I have long ago given up the notion that I can figure out the honey bee. But, it still frustrates me!

I checked a Nuc this afternoon – the very first Nuc that I created this year – for some evidence of a queen. It has been 3 weeks since I created the Nuc which is more than enough time, even in cold weather, for a queen to be raised. She may not be laying yet, but she should be in the little hive. I found a partially torn down queen cell, which told me the queen had hatched, which is a great first step. I looked about for the queen, but I always have difficulty finding them at this age – they seem to be smaller and a lot quicker! I never found her, but made a note to come back in 2 weeks to check for eggs/larvae. This Nuc is in good shape.

Then, onto a second yard where I mainly wanted to put a third Medium super on a colony that overwintered in a double Medium Nuc, had been moved to two full-sized Nucs in early March and now needed a third full-sized Nuc to fill out their brood chamber (I rarely use this setup, but it works and was called for in this situation.) As I accomplished the primary task, I noticed two Nucs (in this yard) that I had created on March 25 – there was zero activity… It was late afternoon and well into the 70’s – a good 10 days since the Nucs were created – there should be activity! Argh. I checked both Nucs – the Med Nuc was completely empty – only dead, capped brood. The Deep Nuc probably had a dozen bees… Insanity. I went back to check the weather – no big drops until several days after the Nuc was created, no huge downpours… But, both Nucs, created from the same parent hive, somehow emptied. I feel like there is something that I am missing – there must be a common agent here (and, I seem to recall this happening in the past, in other yards.)

At any rate, it’s all part of the process. I am more happy that I was able to collect the drawn frame from those Nucs now (instead of 9 days from now, when I would have checked for evidence of a queen.) Once the rain passes, I will just create a few more Nucs in a few other beeyards and move on!

Things seem to be going along splendidly – with only a couple of exceptions, hives are building up at a normal pace, nectar and pollen are coming in and Nuc creation is not behind schedule (it is a relief to finally be managing less than 50 hives! I am no longer constantly behind schedule!!!)

Site Update: Honey Bee Nuc order form is now live and I fixed the Spring Reminders!

Last weekend, I realized that I need a lot more Deep frames to keep going. I started to go back through my records, as I do not remember running out of Deep frames this early in the season. I discovered that the “problem” was that I only lost two hives over the Winter. Normally, I suffer 10% losses on average (from a range of 3.4% to 34.1%) and use the Deeps from those dead out’s to replace frames pulled from my parent hives to create the Nucs. I need something to replace those frames! This past Winter, I only lost 2 hives! This has created a few challenges and one interesting new find (I am always learning!!)

From the challenge standpoint, I normally start painting my plastic frames (with melted beeswax) and building new frames with fresh foundation around tax day. I have had to squeeze in time to get this done now, which was not anticipated. I will not be caught flatfooted next year (although, I am willing to be that losing only 2 hives is likely to be an exception and not the rule, going forward.)

But, from a “Jones is always learning” standpoint, I had one of my theories tested (or actually proven false.) I have long believed that putting foundation into hives in March only increased their likelihood of swarming. Why? Because I did not think that the temperatures were high enough or the flow was good enough for them to draw new wax. By taking a drawn frame (to populate a Nuc) and then replacing it with a frame of foundation or painted plastic, I just removed a room or two from their house, which they would not replace until late April (when I believed real wax drawing started.)

Well, last weekend, I had to drop some plastic foundation (painted with my beeswax) into some hives as I created Nucs. Yesterday, I had to go back into one of those hives (I wanted to create a Medium Nuc from that strong gal, in addition to the Deep Nuc I created last weekend). While looking for the queen, I found that they had drawn out a fair amount of wax! I had to pull the frame a second time to double check (my brain wouldn’t accept it! ha.) It just goes to show, I need to always remember that every single “conclusion” that I think is a “fact” is simply just a theory when it comes to honey bees!

Although I created a couple of Nucs in mid-March, I created several last weekend (the 3rd weekend). In central Virginia (pretty much starting in Richmond and going southeast for about 40 miles), I have found the most success by creating Nucs (on average) in the 3rd weekend. It is true that several hives were strong enough to create a Nuc, the vast majority were coming out of Spring just fine but were not to the strength that I like for taking a Nuc. That said, I tagged a bunch for taking a Nuc this coming weekend (last weekend in March and the following weekend.) This will put most of my Nucs for Sale ready in early to mid-May, which is just fine.

How do I know that it is time to take a Nuc? Well, let’s talk about my misadventures first. In the early years, I was driven to take a Nuc as early as possible (walking drones! walking drones!!!) – I remember taking a Nuc in February once! Although I did have a few successes with these super early Nucs, it took about 5 years for me to realize that I was really wasting bees – the majority of these early Nucs either failed to raise a good queen or failed to raise any queen at all.

Thanks to record keeping (and having too many hives to muck around with too early in the season), I started noticing that Nucs created in late March (regardless of a warm or cold Winter) just did better over all and, more often than not, I would successfully get another Nuc or two off the same hive (not to mention honey and whatnot.) So, several years ago, I started simply waiting until late March to even look. This has (to date) really proven to be a big boon on my Nuc creation fun (although, my Medium Nucs do not enjoy the same success as the Deeps, so I need to work on that methodology.)

So, it’s late March – what do I look for next? The bees simply need to be making a very strong show in both the Deep and the Medium brood chambers. I want them to be on at least 6 frames in one box and 5 in the other. It can be hard to wait for this (at least for me), but it doesn’t make sense why I feel that way. Every day, more drones are born in the area and the chance of getting a well mated queen increases. But, I have some kind of sickness that I just want to create those Nucs early!!! Well, this year, I have held off the urge – I think I have about 8 Nucs created and most were last weekend. This weekend, I will create at least 8 more and the season will be truly off to a good start.

I believe this will be a stellar bee season for several reasons. I also believe lots and lots of bees will be swarming. I should post about that next.

Site Update: The site was hacked on March 17. For the first time in years, I finally get back to posting and managing this blog – then what happens? Some plugin gets a security vulnerability and a loser hacks me!!! At any rate, all is well now – I apologize to any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

For many years, I have been very proud to record substantially less losses than the averages reported by the state. Through 2017, my worse year was a little under 18% losses – averaging more in the 6 to 8% range in other years. But, this year is clearly going to be different. I have checked around half of my hives and am definitely moving towards a 30 or 40% loss due to the Fall/Winter of 2017//2018. I have a lot more inspections to do, but the one big difference this year is the surprizing number of hives with tons of honey and just a handful of dead bees (with queen) found in the middle of them. In my view, the bees simply did not have enough bees to keep the hive warm. Maybe the hard Winter in January was too much for them. On the plus side, I like to view these kinds of years as Mother Nature’s way of weeding out the weak.

Many of my hives have queens with White marks, meaning they were born in 2016. Fortunately, those that made it are, for the most part, doing very well. In fact, I am now seeing large patches of capped drone brood, a sign that I use for starting my Nuc creation. In the past, I would wait for Walking Drones (see a drone or two walking on the frames), but I have found that queens raised during those early days are usually not as well bred (and don’t last as long.) But, if I wait a bit later (usually 2 weeks or so), for when the queens really start to lay lots of Drone eggs, I generally start to get much better queens. So, when I spot a grouping of 50 or more drone brood, it is a sign for me that it is time to start my Nucs (which will raise their own queens. Usually, I have created several Nucs by mid-March, so this year was a bit of an anomaly. I think this year has been more “normal” in many respects, compared to the last decade.

With that discovery, I created my first Nucs of the season and mark several hives for Nuc creations over the next two weeks. I generally wait for at least 7 frames of brood or eggs in one box (usually top) and evidence that the queen has started to lay in the second box (usually bottom) before I start taking Nucs. Several were within a week of being ready, but a few were ready today.

Based on the activity that I am seeing, it seems likely that Henrico swarms could show up by Tax Day. Of course, there will be the outliers that come earlier, but I am thinking that late April will be good for swarms (which I want more than years past, due to the losses of this year!) I am probably jinxing myself, so let’s hope for solid weather with the occasional rain for the next couple of months – no extremes!!

 

Eleven or twelve years ago, I decided to purchase a couple of Nucs to start on a beekeeping journey. This is also when I decided it would be fun to see what all this “blogging” was about and started a beekeeping blog (this site!). It was great fun that first year, dealing with two hives and reporting some of my insane conclusions in those early days.

Of course, two weren’t enough, so I expanded to 4 in year two and believe I may have caught a swarm or two. By years 3 and 4, I was experimenting with every type of “bee increase” you could imagine (nucs, splits, raising queens, etc…) As the years went on, those first two hives became 80 hives. As with all of my hobbies, I eagerly took beekeeping over the edge!!!

It was not until last July, as I once again spent most of my free time on the Summer weekends either extracting a seemingly never ended pile of capped honey supers or running down various tasks in a multitude of beeyards, that everything became clear – I had once again turned a great, fun-loving hobby into a daggone job!!!

As I write this post, it occurs to me that my activity on this blog also dropped off substantially as the hive count rose. I enjoy running on here, on this blog. But, just managing the hives (along with family, work and so on) was preventing me from really enjoying this small bit of fun.

So, I have finally wizened up and realize that an ideal number of hives for me runs at two dozen, not 7!!! Therefore, this year I will begin to sell both Nucs and fully operational hives. I am hopeful of reducing my count over the next couple of years to something that is more of an enjoyable hobby than a full-time job! I plan to update the site with the relevant information shortly, regarding how to reserve a hive or nuc, costs and so forth.

Hopefully this is also a sign of more posts here, and more dialogue with fellow beekeepers across Virginia (and elsewhere.)

Over the last 24 hours, I have gotten a bit over an inch of much needed rain and more is in the future! Per usual, I will likely go from complaining about not enough rain to fretting about too much rain! It seems I am never satisfied with what Mother Nature dishes out:) Regardless, my Nucs are rocking and, with this rain, I am betting that I will have many very strong Nucs in 2 weeks. No doubt, I will have more than I currently have demand for and am likely to post to Craigslist soon! But, that’s a good problem to have so I am not complaining!

Over the past few days, between swarm calls, I have received a lot of calls and emails about queens. For one reason or another, folks always seem to be looking for queens this time of the year. Instead of launching into my typical spiel about sustainable beekeeping and that everyone should have at least one Nuc, I will point folks to a past spiel on that score (see http://richmondhoneybee.com/nucs/nuc.html). Today, I will talk about the supposed “queenless state”.

First, I will pass on a recent experience from a great lady out in the country where I have a very successful apiary on the James River here in Central Virginia. She began keeping bees a few years ago, purchasing a couple of Nucs from me and has been very dedicated to the hobby and doing it correctly. She was actively in her hives and noticed, in early April I believe, that one of her hives had no capped brood at all – not even drone brood. She found open queen cells, but nothing else. If you remember your bee math, this means that there has been no queen in that hive for possibly 24 days (drones hatch then). In my experience, a new queen (post swarm) is laying before all of the drones hatch, but it is possible to have a couple of days between a queen starting to lay and the last drone hatching, in cooler weather. She was fairly certain she was without a queen, so she dropped a frame of eggs (from a nearby, queen-right hive) into the troubling hive. I advised her to go back 3 weeks later to see if she had an open queen cell (the bees should raise a new queen within 14 to 16 days, if they were without one.)

Instead, she found several frames of capped brood and a thriving hive. What happened here? Even though it appeared that she did not have a queen, she actually did. The young queen was simply slow to get started and working on her own timeline, like they always do! The key here is that she had an available frame of eggs to put in the hive, just in case. It was simply insurance. It turned out she did not need it, but it was reassuring that she did.

The ability to maintain your hives under queens of local stock cannot be understated. Purchasing queens from out of state, from differing geographical regions, increases risk to your hives in my view and experience.

Although I did have some concerns after learning of the swarming hive in New Kent (see previous post), I have been very pleased with the findings in my hives since then. The majority of hives have a very respectable force of walking drones and are building out nicely, in a measured fashion. If weather were not a potential factor, now would be a great time to create a good number of Nuc’s. I have created 13 thus far and expect to create a similar number this weekend.

On the down side, I did find yet another entire out yard with dead-outs (this only amounted to two hives, but it is still notable as I have never lost an entire yard before but have lost two this past Winter.) As stated earlier, I blame this more on me than the weather or the bees. The last 6 months of 2016 were horrendous when it came to other responsibilities in my life.

First a note about the Flow – or the period of time when the blooming plants really put out a ton of nectar for the bees – this is truly the GO time for my bee hives. I have a pretty simple system for determining when the flow is on – take a few tablespoons of raw honey and place it in a bowl on the picnic table in my backyard. If bees arrive soon, the real Flow is not here. If they ignore it (sometimes for days or weeks), the real Flow is here. As of yesterday, the real Flow was not here yet, despite all of the warm weather.

Now, on to the only hive I have (so far) had swarm on me this year. I have found that the colonies in Henrico County are anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks ahead of my hives in Charles City County (maybe the warmth of Richmond puts them ahead?). For years, I would start my Spring inspections in Charles City, seeing that I still had a few weeks to go (before overcrowding/swarm issues) during those inspections, only to find hives that had already swarmed in Henrico once I got there. It finally dawned on me that I needed to START in Henrico, which I have done the last few years with good effect. About a week ago, I was down to my very last hive in Henrico – actually a young hive that I had in my backyard. I pushed a couple of puffs of smoke through the entrance, then opened her up. The VERY second that I pulled off the top, bees starting rolling out the entrance. For about 20 seconds, I was confused about what the heck was happening – then it dawned on me. Looking up, I saw the swarm rolling above me and watched (sadly) as it eventually made its way to the treetops and moved on. There is no way to know for sure, but I have serious doubts that the old queen would fly like that. This made me believe this was a secondary or tertiary cast. The only thing that I noted here was that this was the 4th time this bloodline swarmed early on me. I like the bees (very healthy, put on good honey, etc…), but that is one trait that I am not overly fond of (early swarming).

So, the beekeeping Spring moves onward. As of now, I am in good spirits about the outlook, despite my higher than normal losses this past Winter. It appears that I have suffered 19% hive loss, largely due to my inattention to the bees in the last half of 2016. I am confident that I can recover from this based on what I am seeing in the yards today. But, only time will tell!!!