months when no flowers
and nectar available. An average colony requires about 40 to 100 kg of honey to
maintain itself through a year.

Making honey is the most important job of foraging bees. They fly diligently
and tirelessly every day from morning till dusk in all directions and at various
heights and at a distance of 3 to 5 kilometers from the hive prospecting for
plants and trees producing nectar which they collect from the heart of flowers.
Nectar is the basic raw product from which honey is made. It is a mixture of
water and sugar that flowers produce from their nectaries. Nectar contains 20 to
60% sugars generally cane sugar. The water content varies between 40 to 80%.
Besides sugar, nectar contains minerals, organic acids, vitamins, pigments and
aromatic substances.
Bees generally collect nectar in the warm months of the year, from spring
through to autumn.
process begins when a forager leaves the hive looking for flowers to collect
nectar. When a flower is found, the bee sucks the nectar out of the flower with
her proboscis (tongue) and stores it in a special sack in her body called the
honey stomach to be transferred to the honey-making bees in the hive. The
honey stomach holds about 4 mg of nectar that is about half the weight of the
bee. If the nectary is empty the bee flies to another flower. A bee may need to
visit between 50 to 150 flowers in order to fill her honey stomach depending on
the flower species. For instance, a load can be obtained from a few rich-nectar
producing flowers such as eucalyptus or citrus whereas a load can be obtained
by visiting hundreds of small flowers of clover. It takes about 30 minutes to
several hours to collect a load, depending on how plentiful and how far away the
nectar source is. A forager may take hours to collect a load in poor foraging
conditions.
When the honey stomach is full the bee flies back to the hive. On her way back
the bee adds invertase, an enzyme from her body to the collected nectar. This
begins the process of changing the nectar into honey. The enzyme breaks the
complex plant sugar in the nectar down into simpler and more digestible sugars
for the bees, mainly glucose (grape sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar).


A typical colony can produce 30 to 50 kg of surplus honey per year. The bees in
the same colony visit about 4 million flowers to make one kilogram of honey.
The honeys they produce vary in color, flavor and viscosity; this difference
depends upon the floral source from which the nectar was derived. The nectar
from some plants produces a light, mild flavored honey. Nectar from other
plants produces a dark, strong flavored honey.
Honeybees will go on collecting and storing more nectar as long as there is
nectar available in the pasture and there are empty cells in the hive to store it in,
however much abundance of honey the hive contains. A returning forager with
load of nectar makes her way to the combs and begins to inform the others about
the source and direction of nectar to recruit more foragers to the area of nectar.
She does so by performing special movements on the surface of the comb
known as “dance” and does that for seconds or a minute. While she is dancing
some bees gather closely around her and learn from the dance and touch her
with their antennae. The dancing forager makes stops to give nectar to those
bees following and watching the dance to learn its scent and taste. The dancer
then runs to another place on the combs and repeats the dance before another
group of bees. After the dance has ended, she makes another trip to the source of
nectar, and those bees who have followed the dance leave the hive to search for
the nectar. When the recruited bees return to the colony with load they in their
turn recruit more bees.
Foragers perform different dances to convey different information. When the
source of nectar is near the hive i.e., less than 100 meters away the forager will
perform a round dance, and if is far away the bee will perform the waggle dance.
The round dance
During the round dance the bee runs around in a little circle first one way, then
turns round and runs in the opposite direction of the circle. The round dance
tells the bees that the food is near the hive and of its taste and smell, but gives no
information about the direction of the food source.

The honeybees are social insects living together in large group or family called a
colony. The bees' nest inside the hive consists of several wax combs each
containing many cells in which bees use for rearing their baby bees and to store
food. The bees organize their affairs so well in their dwelling and devote
themselves to the welfare and survival of their colony.
A bee colony is made of three different castes: A queen, worker bees who form
the great majority of the colony and the drones. The queen is the mother of the
colony whose only function is to lay eggs from which all bees develop. The sole
function of the drones is to fertilize the virgin queens, whereas the worker bees
perform all tasks that the colony needs. In summer the colony contains 40,000 to
80,000 worker bees and a few hundred drones and in winter about 10,000 to
20,000 worker bees and no drones. Bees born in spring or in summer live on the
average no more than six weeks, whereas those born in September or later live
six months and more. This seasonal variability in the life span of individuals is
due to the fact that spring or summer bees do much work with a lot of energy
spent, and that those emerge in autumn stay inactive within the hive huddled
together in a cluster during the wintertime and eat the stored food.
A worker bee, after emerging from her birth cell as a mature bee lives
approximately six weeks in summer, spending the first three weeks of her life
inside the hive and is termed a house bee or nurse bee. In this stage she cleans
cells, feeds the older and young bees, feeds the queen, builds wax combs, stores
nectar and seals the honey cells, removes debris and dead bees, ventilates the
hive and guards the hive entrance. After this period she becomes a field bee
(forager) and works the second half of her life outside the hive collecting nectar,
pollen, propolis and water.
Bees are vegetarians. They eat two kinds of food, honey and pollen; honey is
made from the nectar of the flowers and provides the bees with carbohydrate.
The pollen is derived from the anthers of flowers and is the source of protein,
vitamins and minerals.