Swarm Management In July

As per the last post, it appears that the Geronimo hive either already swarmed or was preparing to swarm at the end of July. After making that post, I did a lot of online research and found that it is actually quite natural for bees to cast a swarm at this time, even though the odds of survival are low. It is very much as I wondered in the last post, ‘we will throw one simply because we can, and if they make it, we have performed our role in the grand scheme of Darwinism. If it does not make it, we are still strong enough to go into Winter with a good store and continue on next year, possibly even swarming again in the Spring.’

A chart of average/typical hive population actually shows this situation by having a brief population increase going into July/August and then a bit of a drop thereafter. There are a lot of interesting things to consider with this theory. To begin with, this could be considered a form of Varroa mite control. In a swarm condition, you might have 1 to 4 weeks without a single egg being laid. The mite breeds and reproduces in the egg cells, so a lack of said cells (containing fresh eggs or larva) means there is no place to reproduce. This is what the experts call ‘interrupting the mite cycle’. Since July and August are big times for mite increase, it is the perfect time to cast a swarm (probably a small one) and set your mites back just before you have to amp up to go into Winter. The overall theme of my thoughts here is that this type of behavior might be a type of ‘resistant’ gene behavior. It is not illogical to theorize that those bees who were most prone to swarm, when the Varroa mite first appeared on the scene, were the ones to make it through that devastating time. They managed mites by ‘breaking the cycle’ automatically.

You also have to wonder if these bees are not simply prone to swarming. As per  my posts this past Spring, when I discovered that I did not have a marked queen, I had not really found that marked queen since July of last year. It was probable then (and even more probable now that I have seen this swarm activity in action) that they cast a swarm last July too. Perhaps these bees simply are prone to do this? In such a dire time (I have hardly had two inches of rain in both June and July, here in central Virginia – plus, June was the hottest June on record and we broke several ‘daily’ temperature records in July), why would bees swarm unless it was simply something they were going to do regardless? Do these bees ‘re-queen‘ themselves automatically?

Add these thoughts to the discovery over the weekend that the Albo Hive was not showing any inclination to swarm (although I will check them again in 10 days or so). They also had very strong stores (without any feeding whatsoever). Why were they choosing not to swarm (a logical decision in my mind, but still a question to ponder in light of Geronimo’s hell bent behavior to the opposite effect!) The real question was ‘what is different, outside of genetics’?

The primary difference is location. The Albo Hive was moved in late June or early July. Did this upset the balance of things? I am fairly certain that they also swarmed last Fall (although maybe it was later, so I have that to look forward to in the next 4 to 6 weeks.) The move could be it, but I am more inclined to believe that it was accidental swarm management on my part, while the hive was at the Wilton apiary. To begin with, I stole a frame of brood & honey from the Albo Hive in early April to catch my first swarm (which became the Westover Hive, and also the later split, the William Byrd Hive – I would call that a good investment). I took another frame from them for my first cut-out (a horrible investment for bees, but pretty good for lessons learned with the Southside Hive) and three more frames from them to do my late June split for the new queens (the jury is still out on whether this was a good investment or not – created the Bob Hive). Effectively, the Albo Hive lost a quarter of their brood frames (5 out of 20 frames in two deeps). When I looked into them this past weekend, they still had three frames to finish drawing out (although, to be fair, they were already storing resources in all frames – they simply were not fully drawn out.) Was this a swarm management tool? Only time will tell, but perhaps creating a late-June Nuc from a hive is a good way to do a bit of Fall swarm management.

At any rate, I have definitely learned one thing that I am taking to the bank (all previous comments are only theories at this time). You  should go into your established hives in mid-July and maybe late-July/early-August (in central Virginia) for full inspections, regardless of how brutal the weather is. I did not do this last year and, it would seem, the bees were able to swarm/supercede, raise a new queen and go on with production without me even noticing – until the following Spring! I will be a bit more watchful in the future.

Late July Split

Today, sort of on a whim, I went out to check the Geronimo hive. It has been and remained my strongest hive since starting beekeeping in the Spring of 2009. At the last check, everything appeared to be going smoothly : 4 to 5 frames of pollen, 4 to 5 frames of capped honey in the two bottom deep suppers, 10 frames of drawn comb in the top medium super (with a few that had patches of capped honey). Add to this a healthy dose of eggs, larva and capped brood and I figured things were great. With the dearth coming on in the midst of a drought here in Richmond, Virginia, my expectations for today’s inspection were to find mostly the same with perhaps a bit less stored honey (they should be eating into some of the Spring stores now.)

Queen Cells
My Bees Decide to Cast a Swarm

Of course, that’s not exactly what I found. They did have a good amount of pollen and  honey socked away, in addition to the fact that they were about half finished in drawing out a couple of frames of foundation that I had given them when I took some capped brood to start those Nuc’s for the new queens that I picked up last month. But, they also had about 10 swarm cells, 4 of which were torn open…

So, here we are in the worst time in the world for bees to go off and build a new hive and my bees have either already sent the original queen on her way (I did not find the little wench, but did find larva) or were about to. The fact that I found larva says that the queen has been here in the last week.  She may still be in the hive. As to the queen cells that were torn open, they could mean a million different things (of course!), each dictating a different strategy by me!

For example, it is possible that they made hatched queens (and my old queen already swarmed), but these queens have not gotten around to killing the inhabitants of the other cells (I spent a good many minutes examining three of my larger, unhatched queen cells for evidence of Queen regicide). It is also possible that the bees tore them apart because of some failure of the queen larva (maybe she had some mites in there with her…) In fact, I have include a picture in this post that has to be an example of that. The cell’s cap is still intact, whereas the side of the cell is torn open… When a queen emerges, she comes through the end (well, that’s how everyone else’s queens emerge – it wouldn’t surprise me one bit of my queens did it differently from all of the bees of the last several hundred thousand years…) There are a million possibilities, but knowing the answer really wouldn’t help me with my current situation. I still had 7 or so cells, on frames all over the hive, to deal with.

Queen Cell Just Before Being Capped
Still Feeding this Queen Wanna Bee

I  personally do not believe in destroying the queen cells unless you are so late in the season that the drone level may be too low to mate with the virgin. I had decided that I would try to find the queen and move her to a Nuc, where I could then take action later (my 4 Nuc’s for overwintering may need a queen at some point or maybe I would just overwinter 5 Nuc’s – but, judging from the issues with a couple of the Nuc’s, I was pretty sure that one would need a queen over the next month or so.) At that point, my hive would think they had swarmed already and the first queen to come out would just kill the others.

Unable to find my queen, it made more issues. If she swarmed, these other queen cells might be for after-swarms (what kind of insane bee swarms in this low nectar environment? I would bet big money that they would die out before Fall, if they landed in some tree hollow out there.)

Again, I had to focus. Deal with what you know. I had a bunch of viable queen cells and a probability that these bees might swarm again (or maybe were getting ready to swarm for the first time). So, I split the hive, giving equal parts brood, pollen and honey to both splits. I have come to grips with the fact that they are going to need feeding. I honestly was not looking to increase further this year, but now I am wondering about the Albo hive (my second strongest hive), out in Charles City at the Mountcastle Apiary.

At any rate, more to come on this developing situation tomorrow or Sunday. I do know that I will be a bit more active in looking at the strong hives in July going forward (when time allows.) I would have liked to have gotten ahead of this before the cells had even been capped. I  hope to go through the splits again tomorrow and finally locate the queen, assuming she is still in there.

More Thoughts on the Small Hive Beetle

Walter Kelley Bees recently sent out their July newsletter (I recommend it) with a brief snippet on the small hive beetle (SHB). Now that I have had more time dealing with this pest, I am a bit more relaxed about it. They are definitely something to watch out for, but a strong, healthy hive deals with them just fine. Even my smaller hives are (so far) dealing with them effectively. Regardless, as an owner of livestock (or ‘pets’, if you look at them that way), I believe it is good stewardship to ease their way in any fashion that you can, provided that it does not inhibit or alter the natural way of things to any great degree.

As an example, I am quite confident that my honey bees could go find water on their own, without my assistance. But, I ease their labor by providing fresh water in my home beeyard, which they gladly use a lot. It’s not a huge savings, but instead of needing to fly a quarter of a mile away to a nearby, large creek (or a neighbor’s pool…), they can make the trip in under a hundred yards.

So, I am passing on this fairly easy tip that was in the Walter Kelley newsletter, which seems like a great way to ease your bee’s journey in this world. I have not tried it yet, but probably will before the Summer is out.

From the July issue of Walter Kelley Newsletter:

A home-made trap that is somewhat effective consists of a piece of corrugated “plastic cardboard” that is placed in the top of the hive, between the inner cover and frame top-bars. Some beekeepers use off-label chemicals in these traps, but the traps are also effective with no chemicals in them. If the material is cut into 1-inch wide strips with the corrugated tubes running cross-wise to the strip, then placed on the top bars of the hive, SHB will seek refuge from the bees by crawling into the tubes, where they will be trapped by the bees using propolis.

The reason there are adult SHB running around the top bars of a hive is because they have been released from their propolis “prisons” by removing the inner cover. This puts these adults back into play, so to speak, whereas they had been removed from the equation before their release. The bees imprison the adult SHB by trapping them between the inner cover and the top and building a propolis enclosure around them. By giving the SHB corrugated plastic in which they may hide – and be trapped – the SHB will not be released by removing the hive top.

[–End Quote–]

Hopefully, this little tidbit is of use to other beekeeper’s out there.

Adding a Super to the Beehive

My Honey Bee yard in Richmond, Virginia (well, in Varina) continues to hop! The Berkeley Hive has pretty much been without an inspection for a month. This was the strongest Nuc that I picked up from Tom Fifer this Spring (well, the only Nuc with at least 4 frames of bees). When I installed them, I started them on the smallest hole in the entrance reducer and up’d it to the medium-sized slot once they covered 6 frames.

Up until this inspection, they had not demonstrated a ton of progress, but they continued to dutifully post guards at the exit, eat syrup and otherwise appear healthy (from the outside.) I never had to put a robber screen on them and was reluctant to open them up, due to the robbing that kept happening with my other hives (starting in June.) But, things have calmed considerably in my yard (I am wondering if the Albo hive was the big robber, as it is now at the Mountcastle Apiary,) so looking seemed like a good idea. In truth, they are eating me out of house and home (I have started to feed them 10 lbs of sugar mixed with 2 gallons of water, which approximates to something like 1.25 Sugar to 2 Water,) so I wanted to see what was going on under the covers.

I opened her up and immediately noted that they had filled out 8.5 frames! My rule is to put the second super on once they fill out 7 frames. They were working their tails off on the final 1.5 frames and now I was wondering if there was a swarm cell in there (bees were all over the place.) I was not using smoke and everything was calm, but I never do a full inspection of a hive that has a full deep without smoke at this time of the year. Those little things can get ornery if you don’t watch out! Plus, I really didn’t have a prepared deep super ready for them.

So, I left them for a day while I put together a few more frames to complete a 10-frame deep super. I also mixed a lot more syrup, as they were going through a gallon in sometime under 2 days (it was always empty 2 days later.) I wanted to start increasing the volume given to them, especially if they would take it. Ideally, I’ll get this top super fully drawn by October (boorah!)

Now, with smoker in hand, I opened them up to have a look. Again, very gentle and easy to inspect. They had 4 solid frames of capped honey, 4 frames of brood/pollen/nectar and a couple of frames that they were nearly finished drawing. I took a frame of honey and put it in the new deep, replacing it in the bottom deep with a frame of foundation. I made sure to do this as far from the brood nest area as I could. But, I also left the outside frames intact, as my honey bees can sometimes be difficult about drawing them out. Since this hive had drawn both out, I didn’t want to move them. The reason for moving this one frame up was to simply encourage them to start drawing up top. I have had 100% success with this strategy. Drop a drawn/working frame into an otherwise empty super and they bees start working the foundation around it immediately.

During the full inspection (remember, they were packed full in this deep and I wanted to be sure that no swarm cells had been started), I discovered that they had already done away with the old queen (or they cleaned the mark off of her.) I now had an unmarked queen in the hive! This is somewhat surprising, as the queen always seemed to be doing a good job. Makes me wonder if the old mark simply fell off of her. I will probably mark her on my next inspection.

The moral of this little side story about the queen is that you definitely do get better at finding queens as time goes along. In my first year, I rarely ever found the little mischief-maker. This year, I probably find her 3-out-of-4 inspections.

At any rate, once I got the new deep on top of the hive, I put a gallon-and-a-half of syrup on them. We’ll see if they continue to suck it down. I also did not increase the entrance. Normally, I would open the entrance fully when I put on the top super. But, I have recently been reading where a lot of folks keep the entrance reducer on year round. Add that to my recent robbing issues and I think I will keep it restricted to the middle setting for now. I look forward to seeing what I find in August!

They Say a Queen Calms Them…

…and they’d be right! That nasty little group of bees that I picked up at Westover Plantation, in Charles City, Va, this year has always been a bit grumpy. I could put my face within 6 inches of the landing board of the parent hive (original Westover hive) without a problem. But, the minute that I opened them up to look at them, I would get two or three bees banging against my veil. Of course, I was not using smoke but I did not use smoke with my other hives either and never had the same amount of aggression that I would have with Westover. As a side note, I was stung a grand total of 1 time, but they still acted more grumpy, even if they didn’t always act on it.

Then, I split the hives in mid-June and this made it worse, especially with the William Byrd Hive (the Queenless split off of the Westover hive.) In fact, they were a bit more aggressive then the parent. I am now certain that this was due to the queenless situation. I have often read that this will make a hive become a bit aggressive and this proved true for me.

The good news is that they have become much more gentle now. At my last inspection, I had one trying to bump against my veil, but I consider that fairly gentle when you consider that I was breaking the entire hive apart looking for the queen and was not using smoke. The best news came today when I actually found the queen and did not receive a single aggressive move. They remained fairly calm, which is a huge development, considering it is mid-July when every hive that I own is a bit on edge due to the dearth and drought. I considered marking the queen and still will probably do so, but I want to practice on a few drones before I do that. I am thinking that I will get some practice next weekend on the Albo hive out at the Mountcastle out-yard, as they always have a ton of drones. Hopefully, I’ll get this queen marked in August.

So, today was a pretty positive day for me with the bees. It’s nice to have a positive outcome after so many battles with robbing of my smaller hives. It’s also a big deal as this is the first queen that I have forced my bees to raise on their own. In fact, it represents my first genetic move. I am hopeful that this new queen’s eggs have the strong work ethic of the Westover hive with the gentle nature of some of my other hives. She was a big gal. Hopefully, during the August inspection, we’ll find a really good brood pattern. That’s the next step. I will not really know the results of this new queen until next Spring, outside of the brood pattern.

Overwintering Nuc’s

There is a well respected beekeeper in New England (he is respected nationwide, but has his operation in New England) named Michael Palmer. He has been extremely successful raising bees and what follows is a recap of one of his methods from forum threads, articles and 3rd-party sources. I wanted to record it here, as I will definitely experiment with some of his ideas. I am a big fan.

Per the title of this post, the end goal of the following approach is to successfully overwinter Nuc’s. One might assume that this is aimed at the fellow who accidentally has a small hive that he has to place in a Nuc before Winter or maybe someone who has hived a small swarm late in the year. Although some of these concepts may work for those situations, the purpose of this information is not for use as a life saver. It is actually a strategy.

The first question should therefore be ‘Why do you want to have Nuc’s that even need to be overwintered?’

1. Improve the genetic quality of your apiary – you’ll always have a hive or two (or ten) that  under-performs. It produces less honey and or possibly suffers more from natural stresses. You really do not need this hive sending its drones out to mate with your new queens and continuing this poor gene pool.

2. Nuc’s are great resources for other hives or Nuc’s. They represent a ready pool of capped brood or eggs for those emergency situations.

3. It’s a great way to increase the number of hives in your apiary. Many Nuc’s will come out of Winter so strong that they will build up very quickly and may become your next top producer.

Again, the primary reason is culling  your genetic pool. So, the first step is to identify your weak hives. Take these hives and create Nuc’s from them. Each Nuc that you create from a single hive should include the following:

  1. At least 1.5 frames of capped brood
  2. 1 frame of pollen and honey
  3. 1 empty drawn frame or a frame of foundation

The timing for this should be after the main flow. Michael Palmer does it in mid-July. In the Central Virginia area, anytime in July would probably work, but I will need to experiment.

You should be able to get 3 to 6 Nuc’s out of a single, mature hive. Now that you have your Nuc’s, you add your new queens to the mix. The key here is new queens. You defeat the purpose if you let them raise their own, as you are only continuing the poor gene  pool. Michael Palmer goes on to say that you should be using your own queens. In a worst case scenario, you are using queens from a local supplier that is breeding from established, non-treated, strong stock. Michael Palmer is adamant that any given beekeeper with a 2 year old hive can raise better queens then he can purchase. Regardless of the truth of this statement or not, the underlying principle is logical from a biological perspective. (It should be noted that I am still purchasing queens/new hives as part of my build up strategy – I am trying to obtain a diverse gene pool before I begin the master plan!)

So, where do you put your Nuc’s? I have read where some folks in Northern Virginia use regular Nuc bodies just fine. Michael Palmer users what he calls a ‘4 frame double nuc‘ (he actually uses a lot of things, but this is his primary vehicle for overwintering Nuc’s.) This is simply a deep brood chamber with a divider down the middle. The bottom is similarly divided with a small, 3 inch wide entrance for each side, on opposite sides of the super. I am pretty sure he uses tight-fitting, migratory covers, but the point is that neither side should be able to touch the other side, period.

Once you have your Nuc prepared, it’s time to move it to a new bee yard. The reason for this is not clear to me at the moment, but it probably has something to do with keeping any foragers that ended up in the splits from returning to the original hive.

As to the original hive, you can actually still gain something from the old queen if you find her. Place her in the original bottom deep (from the weak hive), along with 4 to 6 frames of honey and the rest simply empty, drawn frames. She will receive the field force (foragers out in the wilds) and has a good chance to build up to a nice, single deep chamber before Winter, when you can either requeen (late Fall) or wait until the next Spring and requeen then.

Now that you have your Nuc’s setup, you need to do some management. You have new, young queens with a good set of bees. There is a very good chance that, as the Fall flow comes on, they will build up so quickly that they want to swarm. You have to watch them and remove brood frames on occasion (for the really strong queens, you may have to do this 2 or 3 times.) You can supply the weaker Nuc’s with these frames of brood, to make sure they have the best chance of getting through the Winter.

So, now we have our new, double Nuc’s in the new yard and they are building up. Fall comes to an end and we start to see the occasional drop into the low-30’s. Now it is time to take these Nuc’s and drop them onto a strong hive. You can stack them right on top of another strong hive’s inner cover. There are a couple of tricks involved with this approach. To begin with, it works best if you have a small entrance drilled into the side of the Nuc for each side. You should also have another entrance, about 3/4 of an inch wide, drilled on the opposite side, towards the top (ventilation.) Double tape the hole in the inner cover of the strong hive, as you do not want them to know about each other (and you do not want the Nuc to have to deal with all of the moisture from the larger hive.)

You can stack the Nuc’s, if you like, but it makes it harder to inspect the gals and give them food, if needed.

Oddly, Michael Palmer will occasionally put a queen excluder on top of the double Nuc and then drop a full honey super over the entire group. He claims that the bees will work up into the super and be content to return to their brood chamber without a hitch. They appear to be content to work together (I look forward to testing this one out!)

Once Spring comes along (when the Cherry Blossoms start, or probably early to mid-March for me), it is time to take them off of the strong hive and let them fend for their own. At this point, you should be able to judge the good ones (for expansion) from the weak ones (to use to supplement the other hives). This can also be a good source of funds, as you can sell these Nuc’s for a premium (a queen that has overwintered and is starting to build up is about the best Nuc you can ask for.)

Failures and Successes : Moving Established Hives and a Rob-out

The weather in Richmond, Virginia continues to be miserable, although the temperatures dropped a bit today from the upper-90’s to the upper-80’s in eastern Henrico. The drought is really bad. I noticed some golden rod blooming, but most other things look like they are more interested in simply surviving as opposed to putting on blooms. A big front is headed our way and appears to be creeping to the east. We might actually get some rain tomorrow!

Today was a busy day in my bee world. The first story centers around a trip to Charles City and a rob-out. I have decided to reduce the number of established hives in my home yard (I suppose I should call it the Wilton Apiary, as I now have three locations with hives.) I had moved two of my most recent splits (Apache and Bob) to Charles City last weekend, to hopefully cease the robbing, to a small pond on my folk’s land. This is what I will call my Goose Pond Apiary, after the natural swimming hole that my grandfather built on the property. I had identified another spot, about a mile or so away, on a piece of land that my father and aunt own, which we call Mountcastle, so this will be my Mountcastle Apiary. It is here that I wanted to place two of my established hives, along a cut-over that is about 4 years old and about 400 yards from a beaver pond.

Although I have moved Nuc’s and single super (always Deeps) hives before, I had never moved an established hive. All of my established hives are working two deeps (full) at least. I cannot pick that weight up, so I needed to get them on a trolley. To do that, I would have to break them apart. Sealing them up for the move and then breaking them apart to move them would have defeated the purpose (bees would have surely been everywhere.) So, I took a different course of action.

Around 10 am, yesterday, I broke the Albo hive apart and placed them on the trolley, about 3 feet from the original location (and 1 foot down). The bees were pretty good about it, considering my normal adventures with opening hives this time of year, and everything went smoothly. I now had the hive setup, on the trolley, and the foragers were slowly finding their way back to it. The plan was to come back after dark, screen up the entrance and use a tie-down to ratchet the whole thing together and then ratchet it (again) to the trolley. Of course, it didn’t work out as expected.

Right at dark, I checked on the hive to discover that they were bearding all over the front of the bottom deep. A solid mass of bees – in the dark! I kept going back every 30 minutes and could see no change. I could not screen up the entrance without losing a ton of bees. Finally, I went to bed and set my alarm for 4 am to check again. I vaguely recall the alarm going off and being very annoyed with it, as I yanked the plug out of the wall and went back to sleep…

So, come morning, I went out to check on them. The beard was gone at 6:15. I was somewhat frustrated and didn’t even screen up the entrance. I toted the hive onto the trailer and off to the Mountcastle Apiary I went! I was able to get them on a decent spot on the ground and step back and watch. After a few moments, several bees came out and began to fly around. This hive has a ton of stores, brood and eggs. No matter what happened in this ride, they should be fine. One hive down, one to go.

Since I was in Charles City, I decided to swing by the Goose Pond Aviary while I was at it. I wanted to see how much syrup the hives had eaten. The Bob Hive was fine. It was still working on the syrup. I briefly looked in and there were a lot of bees covering the four frames. Things looked good. The Apache Hive, however, looked desolate. I opened her up and found about 50 bees and no honey, brood or anything (except a few small hive beetles…). Amazingly enough, I also found the daggone queen. Bees were piled up in the front of the deep and in the robber screen. The food was all gone. It appeared to me that I had a definite rob out. This hive was suffering to begin with. I guess moving it did not help out much.

I took the hive back home and decided to try to start one more split. It’s unlikely that I can get it to stick, but this time I will not be dropping a frame of honey into it. I actually took one frame of bees and capped brood, each, from Geronimo and the Queen-right Westover split (I am going to simply call this one Westover from now on, since they still have that huge, black queen that I picked up with my first swarm) and one partially drawn frame that had some bees on it from the Queen-less Westover Split. I now have them in a Nuc, completely sealed up (I sprinkled a few drops of water on the top of the frame and put them in the shade.) They are not really ‘sealed up’, as they have a robber screen (so they have access to air), but they cannot leave the hive, nor can anyone get in. My plans for this one will hopefully be to combine  it with the remains of the Apache Hive tomorrow (or I might just catch the queen and drop her into the queen cage that I picked up from Bobby, doing a normal queen introduction.)

I returned home for some serious work. I needed the frames for the new split and this was the perfect reason to go ahead and do some inspections. I have started to track my inspections in a notebook, since I have too many hives to track them well in this blog, so the highlights include:

The Westover split is strong. They are working on the top Illinois Super (they are running a Deep and a Medium super) with lots of honey and pollen stored.The William Byrd hive (the queen-less Westover split) is slam full of bees, although I know that they are fairly old. I did notice where one of the queen cells was torn apart, although I could see no evidence of the other two that I noticed 19 days ago. After some hard looking, I found a frame of eggs. I never did see the queen and did not see any capped brood or larva, but I am thinking that is normal. This will be my first successful queen rearing in my own yard, so I am very hopeful. The William Byrd hive has so much nectar and honey stored that I was tempted to take some, but I didn’t. When I split them, I gave them a few of the frames from the Medium Super that was on top of the parent hive. The next day, I dropped a deep between the bottom deep (with all of the bees) and the Illinois super. They have so far only done very minor work on the middle deep. I took two frames of honey and moved them up into the top deep and replaced those with the barely drawn frames from above. I hope this will encourage them to begin work on these frames.

As expected, the Geronimo Hive was very strong. They had nearly finished drawing out the two frames of foundation that I snagged from them for the original Apache split. They had several frames that were solid pollen (and I noticed several bees laden down with pollen on the frames.)

The final note regards the Blue Cottage hive. They have grown respectably to a 4.5 frame Nuc. I moved them to a full deep today and took the Nuc’s for my new split experiment. Unfortunately, I did find wax moth larva on the bottom and killed them all. I will have to watch that hive a bit closer. I am thinking about moving it, along with the Westover Hive, out to my two new apiaries this evening. We shall see!

Lesson : Starting Splits Late

Since last year, my bees have endured one issue or another and I have tried to learn lessons from each situation. The problem with any ‘bee lesson’ is that you cannot be absolutely sure of the cause of any given effect. Regardless, I use this blog to record my observations so that I can continue to track these issues and narrow down on the causes.

Over the past two weeks, I have had some major issues with robbing of the Apache Hive, the small split that I started to accept one of my new queens. This is not minor robbing, but a full onslaught (I have to believe it is from several invading hives or feral bee nests.) Even my robbing screens, that have always reduced or eliminated the robbing in the past, are not working for this hive. I actually closed it up completely (3 days ago), giving them some syrup and some shade, to let them get their feet under them. Today, I opened a small hole, enough for a bee or two to get through, around noon, and once again the onslaught was on.

Now, the immediate conclusion is that the frame of honey that I gave them is the primary issue. I do agree that this is a ‘sub-lesson’. Never give a small, starter hive a full frame of honey. It is nearly impossible for them to defend it from robbers (or other pests, like the Small Hive Beetle) and it simply draws robbers with its smell. That’s a lesson that I will not forget.

But, I am coming to the conclusion that the primary error was trying to start a small hive so late. I effectively started two small hives in the middle of June, Apache and Bob, and both are under some kind of onslaught (although Apache is taking the real beating.) One of the most disappointing effects of this issue is that I simply cannot check on them without drawing bees out of the woodwork. I cannot even do a quick inspection, without catching the attention of a flight of attackers. This is really frustrating, as I like to keep a close eye on the smaller hives (primarily for educational purposes, but also to be able to react to any issues that they may encounter.)

So, tonight I start my first Out Yard, down in Charles City to hopefully remedy this situation. I will be moving both the Apache Hive and the Bob Hive down to Charles City to start this small yard.It is my hope that I will be able to open both tomorrow, for the first time since introducing the new queens, and confirm that I have a laying queen and a bee or two. I will be happy if just one of them is doing well.

There is another lesson that might be on the table here. It could be that having so many hives in my home apiary (and my area in eastern Henrico, Va) is simply pushing it. I may even move the Berkeley Hive down to the new Out Yard tomorrow night. I am seriously considering dropping back to one established hive in the yard for the time being, perhaps creating yet another Out Yard. Trying to play with small hives is very difficult in my yard at the moment and it is something that I really enjoy doing.

Regardless, it is highly unlikely that I will try to start a hive this late in the year again.

Another sad note was the discovery of the demise of the Southside Hive. They were never able to get a queen started. They also dealt with some robbing issues and I am fairly certain they were the first to be robbed out completely. They seemed strong, so I did not get a Robber Screen on them until it was probably too late, unfortunately.