Bee Furniture

This is a good thing to see in your mating nuc. Do you know what is of interest in this photo, and why?

The bees are killing me. I have 7 little mating nucs, all in a row on a hive stand. I was out getting feeders on them - each has a frame of shook bees and a queen, just released from her cage this morning. I glance down at my hive tool on the ground, and there's a bee on it. Pick it up - it's a queen. They just emerged Saturday - shouldn't even be able to fly yet, let alone mate. How am I supposed to know which hive she crawled out of?! I put her near the front door of nuc #1, a bee comes out and doesn't look happy to see her. Move her over to door #2, bee comes out to greet her and in she goes. I guess I'll find out in a week or two if I got it right. Aurgh!

Edit: I just checked and 9 have already emerged and are available immediately! I have a batch of new queens emerging tomorrow or Monday, many of which will need new homes. I should have about 15 available to sell. These are raised from my strongest colony, locally adapted for at least 6 years, and are grafted from gentle colonies with good honey production. This colony has not required the use of chemical mite treatments for the last 2 seasons (I do, however, practice a varie...ty of non-chemical mite treatments, and strongly recommend the use of frequent testing and treatments as required - I'm not suggesting they have any form of resistance to varroa mites). They should be introduced to a queenless colony no later than 3 days after emergence, after which they will mate with your local drones. They are $30 each, pick-up from North Nanaimo. If we have enough people from outside of this area, I can arrange to drive up- or down-island for deliveries early this coming week. Please post below, send a PM, or email info@bee-furniture with any questions or if you'd like any. You can pay me when you collect them but I do request a strong commitment from buyers. Thanks! See more

This Zoom meeting is open to all beekeepers. PM me, Nanaimo Beekeepers Club, or email me at [email protected] and I'll send you all the Zoom login details. Hope to see you on Tuesday evening, June 8th at 7pm!

Fresh new queenies are out and looking for homes!

I just got back from a bike ride and thought I'd say hi to the bees. I noticed a small cluster of bees near the entrance to a mating nuc - seems my queen had been out for some exercise as well! Hopefully she's well mated and will start laying soon. Welcome home, Queenie!

I don't often share others posts on this page but thought this one was particularly worthwhile. I know that I have a evolved a completely different appreciation of farms and farming since becoming involved with bees and beekeeping. A huge thank-you to all of our farming community here on Vancouver Island!

We have another Beginners Corner meeting this evening via Zoom! Based on a suggestion from our last meeting, well start off with discussing all sorts of hive tools and various beekeeping equipment, whats its for, what you might need and what you can probably do without. As always, well address any questions on this topic and then move on to invite any and all beekeeping-related questions, from beginner to advanced. If youd like to attend but dont have the Zoom login info for this meeting, please contact us and well email you all the info. We hope to see you there!

I just got back from a bike ride and thought Id say hi to the bees. I noticed a small cluster of bees near the entrance to a mating nuc - seems my queen had been out for some exercise as well! Hopefully shes well mated and will start laying soon. Welcome home, Queenie!

I dont often share others posts on this page but thought this one was particularly worthwhile. I know that I have a evolved a completely different appreciation of farms and farming since becoming involved with bees and beekeeping. A huge thank-you to all of our farming community here on Vancouver Island!

I love how gentle my bees are, but every once in a while I wonder if maybe they could be just a tiny bit more defensive...

More beautiful queens are emerging today! If you need a new queen or want to replace a failing or old queen, this is the perfect time of year. These queens will do best if they have new homes within the next two days.

Theres a strong demand this year for nucs. If you have a strong colony or two and would like to sell a couple of nucs (instead of letting your colony swarm!) but dont know where to start, please get in touch - I have queens emerging this weekend that need homes, which would allow you to have sellable nucs in a short amount of time. Im happy to guide you through the process if youre interested!

Happy Birthday to my first queen of the year! Shes having a nice snack of some honey and will be introduced to her very own colony tomorrow.

Wow - new queens havent even hatched yet and already Im harvesting honey! I love spring!

Dont forget - the next Beginners Corner meeting via Zoom (video-conferencing) is tomorrow, Tuesday Apr 21st at 6:30pm! Ill be discussing mite testing and probably swarm control, before opening up the discussion to any and all topics bee-related. If youd like info on how to join, simply send an email to [email protected] and Ill send you all the login information. Its entirely free to anyone who would like to join in! See you there!

My bees are happily raising the first "batch" of queens for the season. These will head the first 16 nucs or so. Thanks bees!

Spring has arrived! Ive been allowed to leave the house to visit one of my bee yards for about 4 hours this afternoon and this is the amount of pollen that has accumulated on my windshield. No wonder Im a sneezing sniffling mess these days! Bees are building crazy fast now - added boxes on 4 of these 6 colonies as the populations are exploding, brood everywhere and new nectar coming in fast. Could be a great year if this keeps up! This is hands-down one of my favourite times of year (despite the hay fever)!

Just a reminder that the Nanaimo Beekeepers Club will be hosting an on-line version of our Beginners Corner and general Question and Answer period every other Tuesday evening at 6:30pm, starting this evening! Youll have to sign up for Zoom to join in, but its free and easy to do so on any PC, Mac, tablet or phone. See the event page (link below) for more info. See you then! --Mark https://www.facebook.com/events/219955165739772/

Ive always loved spring, but the bees make it even more exciting! The colonies are all building up quickly now: populations are increasing rapidly, theyre bringing in loads of pollen and even some of the first nectar of the season. Soon well be making splits and getting nucs ready for new beekeepers, which is always an exciting time of year! I will have a few more nucs available for anyone still looking - most will be on medium frames but I may be able to supply a few mor...e nucs on deep frames as well. Feel free to contact me if you would like to reserve a nuc or have any questions. Finally, remember that the Nanaimo Beekeepers Club is moving to Zoom for online video meetings for the time being, and I will also be hosting a "Beginners Corner" and general beekeeping Q&A session biweekly on Tuesday evenings at 6:30pm (first session is tomorrow)! All are welcome - contact me for details. We may not be meeting in person for a while yet, but Im still happy to provide all the support you need as you venture into the amazing world of beekeeping!

We finally got a slightly warmer day yesterday to check on some of my hives. Nice to see the bees brooding up well and pollen coming in when the sun is shining! Im hoping to check on the rest of them later today. Were still a way off from making splits and nucs, but spring is coming... slowly! Meanwhile, Bee Furniture continues to work diligently to fill existing orders - COVID-19 should not affect our progress, and we always keep a healthy inventory of construction materi...als as well as general beekeeping supplies (hive tools, smokers, beekeeping hats / veils, hive-top feeders, frame perches, frames etc.). We are very close to reaching capacity of orders we can fill for hand-crafted products to be delivered this spring, but if you need any off the shelf supplies, we have lots available for pick-up or possibly even delivery. As always, we are happy to help with beekeeping questions and general advice, so dont hesitate to contact us for any of your bee-related needs. And dont forget, bees are social too, so if youre self-isolating, have a little back-yard social gathering with your favourite fluffy friends.

Interested in learning how to keep bees of your own? Or maybe you already have bees, but want to brush up on your management techniques? Heres a great opportunity for both! Feel free to ask any questions you may have; I hope to see you there!

Do you want to learn to keep bees succesfully here on Vancouver Island? Or maybe you already have bees but would like to further your education. Either way, this course promises to provide a clear picture of best management practices and give you the confidence and knowledge you need to keep your bees happy and healthy year-round! The course will be held in Ladysmith for 3 weeks in February. Contact me if youd like more info, or sign up here: https://reccowichan.perfectmind.com//B/CoursesLandingPage

Today was a wild day - I got up close and personal with a species called Vespa Mandarinia, or the Asian Giant Hornet, right here in Nanaimo. Lets hope we dont see any more of these. If you do, please report them - we need to stay vigilant and try to keep them away from BC. Honeybees can be protected by their beekeepers; BCs 450+ species of native pollinators dont have the benefit of our help! See below in comments for a side-by-side image of this magnificent menace with our beloved honey bee. All images are my own.

On Sunday we started testing local colonies for hygienic behaviour, with more colonies tested yesterday (Monday). Photos are now coming in, with some great results so far. One apiary of 3 colonies showed that one colony in particular shows strong evidence of hygienic behavior. Here are two photos, each taken after 24 hours of freezing a patch of brood. One of them obviously has identified the dead brood and has cleaned it all out after 24 hours; the other is a more "average"... colony for comparison. The hygienic colony will be re-tested in a few weeks to ensure reproducibility, but its highly likely that these bees will be able to defend themselves from a whole host of brood diseases. Assuming other desirable traits (gentleness, honey production etc.), we could graft new queens from this colony and would likely see a good percentage of her daughter queens showing the same results (depending on the drones each mated with and other factors). This is what were going for! If youre interested in having your colonies tested, please contact us or post here!

Interested in beekeeping? This clinic is only a week and a half away! Sign up while you still can! https://reccowichan.perfectmind.com//B/CoursesLandingPage

100 plants to feed the bees: tinyurl.com/100plantsfeedthebees

Nucs for sale! I have a few extra nucs in search of owners. These have newly mated, laying 2019 queens and are bred from very docile stock with very good honey production and good levels of hygienic behaviour. Note that I am not selling these as hygienic queens because the heritability of that trait is quite low and these queens specifically have not yet been tested (although I will be happy to do that later on for you if youd like)! Queens are marked. These will be ready to go in a week or less, after the laying pattern and mating quality has been proven. $240, pickup is in North Nanaimo.

I seem to have more queens hatching out than I have mating nucs! Asking $25 for a virgin queen, freshly emerged. Ill take names and will let you know when they have emerged but must pick up that day (likely later today or tomorrow) from North Nanaimo. Please let me know if my asking price is out of line.

Are you interested in keeping bees but dont know where to start? Heres a great opportunity to find out more! Ill be presenting a three hour clinic in Ladysmith that will discuss all the basics. The clinic is designed to give you enough information to decide if beekeeping fits your lifestyle and is something you want to learn more about. Register at https://www.reccowichan.ca or by calling (250) 245-6424. Questions will be encouraged! Feel free to contact me via PM, email, ...phone (250) 802-3991 or post below with any questions about the clinic; a field portion external to the official clinic may also be offered to participants if youd like to visit an apiary and see inside a hive or two. The Summer Activity Guide can be found here; this clinic is listed on the bottom of page 7. https://issuu.com//do/2019_summer_activity_guide_online_v See more

Its always interesting to see different colonies raising queens. I have two cell-starter colonies on the go right now, and have grafted 15 larvae into each. All the same age, colonies are roughly the same strength (very strong). Colony N is building 14 queens from my 15 grafts, with no obvious preference between wax cups and plastic cups. Colony A has decided to only raise queens on my home-made wax cups - 100% success rate on those, but not a single one of the plastic cups. I alternated wax and plastic and theyve completely ignored the plastic ones. Fun stuff!

Were seeing nectar coming into hives in the Nanaimo area! Ive been tracking monthly hive weights on all of my colonies this winter (3 of my own apiaries and one belonging to a friend), and as of yesterday I have one colony that weighs the same as it did on Feb 18th and one that has actually increased. Many of the rest have lower average decreases than the preceding month, which correlates with what Ive seen in almost all of the colonies so far - new nectar coming in. Im ...confident that most of the increase has been the last week or so of warm weather, but its interesting to see differences between apiaries and between individual colonies as well. Regardless, the bees are happy and many of our hives are very strong. Two are on the weaker side but should be ok with frequent monitoring. Of the three that were lost over the winter, two had queens from 2017 and one was a very late season split (Aug 24th), so overall Im happy with 15 of the 18 having made it through winter (so far!). Some would argue that winter isnt over yet, but being watchful of your surviving colonies over the next month or two should help with any further losses. Be prepared to add sugar (granulated or fondant) if required, or move frames of honey closer to the brood area as needed. Yay - spring is (almost) here!

For the fourth consecutive year, Bee Furniture and the Nanaimo Beekeepers Club will have an information table at Nanaimo Seedy Sunday! Drop by to say hi and learn about honey bees! Well also have a sample bee hive so you can see all the parts and how everything works. We hope to see you there!

Taking a short break from sanding kits today (the workshop is cold!) to have a look at nine different bee samples brought into the Comox Valley Beekeepers Association meeting last night during my presentation on Nosema. We were short on time to process samples as part of the meeting, so Im squishing bees and looking at spore counts today, in the hopes that the results will help some beekeepers devise a strategy to reduce the prevalence of these diseases. Its fun, in a science-geeky sort of way!

The results are in: Cowichan Beekeepers have the best coffee break goodies at their meetings!

I wanted to extend a big thanks to everyone who came out to the "Basic Considerations for Backyard Beekeeping" clinic this last Sunday at VIU. We had a great turnout of about 45-50 people, and despite getting a little side-tracked at times by some slightly more advanced topics, it went very well. All of the feedback so far has been very positive and I hope to turn this into an annual event. For anyone who may have missed my presentation on Nosema at the last Nanaimo Beekeepers Club meeting, Ill be giving the same presentation again at the upcoming Comox Valley Beekeepers meeting this coming Tuesday, February 26th. We will discuss the types of Nosema and then turn to identification of the spores of each, in real time, with the microscope image being projected on to a screen for all to see. Fun stuff - I hope to see you there!

Were just about to head into our busy season again, but have some exciting news to share! This year, in addition to our natural-grain wood finishes on both Pine and Cedar kits, were also adding a lower-priced option: painted kits! Theyre built and finished with the same attention to detail, but instead of applying a gel stain and/or tung oil finish, were offering fully painted kits with fun little accents, starting at just $250 including our ventilated peaked outer cover. Check our recently-updated web site at http://www.bee-furniture.com for more details!

I went to the back yard and collected some dead bees off the grass in front of the hives today to get some practice with counting nosema spores (using a microscope and hemocytometer). Placed them into a glass jar, and went into the house to get things set up. Minutes later I hear a buzzing noise, and half of them have warmed up and woken up and are buzzing around the house! Silly bees...

Lots of robber screens on the go at this time of year. Theyre fiddly to build but they do work well!

Ill never get tired of seeing some of the amazing colours that are revealed by passing sustainably harvested, island-grown Western Red Cedar through the planer.