Pre-Winter Inspections Started

I went into a little over half of my hives this weekend, breaking them down (frame-by-frame) until I found a queen or eggs or larva. I have been hearing murmurings of starving bees (we have had a real drought in parts of central Virginia, near Richmond) and mite problems. I can’t speak to the latter (I do not treat for mites, so I rarely do a mite drop count – haven’t done a one this year), but I can say that none of my bees are starving (well, none of the 18 hives that I checked anyway). In fact, I am very pleased.

The bees that were bringing in nectar in late June ended up capping off another round of supers (well, one capped a Shallow and a Medium and another capped a Shallow), not including the substantial capped honey in the brood nest (Deep-Medium set-up). Unfortunately, that outyard was my first inspection, which gave me really high hopes for the rest of the yards. For the most part, nothing else came close to that first set of hives. Clearly, location makes a big difference (something about that location on the James – tons of blooming clover, I am guessing, with good rain (while the rest of us suffered!)) I am not sure if I will extract those supers or not at this point. I will wait until mid-September to make that call (and after I have checked all of my hives.)

Nearly every hive had capped 90% of the Medium of their brood chamber (again, I run a Deep and a Medium for the bee’s home, year round, so this is where they need to store what they will need for the Winter.) A few hives were sitting on uncapped Mediums (I’d guess 70% full), but these were all starter hives from this year (Nuc’s, swarms or cut-outs). I even found a few queens, although I wasn’t looking for them. The Berkeley Hive actually still has the old Blue Queen from last year. I’m sure they will look to swarm next year.

The goal of all of the work last weekend was to make a spot check on the bees. In some cases, these bees had capped Mediums in late June. Some folks had told me that bees will eat into these stores if they are left on the hive. I definitely did not find that. I ran this experiment in 4 different outyards, 3 of which I checked this past weekend. The bees did not eat into their stores. They didn’t add to the stores (in most cases), but neither did they eat into them. But, this is August and we still have the month of September to make it through. Regardless, I now know the 3 hives that I need to watch (late splits from this year that do not seem to have made a lot of progress in filling up their upper Medium’s), out of this initial run. I think it is good to go into the hives in late August to get a feel for what things look like. Verify that you have a queen and make a note of the stores. In my area, to the east of Richmond, I have never seen a lot of build up after August, so you pretty much need to have good stores now. It also helps you find queen problems (per my last post).

I am glad to be going into the Winter strong (so far.) I have a feeling that I am going to lose some hives this year (the law of averages – I haven’t lost a single one yet, except for a Nuc that I starved by not giving enough food…) More hives to check over the next couple of weeks and then (with the exception of my hive with the virgin queen) I doubt I will mess with them again before I do the Winter Prep in late September. Wish me luck!

SHB Follow-up: Per my July post, I ran into a bit of a SHB problem with one of my hives this year (thanks to my inept beekeeping!) I ended up combining the hive with one of my starter hives and using some SHB traps to try to keep them at bay. Of course I probably should be knocking on wood, but I inspected both hives in that outyard this weekend and things look really good. I probably noticed 2 or 3 SHB when I cracked the inner cover (this is NORMAL in my neck of the woods and not a problem if the hive is healthy) and found a ton in all of the traps. I think the bees kept them at bay and the traps probably helped out a bit. I removed the traps and let the bees continue on with their business.

No Queen!

This is not an uncommon exclamation in my neck of the woods (Henrico County, to the east of Richmond, Va) – I doubt it’s uncommon anywhere. A beekeeper goes into a (previously strong, in many cases) hive, only to find no eggs, no larva and no capped brood. It’s been a grueling summer (insert year) and there simply has not been enough time (or energy) to put on a bee suit, sweat 10 buckets of water and go through an irritable hive of bees (no bee likes to be inspected in July!) In many cases, the beekeeper suddenly noticed a decrease in activity and decides to have a check. In a few cases, it is simply a matter of a cool day (and a chance to finally have a peak without the risk of expiring!)

You open up the hive and things look good. We see some stored honey, although maybe the bee population is a bit low. You finally get into the lower brood box and alarm bells start to go off. Not only do you not see eggs, but you also do not see capped brood. Vast areas of the brood nest remain open! What the devil is going on!?!? The first response (typically – based on queries I get from the occasional new beekeeper) is that the queen is dead and all is lost!

In truth, if you do lose your queen in September (in our area – Central Virginia), you are in a pretty tough pickle. The queen should be ramping up production of the first few Winter bees in early September. These bees are fatter and meant to live a bit longer then the normal bee. They are not designed to forage so much as to provide warmth and go get a bit of water or maybe some old grass pollen in January. Few born in September make it to the next Spring, but they are the first wave that will eventually propel your October & November bees all the way to February and March. This is the beginning of Winter prep and its very tough to be without a queen at this time of the year.

But, I have found that many of my strong hives (even with space) go queenless in July-August. I actually believe it is good for them and for the lands around my hives. Today, I began my first Winter checks. I went to check a new outyard in Varina, Virginia. I had take two starter hives (one from the Larry super-Queen and one from a hived Swarm) to this spot in early July. I wanted to see how they were doing. Both hives had done really well with regard to pollen and honey. You want to be sure that your hives have a good store of both when going into the Winter. A late August check is not a guarantee in my neck of the woods, but I use it to identify clear danger hives. Last year, for example, I found one and combined it with the Apache hive. That hive ended up being a super strong hive this year. I doubt the weak hive (Moe) would have made it otherwise.

The very first hive that I opened had a medium that was 90% full of capped honey. Interestingly enough, this was nearly exactly what they looked like in early July (I did a test this year and measured honey stores in early July to see how much my bees would eat in the awful weather of July and August). They had barely touched it. In addition, they had a couple of deep frames that were both 90% full of capped honey and 3 frames of pollen (not full frames, but mostly pollen.) From just those notes, I’d say these gals were ready to make a good go of it this Winter. But, the next ‘note’ was important. The entire brood nest (maybe 6 frames) was empty except for a handful of capped brood (and I do mean a handful – maybe 50, all told.) I must admit that I would probably have freaked were it not for what I found on the very first frame (Deep) that I pulled. A small, unmarked queen! I have my notes that I marked a large, brown queen in May (White), so I was certain this was a new queen. I knew something was up when I found her on the first frame – the old gals somehow always manage to get on the LAST frame during the inspection.

So, noticing a few capped brood, I decided that I had a real virgin on my hands. She probably had not even done a maiden flight. And that’s the kicker. Had I opened the hive a week from now, during (say) 3 pm or so, I probably wouldn’t have found her. But, I would have found no eggs and no brood. Without any other knowledge, I might have freaked and combined them with one of my Nucs for overwintering. But, I have seen this before. For whatever reason (either my area, my line of bees or bees in general), some of my hives will cast a swarm in July, regardless of the weather. I seriously doubt the swarm did very well (hot and dry with no blooms out there), but I do have a new queen. I am not so sure they did swarm, given the number of bees, the lack of any sign of a queen cell and the abundance of capped honey (they didn’t take much with them, if they did swarm). It could have been a supercedure. Regardless, I have a new queen and (big benefit) my bees just went through a dearth of eggs which should set the mites back substantially. A perfect time for a perfect storm.

But, the main reason that I’m glad that I checked is that I know to go back to this hive in 2 (3 at the most) weeks to check for eggs. This outyard is my most distant Varina outyard, so only 1 hive is within 3 miles. The owner had told me in June that they hadn’t seen a honey bee in years. So, I need to cross my fingers for a good mating.

Possible Use for a Queen Excluder?

I recently had a fellow stop by to get a queen excluder. Although I do have a few, I only purchased one of them (the rest were given to me, for one reason or another.) I readily gave him one of the older ones without much thought. Before I got into beekeeping (and many times since), the more experienced beekeepers have advised that they do not use ’em. One fellow here in the Richmond, Virginia area said that he calls them ‘honey excluders’! Add to all of this the report from a new beekeeper, just this past May, that he actually opened his hive and could see a bunch of workers unable to make it through his excluder! In my mind, I was pretty sure that I would only use them in a queen production strategy that effectively has a hive create queen cells in a super that the queen is unable to get to. I would never use them on one of my Producer hives.

Well, I have changed my mind. After my honey extraction efforts this Summer, I have decided to experiment with a few honey excluders next year, but not exactly the way most folks use them. Two of my (honey) Producer hives had adventuresome queens that made forays into my honey supers. In both cases, this happened after the bees had capped off at least two shallow supers. In both cases, they didn’t totally ravage the honey supers with eggs, but instead made a run up one side of the hive, using two to three frames per super and then expanding a bit at the top.

It occurred to me today, while doing spot checks on many of my hives, that I might have been able to prevent this by dropping a queen excluder beneath the capped honey supers. Since I let my bees fill up one super before I place the second (beneath the full, capped super), I could easily begin to exclude the queen once a super gets squared away. This way, I am not ‘excluding’ the bees with the nectar when they actually NEED to get up into the super to fill it up. It should already be filled up! I will definitely give that a shot next year to see how it works out.

Biggest Swarm of the Season

As mentioned in several earlier posts, I picked up a huge swarm from a buddy’s apiary just down the road from my house back in May. After finally getting around to processing the videos on my camcorder, I have been able to isolate a video of the catch. As always, the signature ‘underwear shot’ is included – my blog readers will be happy to know that I have purchased suspenders to prevent this from being a feature of future videos!