When a bee colony decides to swarm they group up in a ball and fly off in search of a new home. The swarm will first send out scout bees in search of potential spots for their new home. When one of those scouts has found a potential home, they will return and communicate this via a WAGGLE DANCE. Another bee will then go out to see the specified location and see if it is a safe location for their new home. If it is then that bee will do the dance again; when they have agreed to a location they will fly to it and begin the process of building up their new home.
When a bee colony decides to swarm, the bees that are getting ready to leave with the old queen will actually take honey with them. If you ever see a bee swarm then you will notice that they are a bit translucent. This is the honey that they will use to build their new hive. We always try to catch a bee swarm early, before any building occurs.
With the new cover crop that has recently bloomed in our fields, our bees now have plenty to forage on because there are more flowers available to them! This means that they will be able to produce more honey, more wax, more bees, and they will be able to build up their hive, which also means we will see more swarms!
We prepare for these swarms by cleaning out old hive boxes, so that we have one ready when we see a swarm, because we need to act fast and collect the swarms before they begin building their hive. On our farm we have small citrus trees that they tend to swarm to so it makes it easier for us to collect them and introduce them to one of our empty hive boxes so they can build their new home.
We catch them by putting one of our hive boxes under the ball of bees and then shaking them inside. You may think that this may anger the bees and it can but if done correctly and quickly they will start moving into the hive box. It is very important that the Queen bee is in the hive box, because this is what will encourage the bees to move away from their current location and into the hive box. It also helps that we reuse our old hive boxes, so they already have a bee scent that lets them know it is a safe place to build their hive.
As soon as the bees feel safe, they will start building their hive right away and the queen will begin laying eggs. If they are able to find enough resources, it can take them as little as 2 weeks to build up their hive! This year we are hoping to see each of our colonies swarm at least once. If we are lucky, a colony may even swarm twice!
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*If you have no interest in repurposing your old beeswax scraps, then we hope you will consider recycling and donating it to any —beeswax company— near you. They will happily take it, clean it, and reuse it.
This will probably be the most time consuming part to get started on creating your chosen DIY, but it will be oh so very satisfying when you have created something new with your own two hands! It is definitely an interesting process. This process is similar to how we prepare the beeswax that we harvest from our very own hives.
To prep your beeswax for use you will need the following:
What you need to do first is melt the beeswax scraps. If you don't have much accumulated then you can use a microwave to melt the wax. Be careful though! You need to warm it up in 30 second intervals or else the beeswax might explode and leave a huge mess! If you have a sizable collection of beeswax scraps, however, then you can melt the wax using a double broiler. You can make one by using 2 different sized pots: one big, one small. You fill the big pot with water and you put the smaller pot inside the big pot. You then put the beeswax scraps inside the small pot and melt it on medium heat, with no lid/cover. It may take up to an hour to melt completely.
After your beeswax is melted, you need to strain it to get rid of any debris in your beeswax. You can use a simple strainer, the smaller the holes the better, or more ideally a mesh bag. This needs to be done as soon as you take the pot out of the heat or else the beeswax will harden again. The process can be done multiple times (you can reheat the beeswax if it hardens) until you are satisfied that most of the debris has been filtered
When you have cleaned the beeswax, you can put it in a container to store or use it right away for your chosen DIY. Fortunately, beeswax is one of the few natural substances that won't expire so you can store it for later use (it may get a white coating over time but that is normal).
Creating your own lip balm can be done in a few easy steps.
What you will need are equal parts:
After you gather all your ingredients, the first step is to melt the beeswax, shea butter, and coconut oil together in a container. You can do this using a microwave, however it must be done in 30 second intervals or your ingredients may explode and make a huge mess. This process may take up to 10 minutes. You can also use the double broiler method we mentioned above. After the ingredients have melted, you can mix in the essential oil of your choice. You can test the mixture on your lips to gouge how much oil to put in but be careful not to burn yourself ( and don't take too long or the mixture will harden as it cools). When you have finished mixing in your essential oil, the next step is to pour your balm mixture into the container of your choice and voila! Your done! All you have to do is wait for it to harden. Was it easier than you thought? We hope so!
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So what are bee blankets and why are they needed? Bee blankets are exactly what they sound like, (well maybe not exactly—we won’t be making tiny bee blankets for every bee!). No, a bee blanket is a special blanket that will be wrapped around each hive box (pictured here) and will act as insulation in order to help keep the temperature and humidity inside the hive stable.
The main reason we want to begin using bee blankets is to improve the chances of a colony’s survival. During the winter months, the bees rarely (if at all) leave their hives. Instead they cluster into a ball, work around the clock, and focus all their energy on keeping the temperature inside the hive a warm 91 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as keeping the humidity levels stable. They do this by constantly being in motion—shaking, shivering, and vibrating to create heat. Most of the bees’ energy is used in this process, so you can only imagine the amount of energy it takes to keep the hive warm for an entire season. Not only do they expend energy to keep the hive warm, but during summer, when it gets overwhelmingly hot, they are working just as hard by constantly bringing in water and fanning their wings to keep the hive cool.
When bees use up energy, they replenish it by eating their honey and if they don’t have enough food stored they will unfortunately not survive. So what a bee blanket does is help maintain the temperature within the hive from fluctuating too drastically when the weather gets either too hot or too cold. With the current state of our climate, we have been getting out of season weather and extreme weather as well, so we want to provide our beautiful bees with extra help so they are not using up too much of their energy keeping their hive’s temperature and humidity under control.
Helping the bees keep the humidity levels stable will also help reduce the occurrence of common diseases and pests, especially varroa mite infestations. Varroa mites are one of the most common pests that can plague bee hives. They are tiny parasites that attach themselves to the bees, feed off them, and ultimately kill them. These mites prefer the cooler and dryer sections of the hive so keeping humidity levels high and stable will keep them from reproducing and spreading to the entire colony.
In the wild, bees tend to create colonies in hollow spaces such as tree trunks because they naturally provide great insulation. In order to replicate that natural insulation, beekeepers use bee blankets, as the standard hive boxes that are most commonly used allow for higher airflow and poor insulation, which makes it more difficult for the bees to keep the temperature and humidity levels in their hive stable. The health and well-being of our beautiful bees is our top priority so we are constantly looking for ways to improve their hive boxes and give them as close to a natural habitat as we can.
We are hand making these bee blankets ourselves and we want to make them using the best and safest material for our bees so the materials we are using are:
We will be wrapping each blanket only on the lower half of each hive box for now. Why not the whole box? We have never used bee blankets before so we wanted to insure the bee blankets are in fact breathable and safe for the bees. The brood (where the baby bees are located) are also usually located in the lower box, so we wanted to insure that area is properly insulated first.
To create our bee blankets we referenced The Idle Beekeeper by Bill Anderson. A video of the entire process will be coming soon, so stay tuned!
Until we reach our goal, 10% of every purchase you make will go directly into helping our little bees be extra ready for any harsh weather that this year will inevitably bring. We are super excited to start this project and we are so happy to have you on this journey with us. You can check our progress here at happyorganics.co or by taking a peak at our emails where we will include our bee blanket tracker! Thank you so much for your continued support!
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