Blog entries

Early Spring Activity

Matthew Reed — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:26:12 +0100

Spring! Too early. At least two weeks too early as evidenced by the bustle of the bees and the grape vines at my day job. Daffodils and Crocus are long since up, and the cherries are blooming actively… in February! We have seen pollen on many bee legs for the last three weeks. It will most certainly be an interesting growing season.

Early spring has found us cleaning out dead hives, checking on thriving ones, finally finishing our honey processing, and hosting basic bee keeping Read More...

Winter In the Apiary

Matthew Reed — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:47:24 +0100

It's the dead of winter here in the Pacific Northwest (Oak Grove, Oregon), and the bees are buckled down waiting eagerly for the arrival of spring 2010. On Tuesday there was a freak snowstorm that brought our city to a standstill, but the bees perservered in their Warre hives as well as their horizontal top bar hives. Here's a picture of our backyard with two horizontal top bar hives, two Warre hives and the natural stump hive that is currently vacant.

The past few weeks we've been slaving to finish our 170' fence to enclose the apiary space, as well as create a safe area for our new dog -- an Australian Shepherd we're rescuing from Idaho Falls, Idaho -- to romp about. This week we'll finish the gates and we'll finally have a beautiful space to host bee classes and wonderful parties.

The first sectioRead More...

Willow Tree Hive Absconds and an Interesting Discovery

Matthew Reed — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:36:06 +0100

As many of you know, when my wife and I purchased our home it came with an ancient willow tree in the backyard. Shortly after moving in we had an arborist inspect it and learned that it was rotten and required removal. As they were cutting it down they found a honey bee colony inside and I had them leave the remaining phallic tree standing in the yard for months until I had time to deal with it.

A few weeks ago, due to a number of circumstances, we had to get the remaining tree down, hiRead More...

Hot Bee Hilarity

Matthew Reed — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:00:45 +0100

I spent the day in wine country today doing a trap out at Cristom winery. After that I figured I should check on my 9 warre hives at the other wineries since I hadn't seen them for a few weeks. The first 6 went swimmingly and I was making good time.

Trap out:

Then I got to Lachini viRead More...

Swarm pictures, traps, heat and harvest!

Matthew Reed — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:09:23 +0100

It's been an exciting couple of months. We're now back up to 23 hives as one of our new-found neighbors wanted to keep the swarm that showed up on their property. Fortuitously, they have the most amazing garden of all Oak Grove, Oregon, and are inclined to trade us an almost-unlimited supply of beautiful organic produce.

The top bar hives throughout Oak Grove/Milwaukie, Oregon are absolutely booming. The two top bar hives in our back yard are so full of bees that at night, when thRead More...

We're in the News

Matthew Reed — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:31:20 +0100

We're in the news! Bee Thinking began 8 months ago as my effort to categorize the beekeeping resources on the internet. Since then we've gained over 300 members, more than 500 resources, numerous articles, and expanded our apiary from 1 to 23 hives.

The Clackamas Review, a newspapeRead More...

Swarm Season Indeed

Matthew Reed — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:38:56 +0100

Over the past week I've had 6 swarm calls, of which I've caught 3, 1 was a bumble bee colony, 1 was a bearding hive in a tree, and 1 was too high up to catch. It is both invigorating and exhausting, and I wonder if I'll feel bored when swarm season ends.

Yesterday one of my hive hosts, Eleanore, callRead More...

What a Month!

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:00:07 +0100

Whew! I can't believe we've made it! From late March until the first week of May it has been nonstop bee tasks. Building hives. Placing hives. Ordering bees. Installing bees. Feeding bees. Managing bees. Catching bees. My family is quite thankful that the brunt of the chaos is subsiding and now we can (hopefully) enjoy the mundane tasks that remain. Hah!

On Monday, April 6th I installed 10 packages of bees (5 Italian and 5 Carniolan) at three different locations in MilwaukieRead More...

Melting Wax Easily

Matthew Reed — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

For a month I read, pondered, tested and finally decided on what seems to be the ideal, cost-effecive, clean method of melting and applying wax to top bars and anything else; the Presto Kitchen Kettle!

Simply put in a chunk of wax, set the kettle to warm and within a minute or two you are left with a beautiful puddle of wax that can easily be poured, painted or applied in aRead More...

The First 10 Packages Installed

Matthew Reed — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

What a week! After more than 6 months of planning and building, the first 10 packages in the 20 hive apiary expansion have been installed. 5 packages of Italians and 5 packages of Carniolans arrived at Ruhl Bee Supply on Monday, after a trek from Northern California's Oliveraz Bee Company. It was an unusually warm day -- almost 80 degrees in April!

My wife, a photographer from the Oregonian and I met at Ruhl, waited in line for 20 minutes to pay and then entered the holy of holies: The Read More...

ETA One Week!

Matthew Reed — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

This weekend it hit me: the first 10 packages of bees could arrive as soon as April 4th. This Saturday! Needless to say, I was a flurry of action this weekend, installing screens, cutting plexiglass, creating roofs, cutting bottoms and completing numerous other tasks I've been putting off. There is a lot more work to do before Saturday, so each evening this week I will be working tirelessly to get the hives ready!

The first 10 packages will be installed into 9 top bar hives and one WarrRead More...

Warre Roofs Completed

Matthew Reed — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Yesterday I dropped off my wife at work, procured some coffee from the local coffee house and proceeded home, determined to make headway on the remaining hive projects. After 5.5 hours of measuring, ripping and screwing boards, here are the results:

10 beautiful Warre roofs:

From Shop 3-22-09

It took over 70 feet of cedar, 180 screws, produced a lot of sawdust (which IRead More...

The Final Touches Remain

Matthew Reed — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Two nights ago I picked up 170 linear feet of Cedar from Jeff at Treecycle Northwest (http://www.treecyclenw.com)-- now the exclusive provider of wood for Bee Thinking. Upon arriving home and stickering it it looked like this:

From Shop

After today's work it looks like this:

The Warrés Are Coming!

Matthew Reed — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

The past couple evenings I've been building the first Warré hive of 10+ to be deployed this Spring. I plan to place all Warré hives at the most remote outyards. The wineries in Dundee are the logical locations for these hives, and I think the reduced management (less than 5 times per year) will make them a more feasible option than top bar hives, which would require almost weekly maintenance during the height of the season. Close to Oak Grove (Milwaukie) I will be using a combination of top bRead More...