Mice seem so innocent and so small. What could they possibly do to hurt your bee hive during the winter? Now is the time to take precautions to keep mice out of your hives. Hi, we are David and Sheri Burns from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms located in central Illinois. Thank you for following our beekeeping lessons online.

Now that it is fall, I’d like to share several fall management tips for your hive to have a better chance at surviving our upcoming winter. Yes, I know. No one wants to think about winter yet, but you have to so that you can make sure your colony is strong and healthy.

Before we begin our lesson, I want to share some things going on around Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. I had a great time speaking in Chicago at the Lake County Beekeepers Club. Ann Miller Did a great job hosting the meeting. I spoke on how to raise queens and I did it in 45 minutes!

We’ve also been hosting groups at the honey bee farm. This week we had a group of homeschoolers who came out to learn more about honey bees. They asked some good questions. I think a few families are going to start keeping bees next spring.

Then we had all the local FFA chapters from surrounding schools visit our place. They were fascinated by our large bee tree and how we make queens and woodenware. But I think what really got their attention is when I opened a hive and found the queen on a full frame of bees. I carried it around so that each one could see the queen. The future of honey bees can be greatly increased as the importance of the honey bee is impressed upon these Future Farmers of America!

Be sure and LIKE US on facebook.  

As many of you know Long Lane Honey Bee Farms is a family business and our family is doing great. We have three sons and three daughters between the ages of 31 and 6 years old. And we have seven grandchildren and another one on the way. Many of you have talked to Karee or Jesse on the phone or in person here. They recently had a baby, Jesse David. He is our newest grandson and he was born premature, spending 103 days in the NICU. The good news is he finally came home on Wednesday! Thank you for your prayers.

New to the beekeeping community is our new beekeeping internet and radio program called Hive Talk. My good friend and bee expert Jon Zawislak and I will be hosting this weekly call in beekeeping radio program. Our debut will be this Tuesday night, October 1st at 7pm central time. The success of this program depends largely upon you, callers who will call in and ask beekeeping questions. If you don’t call in with questions, Jon and I will be left to ramble on and make a miserable attempt to be entertaining. Here’s what you do. Around 6:50 p.m. central time on Tuesday, Dial 1-724-7444. A voice recording will ask you to enter you “CALL ID” for our show which is: 129777, then press the # sign. When asked to enter your pin, enter 1 followed by the # sign.  At that point our engineer will chat with you and get you ready to ask us a question. We recommend that you log in to our show 10 minutes prior to 7:00 p.m. central time. Signing in again is simple:

1. Dial: (724) 444-7444
2. Enter: 129777 # (Call ID)
3. Enter: 1 # or your PIN

If you want to just listen from your computer, go to: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/129777

WINTER-BEE-KIND UPDATE

We are heavy into production of our Winter-Bee-Kinds! Years ago, Zach Watts worked for our family mowing and keeping our place cleaned up when he was younger. Over they years, we keep moving him up and now he’s one of our best shop guys. He’s the main builder of our Winter-Bee-Kinds. He’s working for us while going to college. He’s a huge blessing to our business. You should start seeing your Winter-Bee-Kind arrive in a few weeks. If don’t know about our Winter-Bee-Kinds, check out our website at: http://www.honeybeesonline.com

Finally before our lesson today, here are three of our featured products:

Our traditional Langstroth Hive (Above). Completely assembled and painted with frames. Click here for more information.

Our new Langstroth Hive made from Cedar! (Above)  Spruce up your garden or yard with this majestic hive! Click here for more information.

Our popular Winter-Bee-Kind winter feed, ventilation and upper exit candy board. Click here for more information.

When you order from us, we are able to make a living doing what we love. Thank you!

LESSON 140: Protect Your Hives Against Mice & Should You Combine Your Hives For Winter

Mice seem so innocent and so small. Who would think they could be such a pest to the bee hive? In my early days as a new beekeeper I really didn't do much to prevent mice from entering my hives during the fall and winter. I just assumed the mice would stay out. I thought if they did make it in, they would be well behaved on the bottom board and not bother my bees. Nothing could be further from the truth! Mice will destroy a hive during the winter. When the weather turns cooler mice leave the outdoors and find your hive the perfect place for warmth and yes, food---your bees.

It seems like the colony would kill the mice, but during the winter the colony is clustered to stay warm. In the spring and summer the bees are able to move about the hive and chase out or kill mice. But in the winter the mice have free reign since the bees are clustered to stay warm. This is a great place for mice to raise their young. In the spring you can find a whole nest of pink baby mice and a few adults on your bottom board. When you see that, you’ll probably notice your hive is dead. The mice have slowly eaten away at bees and comb for food.

Do something now! First, understand that mice can fit through a hole the size of a ballpoint pen, or about 1/4 inch. So the challenge is to leave an opening large enough for bees but small enough so that mice cannot fit through. Not to mention mice can enter through a damaged corner or ventilation holes in hives. While it is nearly impossible to find the perfect sized mouse guard, most entrance reducers and mouse guards discourage mice from entering. A wide open bottom board is like hanging out a vacancy sign.We sell different types of mouse guards but an entrance reduce is our suggested defense.

This spring I conducted a study on mice and bees. I was startled at the results of my experiment. In 12 colonies I placed a component which had mouse urine, droppings or nest debris on it. I then installed packages into those 12 colonies on drawn comb. All 12 packages absconded within 7 days. I’ve been studying what makes packages abscond. I found that bees installed from packages can still abscond in new hives on new foundation, but the chances are less likely in new equipment. Drawn comb can help reduce absconding but the older the drawn comb is the more likely bees are to abscond. But any sign of mice urine, droppings or debris can cause a new package to abscond. The best thing is to destroy boxes, bottom board and frames that are soiled from mice droppings.

COMBINING HIVES

There is an old beekeeping saying that we should take our winter losses in the fall. This means that small and weak colonies, which will not survive the winter, should be combined with a larger colony that has higher populations and more food in the hive. The most common way to combine hives is to destroy the queen in the weaker colony and wait a few days. Then place newspapers on top of the top deep box in the strong colony. Then, move all the frames in the weak colony into one deep and place it above the newspaper on the strong hive. Cut a few slits in the newspaper so the bees can begin to destroy the newspaper. The theory is that by the time the newspaper is cleaned out, both colonies will be friends and become one.

Another option is to use a double screen board and place the weak colony on top of the strong colony. Both colonies have queens and the double screen keeps the bees and queens from fighting. The heat from the larger hive drifts up through the screen and keeps the smaller colony warmer on top. Keep in mind that cold is not the colony’s worst enemy. The number one concern is the varroa mite. If the colony has a severe infestation of varroa, they are unlikely to survive the winter. Other concerns are viruses and diseases which can cause the hive to die in the winter.

So you may want to take your winter losses now and combine some hives. If the combined hives overwinters well, you can split it in the spring and you’re back to two.

That’s all for now and thank you for joining us for another beekeeping lesson! Please let others know about these lessons and our business. We appreciate you spreading the word! Your donations help us continue our work and research on the honey bee, such as our recent development of our Winter-Bee-Kind. These lessons are free and will provide you with as much if not more information than you would find in a $30 book. So consider making a $30 donation so that we might continue these lessons, CLICK HERE TO DONATE $30 or go to:
http://www.honeybeesonline.com/servlet/Detail?no=144

Thank you in advance.
David and Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
217-427-2678 Website: www.honeybeesonline.com

Thanks for joining us for another beekeeping lesson!

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone, from David & Sheri at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms! Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that our family enjoys the most. All the women love to cook and all the men love to eat. Sheri and hope you find plenty of reasons to be thankful.
Today, I want to give a lesson on improvements we have made to the woodenware (hives) we sell and how I recommend pollen patties to be used in the hive and why mice are bad for hives during the winter. But first, alittle about what we’ve been doing.
We are enjoying an Indian summer, nice warm days. That should change soon, but we’ve taken advantage of these nice days to try and get our outdoor winter preparation projects finished.
This week , I’ll be moving a bunch of my hives into an area where we had walls of dirt brought in to act as a wind block. Then, I have large, and I do mean LARGE, canvas material that I am going to use to shield the hives. Again, this is somewhat experimental. I’ve never had any better winter survivability when I’ve wrapped in the past, but this time I’m adding more ventilation. So we still have lots of hives to move.
(Remember you can click on all pictures for a larger picture.) We had a new and larger sign made for our farm, and signs for the vehicles. I have been really surprised at how much business those signs have generated.
I was featured in another newspaper. It was a nice article, but the reporter got a few details incorrect on the timing of raising queens. That article really generated a lot of interest and phone calls. Here’s the link if you want to see the article. CLICK HERE


LESSON 68: WOODENWARE (Langstroth & TBH Hives), POLLEN PATTIES & MICE
Woodenware is a term used in the beekeeping community to refer to the actual wooden bee hive, not the colony of bees. There are two commonly used hives today. The most common is the hive that pastor Langstroth designed back in 1851. Pastor L. L. Langstroth was pretty depressed over his ministry and found comfort in his bees. It’s hard to believe that a congregation could sting more than a hive of bees. During his work, he designed discovered bee space, a space measuring around 3/8” that bees would leave as a travel space. With that knowledge he designed a hive known as the removal frame hive. Before that, most bees were kept in skeps and logs.
Another common hive is known as a Top Bar Hive. TBHs are gaining popularity. They are shaped like an upside down triangle. Simply put, the only part of the actual frame used is the top bar. The bees add their comb to the top bar down toward the bottom. Langstroth’s hive is not the perfect design, nor is the TBH.
I’m often asked what I think about TBH. I’ve never operated one, so I may change my mind if I were to use one. But apply some basic beekeeping knowledge and comments I’ve heard TBH folks make, here’s what I think.

The TBH followers claim it is much more natural and usually they are referring to the cell size. Since bees are not using a pre-existing foundation pattern, and some conclude they make smaller cell size. Then, the small cell size proponents claim this helps reduce mites. However, in scientifically controlled assays the results did not show any advantage of small cells comb in controlling mites.
The disadvantages I see with TBH are:
1) In order to inspect a frame, the comb is often attached to the side of the hive and must be cut away to be lifted out.
2) Honey frames cannot not as easily extracted and is often crushed and allowed to drain.
3) Other components are not as available, such as feeders, supers etc.
4) Some state bee inspection rules state that frames must be removable and might not view TBH frames as easy to remove without having to cut the comb.
And I always suggest and encourage new beekeepers to become familiar with beekeeping by using the traditional Langstroth designed hive, and once they have the basic fundamentals under their belt, then they might try a TBH.
We’ll probably one day make and sell TBH but as for now, we are happy with the Langstroth’s hive.

The Langstroth hive has been slightly improved over the last 158 years, but is basically the typical white hives you find sprinkled throughout the countryside, and city backyards.
We enjoy the ease of the Langstroth hive. It is easy to use, compatible with various accessories such as pollen traps, top feeders, frame feeders, entrance feeders, supers, cloake boards, fume boards etc.
Since we are beekeepers, we keep improving upon the way we make our hives that we sell. I want to point out a few of these improvements.

Here’s a picture of one of our deep hive bodies being built. We now place 9, 8 penny nails in one corner. That’s 36 nails in one deep hive box. Holes are predrilled. Also each corner receives a generous amount of exterior glue. Those of you who are wood workers know the strength is really in the glue. But those 9 nails give the box strength especially the 4 nails that are cross nailed.

Also, we’ve hunted and hunted until we’ve finally found the perfect wood we like for our hives. We use a high quality pine. It took us several years to finally locate the perfect wood source. We buy it through our local small town lumber yard. They actually get it out of Indiana. It is strong, dried to our perfection. Knots are small and kept to a minimum.

Here’s a look from the inside of the deep hive. We make our own metal frame rests. Notice how we staple them in from the side not the top. When stapled in from the top, the staples catch the hive tool when scraping off propolis. So we staple the frames rests in from the side, leaving the top smooth. These frame rests allow the frames not to stick to the wood. In other words, a wood frame against a wood frame rest can become so glued together by the bee’s natural bee glue (propolis), that the frame’s ear can actually break. But the frames do not stick as much to a smooth metal surface.
Also, this picture shows the frame rest area that is cut into the front and back pieces just above the metal. Since the board is 3/4” thick, half way through is 3/8”. However, we have widened that cut so that the remaining piece is slightly thicker because historically that has been a weak spot.
We’ve also improved out telescoping top cover in three ways. First, we’ve added a screw at the bottom of each corner. We noticed that beekeepers use their hive tools to prior open the tops when they are glued down by the bees. So we’ve stiffened up the corner with a screw. Secondly, we’ve started using screws to fasten our metal down. Thirdly, we are now using a high quality, painted aluminum for the metal top.
Another improvement that we’ve have made to our hives is the frames. The frames that we now use in our hives are of the highest quality. No knots on the wood used for frames.
Notice in these pictures that wide staples are used, connection points are glued, side bars are a full 3/8 inch, bottom bars are much thicker and ears are tapered up to assist in moving and freeing the frames if the bees use lots of propolis.
The final improvement we have made to our hive is our paint. We’ve always used a high quality Valspar exterior paint, but we’ve added a paint room to our operation. The controlled and consistent drying temperature and humidity has significantly improved the overall paint coverage.

We’ve also listened to our customers and they keep telling us they need an entrance reducing cleat that fits when they have their entrance feeders on in the spring. So we now include two entrance cleats, a large one and a smaller one for use with our entrance feeder.
These improvements require more time in producing your hives, but we feel quality is important. But do remember, that your bees really aren’t impressed at the quality of your hives. Bees are comfortable in old, nearly rotten trees. But the better quality your hive is, the longer it will last so that you can enjoy years of beekeeping.
POLLEN PATTIES
We’ve been asked a lot of questions about pollen patties. I’m sure I’ve address the issue before, but rather than waste time trying to find out, it is faster just to address pollen patties here. WHEN, WHERE, WHAT and WHY?
It is my opinion that the major producers of pollen patties are good and reliable. We sell BROOD BUILDER pollen patties which are filled with pollen, and other minerals and nutrition that is good for bees. You’ll find some beekeepers like some brands better than others.
These are pre-made and come between two pieces of wax paper. Again, I can only share my opinion and experience, but I feel and have found that pollen patties are very beneficial to the overall improvement of nutrition in the hive. Of course, one would expect that the bees would bring in plenty of their own choice of pollen during nectar flows, and they do. So I only use pollen patties in late winter, early spring just prior to a good balance of natural pollen. However, if a beekeeper only has a few hives, it wouldn’t hurt to keep a pollen patty on the hive all year, just in case they need a boost. It will not get mixed into the honey because pollen is kept separate than honey in the hive.
Lay the pollen patties just on top of the frames above where the winter cluster is located. One is plenty, maybe even half of one is enough. Keep an eye on it and when it is almost consumed, add the other half. The bees can move up into the pollen patty on warm days. DO NOT remove the wax paper. The bees will consume it. If you remove it, you’ll find on warm days, the patty can become so soft that it can melt and fall between the frames, and be messy in the hive. So keep the paper on it.
Here’s a friend of mine who has a pollen patty on now that it is fall. You can see they have not consumed much of the pollen patty. You might also notice the Ziploc bag full of sugar water with a few holes on top to help feed the bees. Wonder why they are not consuming the pollen patty?
I found out why. He called me in fear that he might have American Foul Brood. He saw a frame that appeared greasy and spotty. So, I ran out the next day and we examined his hive. Though I have never had AFB, I have examined several frames of it in study of my master beekeeper certification. Spending any extended time in the presence of a frame of AFB makes me nauseous because it smells so horrible.
My friend pulled out the frame under suspect and I’ll let you see it here too. What do you think? Click on the image for a full size picture and see if you know what is wrong with this frame? I’ll give you a minute and then I’ll tell you… His description was accurate. Looks greasy and wet and perforated.
Nothing is wrong! This is a beautiful frame, not of brood, but of bee-bread. Bee bread is a combination of pollen and honey. Take a look at this article on the discovery of what bees do with bee bread:
Scientist solves secret of bee bread from Science News, Nov 5, 1988 by Ingrid Wickelgren
A microbiologist has discovered the microbial ingredients honeybees embed in the nutrient-packed pollen derivative known as bee bread.
Martha A. Gilliam of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Ariz., identified 107 molds, 81 yeasts and 29 bacteria in the bread while she and co-workers sifted through the yellow granules for proteins, lipids, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes.
Workers bees newly emerged from the comb must eat bee bread so their glands produce food for the queen and developing larvae, whereas older worker bees -- the foragers -- survive primarily on honey.
"We think bee bread is somewhat more nutritious than regular pollen, but until recently, we weren't sure what happened to it [after the bees collected it]," says Elton Herbert, a research entomologist at the Agriculture Department's Beneficial Insects Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
Using standard chemical methods, Gilliam picked apart pollen on its path from plant to hive. She took samples from beeless almond trees, from the carrying basket on the bee's leg and from the combs in the hive.
"We found that as soon as bees touch the pollen on the plant, they are adding glandular secretions, microorganisms and either honey or nectar to make it sticky," Gilliam says. The added microbes produce enzymes that help release nutrients such as amino acids from pollen, and the organisms manufacture antibiotics and fatty acids that prevent spoilage. The bees also remove unwanted microbes from the pollen.
My friend was pleased and overjoyed that his hive did not have AFB, but rather had a good source of bee bread to take into winter and next spring!

MYSTERY PHOTO??????
WHAT IS THAT…..
A friend had this dripping out of the edge of his hive. Anyone want to venture a guess? Most beekeepers can quickly identify it as propolis. Indeed it is as I pinched and smelled it. But the real question is why would it run out of the hive and down onto the cement stand. Email us your answers and we’ll publish them in the next lesson. Email your guess to: david@honeybeesonline.com
MICE
Mice like warm places to overwinter. When nightly temperatures drop and farmers harvest their crops, mice look for shelter. What better place than a warm and roomy bottom board of a bee hive. Dead bees are nicely dropped down for the mice to consume. Often, mice and bees coexists without harming the other. In the spring, mama runs out of the hive with her new family. However, usually what happens is the mouse gets greedy and wants more than just dead bees. They start eating live ones, honey, wax, pollen and begin to move up into the brood next of the hive where the heat and food is and by that time, the mouse will kill the hive. It’s challenging enough to overwinter bees, so don’t over winter mice in your hives.
Usually the entrance cleat is sufficient to deter mice from taking up residency in the hive. Do keep mice out! One year I overwintered a nice number of colonies along with huge families of spring mice. That crop of mice then raised me a nice crop of snakes who stayed curled under my hives waiting for mice. So, since I stopped raising mice in my hives, I no longer have snakes either.
That’s all for now and I do hope you’ve learned a thing or two new about beekeeping. Maybe it’s all new and maybe it all sounds Greek. Don’t despair. We beekeepers just like to rattle on and on about beekeeping. But you can be an excellent beekeeper just by keeping it simple. Bees existed fine before we tried to domesticate them, so rest assured your bees will be very forgiving of your learning curve.

WE ARE NOW TAKING ORDERS FOR PACKAGE BEES ONLINE. CLICK HERE TO ORDER Package Bees

Here’s our contact information

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
14556 N. 1020 East Rd.
Fairmount, IL 61841

PHONE 217-427-2678
EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com
WEBSITE: www.honeybeesonline.com

Until next time, remember to BEE-Have yourself!

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