Moving Beehives

Tag Archive for: Moving Beehives

Expanding Your Beekeeping: The Benefits of a Second Bee Yard

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As an experienced beekeeper, you’ve nurtured your hives and witnessed the wonder of their industriousness. But as your bee population grows, you may find yourself contemplating the merits of establishing a second apiary (bee yard).

One compelling reason to establish a second apiary is to alleviate competition for nectar and pollen sources among your hives. When too many bees are concentrated in a single area, they may become stressed and engage in robbing behavior, where they invade other hives to steal their resources.  By distributing your colonies across two locations, you effectively reduce the strain on local nectar and pollen sources. This allows individual hives to thrive and gather more resources, ultimately leading to increased honey production. Studies have shown that maintaining smaller colonies in multiple apiaries yields higher honey yields compared to a single, large apiary.

A second apiary offers a crucial layer of flexibility and resilience in managing your bee population. If one apiary becomes temporarily unavailable due to pesticide spraying, neighbor complaints, or unforeseen circumstances, the other apiary can act as a reliable backup. This safeguards your beekeeping operation and ensures a continuous supply of honey.

When selecting a site for your second bee yard, consider a location that is at least 2-3 miles away from your original apiary. This distance minimizes the risk of bees from one apiary drifting back to the other, causing confusion and potential conflict. Additionally, the location should be within a reasonable travel distance to facilitate regular inspections and maintenance.

Acquiring a suitable location for your second apiary can be achieved through various means. Networking with friends and acquaintances may yield potential sites. Groves and orchards often welcome beekeepers for pollination services. Consider placing advertisements in farm journals or online agricultural forums to reach a wider audience.

Landowners may be more receptive to hosting your beehives if you offer honey in exchange for the use of their property. This mutually beneficial arrangement not only provides landowners with a valuable commodity but also demonstrates your commitment to maintaining a harmonious relationship.

Establishing a second bee yard marks an exciting step in your beekeeping journey. By diversifying your apiary locations, you can reap the rewards of increased honey production, enhanced flexibility, and reduced risks. Embrace the challenge of expanding your beekeeping horizons and witness the flourishing of your bees.

Is it Better to Keep Bees at Home or in an Outside Apiary?

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As an aspiring beekeeper, you can choose to keep your honeybees at your home, on your property in places such as your backyard or rooftop (depending on your local laws). You can also choose to keep your bees on a hosts’ property at an outside apiary.

Which is right for you? Home apiaries are not only very convenient, but the proximity allows you to closely monitor the bees and protect them against pests such as ants. It also allows you to regularly enjoy the bees and work with them on your own schedule — whenever you’re free or whenever the feeling strikes.

While it can be great to have the bees on your property, some aspects of at-home apiaries are less enjoyable. There may be issues with local zoning laws that prevent you from beekeeping how you’d like, depending on your location. Neighbors and house guests may worry about having the bees around, and you’ll need to be vigilant if any children or pets visit your home so that no one gets stung.

Outside apiaries are an alternative to at-home beekeeping. Setting up your apiary in the countryside can provide you with a beautiful destination, along with a built-in an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy nature.  Outside apiaries can be located away from people, so there is less reason to worry about upsetting neighbors or anyone being stung by the bees.

Since you must travel to an outside apiary, however, you must plan more and have an organized way of transporting your supplies. An offsite location may require you to have a truck, especially for loading supers of honey. Moving honey from an outside apiary can often be a heavy, messy task that requires more work and investment than when you are at home. Outside apiaries can also require tenants to provide an appropriate amount of honey to the owners about once per year, in exchange for use of their land.

If you are considering keeping your bees at an outside apiary, here are some questions you should consider to help you decide:

  • Is the apiary accessible by car?
  • How long is the drive to and from the apiary?
  • Do you have the time to make the drive regularly?
  • What are the wind and weather conditions at the apiary location?
  • Will bees be safe from predators or possible vandals at the apiary?
  • Is the apiary located in an area with sufficient flowering plants?

Do Honeybees Fly at Night?

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Honeybees can, and do, fly at night provided there is light.  If one shines a bright light upon a colony, the bees, both young and old, will wake up and fly out to investigate the disturbance.  Bees, like all insects, instinctively fly into bright lights at night.  However, in a normal, typical dark night, honeybees struggle to navigate and instinctively desire to instead “hang out” at the hive.

Most of us know that honeybees return to the hive at nightfall.  The usual nighttime bee activities include keeping the hive warm, cleaning up debris, processing the day’s nectar, pollen, and/or syrup collection, and of course, sleeping.  Yes, honeybees do sleep at night!  The foragers, tired out from their long day seeking nectar and pollen, tend to sleep for longer spells, whereas the younger bees sleep for shorter periods.  This enables the youngest bees to be active for portions of the night, when they take care of the necessary housekeeping activities that keep the hive healthy and productive.  On the other hand, the foraging bees need to work all day, so they take much of the nighttime to sleep.

Sometimes a foraging bee will get caught up in all of its exciting daytime work and lose track of time.  The poor bee may look up and face the harsh reality that it is now too late to make it home before nightfall.  When there is not enough light to safely fly, the bee will have to land someplace comfortable and try to endure the night alone.  In the summer months, this is usually not a problem.  In late autumn, however, a situation like this can be fatal.

Believe it or not, certain species of bees, primarily in tropical areas, do the majority of their flying at night!  These special kinds of bees have evolved to take advantage of species of flowers that bloom only at night.  They are night pollinators.  For us beekeepers, however, it is a good thing that our honeybees don’t like to fly at night.  Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to find a good time to move the bees or to find any downtime for us humans!

Anticipating vs. Reacting

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When we were just getting started here at Wildflower Meadows, an old-time beekeeper was retiring and eagerly sold us some of his equipment.  As we were getting ready to drive away with our truckload of beekeeping gear, and our dreams for the future, he offered us a piece of immeasurable parting advice.  He insisted that we understand that a skilled beekeeper always anticipates the upcoming, and never just reacts to what is happening in the now.  In beekeeping, he said, reacting to the present conditions is always too late.  He explained that his advice especially applied to the honey supers that we were purchasing.  He wanted us to make sure that the supers were on the hives, in place, and ready to go before the honey flow so as not to miss the action.  And then, he insisted that we should take them off right before the honey flow ends, well before the robbing starts so as to be less stressful on the bees.

Actually, his wise and priceless advice applies to almost all of beekeeping.  It is true that the best beekeepers stay ahead of the conditions, and not just react to them.  There is much to anticipate in beekeeping, and reacting is almost always too late.  For example, when a colony is in danger of overcrowding, some sort of swarm control needs to be done before it is too late.  When a queen is failing, she needs to be replaced before the hive declines precipitously.  If there are neighbors nearby with swimming pools, the bees should be given a clean and reliable water source before trouble ensues, and so on . . .

Sadly, many of the supers that we purchased from this gentleman burned up in one of the too-many-to-count California wildfires that seem to strike every year.  Yet, sometimes we still run into a few pieces of surviving equipment here and there, which always brings a smile.  More importantly, however, this beekeeper’s sage advice – far more valuable – lives on.  In our company, we take this advice to heart and always try our best to anticipate, and act, on what lies ahead.

Pesticide Spraying

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Every spring, around late May, more or less, comes the dreaded phone call: “Hi, we just wanted to let you know that we will be spraying the grove at . . . ____ .  We know that you have bees in the area and want to give you a chance to move them out before we begin pesticide spraying.”

While perfectly courteous and respectful, this call and those like them are particularly bothersome here at Wildflower Meadows.  Oftentimes, the yard in question has a group of emerging virgin queens that are just getting oriented to the area.  Other times, the colonies in the yard just received a batch of sensitive queen cells.  At these critical points, it can be detrimental to have to move a colony of bees to a new location.  Yet, they have to be moved.  And, typically, we lose the queens when this happens.

The other challenge of receiving late May spray calls is the unfortunate timing.  Late May is usually the end of our busiest season.  Our crews are growing tired from working long hours since late March, and now have a new, unexpected project to tackle.  Of course the days are long at this time of year, so we have to wait until the sun finally sets to begin the moving process.

The final blow often takes place after we ultimately move the bees to what we think is a safe location, then receive a new incoming call of: “Hi, we see that you just moved bees into the area.  We plan on spraying there next week  . . . ”

 

 

Migratory Beekeeping

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Some of our largest customers at Wildflower Meadows are migratory beekeepers.  Migratory beekeepers in the United States begin each new year in California pollinating almonds.  After that their paths diverge.  Some move their bees to orange groves to produce orange blossom honey.  Other beekeepers continue on to Oregon and Washington to pollinate cherries, cranberries, and apples.  By summer, many of these same beekeepers can be found in the Great Plains producing clover honey.  In the fall and winter, most of these very same beekeepers move their bees to warmer climates, like these here in Southern California, for over-wintering.

What makes all this possible is the existence of the vast United States interstate highway system, the availability of large flatbed trucks, and forklifts.  Migratory beekeepers keep their bees on pallets, usually four to a pallet – most usually known as “four-ways.”  The pallet doubles as a bottom board for the colonies, each of which are held in place by clips.  When it comes time to move the bees, the beekeeper can easily pick up a pallet of four colonies at a single time with a forklift.  Giant 18-wheel flatbed trucks are loaded with upwards of 400 colonies each.  Depending on the distance of the move, the load is netted down, and the truckers head on their way to more abundant pastures.

While migratory beekeeping benefits the bees in certain ways – the bees always find themselves in the midst of flowering crops or fields – it is hard on them in other ways.  The constant moving can lead to stress, which can result in queen losses.  And, keeping bees on pallets and in close quarters is not necessarily ideal because it can lead to the spread of mites and diseases.

Migratory beekeeping can also be hard on the beekeepers, who spend large amounts of the year away from home and family.  The life of a migratory beekeeper features many days on the road, staying in cheap hotels, eating fast food, and almost all of the of time worrying about planning and logistics.

Despite all this hardship, not enough praise can be offered to these brave beekeepers, and the contributions that they make to our food supply.  Without migratory beekeepers and their invaluable pollination services, our crops would suffer greatly – and we would too.  Migratory beekeepers are among the true heroes of beekeeping!

Photo courtesy of Allen’s Honey Company, Brawley, California, pollinators of almonds, melons, alfalfa and countless vegetable seed crops.

California Diamondback

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One of the most enjoyable parts of working with bees is having the opportunity to work outside within the beauty of nature.  In the semi-rural areas of Southern California, where our apiaries are located, we regularly run across all sorts of animals.  In the course of a typical day, we are almost always greeted by chirping birds – finches, mockingbirds, jays, woodpeckers – and even wild peacocks and turkeys.  Occasionally we meet up with a coyote or two, and sometimes even catch a glimpse of a roadrunner scurrying through the bee yard.

Not as enjoyable, however, is when we encounter rattlesnakes.  You might think that bees and rattlesnakes would keep their distance from one another, and that a beekeeper would not be at much risk of running into rattlesnakes.  Unfortunately, you would be wrong.  Rattlesnakes love burrowing under beehives.  The bees don’t bother them, nor do they bother the bees.  It is a perfect arrangement for the rattlesnake; the beehives provide shade in the summer and naturally warm temperatures at night.  Being cold-blooded, rattlesnakes are pleased to discover that relaxing below a buzzing beehive provides a temperature-controlled canopy year-round.  Not only that, the beehives offer excellent cover from birds of prey and other nuisances . . . such as humans.

Although not an everyday occurrence, several times a year we find ourselves face to face with a rattlesnake.  While harvesting queen bees for sale, and taking equipment back to the shop, we have to pick-up our queen mating nucs off the ground.  When a colony comes off the ground and we discover a coiled rattler underneath, our hearts skip a beat, or two.  That look, with the flat head, diamonds across the back, and a rattle at the end of its tail is unmistakable.  And, just in case there is any mistaking the look, a small shake of the rattle leaves little doubt of what’s at hand!

So far, no one here at Wildflower Meadows has ever been bitten, as each of our beekeepers have learned and practice what we call the beehive “two-step”:  lift the colony, take two steps back.  More often than not, the rattlesnake will move away on its own, far out of the bee yard and into another crawl place.  Other times, we will very carefully relocate the snake with a stick.  We haven’t had to kill one yet, and really don’t want to.  The rattlesnakes, frightful as they may be, are a natural part of our ecosystem, our apiaries, and a big plus to us beekeepers in helping to keep the rodents away.

Everything Is Just Right

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Wildflower Meadows’ employees have been out and about lately moving bees in anticipation of the upcoming queen-rearing season.  Raising queens waits for no one, and the work generally continues rain or shine.  At this time of year, we spend our mornings grading our bee stock, then shuffling individual colonies to the proper yards.  Breeders go to the queen rearing yards, strong drone rearing colonies get consolidated near our mating areas, colonies are re-graded, and so on . . .

On the surface, this photo looks like a miserable situation.  Here, one of our employees is moving a few breeder colonies to our queen-rearing area.  It is pouring rain, and around the apiaries there is mud absolutely everywhere.  One might think that all is wrong, but truly, everything is just right.

First of all, we are finally experiencing rain here in Southern California!  This means that the drought conditions are subsiding, and the bees will have an abundance of foraging opportunities later in the season.  Second, the breeders that we are selecting look great!  They have overwintered exceptionally well and are now being handpicked for the upcoming season.  Third, our Columbia rain gear comes from the Pacific Northwest, where they know a thing or two about rain and keeping a person dry.  And finally, because we just installed new mud tires on this pickup truck – we are just in time to have a little fun and sling some mud!

Mud Slinging

Waiting For Nightfall

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One of the unusual aspects of working in commercial beekeeping is the keeping of inconsistent and irregular work hours.  Especially when moving bees, large amounts of work takes place at night.  Commercial beekeepers often need to move bees to take advantage of upcoming honey flows, evade upcoming pesticide spraying, or to establish new colonies in a new location.

It is much easier – and safer – to move bee colonies at night while the bees are dormant and inside their hives, than to move them while they are active during the height of day.  The procedure usually goes something like this:  Colonies are loaded onto flatbed trucks at sunset right after the last of the field workers have returned to their colonies from foraging.  Then, depending on the length of the move, they are either trucked to their new location right away during the night, or they are parked temporarily while the beekeepers catch some sleep, and then installed into their new location early the next morning before the sun rises.

At Wildflower Meadows, we occasionally move colonies throughout the year for all of the reasons mentioned above.  Plus, we are also constantly building and moving in mating nucs to new and existing locations for our queen rearing operation.  Although much of our regular beekeeping work takes place during the day, most of our bee moving activities take place at night and during the early morning hours.  The work can be hard and tiring, but the peace and natural beauty of working outside during quiet hours can make it all worthwhile.

Above, a flatbed truck sits parked with the bees, waiting for nightfall, until the moment arrives when the beekeeper can begin loading…

Relocating Beehives

Relocating Beehives

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Unlike many insects – and many other animals for that matter – bees are able to relocate fairly easily.  Likely, because they are naturally predisposed to swarm, honeybees can quickly adjust to a new location.

This year, because of the California drought, Wildflower Meadows’ bees were having a difficult time finding nectar and pollen to feed on in their usual locations.  The plants had all turned brown and flowers were nowhere to be found.  We decided to help some of our strong and hungry colonies by moving them a couple of hundred miles to an area with irrigated fields of alfalfa.  While not the most nutritious bloom – alfalfa flowers are high in nectar, but low in pollen – alfalfa nectar is still far superior to no nectar.  Surely enough, with the addition of pollen supplement patties, the bee colonies remained strong and added additional weight rapidly.  Last week, it was time to move the colonies back to their original home, and prepare them for a new season of queen bee rearing.

Relocating beehives is a challenging operation.  Beehives are heavy.  Bee colonies need to be moved at night; and safety on the roads is a critical concern.  It usually takes two strong individuals to lift a heavy double deep colony of bees.  However, for moving this set of bees, we used a hydraulic boom loader, which allowed a single person to handle the job.  The loader grabs the beehives by two cleats that are attached to the bottom deep hive body of the colony.  Stacks of two beehives at a time are hoisted up on to a flatbed truck.  The entrances are placed facing forward so that the bees receive ventilation while traveling.  Finally, two heavy ropes secure each row.  Before long, it was time to hit the road with a quarter of a million “ride sharing” insects!