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The Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association is tending a small apiary at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and it serves as both an educational tool and an experimental station. Martha Keifer (my wife calls her “my hero”) is keeping an excellent diary on the MABA website.

It’s really a fascinating project and hopefully it will help shed light on Colony Collapse Disorder and other issues that have been plaguing the bee populations.

If you haven’t heard about CCD by now, bless your heart.

Bee colony populations around the world are suffering and the reasons appear to be multi-faceted. Einstein said that the human population would last but a few years if bees became extinct. And it looks like CCD is the AIDS virus of bees.

PBS just put out a documentary that I highly recommend. Here is an excerpt:

In the winter of 2006/2007, more than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies — accounting for tens of billions of bees — were lost to CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. This loss is projected have an $8 billion to $12 billion effect on America’s agricultural economy, but the consequences of CCD could be far more disastrous.

I got together with some neighbors and fellow Metro Atlanta Beekeepers on Saturday to assist with the honey extraction of their bee hives. As I am a beekeeping novice, this the first time I actually got to make a big harvest. Many thanks to Vance and Patricia for being wonderful hosts (and for taking some great pictures).

Here we are, putting on the “fumigation board” and coaxing the bees to the lower levels of the hive supers.

After the bees moved down a level, we pulled off the supers, one level at a time and then hauled the “beeless” supers into the garage where the extracting was done. By “beeless”, I mean the bees were mostly gone. Each box always had a few bees left behind and we endured a few stings once the equipment came off. The force was with me this time as I escaped without a single sting (although I had a couple get lost in my hair). They seemed to prefer Dave!

Here I am by the unloaded supers in the garage.

Here, Patricia is using a hot extraction knife to melt/scrape off the honey caps. We got our first taste of the honey, and the wide variety of flavors, by chewing on the honey caps like gum - Delicious!

Once the individual frames of honey were “de-capped”, they were put inside the extractor. The extractor works like a centrifuge. Here the honey is coming out of the extractor and is being filtered. Richard Kiefer is looking on and sharing his calm wisdom.

I had to leave right after Patricia’s delicious El Salvadorian-style lunch so I didn’t get to see the final haul. Let us know when you have honey bottled and ready to sell, Vance!

I attended my first beekeeping meeting in Atlanta this Wednesday, March 14th, at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. I met some wonderful, quirky people including the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association’s president Martha Kiefer.

After last year’s loss of 5 hives, I was interested in learning more about getting off to a good start and finishing the season with lots of honey and lots of strong bees. Last year we (my dad and I ) bought 5 hives and queens from the Walter Kelley company in Clarkston, KY.

Unfortunately, when I drove forever and a mile to pick up the bees, I learned that the bees originally came from Georgia! They had been in cages for several days and half my swarm was dead before I had a chance to put them in their hives. The combined effect of a cold, damp spring, and the influx of wax moths and beetles, the bees never made a strong colony. They simply didn’t have the numbers or strength to build up the resistance to make it through the winter.

Since that time I have learned a lot about feeding bees and insuring they have the health and food to survive. I have also learned that I should start with a “nuc” (pronounced “nuke”), which is the nucleus of a beehive, as opposed to just a queen and a swarm.

Last year we bought swarms of bees and a queen for each swarm. The first thing that the bees had to do before going to work was to build out their comb. That takes time and energy. Once the comb is drawn, the queen can lay eggs and worker bees can begin to develop. Again, all this takes time and energy. With low numbers of bees, this process is very taxing to the survival rate of the hive.

With a “nuc”, the hive comes with 4 frames of drawn comb, along with capped brood (worker bees that haven’t hatched yet), some capped honey and a queen. In this scenario, the queen can lay eggs immediately. And while those eggs are developing, the other eggs are hatching and beginning to work. Since there is already drawn comb and some honey, survival is less of a risk.

The only problem with a “nuc” is that I have to get the hive at night and drive them 6 hours to TN. The bees are not caged. But since bees nest at night and are not active, I shouldn’t have to worry too much about a bee wandering out and giving me a nice surprise while I’m driving. I have been warned that carrying a nuc during the day can be quite eventful. So at night it will be….if I can talk my wife into it.

Last year was the first season my dad and I had with the bee hives. I merely delivered them. But I did buy them in Kentucky and drove them to TN in my trunk. I kept the back seats down so they would stay at a comfortable temperature. You could almost feel their strong, consistent buzz.

There was a dead layer of bees an inch thick in each of the two swarms I bought. I was told that was “normal” by the salesperson. But given the wild location of the bees, in a small clearing at the edge of a forest, wax moths didn’t give them much of a chance for survival. At the end of winter, the hives were empty. They are empty now.

We’re doing it again this year. Hopefully we will get a healthier swarm. If you can buy bees locally, do it. Thousands of bees in a 6″x8″ cage don’t last very long.