Preparing for beekeeping
I started preparing for beekeeping in the fall of 2021. I checked and found no requirements for raising bees in Michigan or Ingham County. I bought a book that covered everything in detail about beekeeping and started reading it. I applied and was accepted for a 2022 Beekeeping Training Program for Veterans called "Heroes to Hives. The last thing I did was to check with the City of Mason for any ordinances I needed to follow.
I was told that I couldn't raise bees in the city because bees are classified as farm animals. I went around and around with the city for a while trying to get the ordinance changed. That wasn't going anywhere quick so, I started looking for an affordable piece of land outside the city. While doing some internet searching, I came across the Michigan Right to Farm Act. The act allowed me to keep bees on my property, regardless of any laws, zoning, or ordinances. Because I had more than an acre of land, I could keep as many beehives as I wanted. All the time dealing with the city, looking for land, and making sure I understood the Right to Farm Act and it's requirements, it was too late for me to order bees for the start of the 2022 bee season. I was a little disappointed, but I waited 35 years to do this, another year wasn't going to be a long haul.
I got confused and missed the 2022 Heroes to Hives program. Around the end of the summer of 2022, I started second guessing myself about understanding the Right to Farm Act and the requirements, so I filed the paperwork to have an inspection done on my apiary just in case I had any trouble. I applied for the 2023 Heroes to hives program; started ordering everything in the fall; started building in the winter; and, ordered bees to arrive in April and May.
In January of 2023 The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development came out to inspect my apiary and ask me a few questions. They said my management plan was real good and the apiary setup was fine. They provided me with a letter of compliance and sent a copy to Ingham County and the City of Mason. Everything was complete and I was ready to start beekeeping.
2023 Bee Season- 1st year
The bees arrived in April and May, as scheduled. I had no problems installing any of the packages. It took less than 30 minutes to install each of them. I had a veterinarian come out in May to inspect the colonies. Since bees are considered farm animals, the law requires you to make contact with and have a veterinarian for them. I started the Heroes to Hives program.
The hard part of beekeeping is the inspections, understanding what you're looking at, and deciding what to do. It was harder to remove the frames than what I thought it would be and the boxes were a heavy lift. I was a little awkward with everything I did. Bees covering everything and moving all around didn't make it as easy to see inside the cells as it was looking at pictures in a book or close-up videos on the internet. My eye sight isn't that good, so I couldn't see the eggs. I could see the larvae, so I knew there was a queen there at least 5-6 days ago. Since my colonies were building up, not all the frames had comb drawn out, so the supers weren't full. I didn't know whether I should flip the frames or move them to get the bees to draw all the comb out. I couldn't figure out how to get a good count of how many bees I had. I didn't know exactly when to add another super. I couldn't even find the queens. Never saw a queen the whole season. I tested for mites in June, Zero. I tested again in July, Zero. I was a little confused most the time, but what I knew was, that there were no pests; the hives were full of brood, honey, and pollen; and, the bees were very busy. The hive didn't smell and nothing looked strange.
During the fall the bees were packing away the honey. The bees never started robbing each other in the fall. I put the robbing screens on, but the bees kept to their own hives. I reduced the entrances, put sugar bricks under the top covers and wrapped the hives in tar paper for the winter. It was a fun and easy bee season.
I'd go out to make sure the snow wasn't covering the entrance. I'd see a few dead bees on the ledge, so I knew there were bees inside removing them. About Mid-December I noticed that there weren't anymore dead bees on a ledge. I put my ear to the hive to listen for bees. I didn't hear any, so I tapped on the hive, nothing; I tapped harder, nothing; I lifted the back of the hive and shook it, nothing. Even though it was cold, I decided to look inside. I didn't see or hear any bees. A few days later I went out and removed the front entrance and racked a stick in the bottom of the hive. Hundreds of dead bees come out, thousands. Just before Christmas I took the hive apart. No bees alive and a huge pile of dead bees on the bottom board. Another hive had been looking the same way, so I looked inside it. It was the same. I had 2 dead-outs before Christmas. I found a supplier that still had 2024 season bees for sale and ordered 3 packages to start over again in the spring. My last beehive still had bees on the ledge, so I left it alone. One day in January the temperature got around 60 F., so I opened it. There were a dozen bees crawling around on the sugar brick. I closed it and was able to check it again in February and March. They made it through the winter. My first year of beekeeping wasn't a complete failure, but it sure felt like it.
Winter 2023- Plans for 2024
There really wasn't much of a plan, I had to start over again. I started a number system to keep track of my hives and I would start writing them on the corner of the bottom Deep Super in the spring. It would start with an S or P, meaning Package or Split with a number for the order in which it came, a dash, then the year. The one hive I had left I would split it in mid-spring. The 3 new packages would have a good starts because they would already have drawn out comb and I would be able to take a few frames of brood from each of them in the early summer to make another split. I should have been able to have 6 colonies going into summer ,but with 2 dead-outs that was going to be impossible. With my 2024 plan I could still have 5 strong colonies going into winter. I decided that I wasn't going to waste my time testing for mites, I would just treat them with Formic pro in July and then hit them with Oxalic Acid in December. Since I wasn't planning on taking any honey, I thought that it would be better not to bother them to much and just let them do what bees do. My plan was simple; make a split from the colony that survived as early as possible, make another split from all 3 of the new colonies, treat for mites whether they needed it or not, leave them alone, and leave all the honey.
2024 Bee Season- The 2nd year
The season didn't start out very well. When I did my 1st inspection on P3-23, it didn't have any brood and I couldn't find the queen. The plan I made in the winter was already messed up. I expanded the apiary with an area about 150 feet to the south of the original apiary. I started building a fence on the north and west side as wind breakers. The first package, P1-24, arrived and I set it up next to P3-23. I would jump start P3-23 by taking a frame of brood with eggs from P1-24 as soon as possible and hope there were enough bees to keep it going. P2-24 and P3-24 arrived and I installed them on a stand in the new area. I didn't have any problems. All the packages looked better than the ones I got in 2023, but they didn't seem to expand as quick as what I thought they should. They had comb that was already drawn out but they expanded just like the 2023 bees, which started with no drawn out comb. I really wasn't happy about that. I did take brood from P2-24 and P3-24 to make a new colony. By mid-summer I had P3-23 and P1-24 on a stand in the original area. P2-24 and P3-24 were on a stand in the new area and S1-24 was on a stand in the new area. Five hives and they all seemed like they were doing pretty good. I did reconfigure all my brood chamber this year from the standard two Deep Supers. I made mine one Deep and two Medium Supers. They were a little easier to lift and it actually made the brood chamber a little bigger. The season was going well. I wasn't awkward anymore and I actually looked like I knew what I was doing. I almost never got stung. I still couldn't see very well, that wasn't going to change, but I did start finding the queens. I treated the colonies with Formic Pro in July. In October, I removed the queen excluders I had on a couple of the hives. The supers were heavy with honey. I saw wax on top of the all the frames below which can be an indication that they are running out of space to put honey. I didn't feed them sugar water in the spring because they already had drawn out comb. I started thinking and getting a little worried that I might not have had a good plan for this year and I was making some kind of unknown mistakes. I was getting the feeling that my bees were going to die in the winter again.
I'm caught up on my articles so now I'll be writing in the present.
P3-23 has a Queen and lots of bees, but it doesn't have any brood or honey stored, Strange. I think it got robbed out, but I though the robbers killed everything in the hive they rob. I'm going to start feeding them sugar water and hope they make brood and they are able to pack away some sugar water as honey. I'm going to feed them sugar bricks and check them often in the winter. I might get a infrared gun so I can see the cluster in the hives.
I'm feeding all the colonies sugar water. The other hives are heavy and the top supers are filled with honey. I have some sugar bricks from last winter that I kept in the freezer and I'm making more. I'm going to put them on soon.