Archives for June 2010 | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

The Small Hive Beetle

The Small Hive Beetle is another one of those lovely gifts that beekeepers received from across the seas. The critter originated in Africa. Oddly, one would expect that the Beekeeper’s of Europe would have encountered them as well, but maybe the beetle could never survive the trip through the Middle East…

At any rate, this Bug likes to eat sweet stuff. Fruit, honey, sugar water…you name it. As an adult, it will sneak into a beehive and lay eggs in an out of the way location. Once the eggs hatch, a nasty little larva crawls around and eats honey, comb and brood (that’s right…brood…) The honey bee fights it off, chasing the parents out of the hive and cleaning up the eggs. I am guessing that they will also kill the small larva if given the chance. Once the larva is full, it crawls out of the hive and digs into the ground, mutating back into the beetle (see my Small Hive Beetle page for thoughts on nemotodes that might fight this.) Then, it just flies back up and starts laying eggs again…

But, this all assumes a strong hive. A weak hive can fall behind the beetles and end up with a nest of larva climbing through everything. To make matters even worse, they defecate in the wax and this is one substance that the bees turn their noses up at. They will not clean it out and can/will eventually abscond from a hive that is full of these little beasts.

Now, back to my beekeeping adventures near Richmond, Virginia. The Small Hive Beetle (aka SHB) has been slowly working its way up the coast over the past several years. Like the Varroa Mite, it can overwinter in the warmth of the hive’s cluster. But, it has had a hard time getting a toehold in the more temperate regions (it is a tropical bug, after all.) Still, the State Apiarist noted that central Virginia had its first SHB around 2005. He says that they will cover all of Virginia soon enough, so get ready for them.

Well, I have them. I had them last year, but only a few running here and there. This year, they seem to be everywhere. I think the early warm season gave them a bit of an advantage. Tomorrow, I will take a look at my small hives to see how they are faring, but the reason for this post centers on the Southside Hive.

About 6 days ago, I decided that I should give the Southside Hive some pollen substitute to help them get going. I had just sucked them out of a tree and they had no resources at all. I could see that they were storing nectar, but was unsure if they were getting enough pollen. Like an idiot, I tore off a small chunk (maybe the size of a silver dollar) and pushed it through the entrance (I could not lay it on top, as I have a hive top feeder on this hive right now.)

Well, I checked the pollen sub this morning, to see if they were using it, and found that they were not. Instead, as I pulled it out and turned it over, about a dozen SHB larva were crawling all through it! Ugh! These things are nasty. I wish I had snapped a picture, but I was so pissed that I dropped them on a rock and smashed the living bejesus out of them. Hopefully, I caught this in time and did not endanger the hive any. But, it has me wondering what is going on under the feeder. In addition, I thought I noticed a weird smell from the Berkley Hive the other day (it also has a top feeder – another thing that attracts the cursed bug). At the time, I thought that maybe the syrup was getting ripe (you cannot leave the feed, which is basically water and sugar, out in this heat for too long before it begins to ferment.) But, they were almost finished and I just figured I would swap that feeder out for a clean one tomorrow.

At any rate, this post reflects a big lesson for me. Once SHB weather is here, do not feed Pollen Sub. In this case, the bees will have to make it on their own. Natural Selection. If I give them the sub, I am only stacking the deck against what might otherwise be a strong gene pool. At any rate, I hope that I do not have to cull frames tomorrow, to get rid of a SHB problem. I might be going to the store to get some materials for a homemade trap…

Hot & Bearding

It’s hot as Hades today in Richmond, Virginia, reaching 95 degrees on my gauge. Beekeeping is only fun on days like today when you’re just watching from afar. Regardless, I had to do a couple of checks to see what was going on in the Albo and Geronimo hives. I built another medium (Illinois super) box of frames last night and put foundation in them this morning. I wanted to make sure they were not close to filling of their current supers up. If they were, they would be going into the ‘it is daggone crowded in here’ psychosis and might decide to swarm. Putting an extra, empty super on top would give them the feeling of lots o’ space and keep them happy.

I cracked the Geronimo Hive, which I had seen working the one super on top, hoping to see a bunch of capped frames. Unfortunately, my luck continues to hold and it really does not look like they have done much work beyond my last look. All of the frames have some drawn comb on them, but none of them are fully drawn out and (with my brief inspection) I did not see any capped comb. Oh well. It would appear that I will not get any honey off of these guys, but I am going to continue to let them work at it this year, just to see how it goes. I did not drop any super on them. Of note, these bees were all over the landing board and some were actually hanging off of it, latching on to one another and creating a ‘beard-like’ look on the front of the hive. This is a common occurrence, although most folks worry that the bees are getting ready to swarm and fly off. Instead, they are just cooling off. I’d go out on the porch for some lemonade too!

The Albo Hive had not even touched the super on top. In fact, I briefly removed the super and noticed that they had not yet drawn out the last frame on the top brood chamber. This is the hive that I am going to consider splitting. They are not my strongest hive, but they are still a solid hive. I think that most of my hives did not get a great start, due to how late I received them last year. I am hopeful that next Spring will be a different story. I am thinking about feeding these bees just to see if they will draw out this honey super for next year.

Finally, I replaced the feeder on the Blue Cottage Hive. This weak hive has shown a lot of progress over the past week to ten days. I now see bees on the landing area and coming and going with more frequency then my initial investigations. I am pretty sure that dropping that frame of brood from the Westover Hive was a big boon. It should be noted that I momentarily thought the Westover Hive was robbing this hive, as I could see the blacker bees coming and going (a color that I mainly have in the Westover Hive.) Then I remembered that I had taken brood from them…so, these are some of that brood already going to work.

Not an extremely eventful post, but good for the journal and future reference.

New Queen Cells Started

Today, in my continuing effort to spread out my hive inspections, I decided to focus on two items. The first focused on the Geronimo Hive, as I wanted to check on the progress of the honey super. I do not want them to swarm because they filled that thing up too quickly. A couple of frames were capped, but most simply held drawn or partially drawn comb with nectar and/or honey. They could probably use another honey (Illinois) super, but I do not have the frames available for them yet. I will build some tonight and get it on them tomorrow.

The second, and more important, task was to check on the Southside Hive. Although I was hopeful that I retrieved the queen from that hive, I was doubtful. So, I wanted to see if they had started a queen with the eggs that I dropped in there last Monday (4 days ago.) I also wanted to see what they were doing with the rubber banded comb that I had jimmied into frames for them. I would like to get rid of this comb for two reasons. One, it is dark and old. This just means that it has the greatest chance of having pesticides and other poisons that have slowly built up over the years. Comb like this can lead to American Foul Brood, or so I am told, as it weakens the bees resistances to ‘issues’. I would like to remove it once the bees have gotten a good footing.

The second reason for removing this comb is that there is a chance that some of it has a recent insecticide (from the spraying by the landscaping folks that felled the tree that they were in) right on it. The last thing you want is something that fresh in your hive.

Well, as to the queen cell or eggs (eggs would have been a boon, as it would have meant that I had caught the queen), I found one capped queen cell and one that they were still feeding (I could see the larvae in the pool of royal jelly.) I am sorry that I did not get the original queen, but it is still good news. I picked up a ton of bees in this hive and they had already stored 6 frames of nectar (not full, but lots of cells on each frame that were 75% full of nectar). Basically, they had not drawn out any of the foundation and were simply storing in the existing comb. So, I could not remove any yet, but it will be at the top of the list once they get a queen laying. I will need to do the Bee Math to figure out when to check for the queen and then for the eggs. I have about a month or so before the plan hopefully comes together.

I should also note that the Southside Hive was eating the syrup at an average rate. I probably saw 10 or so bees drinking from it. I put a wooden dowel in the top feeder this time, so none could drown (and this played through true to form – none in the drink!) I will continue to monitor this hive, although I do not plan to remove the frame with the queen cells on it again until I think the old lady has hatched (probably next weekend – certainly by June 24.)

Another Myth Buster – Moving a Bee Hive

Well, the old saying that you can only move a hive 2 feet or 2 miles is hogwash. Beekeepers in Richmond, Virginia and nationwide always advise that you should not move a hive unless it is a really short distance (2 feet or so) or a really long distance (over 2 miles.) The short distance is obvious, as the bees should be able to get a whiff of their queen in the new location (not to mention the fact that the old home is right there beside where they are looking!) The long distance is based on the general belief that bees forage out to 2 miles and know the lay of the land in this area. If you move them a mile, for example, they’ll go out foraging, recognize the area and return to their old home.

Well, I moved a hive about 80 feet (the Southside hive) the other evening and placed a cedar branch over the entrance. The next day, I had about 6 bees buzzing around the old spot. The day after that, I didn’t see a single bee there. But, the hive in the new location has bees coming and going like mad.

It is true that this hive was only recently moved to my property. Regardless, the success of this move matches other experienced beekeepers (such as Michael Bush), so I will bank on it going forward. Of course, I hope to not do a lot of hive moving.

At any rate, it’s off to the wood shop now. I need to build some more brood chambers!

Bees on the Move

Today has been something else. We had a family crisis over the weekend and it has turned to the better as of this afternoon. With a few hours of time to relax, I decided to tackle some of my high priority items.

The Blue Cottage Hive needs some capped brood to bolster its weak ranks
The Southside Hive needs some eggs, in case I didn’t get the queen when I extracted the hive

So, I decided I would take both frames from the same hive. The first hive that I checked was the Geronimo Hive. Very gentle bees and (so far) the strongest of Tom Fifer’s strain that I have received. They didn’t give me honey this year, but they are the best hive I have. Interestingly enough, extracting that hive from the fallen tree over the weekend really relaxed me about the bees. I had bees all over me for hours and kept on working. So, when I went to the Geronimo Hive, I didn’t even think about the smoke. I also never wavered as they flew about. But, they gave me a big surprise.

I pulled up the t-cover and bees literally spilled out of the hole in the inner cover. It was like a small volcano! Only a few took flight – the rest just spilled out, rolling all over the top. This was odd. I had only expected to give a brief look at what had to be an empty honey (Illinois) super and then was going to look for my swap frames in the top brood chamber. So, I popped the inner cover and gave her a better look. Low and behold, these rascals were drawing that thing out and storing nectar/honey! All Spring, I have fretted about not getting any honey and only recently resigned myself to this fact and decided that I would instead look forward to doing a couple of splits. So, what happens? The bees go ahead and start working on the daggone honey! Ha! I look forward to A for so long and finally become depressed that I will not get A. I look at the bright side and start to look forward to B, giving up on A. Once I get really excited about B, those women go ahead and give me A! Wow.

At any rate, regardless of my emotional trauma, I took the honey super off and gave a brief look at a couple of frames in the top Brood chamber. Typical brood pattern with honey and pollen storage. Five zillion bees wishing I would go away. Lots of good news. I was not going to take eggs and brood from a hive that might give me honey (at least no this year!) So, I put them back together and let ’em be.

Geronimo Hive
Queen : No sign
Eggs: Too dark to see. Did see larvae.
Only checked the Medium (drawing out all 10 frames, some nearly finished) and the top Brood chamber (lots of capped brood, honey and pollen.) Installed an Imri Shim to see how that might help them (the State Apiarist said studies show that it does increase the honey crop.)
Hive temperament was very relaxed (and possibly annoyed)

So, on to round 2. I pulled open the Albo Hive and bees also spilled out of it. I didn’t even take off the inner cover. I will inspect them later this week. The similar appearance (and the fact that the Imri Shim for these gals was installed a week or two ago) was all that I needed. No stealing brood/eggs from these gals either. I might get a bit of honey from them too!

At this point, I was torn. I couldn’t figure out which hive, Albo or Geronimo, to go for. Then it struck me – the Westover Hive! Very strong hive. Built up quickly. A tad cranky, but not that bad. I was thinking about splitting them anyway, to expand the bloodline. This was the perfect choice.

So, I opened these gals up and found just what I was looking for. They were working 8 of the 10 frames up top and had not touched (except with their legs, as they scurried over the foundation) the honey super. I would have been surprised if they had. They were at pretty much the same spot they were last time, so this pretty much proves to me the value of feeding a new swarm. I might feed them more when I receive a few more top feeders to help them fill out the remainder of that top brood chamber.

The second drawn frame had a ton of eggs and a good rim of honey. This was perfect for the Southside Hive, which I am going to get a feeder on tonight anyway. The third frame was a ton of capped brood, with the same honey stores. I took out the brush and irritated the badoodle out of them as I brushed them off, but was able to get every last bee off before putting into a transport Nuc and moving to either hive. I checked several more frames and found a good pattern with stores. No sign of swarming (at least in the upper brood chamber.) I was happy with the results and put them back together.

Westover Hive
Queen: No sign, but found eggs, that I gave to the Southside Hive in case they need to start a Queen.
Working 8 of 10 frames in the upper brood chamber, but I took 2, so they are down to 6. I alternated empty foundation between drawn comb with the two new additions and closed them back up.

On opening the Blue Cottage Hive, I was sad to see several small hive beetles. I see them in the hives on occasion, but this small hive might not be able to handle them. I will make a few traps this week and get them on next weekend, to help them out a bit. I also spotted that wiley queen, with a big blue dot on her back. It’s not as noticeable as I had expected, as the ‘blue’ is a really dark blue. But, I spotted her and was happy. Also found a few eggs, but they need more bees (and comb.) I dropped the new comb with capped brood in to give them a new workforce over the coming couple of weeks. Once I get some honey off of one of the other hives, I will give them another dose (probably late June or early July) of capped brood. The primary goal now is to get a bottle feeder on them and give them something to fight the small hive beetle. More on that later.

Blue Cottage Hive
Queen: found her on the last frame. Spotted eggs too.
Frames : Now working 3 frames. 50% growth is not bad, but the third frame only had a bit on it. Gave them a full new frame that should help, if the small hive beetles don’t do too much damage first. So, now they have 4 frames.

Southside Hive
I did not do a good job of counting exactly what I have here yet. I think it is about 6 frames of brood comb from the tree and 4 drawn foundation. I replaced one of the drawn foundation frames with a frame of eggs (and a bit of capped brood and larvae). I’ll be working to get rid of the frames with their brood comb, as I am not sure what those fellows sprayed down in the hole and if it got on any of the stuff. But, first I want to see them get started (evidence of a queen is what I need.)

Tonight, when the sun goes down, I will move them and put a feeder on them (well, I might put a feeder on them tomorrow.) I put them under the shed in haste, due to the family emergency coming up right when I got home with them. They can’t stay there (or I can’t move my lawn mower!) I will disrupt them one last time tonight and put a limb in front of their entrance so that they will hopefully reorient tomorrow morning and start a good bit of growth.

Removing a Honey Bee Hive From a Tree!

Wow, what a busy weekend. Between Friday and Saturday, I received 3 calls about possible feral hive removal. One turned out to be a nest of bumble bees, but the second was quite a whopper. A gentleman a bit to the south of me had a tree in his front yard get hit by lightning. It cracked the tree and made it a bit of a hazard to his neighbors and him, so they had a tree removal service come out on Friday to deal with it. Once that big boy hit the ground, bees erupted everywhere!

Unfortunately, the tree service decided to spray the bees and pour gasoline on them. They then left and decided to wait for Monday, when they figured the bees might be gone. Having been sprayed, these bees were not ideal, but I am game for trying to help any bee along, so I took the job on. What a job it was.

On Day 1, I arrived with all of my gear and immediately realized that I needed a bigger saw (I needed Pop’s Bow Saw, but it was in Charles City, and I was not up for that trip.) So, here was a section of tree about 20 feet long with bees coming out of two holes, some 5 feet apart. This tree was every bit of 3′ in diameter and more when you included the occasional knot. Finally, the thing was living just a few weeks ago and not a bit of it was rotten.

At this point, I was still expecting a young hive. I sort of figured that no hive could survive a lightning strike and these bees must have taken up residence after the tree split. I expected to find a lot of white comb, but not a lot of bees. Of course, I was way wrong.

To begin with, these bees had comb running a good 6′ in the tree, in a center cavity about a foot to 14 inches wide. There was a TON of comb. But, I am getting ahead of myself. I had thought to slowly cut away sections of the tree until I got to the bees. But, this tree was too big. Cutting away one section was a serious nightmare. Just rolling a section was a back breaker. So, I decided to go right at them. I was putting the queen at risk, but I had no option. The tree removal service would be back on Monday and try to kill them again. I aimed the saw between the two exit holes (about 3′ to either side) and cut her in half.

Bees were flying everywhere. Somewhere along the line, some homeless guy showed up on a bike and proceeded to give me advice, claiming bees didn’t sting him. A few minutes after I cut the tree open and started getting comb, he hit the road, cursing about the stings….

I methodically removed comb, placing it (with rubber bands) in my empty frames and into a hive. I filled up about 6 frames with brood comb and pulled a lot of honey comb and left it off to the side (I advised the home owner not to eat the stuff, as who knows what the tree service sprayed down there and what was contaminated.) I never saw the queen, but got a lot of it with nurse bees and left it beside one of the split logs.

A few hours later, I came back to find the bees still in the two sections of the log and also in my hive. The queen was not in my hive to be sure. So, I pulled out the bee vac. I was able to get 3 or 4 pounds of bees and left with my hive, setting them up at home when I returned.

The next day, the hive (I will start calling this one Southside) was pretty cranky. I cannot be sure, but I do not thing they had a queen. So, back to the site I went, sharpened saw in hand.

This time, I cut the two original sections in half again (much easier now that my slack rear end had finally sharpened the saw). One section had the most bees and they were clumped up a lot. Out come the bee vac and once again, I sucked up another few pounds of bees. This time, I got a ton of them and I may have even gotten the queen. Upon returning home, I dropped them in the Southside hive.

Nuc Check – Queen Cup and Cranky

Berkeley Hive
Found larvae, eggs & capped brood
Did not find queen
The bottom deep was wall to wall capped brood (the outside frames were nectar/honey)
Bees had finished Tom Fifer’s 4th frame and were working on two of my frames, effectively on 6 frames now.
Found 1 queen cup. Hive was a bit crankier then I am used to when it comes to a Nuc.
Pests: Spotted and squashed one large small hive beetle.

Since my last, multi-hour adventure with all of the hives, I have decided to break my inspections of the hives up a bit, giving me less hives to check per adventure. Today was the first in the rotation and I chose the Berkeley Hive, one of my new Nuc’s.

This hive has been showing good, eating a nice bit of syrup and having good activity at the entrance all week. Since I have them next to the cantankerous Westover Hive, I keep a close eye on them to make sure that no robbing is going on. Interestingly enough (or, I should say sadly enough), I did witness evidence of a bit of fighting right after I hived them, but that was not due to robbing. I have 3 top hive feeders (4 more were ordered a week ago, so more are on the way) and I had lent one to Pop for his Nuc. That left me with two for my Nuc’s but I was using one on the Westover Hive. I had let it go dry, but when I moved it from one hive to the other, about 8 bees from the Westover Hive were still in it. I went ahead and plopped it on top of the hive and hoped they would join the workforce of the Nuc. Well, instead (at least one of them) they went on a commando mission (or maybe my bees attacked them.) Regardless, the reason I know this is that I saw one bee leave the hive and jump around on the landing area with another bee attached to him. As I watched, I realized the other bee was a black bee from the Westover Hive, but it was attached to the Berkeley Hive bee (believe it or not, but it appeared to have its mouth securely fastened to the Nuc bee’s wing!) As the poor battle-worn veteran tried to deal with this nuissance, I used my hive tool to cut the dead bee in half (it was attached to her wing, remember?) Unfortunately, having the head of one’s enemy attached to your wing is not a good feeling, as she jumped to the ground and began hopping around, rolling over and doing all sorts of other things to get it off. I couldn’t help any further without damaging her, so I left her be. I hope she worked it out!

Regardless, the inspection was good. The bees had done a good job of finishing out the 4 frames they came in and were working on two more. One was really getting a good draw. I never saw that rascal of a queen, but found both larvae and eggs. The eggs were dead centered and solo, so no laying worker nonsense. I also found one queen cup and one worker was really doing something in there, sticking her head down a good way. There was nothing for it, at this stage, so I did not really investigate. I’ll be sure to locate that frame (second to last of the originals from Tom) a week from now to see what we have going. I have heard that supercedure is a common practice for packages and it happens with Nuc’s too. I have no idea what I’ll do if that cup becomes a cell…

Now that the investigation was over, I put a gallon of syrup in the feeder and let them be. I must say that they were flying about in an angry manner, although I saw none actually land and try to sting me. There was a lot of posturing, but I have learned to ignore that. A storm is brewing to the NW, so maybe that had them on edge.