Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in central Illinois! Wow, what a great start to another beekeeping season. Bees are finally experiencing some warmer temperatures, natural nectar and pollen so things are finally feeling pretty good.

Sheri and I have had so much fun over these last few months teaching hundreds of new beginners about beekeeping. Our business is operating so much better each year thanks to great customers like you. We are flooded with beekeeping questions from all over the US. Sometimes all lines are ringing at once. So when you call in, please be patient with us as two of our daughters who work for us have had surgery and are off for a while. We are excited that Karee and Jesse are expecting their first child, but there are complications and Karee is on indefinite best rest. Please keep her in your prayers, thank you.

 

We had a wonderful response to our first ever package bee pickup class. Our regular beginner classes are held all day Saturday but we decided to test a 3 hour class on the same day as new beginners were picking up their bees. It was great. I took them out and showed them how to install a package with a real package, then we inspected a hive one week after installation, and then we opened up an overwintered hive. I could hear the students responding with excitement over what they were seeing for the first time, face to face with a live hive with bees flying around and seeing a queen at work on comb. It was a hoot!

 

Our next exciting adventure in bees will be our week long Beekeeping Institute June 17-21, 2013.
Alex Wild taught me how to use my iPhone for a very close up shot I took last week. Click on the image to see the detail. Alex will be teaching a class at our Beekeeping Institute. Check it out below.

INSTRUCTORS: David Burns EAS certified master beekeeper, Sheri Burns Colony Problem Solver and beekeeper, Charlie Nye Bee Researcher and Bee Lab Manager at the University of Illinois Bee Lab and Alex Wild, biologist, insect photographer and beekeeper. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE WEEK LONG BEEKEEPING INSTITUTE or Click below to sign up for one or several of our classes that week:

Day 1- Basic Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 2- Practical Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 3 - Advance Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 4 - Queen Rearing Taking Registrations Now

Day 5 - Insect Photography Taking Registrations Now

Maybe you’ve heard all the reports and chatter about recent reports about why bees are dying. I’M ON THE TALK SHOW, FOCUS, TOMORROW FROM 10am-11am to discuss all of this. You can call in and ask a question.

This Wednesday (May 8th) I'll be on the Radio Talk Show, FOCUS with May Berenbaum, Professor of Entomology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. It's a call in or email in 1 hour radio program at 580 on the am dial. Here's how you can call in or email your questions during this live broadcast: During the show, you can call us at 217-333-9455 or toll-free at 800-222-9455 or send an email to: will-talk@illinois.edu with your beekeeping questions.

For those of you outside the Champaign/Urbana, Illinois listening area, we'll post a link on our website to the archive of this one hour discussion about why bees are dying.

"The US Agriculture Department said yesterday that the honey bee population declined by more than 30 percent last winter, continuing a decrease in honey bee numbers that began in 2005. That's a problem as more than 20 billion dollars worth of annual harvests rely on bees for pollination. No one really knows exactly why bee populations are dropping, although many speculate it's due to what scientists are calling colony collapse disorder. Researchers have pointed to pesticides, stress and microbial organisms  as possible causes but conclusive answers have so far been elusive.

This hour on Focus, host Jim Meadows talks with May Berenbaum, Professor of Entomology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign about colony collapse disorder, what it is, and what might be causing it. According to new research, high fructose corn syrup could also play a role. We'll also hear from David Burns, a Master Beekeeper and owner of Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in Fairmount." –FOCUS580

Our cedar hives have become a smashing hit! They are beautiful and our customers and loving them. Some are using Tung oil as a natural preservative. I build each top of the cedar hive myself. It has insulation in the top, along with a piece of copper along the peak. We had requests for 8 frame cedar hives too, shown in the picture. To purchase a cedar hive for your garden or yard, click here.

 

 

We’ll be taking a much needed break so Our offices will be closed May 22 - May 29. Our middle son is a Marine and will be deployed to Afghanistan in a few months so we'll be taking a few days off to spend with him. I’ll be riding my motorcycle from Illinois to California too see him. No orders will be shipped during this time and any orders placed during this time will be shipped within 10-14 business days after we return so please place your orders with this in mind. Hope to see you at our Beekeeping Institute June 17-21 here at our honey bee farm. Come spend the week with us!

LESSON 137: What Do Bees Need Most In The Spring?

The answer to this question is, a well educated beekeeper who makes regular inspections.  If you do not feel you are well educated in the beekeeping area, let’s have a crash course, some fundamental starting points.

First, now that it is spring and you are starting with a new package or a nuc, you must monitor you queen. Queens are fragile and can be killed by the clumsy movements of a beginner. Early queens can die and no one knows why other than living things do die. So DO NOT allow more than two weeks to go by without inspecting the health for your queen.

Most of you have installed your package but let me give two tips. Use a screen bottom board and when you install your package, place an entrance feeder in the front of your hive with 1:1 sugar water and block off the entrance so no bees can exit for 48 hours after installing the package. After 2 days, allow a small opening for the bees to fly in and out. It is not uncommon for a small percentage of new packages to abscond, which is when the entire hive leaves. By keeping the colony blocked in for 2 days it gives them time to release the queen and start building a small amount of comb for the new queen. The second tip is to use an entrance reducer all year. I set mine to the largest setting. This restricts the opening to around 3 inches giving the guard bees the ability to keep out unwanted pests. That’s still plenty of room to go in and out even during a heavy nectar flow.

HEALTH OF THE QUEEN is evaluated by inspecting her brood pattern. Look at frames of sealed or capped brood. Make sure it looks dry and not many cells missed. Now, look for larvae and eggs. Please take time every 2 weeks to ensure your queen is laying eggs. If you do not see eggs or larvae order a queen immediately. Every day without a queen means your hive is declining in population by 2,000 bees a day!  Everything you do now is getting your hive ready to survive the winter.

While you do not have to feed you new colony as long as the weather is good and the flowers are producing, some suggest it is a good ideal to feed 1:1 sugar water as long as the bees are drawing out the comb on your new foundation.

Finally, the success of your hive will be determined by how aggressive you are toward the varroa mite. This is what we teach in all our classes. The varroa mite is our number one enemy. Start now using your green drone comb, powdered sugar drops and screen bottom boards.

Thanks for joining us for another beekeeping lesson! Don’t forget to join us Wednesday on 580AM and call in with some good questions. Sheri and I believe the honey bees will only continue to make a comeback if more and more citizens take up beekeeping. Hobbyist can step forward and make a huge impact on the survival of the honey bee by keeping bees, allowing weeds and flowers to grow, never poison honey bees and sharing the important role honey bees play in pollination.

We hope you’ll visit our website at www.honeybeesonline.com, buy some hives and get started in beekeeping! It’s not too late. Now is a great time to dive in. Though we are sold out of packages, we’ll provide you with the numbers of reliable package providers that will ship bees to you. We are ready to be your friend and mentor in beekeeping. See you next time!
David and Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
www.honeybeesonline.com
217-427-2678
 

Hello we are David and Sheri Burns here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. We are having a blast with honey bees. Beekeeping is downright fun. Our bees are coming out of winter in good shape and we are excited that spring is making an appearance.  Last year was our best honey crop ever. More and more new people are entering into the exciting hobby of beekeeping. It amazes me how many people are now starting to keep honey bees because they are realizing the important and vital role honey bees play in pollination so we can have food. We cannot do without our honey bees. For those of you wanting to start beekeeping this year, now is the perfect time. It’s not too late to start keeping bees. We are hear to sell you the equipment needed to keep bees, educate you either through one of our beekeeping classes or our online lessons.

We have these extensive lessons as well as beekeeping videos where you can learn more about beekeeping. We are a unique beekeeping business because we are a total turn key operation. We provide the education (certified master beekeeper) through classes and online lessons and an extensive online beekeeping store to purchases needed beekeeping equipment and supplies, bees, queens and more.

We believe that educated beekeepers have better success. Therefore, we are offering a week long BEEKEEPING INSTITUTE. June 17-21, 2013.

INSTRUCTORS: David Burns EAS certified master beekeeper, Sheri Burns Colony Problem Solver and beekeeper, Charlie Nye Bee Researcher and Bee Lab Manager at the University of Illinois Bee Lab and Alex Wild, biologist, insect photographer and beekeeper. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE WEEK LONG BEEKEEPING INSTITUTE or Click below to sign up for one or several of our classes that week:

Day 1- Basic Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 2- Practical Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 3 - Advance Beekeeping Taking Registrations Now

Day 4 - Queen Rearing Taking Registrations Now

Day 5 - Insect Photography Taking Registrations Now

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU

Sheri and I are constantly flooded with positive feedback about our hives, queens, bees, classes and business. We are starting a page of customer’s testimonies. Please email your testimony, either how we have helped you on the phone, in person, through these lessons or our hand made hives. Email us at: testimony@honeybeesonline.com If you want, you can even include a picture. Thank you!

Every Monday on our facebook page we present a challenging question and the first one to answer it correctly wins a Long Lane Honey Bee Farms coffee mug with a bag of coffee beans that David personally roasts himself. He likes his coffee strong. Follow us on facebook.

Facebook is a great place to hear from us daily and to keep up on what we are learning about honey bees on a regular basis. Not to mention that Sheri and I are just fun to follow :) Follow us on facebook.

 

 

Advance Beekeeping Training

I will be holding an Advance Beekeeping Training Workshop near Chicago, Illinois at the Heritage Prairie Farms located at  2N308 Brundige Road, Elburn, IL 60119.

Topics covered will be: Swarm management, splitting hives, rotating hive bodies, queen rearing, specialize equipment, detail inspection techniques, overwintering hives in the north, pests & diseases and more.

This workshop will be on Saturday April 27th, from 9am - 4pm. Call to register: 630-443-5989
Heritage Prairie Farm is located approximately 40 miles west of Chicago along Route 38 or 2.5 miles west of Randall Rd. on Brundige Rd. on the south side of Route 38. Coming from the North or South, Route 38 intersects with the following: Routes 47, 25, 31, 59; and Interstate 355 and 294. For more information or to register call 630-443-5989

 

LESSON 136: Honey Bees Are In The News Again, Should We Be Concerned?

Honey bees find their way into the news on a regular basis.Now, they are back in the headlines. I normally do not spend much time addressing the various news headlines because there is a certain level of sensationalism. However, I think it’s time to speak to the current issues facing honey bees and what is fact or fiction. But if you don’t want to read everything below, let me say it is my opinion that not much has really changed. I’ve read Rev. Langstroth’s overwinter issues back in the late 1800s and early 1900s and even without mites there were times bee losses were high.

In 2006-2007 bees really hit the news because many large commercial beekeepers were suddenly losing colonies. Speculations soon appeared in the news, from everything from green Martians, farm spray, to cell phones towers. Although portrayed as something never heard of before, very similar disappearances of bees have been reported over the last 100 years. Somewhere after all the dust settled we called it Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD for short.  It was a new name for an old problem.

When bees first made their news debut, it was a double edge sword. While we were sad that CCD had caused the loss of many hives something happened that few of us ever expected, a silver lining in the cloud of disappearing bees—they started returning! Let me clarify. While it was true that CCD caused bees to simply disappear from hives, leaving only the queen and a small number of bees left to slowly die, the interest in saving the bees grew rapidly. Honey bees returned to the scene.. Prior to CCD honey bees were slowly being forgotten at best and carelessly being neglected at worst. While a few might not ever miss another stinging insect, most of the population quickly became concerned as to what a lack of honey bees would do to our food supply, especially since we are more in tune with eating healthier foods that bees pollinate.

Responsible citizens armed themselves with suits and hive tools and started keeping bees for the first time. This was tremendous. And the movement is gaining momentum.  Bee populations were saved! Now home owners finding bees living in houses and buildings are relying on competent removal experts to carefully remove bees without killing them. Pest control companies have stopped killing honey bees and are referring the matter over to beekeepers to rescue the honey bees. What first appeared bad turned out pretty good.

Are bees really dying? They always have died. Humans have always died.  Will bees become extinct soon and we will be left to eat oatmeal and rice? No. That is, as long as responsible citizens continue to take several important steps:

1. Start Keeping Bees

Sheri and I have always had a passion to help more people keep bees because the more beekeepers, the more bees. In the late 1700s and early 1800s John Chapman traveled around planting apple trees. In parts of the Midwest early settlers were required to plant an apple orchard to claim their land. I’ve always admire the life of Jonny Appleseed and his passion to plant apple trees.  We need that kind of passion for planting bee hives. Honey bees are amazing creatures and deserve our attention, care and help. If you’d like to become a beekeeper, click here for more information.

2. Stop Killing Every Weed

I’ve lived in the big city where everything is concrete and asphalt. I know we often want our yards perfectly manicured, no weeds and every fence row cleared and ditch mowed. Keep in mind that for every flowering weed we kill, we are depriving honey bees of their substance of life. They must have nectar and pollen and much of what they gather comes from the wild flowers we don’t like such as dandelions and clover in our yards. I’m not so much concerned about thousands of acres of corn and beans, but rather about thousands of acres of wild flowers that are being lost. These flowers provide the variety of pollen our bees need to be healthy. We need to stop killing the weeds.

 

3. Never Poison Or Kill Bees In Trees or Homes

We should never kill honey bees. If they swarm onto or into our homes, we should seek a skilled beekeeper or a professional removal company to safely remove the bees and place them into their own hive. When hives are poisoned inside of walls and structures, the poisoned honey is robbed out by other healthy colonies and the tainted honey is taken back to other hives where it will continue killing bees. This is very sad and troubling. With bees in decline it  would be sad to know how many hives have been killed deliberately or through careless spraying of insecticides.

4. Spread The Word About The Importance Of Pollination Of Honey Bees

I was speaking to someone today explaining that honey bee pollination has a 15 Billion dollar agriculture value a year! He is a Schwann salesman and I told him that if bees are greatly reduced he will only be selling oatmeal and rice from his truck. Without bees there will be little to no vegetables, fruits, beef, no ice cream and on goes the list. Some people view our food as coming from stores and as long as stores sell food we don’t need bees. However, we must educate others that pollination of honey bees is what makes food available in stores.

When bees die, fingers are pointed at farm chemicals, CCD, mites, poor queens and the list goes on. All of these and more can harm honey bees. But let’s not forget the beekeeper. Poorly trained beekeepers and beekeepers who push their bees are the cause of many losses. With increased knowledge and improved management skills beekeepers will keep healthier colonies. We need more beekeepers, but well trained beekeepers.

Sheri and I believe the honey bees will only continue to make a comeback if more and more citizens take up beekeeping. Hobbyist can step forward and make a huge impact on the survival of the honey bee by keeping bees, allowing weeds and flowers to grow, never poison honey bees and sharing the important role honey bees play in pollination.

Thanks for joining us for another beekeeping lesson. We hope you’ll visit our website at www.honeybeesonline.com, buy some hives and get started in beekeeping! It’s not too late. Now is a great time to dive in. Though we are sold out of packages, we’ll provide you with the numbers of reliable package providers that will ship bees to you. We are ready to be your friend and mentor in beekeeping.

See you next time!
David and Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
www.honeybeesonline.com
217-427-2678

Beekeeping is so enjoyable! It not too late in the season to start beekeeping in 2013. We are here to help. We build all the hive equipment right here in east central Illinois. We are a total turn key operation, meaning we’ll get you started in beekeeping the right way through our classes, equipment and bees. When you call you will be speaking to a well trained beekeeper. We will not try and sell you things you do not need or things that do not work just to make a sale. We want you to be a successful beekeeper. If our beekeepers cannot answer your beekeeping question, they’ll turn you over to me. I started keeping bees in 1994 and I’ve been a certified master beekeeper for 3 years. We are here to help answer all your questions.

I have written 135 beekeeping lesson from years of my own experience, research and experiments. In today’s lesson, I will be teaching you the dangers of losing your bees in late winter or early spring from cold snaps resulting in starvation. But before I dive into today’s lesson, I want to introduce ourselves more and introduce you to the wonderful world of beekeeping.

Sheri and I own Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. We named it that because we live down a long lane with beehives scattered down our quarter mile lane. We have hives in several other places, but this is where we raise our Illinois Pioneer Queens, winter hardy, chemical free survival bees. We are a mid-west, hard working family in our 50’s employing many of our grown children and some friends from our church to help get the job done. We are a home school family and have been blessed by God with a bee business to provide for our family. Our business is driven by our strong Christian values from Scriptures like, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…” (Colossians 3:23). We do our best to treat our customers by the Golden Rule, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you…”(Matthew 7:12).  So we appreciate all of our fantastic customers who choose to help support our business by purchasing from us. Thank you!  We know you may have other choices so thank you for giving us a chance to serve you.

  Once again we are gearing up for our next beekeeping class this Saturday, March 23rd. This class has been full for several weeks. We are remodeling our store to make the flow of things go better during our classes. We are stocking the shelves getting ready for the spring season. Local beekeepers appreciate that they can stop in and purchase the hives and equipment they need locally. Beekeepers around the US benefit from our online store, shipping needed beekeeping hives and equipment throughout the country.

Sheri wanted our store to have honey bee comb hexagonal cells painted on the wall. Jesse made a large stamp and I dipped it in painted and away I went!  It was fun and turned out better than we thought.

Over a year ago we began to add an additional hive to our line of beekeeping equipment. Up until now we have built our hives of Langstroth tradition, with the occasional top bar hive. A year ago we purchased some cedar boards and began exploring the idea of building our hives out of cedar. Cedar is a slightly thicker board and is smooth on one side and rough on the other. We wanted to make sure we could keep the traditional sizes of our hives and frames and still retain bee space.

Also, we had to design our own peaked top rather than our flat tops. Jesse spent several months thinking through a cedar top and finally came up with a top that is peaked and has a strip of copper across the top. We decided that our Langstroth cedar hive will come with two deep hive bodies and two medium supers, with wooden frames and foundation. Our cedar hives are fully assembled and untreated and unpainted. They are absolutely beautiful. The natural color of cedar is gorgeous. Cedar is very expensive, so our cedar hives are more expensive than our traditional pine hives. However, if you’re looking for beauty, it’s worth the price. Remember these are built right here in our shop, no middle man here. We take pride in our work. If you’d like to purchase one of our cedar hives, CLICK HERE.

Of course our most popular hive is our standard Langstroth hive. Many people ask me how we got into making bee hives. Well, years ago, I made a hive and put it on eBay. It sold immediately.  I built another one and it sold immediately. When we first started we only sold on eBay because we didn’t have a website. Now that’s all changed. I made my hives with a few special features that I wanted in my hives as a beekeeper. We still make these hives the same way.  We love them and so do our customers. Our Langstroth hives are fully assembled and painted. We also include metal frame rests in all boxes to help the frames more more freely when inspecting the hive. Our hives are all built with screen bottom board to assist with ventilation and Integrated Pest Management. Our special inner cover provides upper ventilation. Painted with a high quality exterior paint this hive will stand proud in your yard for years to come. We ship hives all over the US. Look at our shipping cost to ship a hive in the US (except Hawaii or Alaska) Only $29. Click here to order today! This offer only applies to our traditional hive, item #1.

 

We've listened to our customers and so many wanted a class on package bee pickup day. So here it is. May 4th, our basic beginners 3 hour class. 9am until noon.  Come pick up your bees and equipment and take our 3 hour class. Be sure to order equipment in advance. This is a very introductory class and does not go into as much detail as our all day classes. But if you just need to learn about beekeeping equipment,  how to install a package, and how to inspect a hive, you’ll enjoy this three hour class. You must have protective gear to go into the bee yard. All students must be paid and registered to attend. Click here to register now.

LESSON 135: March Is One Of The Hardest Months For Bees In The North

We all want our bees to survive the winter. Beekeepers in the south have a much shorter winter than we do in the north. I live near the 40th parallel, map jargon which means I’m in central Illinois. It gets cold here. Many beekeepers make the mistake that since March doesn’t seem like a cold, brutal winter month that the bees are out of the woods. But nothing could be further from the truth. In the north, queens begin laying more which requires much more honey and pollen consumption. But, there is nothing much left and nothing yet to gather. It’s too cold to forage even if there was something blooming.

To make it even harder, most of the northern US has had challenging bee weather over the last few days. This is when it warms us in the day but drops quickly and drastically at night. For the last week, and sounds like all next week, our temperatures have been in the 40s in the daytime and in the teens at night. The reason this can be hard on bees is because at 40+ degrees the bees will break cluster in the hive, move around and eat honey. But as the sun goes down and the temperature drops suddenly the bees may fail to regroup into a tight cluster. Sometimes they get separate into several clusters and then cannot generate enough heat to keep from freezing to death if temperatures plummet into the teens and the bees are low in numbers or short of food.

Bees need food to generate heat. They eat honey so they can vibrate and make heat. What you can do to help shave off the sudden evening chill into the teens and give the bees a better opportunity to cluster correctly is use a heavy blanket and lay over the hive at sundown. Place some bricks on the blanket to keep it on the hive. Do not cover the hive completely as this might not allow enough air for the hive. Do not cover the front entirely with the blanket. In preparation of this lesson, I placed a blanket on one of our hives. I remove it during the day. Do not let it get rained on or it will hold too much moisture near the hive.

Watch my complete video on how I use a Winter-Bee-Kind and blanket.(In the last 30 days 35,000 people have watched our YouTube Beekeeping videos.) I only recommend the blanket when the day is warm but the evening temperature will drop into the lower 20s or teens and your bees  might be low in numbers. Small clusters can die when temperatures drop into the teens. That’s why we recommend not installing new packages of bees in the north until mid April. A 3 lb package only contains 10,000 bees on new foundation with nothing stored in the comb to heat. And a lake of drawn comb makes it hard for the bees to stay warm. This makes a cold night.

Please be careful not to feed bees too much liquid sugar if the day will be too cold for the bees to fly. They will be unable to relieve themselves. We prefer to feed the Winter-Bee-Kind candy boards to bees in late winter because it is an emergency feed for when the bees start to run out of food without overloading their guts.

Thanks for joining us for another beekeeping lesson. We hope you’ll visit our website at www.honeybeesonline.com, buy some hives and get started in beekeeping! It’s not too late. Now is a great time to dive in. Though we are sold out of packages, we’ll provide you with the numbers of reliable package providers that will ship bees to you. We are ready to be your friend and mentor in beekeeping.

See you next time!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
www.honeybeesonline.com
217-427-2678

Hello and welcome to Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. We are David and Sheri Burns. We are passionate about beekeeping and we work hard to help you enjoy honey bees and beekeeping as much as we do. We are located in east central Illinois, a hard working family beekeeping business seeking to earn your business. I am an EAS certified master beekeeper and started beekeeping in 1994. We’ve been in business since 2006We hope you’ll make us the place where you will purchase all your beekeeping equipment and beekeeping supplies, but also the place you come to receive all of your beekeeping education.

In today’s lesson, I’ll answer one of the most commonly asked questions, “How do I know when to add the next hive body or super on my hive?”

Before today’s lesson let me encourage you to FEED YOUR BEES! Those of us in the central US or further north need to feed our bees coming out of winter. Most hives starve to death in February or March. Our Winter-Bee-Kinds are a big boost for hives in late winter or early spring. There is a period of time when nothing is blooming, but it is warming up and the bees have eaten through their winter honey and pollen stores but there is absolutely nothing out there for them. Click here to order a Winter-Bee-Kind. Available in 10 or 8 frame. If your bees have made it this far through a tough winter, don’t neglect them now!

Not only are our bees tired of winter, but we are fighting all the feelings of cabin fever too! We are taking our Vitamin D and wishing that spring would hurry up and arrive. The closer we get to spring, the more snow we keep getting. Come on! Sheri and I are both avid motorcyclists and last winter we rode our motorcycles all through the winter. Remember how warm it was. It was 80 degrees in February and March!

Sheri and I really enjoy hanging out with other beekeepers. It might seem crazy but  we enjoy welcoming a building full of beekeepers every Saturday here at our honey bee farm. Beekeepers are just the best kind of folks to associate with it seems to us. Thank you for being one of our customers. We know that you could do your business at other beekeeping places, so thank you for sharing your lives with us. Let me tell you about some of the great folks I met down in Arkansas.

I just returned home from spending a few days speaking in Little Rock, Arkansas at the University of Arkansas Agricultural Extension Department where the Arkansas Beekeepers State Association held an awesome event. It was so much fun. I spoke on: Breaking the Brood Cycle, The Value of Nucs, The Basics of Queen Rearing, Bee Pheromones, and Triage Beekeeping. Southern hospitality was at its best. Many people commented that they were fans of our Beekeeping video channel on YouTube. A special thank you to all the Arkansas beekeepers!!

We have a rapidly growing fan club who receives our special weekly mailing of specials we offer, links to our videos and other beekeeping tips. Click on the “Join our FREE Email Mailing List” below to sign up. Sometimes things appear in that mailing that do not appear in this blog, so join both!

Sheri and I have presented two basic beekeeping classes in February and due to popularity, we have three that are almost filled for March. March 30th class still has 8 openings.

Also for those of you who might be interested in a 3 hour class, we are offering a very introductory beekeeping crash course on May 4th from 9am –Noon at our facility. $39 Click here for more information.  This class is VERY introductory, nothing compared to our all day classes. But if it works for you to just quickly learn the basics of basics, this class might be for you. We look forward to introducing so many more people to the wonderful life of beekeeping.

Let me tell you about another exciting event we have coming up June 17-21, 2013. We are hosting a 5 day beekeeping institute here at our honey bee farms. This event consists of 5 awesome days of beekeeping teachings. You can sign up for the whole week and take all 5 classes and save, or take one or more classes individually, you decided. Here’s the schedule.

Monday June 17th – Basic Beekeeping Sign up for just this class or the whole Beekeeping Institute Week

This class is part of our week long beekeeping institute and will benefit those interested in keeping bees, as well as those who have been keeping bees for a couple of years but need a refresher course. We have designed this one day beekeeping course to cover topics on basic beekeeping. Click here to register now.

Tuesday June 18th – Practical Beekeeping   Sign up for just this class or the whole Beekeeping Institute Week

Now it’s time for the next step, hands on, practical steps to really learn beekeeping. Join our Practical Beekeeping class June 18th, 2013 as part of our week long Beekeeping Institute. We'll be teaching on proper field management such as lighting and using the smoker, how to reverse the hive boxes, tips on how to find the queen, how to use drone comb, beetle traps, powdered sugar treatment of mites, swarm prevention techniques, splitting hives, honey extraction, repairing boxes, Cloake board use, and inspecting a top bar and Warre hive. We will even place a live swarm in a tree to teach proper techniques on how to capture a swarm from a tree. (Many of these events will be demonstrated live in the field weather permitting, but inside if the weather if bad.)
Click here to register now.

Wednesday June 19th – Advance Beekeeping    Sign up for just this class or the whole Beekeeping Institute Week

Some people have kept bees for years but continue repeating the same mistakes and are not gaining the experience they need. They keep losing their bees. Many beekeepers are stuck being a first year beekeeper year after year. Take the next step, and leap into becoming a better beekeeper! We'll take a more in depth look at swarm prevention, splits, overwintering hives, pests & disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention, increased honey yields and tricks of the trade. Join Beekeeper David Burns, EAS certified Master Beekeeper and other experts for a day of Advance Beekeeping on Wednesday June 19th, 2013 at our new facility at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. Click here to register now.

Thursday June 20th – Learn How To Raise Queens   Sign up for just this class or the whole Beekeeping Institute Week

Our queen rearing courses continue to fill up and so we are offering another queen rearing class for Thursday June 20, 2013 9am-3pm at our new classroom facility here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. This is part of our week long beekeeping institute. Take all 5 classes and save $46. Every beekeeper can benefit greatly from learning to raise their own queens. With constant struggles with queenlessness and queens disappearing it's time to take the next step and stop buying queens and start raising your own! It will be worth the investment. Click here to register now.

Friday June 21st – Honey Bee and Insect Photography Taught By World Renowned Insect Photographer Alex Wild
Sign up for this class by itself or sign up for the entire Beekeeping Institute Week 

As part of our week long beekeeping institute we have a special day long class on honey bee and insect photography taught by world-wide renown insect photographer Alex Wild. Alex's honey bee photos appear in many popular beekeeping books and magazines. His website is: http://www.alexanderwild.com/ Save $46 and sign up for all 5 classes for the week or take this class separately. Click here to register now.

LESSON 134: When To Add More Boxes To The Hive?

Once you install your package of bees or nuc, your bees will begin to consume nectar from flowers or consume sugar water if you feed them. They will begin to produce wax from their wax glands and add it to your frames of foundation, drawing the foundation out to become drawn comb. Bees need to consume 8 pounds of nectar to produce just 1 pound of wax. Sometimes actually seeing and observing a lesson is better than words. So visit my new video on my website by clicking here because I have heard from many new beginner beekeepers that they do not understand the different between drawn comb and frames just foundation.

Click here to watch my video on knowing when to add another box to your hive. Just scroll down on our website and you’ll see the video. Or direct your browser to: http://www.honeybeesonline.com

My video explains it this way: Remember that when you first install your package or nuc, you will only want to use one deep hive body. Do not use more than one box.  If you use more, this can slow down the bee’s progress in drawing out comb and give extra, unprotected room for pests to hide in corners, like wax moth or small hive beetles. But the big question is how long should you wait until you add the second box. This applies whether you are using deep hive bodies for the brood area or medium sized boxes. Add your next box once the bees have drawn out 5-7 combs in their first box. How long this will takes depends upon the weather conditions and your individual bees. Inspect every two weeks to monitor your hive’s progress.

After you have placed your second hive body on, wait until it has 5-7 drawn comb with bees on the comb and then add your super. When adding your super, it is a good idea NOT to put a queen excluder on under undrawn foundation. So first, place your super of new, undrawn frames on the hive and wait until the bees and started working a couple of frames and have drawn out one or two frames. Then, add your queen excluder under your honey super. However, check each super frame to ensure the queen has not made her way into the super. If she has simply pick her up by her wings and release her between two frames in the deep hive body below then add your queen excluder, placing the super above the queen excluder.  If you do not want to handle your queen, try gently bumping the super frame she is on, shaking her into the deep hive body. But, I bet you will not see her up in the honey super if you catch the super with only one or two drawn comb.

Continue to add supers using this same idea, but be sure to wait until 5-7 frames are drawn out then add another super. I am frequently asked if the second honey super should be placed on top of the existing super or below it. Either way works. However, I prefer to place additional supers on top of existing supers. The filled super above the two deep brood nest area acts as a queen excluder. The queen seldom crosses the honey barrier of a full super. So by adding addition supers above a full one, I do not have to use a queen excluder.

Again, check out my video on this lesson by scrolling down on our main page at www.honeybeesonline.com

Do you need a hive? Our hives are family made right here in central Illinois!  Fully assembled and painted. Our hives include frames and foundation. Order now and avoid the spring rush and possible back logs. Thinking about making some spring splits in a few months or catching some swarms? You better have a hive ready to grow into! Click here for more information or to order now. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us for another beekeeping lesson. So much more to learn! We do hope you’ll give us a call, visit our website at www.honeybeesonline.com and come over and meet us at one of our classes.

See you next time!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
www.honeybeesonline.com
217-427-2678

 

We enjoy beekeeping so much. Every part of it is thoroughly enjoyable, even when I’m high atop a ladder carrying down a swarm from a tree barehanded. I’ve done about everything there is to do with bees and it really gets in your blood. It’s a hoot. We love bees.
Hi, thanks for stopping in on our website and learning more about beekeeping. Every where we go people will see the signs on our truck and ask me about bees. Most people tell me that they’ve always wanted to keep bees or that their dad or grandpa kept bees and now they’d like to keep bees too. It is amazing how many people are becoming beekeepers.
We are David and Sheri Burns and together, with many of our family members, we operate Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, a family beekeeping business dedicated to encourage, assist and educate others in the wonderful experience of keeping honeybees. We’re kind of like the Duck Dynasty people but without the beards, dynasty and ducks. We are the one stop beekeeping shop, providing classes, beekeeping supplies, and even the bees for those who are getting started in keeping honeybees. Perhaps you will be the next one to start.
Today, I want to share several important uses of a 5 frame nuc box. But before I do, let me share 3 things: 1) We have added a third basic beginners class on March 30th. We are also offering classes on March 9th and 23rd, but these classes only have a few openings, so we’ve added March 30th. These classes are all on Saturday from 9am – around 3:30 central time. They are held in our new beekeeping education center. It’s very comfortable and right here on the bee farm. Click here to read more about our beekeeping classes. Since there are many places to take beekeeping classes, we have detailed information as to what you’ll receive from taking one of our classes. Just click on Why Take Our Beekeeping Class
Secondly, we are offering $30 Off Our Completely Assembled & Painted Hive. Complete with screen bottom board, two deep hive bodies, 20 wooden deep frames and foundation, one super with 10 wooden super frames and foundation, inner cover and top cover, queen excluder and feeder! This offer is only good through midnight Sunday, February 17th, 2013.
Thirdly, we are only weeks away from the publication of our E-book on Beekeeping. It’s in its final editing and formatting stage. We are excited about this project and it has bee 5 years in the making. We will keep you posted on when this book will make is debut. This book is a collection of years of working with bees, research and 20 years of beekeeping experience. The book is around 300 pages long with very good pictures.

Lesson 133: Using A 5 Frame Nuc To Support A Hive

Today I want to share why it is helpful to own a 5 frame nuc. We use the word nuc because it is short for nucleus, which means a smaller part of a larger hive.  For years, I have been promoting the importance of using a small 5 frame nuc box as a smaller, support hive for a larger hive. So let me start here with the idea of using a small nuc to support a full size hive. How does this work? Here is an easy way to do it. From a full size hive remove 3 or 4 frames in the spring. Make sure you move frames over to the nuc that contain honey, pollen, brood and eggs. The nuc will raise a new queen from the frame of eggs. This will take about three weeks before you have a laying queen, so just be patient. If you move over 3 frames from your larger hive, use two new frames as this will allow the bees to build comb out on the new frames.
In three or four weeks, you’ll have a fully operational hive on five frames in your nuc box. The primary help offered by your nuc is that if something ever happens to the queen in your larger hive, you can move the queen from your nuc box into your queenless hive. You will, of course, need to place your nuc queen in a queen cage with a marshmallow covering the opening hole. This will allow the queenless, larger hive time to become familiar with the new queen while they are releasing her by consuming the marshmallow candy. Your nuc will be queenless only a short time because they will immediately start raising a new queen. The reason this is so valuable is because you’ll have access to replace your queen immediately once you discover your larger hive is queenless. And your queen will be a local queen from your area. Often it can take a week or two to order and receive a queen. Since a queen lays 1,000-3,000 eggs a day, the longer you wait for a queen, the less populated your hive becomes. If you wait 14 days for a queen, you will lose 21,000 future bees (1,500 eggs x 14 days). That is equal to two 3 lb packages of bees. $200 worth of bees.  This is especially important because many beekeepers fail to take their hive into winter with a good queen or even a queen at all. This causes the overwintering population of bees to be too low to keep warm, and the hive perishes in the winter with plenty of honey. They simply did not have the full count of bees to keep the hive warm, because of a queen issue. Click here to order our 5 frame nuc.
Another way a 5 frame nuc can be helpful is because it has frames of resources that at any time can be transferred over to a weaker hive. If a larger hive is running short of pollen or honey, a frame can be transferred from the nuc. Or if a weak hive needs a shot in the arm of brood, a frame of brood can be move over.
The 5 frame nucs can be placed anywhere even behind the support hive. In a good year, the smaller nuc must be inspected often. Since there are only 5 frames, you may have to pull out a frame of honey and share it with a weak hive or extract it and fill a couple of jars. Also,  it is fun inspecting the smaller nucs because there are only 5 frames which means it is easier to inspect with only 5 frames. In fact, I think learning to work bees on a 5 frame nuc is always a great way to start. You can use your 5 frame nuc to mentor potential beekeepers. We are often asked to speak at schools and we use a single frame observation hive to take to class. We always go to one of our nucs to pull a frame because with only 5 frames it is easier to find the frame the queen is on. A large hive has 20 brood frames and 10-30 honey frames.
It is also a good idea to have an empty 5 frame nuc available to take to capture a swarm or to move frames out of a hive that is so large it might swarm unless you make a split. Every beekeeper will benefit greatly from having a couple of 5 frame nucs ready to assist you in your beekeeping endeavors.
We use 5 frame nucs in our queen rearing operation. We are in full queen rearing operation by June and our field is sprinkled with hundreds of nuc boxes used as mating nucs and starter hives.
Now, I realize that someone might be thinking about using a 5 frame nuc as a hive all year. Here’s the challenge, it will grow and you’ll need to give them room to expand or they will swarm if they become congested. We do sell additional deep 5 frame boxes that are used to go above the bottom box.  Can you make this a hive? Yes, the challenge will only be that you’ll need to add three or four boxes and a 5 frame nuc is only 9” wide. Our standard Langstroth hive is 16 1/4” wide. So the nuc only has a 9 x 20” base and if you stack 5 boxes on top, it could blow over. You will have to find a way to keep the 5 frame hive secure against the wind if you choose to add 3 or 4 additional boxes on top. One option is to use a tie down strap and secure it to a pallet or use two large tent pegs in the ground to secure your strap to and carry it over the top of the 5 frame hive. Other than this challenge, 5 frame hives work fine.
We make our 5 frame nucs exactly as we make our hives. We have a real, screen bottom board, a real inner cover and a real top cover with metal. It is just like a large hive only with 1/2 the number of frames and only 9” wide. Our 5 frame nucs come complete with 5 wooden frames and foundation which is helpful to have as your nuc grows. Our nucs are fully painted and assembled ready to go. Click here to read our full product detail on our 5 frame nucs.
Before we leave you let me invite you to look at our special hive kits that are available. First,  we've listened to our customers and so many wanted a kit where they could come and pick up their hive and bees and equipment and take a class while they were here all at the same time, the same day. So here it is. May 4th is the date to come and pick it all up and take the class. However, you must order this kit in advance. 1 Completely assembled and painted hive consists of two deep hive bodies, 1 medium super, screen bottom board, inner cover, top cover, 10 wooden frames with super foundation, 20 wooden frames with brood foundation. 1 Equipment special, hat, veil, smoker and a hive tool. 1 3 lb package of bees with queen. A four hour bee class May 4th. To order or to find out more information, click here. We are calling this our Valentine Special. But we also have many other kits available with bees or without bees. Some of our kits do not include bees because people choose to find bee more locally. To see our full catalog of hives, CLICK HERE or go to: http://www.honeybeesonline.com/kitswo.html For a limited time we are offering our Freedom Kit with bees included. This was extremely popular last season. It comes with two hives, all the equipment like hat/veil/smoker/hive tool/book/smoker fuel/gloves/queen excluder etc. The reason two hives are better than one is if one hive becomes weak, you can share resources between hives. CLICK HERE to see more information on our Freedom Beekeeping Kit. Thanks for joining us today, and please feel free to read through all our lessons online or give us a call and we’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have. 217-427-2678 Visit us online at: www.honeybeesonline.com