Beekeeping

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 Some beekeepers leave their hives naked for the winter but I wrap mine with 1/2 inch Styrofoam. This doesn't warm the hive much but the main concern is wind and rain. Strong Cold winds and driving rain can make their way through the sides of the hive where the boxes come together. Either one will kill bees. This wrap should stop both the wind and rain from getting to the bees. 

Next, I put Styrofoam insulation under the top cover. Make sure the inner cover entrance is facing down. The bees can use this as an escape if snow or debris blocks the main entrance. Most important for this opening however is ventilation to let the condensation out. Bees cluster in the center and move their wings to generate heat to keep the cluster warm. This heat also generates condensation. If there isn't enough ventilation, moisture will develop on the inner cover and drip down on the bee cluster. In extremely cold weather this will most definitely kill bees.
Next, block the main entrance with a mouse guard so those mice don't take over the hive during the winter. 
Last, I installed an empty honey super on top of the brood boxes. This gives me space for my home made sugar cake. I keep an eye on the sugar cakes during warm winter days. If the bees are eating all of the sugar cakes they may be out of food and ready to starve to death. If you see the sugar cakes are almost gone, add more sugar cakes. If it is late enough in the winter and the temperature is above 50 degrees most of the time, add liquid sugar water 1-1 ratio.

 This may not work for everyone, but so far in 8 years I have only lost about 10% of my hives during the winter months. National average is between 40% to 50% loss during the winter. 
 

After extracting honey, there is a pile of wax capping's left over. I take the wax cuttings which are saturated with honey and put them into a 5 gallon bucket. Then I fill the bucket with hot water and stir the cuttings with my hands. The left over honey will settle to the bottom of the bucket and the clean wax capping's will rise to the top. Remove the wax and place in a screen or queen excluder covered with paper towel to dry. Once dry it is ready for solar melting.

Solar melting requires a warm 80 + degrees with full sun. Place the wax into a pan with holes in the bottom on top of paper towels as a filter. Place another pan under the capping's with some sticks to keep the two pans separated and place into a deep hive box. Cover the box with glass or Plexiglas on a hot day. After several hours your top pan will have the crusty left over pollen and other debris and the bottom pan will have fresh clean bees wax. 

This was can now be used to make candles, for waxing frames to help the bees fill them out to hold honey, and other uses.

This is a swarm that I caught last summer. The swarm was about 15 feet off of the ground and in an awkward area to get to. I used a 5 gallon water bottle with the bottom cut off. The small end has a paint handle attached with JB Weld. The pole will extend to 30 feet but is hard to bring down extended that far because when full of bees it is very heavy. Fully extended you need two people to get the bees into a hive box. Although, extending 30 feet is difficult for one person, it is much better than trying to use a ladder to catch a swarm that is high above the ground. At 15 feet, however this works very well for one person. The water bottle can be placed around the swarm, and once the swarm is inside the bottle, push it hard and fast into the branch and most of the bees will fall into the bottle. Then it can be lowered, quickly down into a hive box. With this swarm, I got the queen in the first try and the bees that fell to the ground started marching into the box instead of flying back to the limb. When they march into the hive box you know you have the queen. 

In my opinion, every hive should have some type of hive beetle trap between April and September, in So. Illinois. Hive beetles are now a problem all over the state of Illinois now. If hive beetles infest a hive, the queen will leave the hive along with the colony. It only takes about a week once they get started. I have had this happen to me twice and hope to keep this from happening again. My strategy is, 1st keep the entrance small, about 3 to 4 inches wide, this makes it easier for the entrance defenders to attack the beetles before they get in the hive. 2nd in February I will install an inside upper feeder and start feeding the bees to get the queen started laying eggs to build up the colony. 3rd in March, about 6 weeks after starting to feed the bees, I will remove the upper feeder, so the bees don't make honey out of sugar water,  and install a honey super with one or two beetle traps on the corners. I won't put a second honey super on the hive until about June when the first honey super should be pretty full. If you allow too much space for the bees, they have a hard time defending all of the space against the hive beetles.