I saw Daniel on Meet the Farmer last week on TV and I got his website up and contacted Dan and here he is already! I learned so much just in the first two minutes of watching the show and I know a lot of you are going to be excited to learn today too! Daniel is one of the first people called when a swarm needs removed. Daniel runs the NJBees.com website full of information about bees and you can also find out how to become trained as a beekeeper yourself.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I began beekeeping about 5 years ago. I was visiting a friend of mine’s farm, I was giving him some help with his mobile chickens. I looked across the field and there’s this chain link fence with a bunch of boxes in it and  I asked him, “what’s that?”

And he said, “those are my bees.”

“Oh wow, cool, you have bees? What’s the chain link fence for it’s not gonna keep the bees in or out?”

“It’s to keep the bears out!”

“I’m like Bears …  bees …. I’m sold!”

I started reading up on things, about 6 months later I purchased my first pack of bees. I do a whole bunch of bee rescue, I sell a whole bunch of honey.  I average about 20 hives that I manage right now, it’s a hobby sort of gone wild.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

I can’t claim to be an expert gardener, when I was a very young child, my grandparents lived next door to a guy who tilled his backyard and made it into a wonderful garden. I was probably maybe 3-4 years, and I wander into his backyard, and he’d show me the  carrots, tomatoes and  various other things he grew.

I’m very into the outdoors, I’ve been around gardeners, and gardening, I’ve done a lot of work, tangentially related to, but I’d say my earliest experiences were with Mr. Ribner in North Bergen NJ.

You’re in NY, but isn’t your thing called NJBee?

I’m born and bread in NJ, my primary home is in Teaneck, NJ

I have bees in my backyard.

Depending on the time of year, between 4 and 6 hives in my backyard

I have a number

I have a summer home in Woodridge, NY. That’s where my garden is, that’s where my big apiary is. When I started I was reluctant to keep bees in my backyard.

Teaneck is Urban, so I was nervous, I have neighbors etc. So when I first started keeping bees I kept them in Woodridge which is much more rural. I’ve got about 10 hives there, I also keep them in Eldred NY, also have bees in Manhattan right over Central Park. I keep bees on a roof in  Teaneck

I’ve got bees in a number of locations. I travel back and forth, it takes about an hour and 20 min, about 80 miles. The bees make the trip. They’re limited to a 3 mile radius outside the hive.

I often move hives from one location

It’s better to start with them in Teaneck, we have an earlier spring

We have a summer dearth in NJ, and there’s still a whole bunch of flora upstate so I transition bees. Later summer into fall, I move a lot of my hives upstate because they’re still productive.

What you take the hives at night?

We wait till evenings, when I first started moving hives, I actually sealed them up, I was worried about losing a bee or two. I position the entrance so the wind won’t blow in it, I reduce the entrance, I don’t want to lock the entrance so I don’t have to worry about temperature. I move under the cover of darkness

sometimes they’ll hang out on the front porch of the pickup, once you start moving the van they go inside the hive. As long they are 3 miles away they’re not gonna return to the original location.

Then do they stay in Woodridge thru the winter?

We always try to stay, a responsible bee keeper always respects what they call bee law. I try to stay within bee law, in NJ they don’t have bee law, but they have recommended practices. In Teaneck, I’m only on a 200×200 property. I want to stay within the number of 6-7 hives. I always make sure that I’m at that number because bees will overwinter a little better in Teaneck.

The remainder of my bees

In my area, to make it through the winter, they need 80lbs of honey

I make sure they are chock full of honey going into winter, I feed them fondant as well. The upstate hives I insulate so they have some help with the weather,  I make sure I have a lot of windbreak, so the wind isn’t too challenging for them. The national average is a survival of  60-70% I generally run 80-90%. If I enter winter with 10 hives, I’ve been exiting with at least 8. So that’s a great percentage.

80lbs of honey per hive?

Per hive. Right now, the bees are at their highest numbers. The queen is starting to slow down. So my hives, have about 60-80k bees per hive, depending on the species, that number will drop. I have feral bees, I rescued the bees from the wild, or they’re children of bees I rescued from the wild.

Italian bees go through their winter clusters

They’re a little larger then some other varieties of honey bees.

They’re numbers will drop to about 20k. Now they need those 20,000 bees to care for and insulate and warm the queens. Those 20k bees will need food and their food source is the honey they collect. The average 20k bees in my area with the length of my winter, will need about 80lbs of honey.

I don’t sit there

average Langstrom hives, 2 deeps if they’re heavy, if your bees collect enough honey will be about 80 lbs. So if they fill more boxes, we can take those. We always leave those first two boxes to fill up with honey.

How do you know when the hive is full of honey?

When you start, generally, 90% of people out there are using Langstrom hives.

Langstrom was a beekeeper who discovered bee space, which leaves an 1/8 inch and that separation, the bees won’t builds birkhome. By building modular hives.

So you can build so you can manipulate the frames. You start with one box, 8 to 10 frames, once they start to fill those their developing babies and pollen. then you add a second box.

Once that second box is full, then you start adding the honey supers, because those 2 boxes are what they need to get through the winter. The honey supers is what you can harvest. So it’s easy for me to figure out if I can harvest honey. I go pop open the hive. If they only have 2 boxes, there’s nothing for me to harvest. If they have 3, I check the condition of box #1 & #2. If it doesn’t look good.

I have a way to encourage the bees to move the honey

in between box #1 and box#3 and bring it down

How often do you check the hives?

Most people are very passionate, about the way they do beekeeping. If you ask a beekeeper they are ver insistent: This is the only way you can do it!

And the bee keeper will tell you, I

one of the major different approach is do you want a very hands on approach or the other hand is a hand’s off approach.,

some would say you check the bees once a week.

The only way, hands off, leave the bees alone, don’t bother them.

Each school of thought will t

At the Hive Entrance

if your not constantly monitoring, you have a very good chance of disease and also

failing queens, you’ll end up losing the whole hive. I take an approach that is a balance between the 2.

when you first start. I recommend starting with 2 hives, if you start with 2 hives, you should figure spring into a summer an hour a week, maybe a little more. Once summer gets going you can cut that to an hour every two weeks, you’re gonna visit them more then you have to.

It’s the type of thing if you take to bee keeping, it becomes a passion and you end up visiting more then you need to.

that I’m usually getting a quick look once a week.

What are you looking for when you go in there

Looking for pests, there a couple of pests that affect the hives. One is a a small hive beetle and a moth, verroa mites, a huge problem and probably contributing to colony collapse disorder

A good pattern of brood

see that she’s laying well, there’s enough brood there. Want to make sure they have enough room, if they need more space, they’re gonna swarm.

once they swarm and then

I think he usually goes kinda towards dark? Is that right around sunset? (Mike said he checks his bees between 10am-6pm on a sunny day with no wind)

You’re bees are returning

Don’t want to disturb them at night

so they sort of get frazzled if you bother them

I like to check early afternoon

so I avoid the foraging bees so your population is lower and your disturbing fewer bees.

I try to get there in the afternoon

I had somebody wanted to visit my hives so this morning at 9 o’clock we were cracking open hives.

convenience as long as it’s light out.

Colony Collapse

Let’s talk about Colony collapse and difference of honey bees

loss of feral and managed hives

Feral hives are

there are no indigenous

brought here to use for pollinating crops, or collecting honey. But many escaped into the wild and established themselves.

Feral colonies are very important, especially when there were

They do

Pollination

Why are bees so import