Building A Better Beetle Trap

I truly hope that someone smarter than me is working on eradicating the Small Hive Beetles.

"Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

However, until then, this is my latest attempt. I bought Catchmaster Home Pest Traps (glue traps for insects) 12 pack for $4.97. I then cut those glue traps in half, longways.

Then I made cage around it with #8 hardware cloth and placed a cue-tip inside. I used a syringe to put apple cider vinegar on the cue-tips for beetle bait (BTW it got in my eye and it burned like hell).

I only had time to make 9 Sticky Traps, so I put them in the 9 weakest hives - that being said, all of my hives seem very strong.

It should rain for the next week, so I'll check on the traps after that.

Other Hive Notes:

It was a very hot day (95F) . To be honest, at 400lbs, I was a little worried about the heat but I made it a point to take it slow. Much to my delight, I never got overheated and I was able to check all 20 hives and place a Swiffer Sheet in each one.

A word on my bee jacket: I bought a Ventilated Bee Jacket from Bushy Mountain. I've had 4 other cotton jackets and suits and I got stung through them all! However, this jacket is like Kevlar for bees. I got a little rough with one of my hives and the bees went nuts... but not one of them stung me through my jacket.

I pulled 24 frames of honey from 4 different supers. I found that using a bee brush to remove the bees from each frame works really well. It's not much of a solution for large harvests but while I am just pulling 15 or 20 supers, it works great.

Also, by pulling one frame at a time, I was able to spot the brood and leave it behind - as well as the uncapped frames.

I'm now up to 35 gallons of honey. I plan to reinvest all of the money into building more hives.

I also finally got out to the Old Farm. That one hive is still alive. It was dry out there that day but it is usually very wet (ankle deep). So I think I'll just bring it to my house this winter and never go back to the Old Farm after that.

Final Hive Count: 20-Hives & 1-Five Frame Nuc

Bees, Beetles, and Mosquitoes... Oh My!

Maybe I'm cheap or maybe I'm frugal but either way, I have a hard time throwing out dilapidated supers. This is my last attempt to breathe life into my original boxes.

The super in the picture is about 13 years old and has been badly
treated. My latest act of malevolence was when I dropped the box about 8" filled with honey to knock out the last of the bees. Not only did this break the ears off of most of the frames but it made, the already weak corners, come apart.

So I used 1/4 hardware cloth to repair it. The inside lip was also rotting away, so I used the wire to make a new ledge. If it works, great. I'll get another season or two out of the box. If not, nothing lost.

One day, and I hope soon, I will have enough return on my honey investment to buy good wood and plastic frames but until then... waste not, want not.

The 5 frame nuc I made has about 7 to 10 queen cells in it. I moved it out to Dr.D's Saturday. It seems fairly strong and I think it might just make it through the winter - if the beetles don't kill it first.

BEETLES! All of my hives are filled with beetles. Luckily the hives are strong and are keeping them beat down but the beetles are there and just waiting for their chance to destroy the hives.

Wednesday, I will place a swiffer sheet and a Fat Bee-man Trap (though I am not convinced they work) into each hive. I've also broken down and ordered beetle blaster traps for all 20 hives ($48 with S&H) and will put them in as soon as they arrive - they work great but are too pricey.

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito." The Dalai Lama XIV

I think the apocalypse is near and the mosquitoes might be the fourth horseman. I've never seen mosquitoes this bad before. This pictures shows my pants leg but I was covered from head to toe. And it wasn't just out in the country - I must have killed 30 or more in my house that flew in as I came in the front door.

Maybe these incredibly hot days we are having this week will kill them back - I hope so anyway.

Harvest Continues: Well I've harvested 8 deep boxes and have gotten about 25 gallons now. I still have about 12 boxes to go.

We Harvest Honey When It's Warm For A Reason

"I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather." - Sherlock Holmes

The picture shows the stand I built for my honey extractor, so that I could fit the 5 gallon bucket under the bung hole.

I used a 4x4 that was actually only 3.5" tall. On top of that I used some scarp 1x4 material to make it a total of 4 1/4" tall. I attached all of this to a scarp piece of 3/4" plywood I had in the shop that was 28"x36".

I pre-drilled the bolt holes and used heavy 1/4" wood screws to secure the extractor to the stand. It worked very well and reduced the wobble of the extractor by about 75%.

Now that is all of the How-To part of my blog... what follows is my struggle to get the led out of my ass. Feel free to stop reading here.

Maybe I'm just old... Maybe I'm just out of shape... Maybe I'm just lazy... I really don't know. However, Saturday I was so exhausted that I could hardly move. By Sunday, I felt fine and I was able to finish the work I started on Tuesday.

That's right Tuesday. As I said in the last blog, it was late Tuesday night before I got all of the supers in the house. So I had planned to extract them Wednesday. The trouble was, that I left the honey under the A/C all night and it became so thick, it wouldn't come out of the wax. So I placed a heater on it Wednesday.

Of course I work out of town on Thursdays and Fridays so those days were out.

Saturday I was so lethargic that I felt like I hadn't slept in days. I had stayed up the night before till midnight but I slept in till 9am - so that didn't seem like the problem. I also crashed my diet Friday by eating a family size bag of M&M's... DON'T JUDGE ME, YOU DON'T KNOW ME! Anyway, Saturday might have been a sugar crash. Whatever the reason, I didn't do anything productive that day either.

That brings us to Sunday. Now I had the heater going (which worked great). I also had the extractor spinning and with the new stand, it was spinning about 20 frames an hour. I also had the washer going in the adjacent room since I had gotten honey on my beekeeping jacket.

So as I was finishing up at 7:30pm, my wife came home from work and I kissed her. I'm so in love with her, that I saw a flash of light. I kissed her again, and again there was a spark. She felt it too... or at least saw it.

"Did you see that?" she exclaimed. "Was that the refrigerator?"

It was. The old wiring in my house couldn't take all the appliances... or maybe the little fan next to the sink had gotten wet while I was doing the dishes (I'm a big multi-task'er)... whatever the reason, the outlet blew.. Thankfully there was no fire - I checked on it all night and hardly slept but no fire. So the outlet will need to be replaced - add it to my list of things I need to fix.

Well, it took most of the afternoon but I got all 5 boxes of honey extracted and came out with about 12 gallons of honey - 16 gallons total so far this season. I say about, because the sieves hang down in the bucket so that I can only fill them to about 4.5 gallons full.

So that's my story... weather has me down until the weekend, so until then, best wishes faithful readers.

The Accidental Split - 2018 Harvest Continues

"We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents" - Bob Ross

Last night, Noah and I, attempted (without success) to put the trailer tire back on the rim. I am convinced that someone crept out to my trailer in the middle of the night and put a larger thinner tire on the rim.

Perhaps I'm paranoid but, then again, is it so inconceivable that someone bought a different tire, aged it so I wouldn't notice, then waited for the tire to come off the rim, then swapped my tire for theirs, and then hid and watched me fight for an hour to get a seal... all the while laughing manically? "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Well played, Tire Bandit... well played.

Well we bought a new tire, waited for the rain to pass, and then, with only a little daylight left, we decided to only take the top box from the 6 three deep hives.

To remove the bees from the supers, we smoked them until they ran down. Of course this didn't get rid of all the bees, so when I got home, I used my air-compressor to blow the rest of the bees out - that didn't work at all. Next time, I'll use the leaf blower.

The only way to keep the bees from coming into my house was to take the frames out, one by one and shake off the bees. Then two frames at a time, I carried them in. It was a totally unproductive way to go about it all.

However, as I was taking the frames out, I found 5 that had brood still in them (one with pretty young larva), so I grabbed an empty 5 frame nuc and made a split. Now I don't know if this will work, given there wasn't much pollen and the brood may have gotten chilled on the drive home. Nonetheless, I accidentally brought about 2lbs of bees to the house and this gave them a new home. If it works, then great. If not, nothing lost.

Today is my half-day at work but since it is expected to rain for the next 10 days, I will spend my time extracting the frames I brought home last night.

Super Count: 20 Hives and 1 Five-Frame-Nuc

Loss 13% - Time for Harvest

"It takes 15,000 casualties to train a major general." - Ferdinand Foch.

I lost 3 of my 23 hives to beetles. Actually, I lost 3 hives to neglect. While the beetles were the final cause, I think that the hives may have swarmed and left the remaining colonies too weak to defend themselves. I could make a 1000 excuses like work, weather, and want... but at the end of the day, I allowed my hives to go two months unchecked.

Last year I fussed too much with my hives, this year too little. The lesson here is to find the sweet spot - I believe that is about once or twice a month.

To add insult to injury, the tire on my 4x8 trailer came off the rim and, not having any other option, I had to drive home on the rim. Much to my surprise, the rim seems unharmed. I will try to put the tire back on the rim tonight but I may need to buy new tires.

Just the same it was a very productive year. I increased from 7 to 20 hives. I have 20 deep supers of honey to collect and if they are all the same as the one I extracted last night, that will equal 80 gallons or 50lbs per Deep Super.

Which brings me to my new extractor: Honey Keeper Pro Electric 4 Frame Stainless Steel Honey Extractor which cost about $325 on Amazon.

It worked great. It took about 10 minutes to setup. The barrel was bent a little oval'ish when I opened the box but I'm a big guy and I was able to bend it back round. The extractor held 4 deep frames that had to be flipped midway through. One Deep Super took about 30 minutes - of course that was my first try so I am sure I will get much more efficient.

One of the ten frames I extracted was a wood frame with no wires in it. Much to my delight, it did not come apart and extracted without incident.

The drum only held about 4 gallons so that the final extraction caused the honey and wax bits to get stirred and whipped - that is why it looked a little foamy in the bucket picture - it later settled out clear.

Two other smart purchases I made were:
Honey Strainer Double Sieve for $25 and Honey Uncapping Roller for $13.00

I have spent at least a $100 on cheese cloth over the years. The double sieve is not only cheaper but it was so much easier and cleaner.

As for the uncapping roller - Why does anyone use a hot knife? I have tried a scraping tool which was awful. It made a huge mess and I usually ended up scraping off most of the wax from the frame. I've also used a hot knife and that too was messy. The uncapping roller was extremely clean and effective.

Well I only extracted a single super last night. Tonight I will try to bring home 10 more - assuming I can get the trailer tire fixed. If not, I have a rack on the back of my SUV and it will hold 3 supers.

Hive Count: 20 Hives

Taste Test Sept Pear Mead: 6 months later

"To understand bad taste one must have very good taste." - John Waters

On July 24th, Noah and I opened the second bottle of the Sweet Pear Mead. Still very disappointing.

On opening the bottle, I still smelled the aroma of beer. It faded after it had breathed for 20 minutes.

In the glass it smelled sweet and had a clear amber color. 

The first taste was a shock. Very dry, faint taste of honey, and finished with that tallow sensation on the back of my tongue.

We tasted it a few times more just to be sure. The only thing that changed was the tallow sensation seemed to lessen.


We divided the bottle into 7 glasses. 1 for my wife, and 3 each for Noah and myself. The mead was so strong that Noah and I both got a really good buzz. Neither of us are lightweights, so it was a very strong mead.

On our second two glasses, we added a few drops of honey and found that it improved the taste drastically. In our opinion, the only thing wrong with this mead, was that it was just too dry.

My first tomatoes

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

My Papaw was a carpenter by trade and lived in the suburbs of North Miami. His tiny backyard always had chickens, fruit trees, and a small garden. Slowly, my backyard is beginning to look the same.

This year, I tried my hand at gardening. I live in town but have a large yard, though most of it is in the shade. So I bought three huge plastic pots, 5 tomato plants of varying verities, 3 bell pepper plants, and an olive tree.

The olive tree, to my surprise, actually produced two tiny olives. However, it turned out, that olive trees need lovers to pollinate and I only had the one tree. It did well at first but seems to be dying now - perhaps from loneliness - perhaps it just needs a bigger pot. Either way, I don't think it's going to make it.

I planted the rest of the plants in the other two pots and placed them in the sunniest part of the yard. I know - way too many plants in each pot.

I used the mulch I had been making all winter. A combination of pine chips, hay, food scraps, and chicken shit. Since I didn't have enough, I filled the bottom 1/3 of the pot with hay, covered that with news paper, covered that with mulch, then added a little potting soil on top of that.

The bell peppers never seemed to grow. They hung in there for a a month or two but eventually gave up the struggle.

My cheery tomatoes where the first to bloom and I got about 20 little tomatoes. Then the plant turned brown and died. We've had a lot of rain this year, but on the dry days I always watered my plants.

I read somewhere not to splash the water on the soil as this could cause fungus in the soil to get on the leaves. So I always did my best not to do that. I also saw on a YouTube video last week that you should trim the bottom leaves and shoots up about 10"-12" to prevent the same issue. I think that information came a little too late.

I think that fungus, did in fact, get to my tomatoes. No matter if the soil was dry or wet, the plants always had brown tipped leaves. Then as the tomatoes began to ripen, the majority of them would split or get black spots on them.

I fed the rotted tomatoes to the chickens, while struggling to harvest enough good tomatoes to make so much as a single bowl of bruschetta.

I'm not upset, it was my first try. Next year, I will do better.
1. More potting soil.
2. Only one plant per pot.
3. Prune the lower 12".

I bet next year, I'll be swimming in tomatoes.