Starting Out As A New Beekeeper Can Be So Exciting But So Stressful

How Do You Feel About Your Bees?

Sheri and I would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting our family business. This is our only livelihood so we are highly motivated to show our appreciation to you for every purchase you make with us. We know you have lots of options so we appreciate your purchases from us so much. One of the best ways you can put a smile on our face is to order one of our ONLINE COURSES. Not only is this a huge support, but it also helps us accomplish our passion of informing beekeepers the right way to keep bees.

Beekeepers around the country have recently started with a package or will install  package within the next few weeks. Our packages are on schedule so far, for this Saturday. It is exciting, especially for new beekeepers. With that excitement comes a little anxiety and maybe a tiny bit of fear or uncertainty for what to expect.

I remember when I bought my first package. I wasn't sure if I knew what I was doing or not. Even the whole next month after I installed my bees I kept worrying if I was doing the right thing. What should I do next? Should I keep feeding them? Will the cold nights hurt them? When do I add my next hive body? Do they need a pollen patty? Should I test for mites now, or wait? Since mites are the number one killer of bees, when should I start mite control? It is overwhelming to a new beekeeper. 

If you've started without taking a course you will be even more overwhelmed and your bees will likely suffer from your lack of knowledge and preparation. Two of our six online classes you will benefit the most from are: Basic Beekeeping & Spring Management. Check them out today and ease your mind by gaining the knowledge needed to help build up your confidence.

Okay, it's time for you to learn how to raise your own queens. Join David on May 24th 9am-3pm to learn how to raise your own queens. When you need to purchase a queen they are not easy to find and certainly not always available when you need them. You can raise your own queens and have them available when you need them and save lots of money and time. As an EAS Certified Master Beekeeper David has raised queens a long time. His practical expertise will help you raise just a few queens or hundreds. This is a hands on class with some training both indoors and out in the bee yard. Sign Up Today. Only 4 spots left.

5 Frame Nucs With Bees for Sale

We have 5 Frame Nucs with bees for sale. It's great when bees overwinter so well that we can sell bees from overwintered Illinois hives. These colonies have already been inspected by the Illinois Department of Ag and the inspector wrote on the inspection report, "Hives look very good."

These are 5 frame nucs with a mated Illinois queens. These are notnucs from the south and are not made from packages. These are nucs from Illinois overwintered colonies. Click here for more information.

Package Bee Pick Up This Saturday

DIRECTIONS TO LONG LANE HONEY BEE FARMS

This Saturday is our package bee pickup day. 9am-4pm. Please call first if you are wanting to pick up other items other than packages when you are here so we can be sure to have items in stock. Otherwise, inventory sells very fast to the early birds. Remember to call anytime to listen to a recording updating if Saturday is still a go before making a long trip. If there is any delay we will only place the info on our recording.

Wear rain gear if it rains and try to stay on the gravel if it is muddy. Let's hope for a beautiful day. We recommend wearing protective gear because there can be lots of bees flying around. 

BURNS BEES FEEDING SYSTEM

Our awesome feeding systems are selling faster than we can make them. Another batch should go online today or tomorrow. These are flying off the shelves and inventory is cleaned out as soon as we place them online. So keep checking the website. Click here for more info: Burns Bees Feeding System. 

HOTTEST SELLING ONLINE CLASSES THIS MONTH

Basic Beginners Online Course

Spring Management Online Course

OUR TOP 3 MOST VISITED WEB PAGES

How to Install Packages

Frequently Asked Beekeeping Questions

Beehives For Sale

BEEKEEPING YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Beekeeping Catching A Swarm

How To Start Beekeeping

Do You Have An Amazon Alexa or Echo Dot?

Every couple of days David places helpful beekeeping tips on the Amazon Alexa for you to listen to with your daily briefing. The Amazon Alexa/Echo was a phenomenal hit this past holiday season. If you were one of the millions of people that purchased one of these during the holiday season you can now listen to a daily beekeeping tip from certified master beekeeper David Burns. Just go to your Alexa skills and look for Beekeeping and add it to your daily flash briefing.

I'm glad you are keeping bees or thinking about it. Thank you for supporting our family business for all your beekeeping needs. Our hours today are 10am-4:30pm central time. Give us a call.

Sincerely,

David and Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

 

Lesson 53: Queen Rearing Made Simple

There's never a dull moment here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. Hi! We are David & Sheri Burns and bees are our business. We live in East Central Illinois and our entire family is involved in our honey bee operation. We manufacture and sell beekeeping woodenware and we always appreciate your business. We also sell everything related to beekeeping and always welcome your business.
The primary goal of our business is to give glory to the LORD Jesus Christ through our business. The Bible says, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). So whether we are building hives for customers, making up nucs, raising queens or answering the phones, we do it all in a honorable way that would give glory to the LORD.

The last few weeks has been a whirlwind of activity. Last Friday we had another successful class here at our honey bee farm. We had 17 students who came to learn about raising queens. This class was in conjunction with the Illinois Queen Initiative, which is a work where several of us are hoping to produce queens that are more acclimated to the climate here in the mid-west. Dr. Joe Latshaw is a commercial queen breeder and he came and held a workshop at our farm and the next day presented the same workshop to another group in Chicago.

Our store/lab was full of eager beekeepers wanting to learn the fine art of raising queens. During the morning Joe gave great detailed presentations on just how to raise queens. Joe holds a Ph.D and also teaches at Ohio State University in Columbus in Ohio. He has worked bees almost all his life and has studied and worked along side the most well-known entomologist. He has become my main mentor for understanding the art of raising queens. Joe has made himself accessible to me whenever I have any questions about queens. He's a true gentleman, friend and excellent beekeeper. His knowledge, experience and wisdom in raising queens is superior.

I highly recommend Joe to other beekeeping associations who would like a special speaker. Joe's website is: www.latshawapiaries.com

After a full morning of presentations on the details of raising queens, we broke for lunch. We try to make our classes and workshops as comfortable and professional as possible, so we had a tent company bring in a nice size tent so that we could enjoy lunch outside. Again, during the lunch break, beekeepers continued to pick Joe's brain as well as talking to each other about failures and successes in beekeeping. It was a nice day, though a bit windy.

I enjoyed meeting beekeepers from around the state of Illinois and hearing about their special techniques of beekeeping. My wife Sheri is such a hard worker around our honey bee farm. She put the entire day together for me. She made sure our room was configured properly for the class as well as making sure lunch was brought in on time.
For the last few weeks Sheri has installed packages, fed bees, answered the phone calls from our customers, helped packaged hives, data entry, taxes, Internet orders and the list goes on!
Even yesterday Sheri was on the four wheeler running up and down the apiary feeding the bees. I am so blessed to have a help-mate like Sheri! Last week I needed to take a trip down to Kentucky to pick up a trailer load of beekeeping supplies. Sheri jumped in the truck with me and our little youngest son Christian and we enjoyed a two day trip down for supplies. Thanks Sheri!
In the afternoon of our class with Joe, I worked to prepare a starter nuc and gathered up 5 frames of larvae so the students could practice grafting.
With Chinese grafting tools in hand, flashlights, magnifying glasses in the other hand, students when to work, selecting the perfect aged larva and transferring them over into queen cell cups I had made earlier in the morning. Students helped each other and Joe was there showing each student the art of grafting. This was a great hands on opportunity.

You can read all the books you can get your hands on, but until someone walks along with you, somethings are difficult to grasp.

LESSON 52: QUEEN REARING MADE SIMPLE
I have noticed that most beekeepers feel that raising queens is complicated and mysterious. I say that because I hear so many beekeepers say they are buying different types of "systems" for raising queens. These systems do work, but in my opinion there is much more control over raising queens through grafting than using systems. Besides, I like hands-on experience.
Here I am standing in David Miksa's apiary among his finishing colonies where he raises his famous queens. I told you that I visited with David Miksa. He and his operation was featured in the May edition of the American Bee Journal. It was a great article! Having seen his operation and now having read about it too, I am very pleased with his queens. I am incorporating several of his techniques into my queen rearing operation. And, of course, I'm using some of his stock in my yards for breeding as well. He has some very nice and very productive queens. I visited a hive two years ago that was headed up by a Miksa queen and I was impressed! We placed David Miksa's queens in 200+ packages, the ones that were picked up from our farm.
Raising your own queens can be very rewarding as well as save you money and time. I think every beekeeper should have a 5 frame nuc with an extra queen in there as a backup emergency replacement. Or if you want to make splits then you can raise your own queens to increase your hive count.
So let me give you a brief rundown on how to raise your own queens.
Create the perfect 5 frame queenless starter nuc. The nuc should consist of:
-One frame of honey
-One frame of pollen
-2 Frames of nurse Bees under 16 days old
Leave it queenless for at least 2 hours, but not too long or they might start raising their own queen if there are eggs present, which there should NOT be.
The starter nuc must not have any open brood so that the nurse bees can give all their resources to the cell cups. And this 5 frame nuc must be severely overcrowded with nurse bees,
completely blocked off and kept in a cool, dark place for the 24-36 hours they start the cups. When I make up my starter nucs, I leave an opening to place my queen cell frame into the nuc. I like to close off my nucs so that the bees stay in for the 24-36 hour duration.
The nuc should not have any open larvae. I want my nurse bees to only care for the grafted queen cups. The goal is to make LARGE size queens and to do this, I need copious amounts of royal jelly in each cup. So the bees in the starter nuc feed the queen cells. Because this hive only has nurse bees primarily, I close it off. Nurse bees do not need to fly out, so I close it off and keep it in a cool place for the 24-36 hour duration. Because I usually graft between 30-40 cell cups, I have to move this frame out to a larger hive that can continue doing what this starter hive started.


After 24-36 hours in the starter nuc, transfer cells into a queenright finishing hive.

The finishing hive must be very strong with two deep hive bodies with the queen in
the bottom hive body below a queen excluder. Leave the cells there until 8-10 days
old. Then, on day 8-10, transfer the cells into a queenless mating nuc. The mating nuc can be anywhere from a complete large hive that is queen less down to a mini-mating nuc with only 2 or three mini-frames.
It works best to transfer the 10 day old queen cell into a queenless nuc on day 10. Bees always accept a queen cell, much better than an emerged virgin queen in a cage.

When I graft, I make my own queen cups from my wax that I know is chemical free. Then, I attach the cups with wax and then I place large amounts of wax on the bar so the bees can use my wax to continue to draw out the queen cells.

I also make my own frames and cell bars. I dip my wax after melting it in a large electric pan that I bought at Wal-mart for $50.

I place my graft into a queen cell cup frame that I've just made up myself. They are easy to make by modifying a deep frame . The one in the picture, of course, is upside down. Don't worry, when you flip it over the larvae will not fall out. They are sticky and stay put. Also, you really do not have to worry about temperature when they are this young, 1-2 days old. Notice I graft with several layers of wet paper towels because the larvae do need to remain moist.

The grafting technique must be hands-on. For example the larva must only breathe on one side when they are this young. Therefore, you must place them in the new queen cell with that same side up. If you flip it over, they will suffocate because they are not yet breathing on both sides.

Then I go out to my bee yards and transfer the 10 day old cells into queenless mating nucs. I mainly use 5 frame nucs with deep size frames or 3 frame nucs with deep size frames. As you can see, these nucs make nice chairs too when working down the line. You can click on any of these images for a larger view. I work my bees with only a hat and veil because my bees are gentle and I hate wearing gloves. Though I do not have to wear a hat and veil, I feel it is essential to protect the eyes from stings. I never want to take a chance, nor should you.

The success of the beekeeper will be greatly increased by his or her ability to raise their own queens.

That's all until next time! If you'd like to contact us, please give us a call or email us. Here is our contact information:

GENERAL PHONE: 217-427-2678
QUESTION LINE: v217-427-2430
EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com
WEBSITE: www.honeybeesonline.com


Bee-have yourself!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

Lesson 38: Raising Queens Part 3

We love honey bees, also known as Apis Mellifera. Apis Mellifera is just the scientific name which means honey carrying bee, which technically is incorrect, as honey bees do not carry honey. They carry nectar and turn it into honey in the hive. So let's just call 'em honey bees!

Honey bees swarm. They swarm for several reason, and for some reasons we'll never understand. Here I am watching a swarm from one of my hives land in my near by tree. You can click on the image for an enlarged view.

My wife and I clapped our hands, rattled a metal sheet around the swarm and believe it or not they went back into the hive they swarmed from. Either what we did worked, or for some unheard of reason, they just went back home. I know bees cannot hear, but they do "hear" by sensing vibrations.

Beekeeping comes with many challenges. During May and June our biggest challenge is keeping our hives from swarming. I run my hives tight and full because I believe bees like to be crowded--not congested, but crowded. This year, I've only had 2 of my hives swarm. This one was high up so I put an empty hive on top of my truck and climbed up the ladder and shook the swarm down into the box on the truck. Imagine going through a fast food drive up with that on top of your truck! When a colony swarms, it loses a large number of it's population. Most agree that if a colony swarms, the remaining bees probably will not produce honey that year. So, no one wants to see a swarm unless it is someone elses. :)

Another beekeeping challenge is failing queens. Has your queen gone feet up on you? Maybe she's deformed, like this one which has lost an antenna. Or like this queen in the picture, maybe she needs wound up again. Sorry, when the queen runs out, there is no winding her back up. She will not mate again. Time for a new queen. This is another challenge we beekeepers face...failing or missing queens. None of us want to find a bunch of queen cells in our hives when the queen is doing great nor do we want to find that our queen is gone. We must have strong, young and great laying queens to keep our hives striving.

Here's a queen cell in my hive. For those of you who have never seen a queen cell and have always wondered if you could identify one, here you go. Queen cells on the top half of the frame means they are replacing their old queen for some reason. And queen cells on the bottom of the frames mean they are preparing to swarm. Excessive swarming can be a trait within the queen's genetics. But it can also be environmental such as the hive is congested.

So, all of that being said, I want to wrap up my lessons on queen rearing for now with some final comments.

You are most likely going to keep buying your queens from reputable queen providers probably from the sunshine belt, where the weather is warmer longer so queens are easier to raise and can be raised earlier in the spring. And, we sell packages and queens from the south, so I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. But there are a few things we should consider about queens from the south.

First, they have to travel a long way to get to northern states. Shipping can be hard on bees and queens. It shouldn't be, but sometimes it is. Data recorders have shown that some queens were exposed to cold and hot temperatures that could effect the overall health of the queen. Delivery centers spray for insects. Could that spray residue effect queens as well? Not to mention that some states in the deep south are known to have Africanized bees. Great efforts are being made to keep the Africanized genetics out of the pool, but for open air mated queens, who can be sure, right?

I've heard farmers say you should buy your animals from the north and move then south but never buy them from the south and bring them north. Which brings us to the idea and consideration of whether a southern queen may not be able to survive a northern winter. That's hard to make a case around. Bees are bees, right. They are going to work and do what bees do. However, it makes sense to me to obtain a queen that is bred in the area of your own climate. For years people in the north have successfully over wintered hives purchased from the south. However, winter die outs are on the rise.

That being said, if you live in a northern state which has harsh winters, it just makes sense to purchase queens that have proven successful in northern climates. Here's why: First, you avoid shipping stresses. Secondly, you are obtaining a queen that has survived your unique climate. Thirdly, you know that your queen is from hives that have survived pests and diseases that are common in your area. To me, this makes sense. And with a near by queen breeder, you may be more apt to replace your queens regularly.

Come on! Would you buy a queen from a hive that is known to have CCD or is Africanized? Of course not? Even though she may not carry or transfer the cause of CCD, no one would want to do that. Then, why would you buy a queen without knowing anything about her genetic track record? Usually because we get desperate to have a queen, and most queen breeders are desperately trying to sell queens and can no longer carefully monitor the genetics that governs the overall success of queens. This isn't the case with all southern or western queen breeders, yet the reality of the stress placed on queen production can sometimes cause shortcuts to be taken, in my opinion. I know for a fact that last year queens are sold as this year queens. Again, not everyone does this, but money does talk, and the bottom line governs business.

Our long term goal is to raise queens from survivor hives, which are hives that have survived at least two northern winters, have gone untreated for all pests and disease for at least two years and have not been hindered by pests or diseases. And a hive that has other good qualities such as minimal swarming, gentleness and maximal honey production. That's a long term goal and will take years to improve this stock. For now though, we are achieving success along the way.

But remember, we can't always point the finger at our queens. There are some great coaches that just don't have the player skills to win games. Some queens may be great, but may face tough Springs. Is it fair to blame the queen for a tough spring? The older bees seem to be the ones that call a lot of the shots. Should we blame the queen when the older bees make poor decisions? Or, this is one none of us want to admit, but should we blame the queen for our poor management and poor manipulation of a hive? For example, some medications in the hive have been shown to reduce the queen's performance. Is it fair to blame the breeder or the queen because we poisoned her?

So be patient with the queen! We can all get a dude, but let's be sure before we give up on her.

This is why you should consider raising your own queens. This year introducing my own young, freshly mated queens has made a huge difference in the overall performance of my hives. I realize it is impractical for every beekeeper to raise their own queens. That's why we need more and more local beekeepers to form regional queen rearing programs.

We have a limited number of queens we are selling this year. If you'd like to try one, please give us a call at 217-427-2678. We ship queens on Monday and Wednesday. By purchasing your queens from us, we are able to use that profit to expand our queen stock improvment program.

Also, if you are planning on becoming a beekeeper next spring, then please order your equipment and hives from us this summer or fall. It becomes very difficult for us to keep up with all the orders between February-June. Plan ahead!!

That's all for now, and remember...BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

217-427-2678

EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com