The Royal Lady Eludes Me Again!

Two dead bees, head first in the comb
Dead bees that starved

Today (actually, 10 minutes ago), I took on the first major hive inspection of the year, focusing solely on Hive 1, the hive that I have started to call my Geronimo Hive. As per my last post, I had lots of expectations for this inspection. Given the fact that folks to the North of me are talking about reversing already, I went in prepared for Bear. Outside of my normal gear, I brought with me:

  1. One of my new Nuc’s, in case I found queen cells
  2. A brood chamber full of frames with foundation, to replace any frames that I removed from this hive, in case I had to
  3. A top board, as I was definitely going to remove the feeder, which they were not using at all (two idiot bees had ventured into the mix and drowned, of course)
  4. A capping knife, to cut out any major burr comb that I came across
  5. A new, painted bottom board (the current screened bottom board is not painted and I want to paint it this year, plus it will be easier to clean it away from the hive.)

The goal of this inspection was to figure out what was going on, find the queen and clean up the bottom brood chamber. For the most part, it was a success.

When I opened up the hive, I removed the feeder and dumped it on the ground nearby. I then removed the Imrie shim and I found one bee eating on the pollen substitute. I think it was wise to drop this in here, although I probably should have done it early (like early February) instead of early March. They had eaten half of a full patty, but now were finished with it. As I found out later, they were bringing in more then enough pollen to feed themselves (and natural pollen surely tastes better then the stuff that I gave them.)

Honey Bee Comb Eaten Through
Wonder how this happened?

I removed the pollen (tossing it on the ground nearby), and started my inspection of the top brood chamber. There were a fair number of bees about the place, although all of the honey towards the south of the hive was gone (except for a couple of patches). In one frame, I found two bees that appeared to have died of starvation, with their tails sticking out of the comb (of course, I forgot to poke them, so I am only assuming they were dead.) On the north side of the hive, I found 3 to 4 full frames of capped honey. For the most part, this hive body was fairly clean. So, I put it aside and began to examine the motherload.

This time, I lit my smoker and hit them with a few puffs. There were tons of bees (I should have grabbed a picture of them.) I think they covered 6 or 7 frames on the top (and I mean tons – not just a few wandering about – head-to-tail, thick). The frames in this hive have no space on either end, due to my lack of experience last year. One of my goals was to remedy this.

Ball of Honey Bees
What the heck are they doing here?

I began to remove the frames, one-by-one. What I found was interesting. What I did not find was irritating. The hive had a couple of frames with lots of pollen and some nectar/honey-being-ripened (partially full cells). One frame, oddly enough, was eaten up a lot. It was like wax moths had gotten to it, but I found no evidence of them in the hive. As I moved through the hive, I came across 4 or more frames that were stock full of capped brood. There were probably one to two frames with eggs and larvae. Fortunately, there were no queen cells (that I found, anyway.) I also did not find that rascal Queen. But, I did not push it, as the frames with the eggs (where I assumed she’d be), had bees a couple of layers thick, all on top of one another. I figured she could easily be in there, out of my sight. I did find one frame with a few capped drone cells, but it couldn’t have been more then 30 or so cells. This was a positive sign, as I also did not see any drones, so we should not be very close to any swarming activity.

Honey Bee Propolis
Propolis Scraped from Frames

One of the big things that I learned during this inspection was that my problem with the Geronimo hive was not burr comb, but propolis. I see now that the whole ‘cleaning’ aspect of beekeeping escaped me (my wife would say that it escapes me in life). When I was inspecting the frames last year, I should have been using my hive tool to scrape the propolis off of the sides of the frames (where they come together). Since I did not do that, it had built up a lot between several frames, spreading them out substantially. But, I took care of it at this inspection, scraping the sticky stuff off of the side bars of each frame, so they could come together more flush. In the end, I did have a little space on the ends of the frames (although I will have to continue to clean through the warm months to fully defeat this issue.)

Junk on the front of my Honey Bee Hive
What is this junk at the entrance of my hive?

As I was leaving the hive, I took a quick picture of something that has started to bug me over the last month. It seems to me that they are generating a big mess at the front of the hive. Some of this might have been here all along, but I am certain that it was not this thick. I am assuming it is excrement, possibly due to the lemon feeder I had on top these past few weeks. Regardless, I am watching it (they do get problems with having some kind of bee diarrhea, but this doesn’t look at bad as the pictures that I have seen of this problem.)

Also, this last picture was just an oddity. For some reason, bees from the outside frames that I had put on my frame holder decided to show off and do some kind of bee acrobatics. I am not sure if this is normal or not, but my bees are always putting on this kind of show (they did it last year and the young ones from this year appear to have picked up the same trick. I typically have to hold them over the hive and push them off with my hand.

Ball of Honey Bees
What the heck are they doing here?

Lots of Activity

Hive 2 Starting Real Pollen Gathering Activities
We need a traffic cop...

Both hives showed strong activity this weekend. There were tons of bees on the landing board and all on the front faces of both hives. It’s fun to watch them coming and going when they are active. They are really bringing in the pollen now, yellow’s, red’s and a beige color. I decided not to open them, as I am hopeful that they are moving up into the upper deeps. And this gets to the heart of my worries.

Having checked a few other blogs out in cyberspace and monitoring some forums, there are lots of folks to the north of me that have already done their reversals. Although the weak hive definitely had a barrier (tons of sugar water honey, making them honey-bound, above them), the stronger hive should have moved up. They have lots of empty, drawn comb above them.

Regardless, I have come to learn that there is no correlation between seeing something that I did not expect and the well being of my hives. Said another way, I am typically concerned for naught (and this has frequently driven me to do things that probably annoyed the bee’s at best and set them back at worst!) Even so, I am certain that it is past time for me to actually break the bottom deep’s open. As of now, I have only viewed them from above, since there is so much burr comb in their loose formation (see my earlier post on why this happened, as I cannot bear the pain of repeating my idiocies again!) So, this coming weekend is going to be a big one. As a reminder to myself, my plan is as follows:

My Honey Bees finally start to eat the pollen substitute.
A few bees finally decide to eat on the pollen patty.

  1. Open each hive and pray that there is some movement into the upper deep’s (by ‘movement’, I mean that I need to see queen activity up there). If I see it, I may wait another week or two before proceeding to the next step. For me, it is critical to locate both queens at this inspection. I have gone 6 months without seeing either of them.
  2. Remove each frame in the bottom deep and do a thorough inspection. Record honey, pollen and brood estimates.
  3. Check for any drone cells. It is my understanding that swarming begins when the drones first emerge. I do not expect to see any this early, but we all know how it goes with my expectations.
  4. Clean all frames of propolis and burr comb. This could get messy, so I hope to bring a little container along with me. I am going to clean up these frames. I might even smoke them for the first time this year if things get hairy.
  5. Clean the bottom deep of propolis and any stray wax.
  6. Take two of more of the oldest frames (the ones that came as part of the Nuc) and move them to the outside of the deep, for removal/replacement next year.
  7. Identify what frame the queen is on and make sure she is not on the bottom. Then, remove the bottom deep from the screened bottom board and replace with my painted, screened bottom board.
  8. Put them all back together.

Hopefully, this will all go well. The strong hive has had a big batch of sugar syrup and Honey-B-Healthy on them for a week now and they do not seem to have touched it. I think this is a positive sign, as they must be finding nectar out in the wilds (I noticed that my plum tree is blooming now.) This is little doubt that there are all kinds of surprises waiting for me, but here are some of the things that I might come across and my plans for dealing with them (I am trying to get these clear in my mind so that I have all of the necessary equipment on hand when I make this dive.)

  • Swarm Queen Cells: If I find these, I will do a split. I will move the old queen, a frame of brood and a frame or two of honey to a Nuc. If I have more then one frame with a queen cell on it, I might take one of the spare queen cells and also drop it into a Nuc. I purchased two Nuc’s this year for this exact reason. I honestly hope that I do not have to use them…
  • Supercedure Queen Cells: If the weak hive is getting ready to start a rebellion, I will let them do it. The hive looks strong right now, but they tried to get rid of her last Fall (but I stopped them – or I think I did!). If more then one frame has a queen cell on it, I will pull it and drop it into a Nuc with a couple of frames of honey.
  • Lots o’ Honey: If the weak hive still has 7+ frames of capped honey, I will take 3 frames of this and put it in the freezer. I will take a frame or two of drawn comb from the stronger hive (putting in foundation here) and drop it into the center of the weaker hive. The goal here is to create some brood-rearing space.

For my Nuc’s, I will use the honey frames from the weak hive. Unless things have changed, I will probably have a ton of them left over. But, who knows what I will find. If my course remains true to form, I will find none of the above and instead something totally odd.

Honey bees in the strong hive begin to venture out in Spring
Honey bees in the strong hive begin to venture out in Spring

Honey Bee’s Bringing in Pollen

Over the last couple of days, I have noticed a lot of pollen coming in. The usual gray, but mostly yellow with some a fairly deep red. The red could be the Maples, while the yellow could be the dandelions that have started to pop up here and there. I still have no idea what the gray is. Both hives seem to be active in bringing this in at a good pace. There is also a fair amount of activity on the landing board, possibly young bees doing some training flights.

As noted previously, the weak hive (which I fed syrup all Winter) has a Top Deep that is nearly full of honey (about 7.5 frames full of capped honey.) My reading online indicates that this could be a problem known as ‘honey bound’, where the queen has no place to lay because of all of the honey. This can trigger swarming activity. Kenny at the ERBA and a few folks online advised me to put a couple of empty frames of drawn wax (or simply foundation, if this is all I have – which it is, being a new beekeeper) in the center of the Deep’s, placing the ones currently there (which are full of capped honey) into the freezer for use later.

So, I ventured out over this past weekend to do just that. But, once I was able to get the top off, I noticed that I had some empty frames on the side. So, I swapped the empty frames for the full ones, right in the center of the Deep. I also stopped feeding them a few weeks ago, so the thought is that they will draw this wax out and start to move up. We’ll see…

Now, on to Hive 1, the strong hive. Up until this past weekend, I had thought that it was also honey bound (although I had stopped feeding them last November or December. But, when I went to swap out some empty frames this past weekend, I found that most of the frames in the upper Deep were actually empty! I now believe that my casual observations of the frames (without breaking them out of the Deep) was faulty. I even found two bees that were head first in the cells, as if they had starved (I didn’t poke them to see if they were alive, but doubt they were.) They still had a little capped honey, but not a ton (maybe 3 frames worth.) This was a pretty good lesson, as these guys could have starved. I should have been looking more carefully.

Since this hive, what I have been calling the Strong Hive, had so many empty, drawn frames that I only did a little re-arranging. Last night, I made up a batch of syrup and added 1 Teaspoon of Honey-Bee Healthy per quart. I put two gallons on this hive, thinking that they might need some assurances with the possibility of low food. I went back later this afternoon and didn’t find anyone on the syrup. This is odd. Either it was a little too chilly or they simply didn’t want it (maybe that lemon smell of the Honey-Bee Healthy freaked them out?!) Only time will tell. A couple of days in the high-60’s and low-70’s are coming up soon, so I hope to see some feasting then.

Article in the Post

A buddy at work emailed me a link to an article on Bees and CCD in the Washington Post this morning ( Click Here to See It ). Like most articles for the layman, it beats the drum on CCD, but it did have an interesting tidbit on Winter losses. From the author’s perspective, we have had one doozy of a Winter with very high Hive Loss rates. To this author, it was expected that you would lose about one-third of your hives before this last Winter. They expect much higher losses when the Spring counts come in.

For what it is worth, Kenny advised that he lost half of his hives. That’s a major blow, to be sure.

Still Hanging Out in the Basement

I am now have serious reservations about my decision to feed the weaker hive so much and then put cane sugar (Mountain Camp Method) on the hives in late January/early February. I checked both hives on Friday and, while strong, neither of them had made hardly any progress up into the upper Deep. They both have around 8 frames full of honey (made mostly from sugar syrup, I’d guess) above them. This is somewhat annoying, as I had plans to clean up and fix the lower deeps on both hives with a reversal. The way things are now, this is looking less and less likely (of course, maybe this will be another nube concern and I’ll find them moving up quickly later this month – we’ll see…)

The Varina Beekeeper’s Association had a meeting about putting woodenware together this past Tuesday, although the conversation was seriously sidetracked and we did not spent a lot of time on that topic. It is unfortunate, as the main speaker (Kenny) has a ton of knowledge. To that effect, I asked him about my hives and the fact that the bees were still hanging out in the bottom deep. He advised to take two empty frames (just foundation) and drop them in the center of the upper deeps. This will encourage them to draw these out and the queen is likely to start laying in them (she should need space as she ramps up for the Nectar flow.) I decided to try this on the  (previously) weaker hive, since it already had two empty frames in it (both on the far outside of the deep.) I move the frames full of honey to the outside and swapped them with the  empty ones.

On another positive note, I noticed the bees bringing in yellow pollen, in addition to the vanilla/almost gray pollen they were bringing in during February and March. Both hives seem to have tapped into this trove a bit. I also found out that the weaker hive is now taking to the pollen substitute, instead of tossing it out of the hive as it used to. A couple of dozen bees were working it before I uprooted them to swap out the frames.

Most of my boxes and nuc’s are now constructed and partially painted. The wet weather is keeping the paint wet and sticky, so it’s been a bit of a pain trying to prevent them from sticking together when I stack them. I hope most of this goes away in the next month to month and a half, when I’ll be adding the two new kids to the block.

Next Sunday I will get my first look at my cousin, Rob’s, bees. He has a strong hive and has not looked at them yet. He invited me to do so with him, so it should be good fun.