An avid gardener and outdoorsman, I started beekeeping in 2009, give or take, and began using this journal as a way to document my trials and tribulations. Over the years, it has become a part of my hobby, recording events here.
My goal in this beekeeping adventure is to end up with a bunch of bees that can survive in today’s environment. In the last post, I touched the basis of my current goals and one aspect of them, Drones. Today, I wanted to touch on another aspect to this plan, the Queens.
There are many folks that recommend re-queening every Fall. The basis for this approach is that you are tackling two problems with one action.
The Royal Lady
The first problem is genetics control/swarming. By putting a new queen into the hive in the Fall, the pheromones will be strong (from the young queen) and the hive is much less likely to consider replacing her this Fall or swarm next Spring. Bees typically look to replace aging queens when the pheromones become weaker. If they do it on their own accord, they will end up with a gene pool that is beyond your control. But, as per my last post, my goal is to populate the region with my drones. So, it is not a problem with me if they raise their own queens. But what about the second issue? The swarming issue is more complicated (as I will go into later, I am not so sure that it is beneficial to the bees to continually combat the swarm behavior, unless you are taking steps of simulate a swarm situation (like with a split)).
The second reason to requeen is for varroa control. By replacing an established queen with a virgin queen, the hive goes into an ‘egg-laying dearth’ as the new queen becomes accustomed to the new hive and goes out to mate. This might be a week or three weeks. During this time, the breeding cycle of the varroa mite is interrupted. It can set them back substantially, thus giving a hive a leg up on the cycle. I do believe that this is a valid strategy, as the bees in the wild swarm to create this same kind of scenario (when the old queen leaves, the hive waits for the new queen to hatch and goes into a dearth of its own.) So, if you are preventing your bees from swarming and raising their own queens, requeening is a way to replicate what nature would do on its own. But, this only works if you let them go through a dearth.
If you pinch the old queen and, 1 day later, give them a young, recently mated queen, you are not creating a ‘dearth of brood.’ The new queen gets started laying immediately (and probably stronger), allowing the varroa to continue their cycle. When I requeen in the Fall (actually, in early to mid-July), in the Richmond, Virginia area, I do so by simply killing the old queen. The bees are forced to raise their own queen and necessarily go into a healthy dearth. Ideally, my new queen is mated and laying on September 1, when the bees will be starting to groom the new brood for Winter survival.
Although I do plan to raise queens, it is not my current intent to requeen (definitely not every year.) Instead, I hope to do natural splits to replicate the swarming mechanics of nature. As to my queens, I initially plan to use them to start new Nuc’s and as emergency replacements for queen losses at my established hives. We’ll see how that works out…
As often stated in my musings (or are they gibberish’s of a madman?), I decided to go with a treatment-free bee management plan. In today’s environment, many beekeepers use various chemicals to treat or prevent a parasite/disease. There are many threats (both known and unknown) that face today’s honey bees. These threats can wipe out an entire hive in no time. As a new beekeeper, with all of your eggs in one basket, it seems only natural that you are going to do whatever you can to prevent or address these issues to prevent the loss of your only hive. I can also understand why you would be inclined to treat your bees with chemicals if you were a commercial beekeeper where every hive is a means of putting bread on your table. It’s easy to reconcile treatment in these cases. Even so, I have chosen to go treatment-free.
This is by no means something that I came up with on my own. There are many beekeepers out there who have been doing this for years or have started doing it recently. The underlying belief of the treatment-free strategy is based mostly on the theory of evolution. Basically, you assume that a few queens are born every year with a natural resistance to some, or many, of the threats that face the honey bee today. It is simply a genetic ‘roll of the dice’, where some bees are born with a greater resistance but most are born without it. In nature (without any beekeeper intervention), where no treatment is available, the ones born without it perish, while the ones born with it continue to thrive and produce more offspring. The ones with this superior genetic trait go on to produce more bees (and swarms), many of which will also be resistant to the pressures of today’s environment. Although one can call ‘Survival of the Species’ a theory (in truth it is), it is a theory that has passed the test of time. Many treat it like a Fact. Few treat it otherwise (excluding religious thinking.) Under this ‘natural plan’, the weak bee genes are slowly weeded out (they simply do not survive long enough to propagate – cast a swarm). Without any external intervention, one can imagine a ‘new’ bee finally emerging after many years where most of the bees (new queens) are resistant and doing well against the threats of today. They require no meddling by mankind. Unfortunately, we are not in a condition of ‘lack of external intervention.’
Every Spring, a large number of new queens are introduced into the natural system that are more likely to hold the weak genes then the strong. Why? Because many queen breeders still use copious amounts of treatment on their bees. They do not let the weak genes die, using treatment and feed to encourage an otherwise weak pool of genes to be dispersed to the next generation. Just think about it like this – a queen is born to a Queen Breeder with very poor resistance, but she survives because the beekeeper or queen breeder gives her medicine to help her live anyway. She goes on to spawn bees that also have very poor resistance to mites (tracheal and varroa). In addition, the bees do a very poor job of overwintering (perhaps the queen produces bees that require more caloric intake of carbs for each calorie of heat that it emits in Winter – thus requiring more food then the normal bee would require to overwinter.) In nature, this bee is unlikely to survive long enough to send its genes out into the wild. The hive may die before its first Winter and is very likely to perish in its first Winter.) This is a good thing. It is called ‘Natural Selection’ and it keeps a species strong. But, in a queen-rearing operation, this hive will be treated and copiously fed, preventing the elimination of these weak genes. Indeed, the weak genes are propagated and eventually sent around the nation in the form of virgin queens that the commercial operator sells.
So, every Spring, these Queens arrive to pollute the gene pool of the area they were sent to. A fellow purchases one of these queens (I call them genetic garbage) and sets her up in his yard. A neighboring beekeeper may have gone several years without treatment and feel that he is finally taking those first baby steps towards a superior bee. He has mostly gotten rid of the poor genes, letting his weak hives perish instead of treating or feeding. Then, out of the blue, he is once again knocked back several years when one of his virgin queens goes out and mates with a Drone from this new colony of genetic trash (that is full of poor genes from a queen that only lives today because of the intervention of man, ironically enough).
The main point to all of these ‘musings’ is that you need to try to control your drone pool to the best of your ability. This can only be done with quality queens (treatment free) nearby that are producing drones. The more drones ‘of good breeding’ that you have around your queens, the less chance that they’ll end up with an inferior breeding. You can never guarantee who your saucy young queen is going to go out and kiss on her maiden flights. But, you can certainly nudge the odds in your favor by making sure you are supplying the region with A LOT of good, solid drones. How do I think one can accomplish this?
make sure other local beekeepers buy local queens and nucs (supply them yourself if you can)
try to focus your outyards in an area, dropping 1,2 or 6 hives in areas about 2 miles apart (I am very focused on this aspect)
be happy when your bees swarm in April, as you have just added to the genetic pool of the feral bees in your area
never, ever, ever let genetic trash enter your selection pool through the Drones of an inferior queen
That’s it for now, more soon on other musings of my strategy.
Now that my extraction fun is over, I have a good moment to rest and enjoy several of my other hobbies. The main task that I tackle in July focuses on my starter hives (those hives that I started this year that have NOT built out the brood nest yet). I try to watch them once a week, although it can go longer if things appear to be going well on the outside. I am primarily checking my top feeders, to add another gallon or two of feed. The goal is to get these hives with a drawn out Deep & Medium by October or so and let them roll through the Winter. Since these hives are in my backyard, it’s not a time intensive task at all.
The second task that I focus on is next year’s equipment. Although Winter is a great time to put frames together, I personally like to get my supers put together (for next year) from July to September. These are typically great months to paint, due to high temperatures and dry weather, so I like to knock it out now. I can honestly say that having all of your equipment ready in March is a true dream. You can focus solely on what your bees are doing, instead of hustling to get everything put together and painted. Plus, a super painted now does not ‘stick’ like a super painted a month before it is used!
This past weekend, I did my last deep inspection of many hives until August. There were plenty of good signs and it will be interesting to see how the bees do over the next few months. I harvested several 5 gallon buckets full of honey and still have two more hives to harvest from! It’s a pretty good harvest for me (considering it is my first, I guess anything is good), but I know a fellow in Buckingham that has already harvested 200 lbs of honey! I could take a bath in that much honey…
Small Hive Beetle Larva on Frames
In the inspections, I found several hives that were loaded with honey in their brood supers (Deep-Shallow, in most cases). In one (of three) hive that still has a ‘2 Deep’ setup, I found literally every frame in the top Deep was capped with honey. My back still hurts from moving that thing. I have some drawn deep frames now (see the sad story below) and will probably go out this weekend to swap out 3 frames with these empty ones. I do not mind a hive superceding in July/August – in fact I love it – but I do not want them swarming. A swarm in July/August is just a waste of bees. The chance of them establishing a colony that can last through the Winter is next to Zero. There’s simply not enough time to build up. So, by giving them a bit of space in the Deep, they should go back to work (and forget about swarming, since they have space again) and I’ll have to check them again at the end of the month to see if they are full again… Maybe I should have purchased the extracting basket for Deep frames (this is the one millionth time I have said I would never do X and then changed my mind weeks or months later…)
There were several hives that were also a bit light. Most of them were jammed full of capped brood, but they simply did not have the stores that I expected (or had seen on other hives.) This was not purely location-oriented, although I did find some locations to be better then others this year (but 1 year does not a pattern make – still, it’s good to record it.) Logically, the bees should not be bringing much in at this point, so you would think they will be net consumers of whatever they have. If August rolls around and they have less honey then this past weekend, this will be born out. But, I am interested to see if they can simply maintain what they have (and subsequently add to it during whatever nectar flows in the Fall.) I am also interested to see how much honey the heavier hives eat. Many folks have firmly told me that they eat into the stores come July. It makes sense, but I want to see it. Plus, I’d like to see if different bees eat into it more then other bees.
All in all, I checked on 18 of my hives. Most of them appeared to be doing well (some better then others) and I was able to make sure nearly all of the queens were marked, so that I will know for certain if a swarm/supercedure happens this July (I had some swarms last July, which I discovered after the fact.) But, there were two big problems.
The first problem occurred with Blue Byrd (a split off of William Byrd, which was a 2010 split off of Westover.) I mentioned in an earlier post that I had personally caused what appeared to be a minor Small Hive Beetle invasion on Blue Byrd. Well, it turns out that my efforts were all for naught (I took what I thought was the only problem frame and froze it – I didn’t see evidence of SHB on any other frames.) I checked this past weekend and Small Hive Beetles were in all of the frames. I never saw the queen (she should have emerged a couple of weeks ago) and the hive looked horribly. SHB larva (maggot loooking things) were going through all 9 deep frames of (mostly) capped honey and pollen. A few wax moths had even started to join the fray.
This was so discouraging at that moment that I had to put the hive back together and go sit down to think about what to do next. There were probably a couple of pounds of bees left, but nothing else of value. I have 2 other, strong hives nearby (that I had just done full inspections of and they were rocking.) This hive was like a ticking time bomb (that may have already gone off.) I bet several thousand SHB larva were crawling in it.
Well, after I manned up, I went back to my home apiary and picked up a brand new setup (deep, bottom board, top) and put 9 frames of foundation and 1 old drawn frame of wax (that I was going to melt this week.) I returned to the outyard and shook the bees off of the deep frames (and into the new setup) and put them in my car (they went directly into my freezer). I put the new setup in the exact same position as the old hive. I will return tomorrow or Thursday to have another peak. I am not sure if I should even risk combining them with another hive at this point – I am tempted to just shake them off in my home yard or in the outyard and then put the hive in my car to let it bake in the sun while I am at work. I may combine them just to experiment, but I may not be brave (or foolish) enough to try it. We’ll see if I see a bunch of SHB in them on the next inspection or not (I really wonder if they are doing anything, as I gave them no stores in the new setup.)
As to the frozen frames, it has been 72 hours and I am sure the SHB are dead (don’t listen to that nonsense about SHB living at -40 degrees.) But, each frame has those daggone larva in them. They say that a bee will not eat the honey after a SHB larva defficates in it. Well, I wasn’t about to put these frames into a thriving hive, but I did take one and put it (well away from any hives) in my home yard. I cut some cappings off and let it sit in an open super under my shed.
In 2 hours, the bees cleaned it like you wouldn’t believe. They ate every bit (I guess they tossed the dead larva on the ground.) I took the frame this afternoon and put it back in the freezer, just in case some wiley SHB laid a few eggs in it during the day. So, for the ‘glass is half full’, I should have 9 drawn deep frames that are empty. I have never had that many and it opens up some management strategies/options/experiments. Regardless, I would rather have my hive of bees back…
In addition to the SHB fiasco (just to recap from the earlier post, I am 100% to blame for this, by squashing that honey up against the side of the super and leaving it like that), the Geronimo hive was unable to make her queen. Again, blame the beekeeper, as I went into the hive 14 days after I put the eggs in to have a look and damaged one queen cell irreparably. I thought I could see others deeper in the hive and stopped the inspection, but I wonder now if that was the main one. She looked great, except that she was white and soft and not ready to be pulled out of her queen cell… At any rate, this hive was still holding its own, with a full Medium of capped honey and a full deep of empty (mostly) drawn frames! Sheesh. Well, this is why you start a bunch of Nucs in the Spring. I took one of the Nucs that I had recently put in a Deep and combined them with this hive. Normally, I’d say that I have a strong hive in that outyard now, but with the recent luck, I wouldn’t put any money on it. Hopefully, this weekend, I will find a combined hive with lots of stores and ready to build up for Winter.
So, several lessons this past weekend, about inspections (how to do them and when not to do them) and taking swarm cells from strong hives (that was why Geronimo ended up without a queen in the first place.)
Finally, I had my first robbing attempt this past weekend. The home yard has a couple of strong hives that need moving out and one of them has decided that their neighbor’s honey is better then going out and working to bring in their own. Again, I caused the problem. I use top feeders to great effect, but this time I put one of my migratory covers on top of the feeder. In addition, I left it open longer then I should (went back to get another gallon.) Finally, I did not have an entrance reducer on the hive (they were strong…) I came back to find robbing in full earnest. I had seen plenty of dead bees outside of many of my hives and new that robbing was starting to ramp up, but this was the first full scale assault.
Fortunately, I THINK I resolved it for the time being. I dropped a wet towel on the hive and waited until after dark to come and install a robber screen. This is VERY important. If you install one in the middle of robbing, the robbers who are in the hive will learn how to get back in (as they will have to leave from the new exit on the screen.) The next day, I found many bees trying to get back in, but the two days following have shown fewer and fewer would-be invaders. I think the migratory cover is not helping, as several invaders are always crowding at the cracks along the top trying to get in, as if they can smell the syrup through the cracks.
What are my lessons here? For one, I now do my feeding right before or at dark. Secondly, now that it has started in the yard, I need to get the strongest hives out of here this weekend. There is a robber (or two) about and I have found (from past years) that once you start moving hives out, one day the robbing just stops. It is clear to me that the main hive (or two) that is responsible was moved out of the yard. I’ll probably move 3 or 4 hives out this weekend, all to outyards with strong hives and start each of them off with robber screens (only 2 are to the point when I normally move them – fully drawn deep and 70%+ drawn medium.)
Overall, it has been a bloody past few days. When I step back, things still look great. I have to remind myself that you can only learn by experiencing the bruises (well, I can only learn that way.) So, I keep saying that it was a good thing to only lose 2 hives. Hopefully, I will not be back here later this month talking about similar lessons with other hives. I’d like to keep the Summer losses down – Winter is tough enough…
Good lord. I mentioned in my last post that I had extracted two-thirds of a five gallon bucket off of one of my hives. In all honesty, I am certain that experienced beekeepers will see that and think it isn’t much. But, I can tell you folks out there who, like me, are just getting into this hobby, that it is a lot. I was amazed at how many jars I filled up, of varying sizes (and hope to get a picture of it tomorrow.) I have a lot of folks that I am giving honey away to, but even after that I will have more honey then my family can eat in a year (by a LONG shot.) The real kicker is that this was just one hive. I have 4 more hives with similar takes (one has a lot more, but the average on the rest is 3 shallows)!!!! Heh. I thought I might sell a bottle or two to recoup the costs of my glass jars. I can see now that I can recoup the cost of the extractor over a few years. I must say that I have not been this excited since I first got the bees. It’s been an amazing adventure. This honey is from last Fall and this Spring (on a Varina hive), so it is a mix but it is very dark. I look forward to my next extraction (Thursday) from a Charles City hive.
On a side note, I had taken the extracted supers and put them back on the original hive. A couple of notes about this. To begin with, I put them directly on top of the brood chamber (a Deep and a Medium, in my case), under the inner cover. Just like they were when I got them. The goal here is to let the bees clean up the remaining honey and, I assume, consolidate it back closer to the brood nest. They also will patrol the comb to keep the wax moths and small hive beetles out. Finally, they can use it if we get a Fall flow (hasn’t happened since the 90’s in my area, according to the old timers, but I’m ready for it if it does.) After doing this, I had some questions about my experience that I posted on a bee forum. While searching their archives, I found where lots of folks put the supers on above the inner cover. I had no idea and asked why (and if I had made a mistake putting them back on beneath the inner cover.) In the end, many folks responded that they do exactly like I do (for the same reasons posted above) and the only reason mentioned for putting it above the inner cover was to make sure the queen didn’t lay in them. At this point, I am not worried about that. The risk is that Wax Moths are attracted to pollen and brood comb. They don’t care for honey comb. So, keeping the queen out of your honey supers removes the wax moth risk. At the moment, I am not trying to keep her out (as always, this may change in the future.) To begin with, I doubt she’s going up there at this time of year. Secondly, I hope to use other methods to keep the wax moth at bay once I actually remove the supers in November.
The second note is that I definitely noticed a lot of increased activity around the hive that I harvested from when I put the extracted supers back on the hive. I cannot be sure, but I think the smell of the honey drew bees from the other two strong hives nearby. This hive can defend itself, but I am not partial to setting up mortal combat for no good reason (bees die when these would be robbers try to make a go of it.) The next time that I do this, I will put an entrance reducer on the hive before I drop the extracted supers back on. This will reduce the entrance, make it easier to defend and (hopefully) dissuade most of the combat from happening. We’ll see…
Lastly, I have started my Nuc list for 2012 (a lady in Charles City wanted to get on it.) I hope to get a page up on the site to help folks decide if they want to get on the list and how to do so soon. I’ll also need to get something up about ‘local honey for sale’!!! Bonzai! Beekeeping is a blast.
I finally did it. I harvested my first batch of honey! It was not nearly as messy as I had expected it to be and I did get a nice batch off of my one of my producer hives in Varina, Virginia. The worst part was cleaning up the equipment after the extraction. I am pretty sure that everything else went smoothly (it seemed that way to me, at any rate.)
Honey
Once we hit mid-March this year, I had identified the hives that I wanted to create Nuc’s and Splits with (these were the strongest hives) and the ones that I wanted to let accumulate honey (I don’t want to say ‘weakest’ hives, as they were all good hives, but let’s just say they were in the ‘second best’ group.) Then there were the two hives that I marked as my ‘weakest hives’. One ended up raising their own queen and is building up this year (with new genetics from Charles City) and I killed the queen of the other (replacing it with one of my Larry queens). But, the point is that I used my second class of hives to build up honey.
It was early April when I dropped the first supers of foundation on my honey hives. In several instances, I had 2 capped supers by early May and I averaged around 3 supers on my honey hives. I mostly use shallow supers for honey but Mosely, the super producer (it was actually one of my strongest hives that, due to timing and having too many Nuc’s already, I never split or cut into Nuc’s) ended up (as of yesterday) with 3 shallows and 2 mediums (although I am pretty sure that one medium is only drawn and being used to cure honey right now – very little capped.) In a future post (soon), I will go into how I definitely noticed a marked difference in honey production at a couple of spots. The flow was stronger at some spots and, in the outyard near Shirley Plantation in Charles City County, still going on right now (the flow has dried up in Varina.)
I super from below, meaning that I put a honey super on the brood chambers (typically 1 Deep and 1 Medium in my case) and let them work on it. Once they have capped off at least 80% of the frames, I drop another super BENEATH the super they are currently working on and directly above the brood chambers. It seemed to work pretty well this year, but I am sure that I will experiment with other methods in the future (next year, assuming the wax moths don’t get all of my drawn frames, I will have drawn supers to play with as well!)
When I pulled the 3 supers off of my one honey producer in Varina, they all seemed pretty heavy and appeared capped from above. So, that was 30 frames to extract and my Ranger Extractor only takes 6 per go of it – that was perfect! I would run it 5 times (or so I thought…). I used two telescoping covers, one for the bottom and one for the top, to hold the supers while I finished up my inspection. The bees definitely smelled it, as they were crawling all over the outside of the supers trying to get in when I got back to the Trailblazer. Regardless, none did get in and we were off to my garage to begin the extraction.
Once in the garage, I used a regular uncapping knife (not heated) and it worked great. I did have to use one of the scratchers to get a few areas that the knife missed on each frame, but I ended up with 23 frames (not 30) to extract. Several simply had too much honey still in the curing phase. This seemed to leave me with 1 too few frames for 4 full runs. But, I accidentally missed a side of one frame with the uncapping knife, so that one was run twice (and it worked great in the extractor with 6 frames on each run.)
Twice, I had to let some honey out of the extractor and pour it through a double-strainer and into my honey bucket. In the end, I had a bit over 2/3’s of a 5 gallon bucket full of honey. Not a ton, but a nice haul for my first run.
It was pretty much trial and error and I am sure I will have more ‘lessons learned’ over the next couple of weeks as I go out to the other honey producing hives.
When Wade Murray purchased a Nuc from me, he videoed nearly the entire purchase which included a look at the Nuc that he purchased (which corresponded with my commentary about what you should look for when purchasing a Nuc) and a good period of Q&A as he was getting ready to start his first hive of bees.
June in my Bee-yards near Richmond, Virginia takes on a new dimension from the first few months of the year. To begin with, the workload reduces a lot. I am no longer trying to do a full inspection of every hive. In truth, some of the full inspections (top to bottom, pulling every frame) wane in early May. But, by early June, I am simply taking a super or two off to have a look at the super they are working on, in case they need another honey super. I rarely pop more then 3 frames from the super to get a good feel for where they are before I put it back. The only exceptions are the hives that need a bit of extra care (such as splits done in May.) I make sure to have a look at the brood nest (a few frames at least) once a month from now on.
The other change primarily takes place in my Home Yard. Most (if not all) Hive Starts in the yard should be out of here (and onto outyards) by the end of the month. As mentioned last year, I found it to be extremely difficult to start late season Nuc’s (or Nuc’s for overwintering) when I had a few full hives in the same yard (it became a robbing bonanza.) So, any increase for the year needs to be ‘out da door’ by the end of this month. I seriously doubt that will happen, but that’s the goal. I have 3 more hives leaving this Friday (that will put my outyards at 7 and my hive count at 23!), but there are 11 more starts still in the yard. At least 4 are on the verge of having ‘beekeeper regicide’ performed on them (which might convert them to the Overwintering Program) I think it is reasonable to expect me to go into the Winter with 30 hives and 3 or 4 Nucs for overwintering this year, but who knows what will happen.
I also ramp up my syrup feed (if I still have increase hives that have not drawn out the bottom deep and top medium) to a straight 1:1 mix. I have no idea why this is the case, but my bees draw wax fine in my backyard on 2 parts water to 1 part sugar until around the June time-frame, when they simply stop taking it (on average.) But, if I ramp up the mix to 1:1, they go back to drawing wax and sucking down the syrup. In truth, I should look into upping the mixture in May, because they take the stuff at a pace that is very much higher then the pace they were taking the 2:1 mix when I start it. Next year, I might start the new mix in mid-May.
In closing, the weather continues to be pretty good for the bees (nectar still coming in at a good rate!), although it is extremely hot for the beekeeper. I look forward to my first round of extracting in a week or two and will report back the successes (and, more likely, failures) then.
Another lesson learned for this old boy. I did a split of the William Byrd Hive back in late April. It was one of the hives that I had targeted for honey but had gone on a swarm rampage anyway. Come late-May, I did not see the signs that I liked and I dropped a frame of eggs into the hive, just to be sure (off of Apache, a good blood line). In the process of putting the new frame of eggs (I was in a hurry…), I removed the outermost deep frame and sunk the new frame of eggs in the center. Sounds logical, eh?
Well, the second from the outermost deep was a bit thick on capped honey. They had drawn it out too far and, on the frame that I removed, had simply not drawn it out much at all. This meant that when this frame became the outermost frame, the capped honey was actually touching the side of the Deep. No problem, I thought, the bees will eat this away and create a new walkway.
Bees may do that, but mine don’t. They let it sit (about 33% of the face of that frame), smashed against the wall of the Deep. This is what we call ‘Prime Small Hive Beetle mating ground.’ Basically, I noticed something of concern when I approached the hive. A brown stream of liquid was lazily running out of one side of the entrance. To be honest, I thought SHB immediately, but didn’t realize I was to blame (I figured the hive must be a goner.) Instead, the hive was strong as can be (for a split at this time of year), but that one frame had tons of SHB larva. Like an idiot, I scraped two carvings (with the hive tool) off onto the ground before I realized that the ground is where they pupate. Sigh. Once I regained my senses, I shook and brushed the bees off of it (oddly, this was the only frame to have two supercedure cells that had not been capped yet) and took it home to go in the freezer. I’ll figure out what to do with that thing later.
At any rate, I will never push honey comb up against the side of the super again (on purpose, at least.) I could not believe the sheer number of SHB that had gone to town in that little protected spot. Obviously, I need to get another frame of eggs on this hive and watch them very closely.
I must make every mistake there is to make in beekeeping…
The temperatures to the east of Richmond, Virginia felt like 200 degrees when in full sun, in my bee gear. Makes me appreciate some of the advice that I received early on (and foolishly dismissed): bees may like it in full sun, but I like to be in the shade when I do my inspections, an experienced beekeeper once told me. Normally, I set my hives with their northern/northwestern backs to a good, deciduous tree, which gives me a bit of a break from the heat in the late afternoon. But, in my Nuc Yard (where I keep all young hives, Nuc’s or otherwise), I have to place them where I have space, which is frequently in a Sunny position all day long!
Normally, I do not do a full inspection of my entire Nuc yard every week (I did one last weekend and the next one is scheduled for next weekend.) I do check my regular Nucs every 4 to 5 days, but the rest do not get checked as frequently. But, after the bee inspection, I had to get in there to straighten the frames and square them (the inspector was not as particular about this when he was going through my hives…something I obviously noted and needed to correct this weekend.) It was a fairly eventful inspection, to be sure.
My first check was the Estes Swarm, a swarm about the size of a pine cone that I ‘caught’ (maybe the term is ‘pocketed’ for this size swarm…) after I noticed the queen crawling around on my hand after I broke the branch off that the bees were hanging on to show to a friend. Maybe I never caught the queen (I never laid eyes on her after I got back home) or maybe she was a virgin that never returned from her love voyage. Either way, it has been over 3 weeks since I caught them and I should have seen eggs (and I should have seen her by now, given the size of the bees.) I ended up combining them with a teenage Nuc (basically a Nuc that had done well enough to advance to a Deep and was on the verge of needing a Medium.
My next inspection was worse news. I had created a Nuc with two deep frames of brood, both of which had at least one swarm cell. The problem, I think, was that I overloaded the thing with Nurse bees shaken from a couple of hives. The thing was busting out on Day 1 and I should have done something about it (lesson learned.) I am pretty sure they swarmed (maybe twice) when the queens came out as the bee number reduced a lot in about 10 days and I never found a queen. I haven’t reviewed my bee log, but I know that I had identified the problem over two weeks ago and given them a frame of eggs from a proven hive (Apache). I noticed a queen cell sometime later and hoped to find a laying queen today. Instead, I find tons of capped drone…tons of it. I see eggs laid dead center of many cells but cannot find the queen to save my life. With all of that drone brood, I was suspicious, so I started to inspect lots of ’empty’ cells. Finally, I find the tell-tale sign of a laying drone (probably more then one) – 3+ eggs in a cell. I checked the hive (a third time) for a queen (hoping against all odds) and found more of these daggone cells with multiple eggs. I have notes about what to do in this situation and now laugh at them (I wrote them without much experience). There is no way that I am going to put a frame of brood/eggs into this Nuc every week for 3 or more weeks (I might as well create 3 new Nucs instead.) I think this advice is if you have a full hive that has laying workers – it doesn’t make sense to do this with a Nuc. So, I combined them with a nearly mature hive (mature means a Deep and a Medium that is a week or so from being moved to an outyard.) I marked the queen in that hive, so we’ll see if they combine well or not (you gotta learn sometime.)
So, two Nuc’s (well, 1 real Nuc and 1 swarm that was in a Nuc) were a bust and those were the first two hives I inspected. Not a good start. Fortunately, the rest of the inspections went fairly well except for two near miss issues with marking new queens (I fumbled BOTH jobs and ended up leaving the ladies alone for a later marking – all the while hoping I didn’t damage them.) One Nuc is ready for sale, which a fellow is coming by to get tomorrow. I also upgraded 1 to a teenager (moved to a full Deep.) The rest are doing fine with good laying queens that should be ready for action within the next two weeks. I want to get these done with by July 1, when I will embark on my Overwintering Nuc program.
One really positive note is something that I honestly would have a hard time believing if I read on someone else’s blog, but I am going to relay it anyway. On May 23, I received a call from a beekeeper down the road that one of his hives swarmed (I had already picked up a swarm from one of his hives earlier this year, so this was number 2). I couldn’t believe the size of this swarm (I will get a video up on it shortly.) This thing was big by my standards and it was tough getting them in the single deep that I brought along. When I went to pick them up, a solid pound of bees or more were hanging all over the front of the hive (I have never had this happen before.) Since they were not in the hive, I couldn’t tape them up, so I gingerly strapped the hive together and transported them in my car, while they hung on the front (thankfully, I did not get into an accident…) The next day, there were still a ton of bees hanging all over the front, so I decided to give them a Medium of foundation. I was a bit concerned about this, as I was basically giving this hive a full deep and a full medium of foundation – that’s a lot of space for a new swarm. What would they do? Would they just draw out the center frames of each box? Would they only focus on the top Medium (just below the feeder)? I gave them a single gallon of light (2 parts water:1 part sugar) syrup (all I had mixed at the time) and watched them occasionally during the week. The inspector passed over this box, so I had not looked in them since the 23rd. Today, I checked. To my complete amazement, they had drawn out every single frame on both boxes (although the outer frames on both supers were only half drawn)! I was amazed. They filled out a full brood chamber (for me, which is a Deep and a Medium) in a little over a week with ONLY 1 gallon of syrup! (It should be noted that the inspector was surprised by the nectar my bees were bringing in – he has a yard at VSU which was not bringing in much, a surprise to me). The wild thing was that I did find the queen but she had only started laying eggs – not even any C-shaped larva (that I could find, anyway.) Normally, I would have expected to see something just about capped at this point. It must have been a virgin, which is hard to believe – this could not have been a ‘secondary’ swarm. The hive that cast a swarm this big as a secondary swarm would have to be 10+ supers tall!
But, it was two weeks ago (I think) that the same fellow called me about a swarm, but when I got to his house, he advised that they had all just flown back into his hive. It makes me wonder if the old queen was in that swarm and somehow died or failed to make it to the initial landing branch (and perished in the process.) Maybe she was with them and when they went back to the hive, the virgin killed her. Who knows (I certainly don’t.) In the end, I put a shallow on them just in case and now have to figure out when I will move them to an outyard. I rarely have a hive this big that I have to move and am pretty certain it will break my back.
In closing, it reminds me of the old saying that a swarm in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, but a swarm in July ain’t worth a fly! This was definitely a silver spoon (and maybe a fork too!) In my book, it is a World Record.
