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.

Always Start with Two

The weather around Richmond, Virginia continues to be outstanding. It actually hit 84 degrees today, breaking the previous record from back in the 1920’s. Dandilions are in full bloom, as are pears, peaches, plums and apricots. A friend down near Shirley Plantation indicated that her bees were covering the flowering quince in her neighbor’s yard. Basically, there’s a lot of forage out there (even though the official start to my flow, the tulip poplar bloom, has not happened yet.) My findings in the hive inspections for today only confirmed this – as well as reminding me that it’s a daggone good thing that I started my beekeeping with two hives in the Spring of 2009, and not one.

The general tone of today’s inspections included more hives with just a few capped drone cells (but nothing walking about) and more hives with dozens (if not scores) of capped drone brood and many walking about on the comb. The bottom line is that the hives are building up at different rates. I am a big fan of this early build up. I had one hive today (the Westover Hive) with 6 frames (back and front) of brood in the top medium AND 7 frames (not all were back and front) of brood in the bottom deep. It was nothing short of amazing, compared to my other hives (including my other strong ones.) The amount of bees about to come out of this hive is going to be like a volcano. I found the queen and cannot be sure if this is the same queen from last year’s swarm catch, but it doesn’t really matter. These bees are what I want.

They come from stock that made it through at least 1 Winter before I caught them
They have made it through one year with me, without a lick of medication or even a powdered sugar dusting.
They seemed lethargic during brief forays into the 50’s during the Winter (I hope this means they are frugal)
They build up fast in the Spring

There are other traits that I would like to have, but these are the primary traits that I am looking for at this time of year. I will take at least one Nuc off of them (I’ll probably swipe the old queen (Nuc 1) and a frame of eggs (Nuc 2)). I’ll need to get this done by next weekend – the congestion in that hive is about to go through the roof. I should put up a swarm trap down there this weekend.

The hive beside it (the one that showed more activity in January) is good ole Albo. When I walked up to it, I honestly thought it was my first hive casualty for the year. But, as I unceremoniously removed the inner cover with a loud snap, the tell tale hum of bees could be heard. They are small – maybe at 2 frames of brood with no drones at all – but they are alive. No doubt they will build up and once again fail to provide honey or enough bees for an increase. Albo was one of the first two hives that I started with in 2009. It’s sister hive, Geronimo, has continued to do exceptionally well, whereas Albo just barely survives a Winter (I actually fed them through last Winter, before I adopted my ‘James Bond’ strategy.)

Thank the lord for Geronimo. If I had started with only Albo, who knows what I would be up to today. One thing is for certain, I will be removing that queen this year. As of right now, this is the only hive that I will be requeening this year. They have enough genetic fortitude to make it through the Winter (which is enough for me to let them raise drones for the time being, if they want), but that’s it. I will be using the brood in this hive to fortify my Nuc’s and Queen-breeding boxes, as well as bait for my swarms and/or trap-outs. But, this bloodline will not be with me this Fall.

The final note about my inspections today centers around both the Westover and Berkeley Hives. Both have basically filled up the combs above them and were building honey comb between my inner cover and the top frames (I had not inverted the inner cover yet this year.) Westover had a bunch of comb because I had put a spacer in them to feed them pollen (something I am unlikely to do in the future, but that is a different topic for another day.) So, I have put supers on several hives today, all with some bare foundation to increase my wax stores. The way things are looking today, I would say we could have a real killer of a honey build this Spring (and I still have not purchased an extractor!)

There is an article one of the bee magazines this month about a French beekeeper that stopped medicating a few years ago. He suffered big losses the first few years, but his losses have dwindled substantially now that he has weeded out the chaff (letting those poor hives die off, along with their genetics.) He is actually looking to buy varroa mites, do he can subject his hives to them (and thus weed out more of the weak ones!) I’m not in the market for any varroa, but his experiences over the past couple of years simply cement my resolve to keep up the current plan.

It is clear to me at this point that I have 3 hives that are readying to swarm – and it could happen anytime in the next couple of weeks. I am seriously considering taking two Nucs off of each of those hives (one being the old Queen and one being a frame of eggs.) With my winter Nucs, I honestly have no idea what I would do with 6 more Nucs (plus, my goal was to only start 4). I might just do a simple split with one of these strong hives. We shall see. But, it’s time to go finish work on the last of my swarm traps. These things need to all be up by the end of the weekend for sure.

Whoa, doggie!

In my last post, I asserted that this past weekend would be the beginning of a Nuc or two in my yard. This was all based on my discovery of drones walking on the brood nest in the Larry Hive on Friday. If I had walking drones, then 14 or 15 days later (when my virgins would emerge from the walkaway splits) drones would definitely be flying about and ready to mate. Fortunately, I went out to do a full Spring breakdown inspection on both of the hives at Westover (Curly and Apache.) I found no drones in either hive and Curly is a sister hive (similar genetics) to Larry. Being conservative, I decided to wait one more week.

When I arrived at Westover Plantation, the first thing I checked was the old knot hole where my Westover Hive (and subsequently the William Byrd Hive) originated in a swarm last April. I had yet to see any real activity until Saturday. It was alive with bees, going to and fro, bringing in some of the bright yellow pollen that my two hives were bringing in, no doubt. It was good to see that they were still alive and doing well. I hope to get up two swarm traps within the next week or two to take advantage of any other casts that they make.

I have taken some scrap wood and built Nuc-sized boxes that can hang on a tree. Within it, I am placing a frame of comb and several frames of foundation. Finally, a drop or two of lemongrass oil at the entrance and it’s good to go. The beauty of this trap is that the drawn comb makes it appealing and they will immediately start to draw out frames that I can put into a Deep once I discover that the trap is full. Last year, I didn’t get them built until late May, so they didn’t have a good shot. I am very hopeful this year!

Both of the hives on the grounds were doing well. Apache was the hive that went queenless last September (for reasons that I have no idea of). I combined them with my Apache Nuc (laden with the young hygienic queen from out near Farmville). As one might expect, the bees took up residence in the upper Deep where the Apache queen was laying last Fall. The bottom deep was full of nectar and the top medium was full of capped honey (sugar syrup based, for the most part.) I simply swapped the Deeps and removed the medium (and also replaced the old bottom board with a newly painted SBB – insert in place for now.) They were bringing in a ton of bright yellow pollen (compared to the dull gray of most of my yards), which I now believe was due to the dandelions. After setting up a new yard near Shirley Plantation this weekend, I can see that the lands near the river are about a week ahead of the yards inland, on bloom season. They have tons of dandelions in bloom, as opposed to a basic start inland.

It was a good weekend, to be sure. The bees are bringing in tons of supplies and should really ramp up over the next 3 weeks. There should be a lot of opportunities to prep my mediocre hives for honey build and my stellar hives for increase. It is even looking good for my queen rearing experiment, as I should have a hive or two to use for the Starter and Finisher hives. Well, back to churning out more frames! This weekend I start a trap out and attempt a smoke out. Both will be adventures, I am sure.

Walking Drones and New Lessons

Wow, what a Spring in Richmond, Virginia! It is true that this is only my third Spring as a beekeeper, but I have been a gardener and son of a farmer for over 4 decades (which is my whole life…) This Spring is unusual, but it is really working out well for the bees (so far.) The forecast continues to be fairly mild and the only big risk at this point would be an extended cold period (by extended, I would say a solid week of temperatures not rising above 40.) Even a week of that would not necessarily be devastating. Two weeks would probably set all of my hives back though. I am paranoid by nature, but my experience with gardening tells me that such an occurrence is not realistic at this point. So, time to really get into managing my bees!

I’ve been really under the weather the last few days, but managed to get out and check one of the Varina hives this afternoon. My main goal was to grab a few frames of honey from one of my stronger hives and drop them in my winter Nuc’s. Since this is my first year with Winter Nuc’s, I continue to be a tad paranoid about them (I simply do not know what to expect.) So, I walked out to open the Larry hive to grab a few frames of honey off of them.

As a backdrop, Larry ended the season with a Deep, a Shallow and then a Medium (bottom-to-top). They were one of my reserve hives – a place to grab honey if I needed it somewhere. They also have proven to be frugal and early risers, two traits that I am really starting to like. They do not seem to eat a lot of honey over the Winter and they get to work at about 41 degrees – a good 8 to 9 degrees cooler then my other Varina hives. I have never medicated or even put powdered sugar on them and they seem to be thriving. I want to get some offspring off this hive. I may even raise queens from it.

At any rate, back to the point (I can go on endlessly about ole Larry…) Last weekend, I checked Larry and found 5 frames of pretty solid brood. Not wall to wall (a thin edge of honey/pollen along the edge), but pretty daggone good. They say a hive makes up its mind to swarm a month in advance and I am pretty sure that Larry’s mind is made up. This excites me, as I look forward to the challenge of preventing the swarm while harvesting some swarm cells for some Nucs (of course, a month from now I may be singing a different story.)

So, as fate would have it, I had pulled each frame of the top Medium and found nothing but full honey. I skipped the shallow super (big mistake here) and went to the deep, finding tons of brood and a whole lot of capped drone cells. I wanted to get that Super off of them (why that super was in that spot is another story and another lesson for another day), so I swapped the shallow and the medium, moving the shallow from the middle to the top. Now, it was easy to get at and the bees should move up into the Medium.

Ha! Those bees had already moved into the daggone shallow, as I discovered when I peeled off 4 frames to give to my Winter nucs. Basically, I did the HUGE no-no : I separated the brood nest. It is only by the grace of god that the weather has been favorable, as the bees have had to cover brood in two supers, separated by a medium super! I may have inadvertantly messed up the swarm urge, which would be a shame. Tomorrow, when I hope to feel a little better, I will try to rectify my mistake and get them back together.

But, the one big bonus that I found was walking drones! On the two little shallow frames that I pulled with brood, both had a few drones on them, walking around! That’s huge news for my Nuc experiments. I am currently going with the rule of thumb (you’ll get differing opinions on this, as with everything) that it takes 14 days from hatching for a drone to become a romeo. My other rule of thumb is that it takes 20 days for a Nuc with eggs to send forth a good queen who is looking for a romeo. Basically, I could start a Nuc today and she would have some drones out there to mate her!

So, one of my goals for the season begins a new phase this weekend, as I will start two new Nucs as part of my experiment. It only seems logical to me that waiting another week or two will really give all bees a chance to get a bunch of drones out there (and thus increase the odds of getting a good mating), but I want to experiment. I will start a couple of Nucs each weekend into April and watch how they do. Let the experiments begin!

Sustainable Beekeeping and More Early Blooms

Wow – this year is turning out to be a weird one. Today, I noticed a couple of dozen dandelion blooms over at one of my rentals! My bloom chart is getting a bit of a skew this year, as this seems really early. For some reason, I didn’t record the Dandelion bloom last year, but I think it was mid-March. This will be an interesting Spring for the beekeepers around Richmond, Virginia for sure. Having gardened for several decades, I know full well that very cold temperatures are in our future for two months ahead, but the last two weeks and the next two are like early Spring and not mid- to late-Winter! The bees are collecting nectar and pollen well in advance of when they normally do. In two of my yards, they are getting syrup and taking it down like piglets. How will this play out when it gets cold?

The big concern that most folks have is that the bee will ‘over lay’, effectively creating more brood then they can keep warm, should the temperatures drop. A big cold snap hits and they suffer – they stress themselves trying to keep a lot of brood warm. Normally, without the syrup or early blooming flowers, they wouldn’t have that much brood to cover. The other concern is around moisture in the hive. Putting a lot of sugar syrup in the hive somehow is a detriment. Having a fairly good background in chemistry and physics, I definitely do not understand this logic (we put buckets of water in the greenhouse to keep the temperature up – water stops it from getting cold, due to the massive energy it takes to convert water from a liquid to a solid.) Ventilation should resolve moisture issues and I think having a liquid in a structure actually keeps the temps from dropping as fast or as far!

In my opinion, the bees do what they need to do. I am pretty confident that they will be just fine, but only time will tell.

Sustainable Beekeeping

This past Friday, the Central Virginia Beekeepers Association out of Ashland, Virginia had Billy Davis of Sustainable Beekeeping up in Northern Virginia. It was an interesting talk and only cemented my resolve to focus on bees that are born and bred in my neck of the woods. Billy Davis focuses on splits, Nucs and overwintered Nucs to do increases off of bees that make it through his Winters. By ‘make it through his Winters’, he means that they do so after he gives them a lot of pre-stored honey frames and a big block of candy. I absolutely respect his work, but it does not surprise me that he has a ton of success overwintering bees in that manner. If you used the exact same strategy on a full hive, you’d probably have great results as well. But, the point is that he is doing it not to just ‘survive’ but to end up with an increase Nuc off of his prime hives. He advocates that we should all do this, trading our increases with other beekeepers or selling them to others in the area. This spreads good genetic material throughout, which benefits both the honey bee and the beekeeper.

He really focuses on using bees that are his version of ‘survivor stock’. He did not mention whether he uses chemicals or not, but you have to admire his tenacity. He uses tons of hives and weeds out the weak, making a great stock for his neck of the woods. If I lived up there, I’d get all of my bees from him. And that’s his goal. Folks up there should start getting their bees from him and from each other, effectively spreading survivor genes throughout the region and eventually (a tertiary goal that he mentions) leading to feral bees again. To be fair, he jammed a 6 hour lesson into 2 hours, so I probably missed a lot of the meat. I will take the full course from him in the future.

On a few points, I believe he is mistaken. The biggest is the African Honey Bee. He points out that getting local hives will prevent the spread of this bee to our region. I am here to say that AHB is coming and will be here, no matter what mankind does. The new Honey Bee pest in Australia will eventually get here as well, no matter what mankind does. Mother Nature rules, but we still fight it. As mentioned in previous posts, I believe that the future of our bee (the European) will hinge on the African strain (and the Russian strain and many others.) They will need the best traits of the mix to make it in this rough world!

Maples are Blooming!

Bee On Crocus Bloom in February — Enjoying a little Early Season Forage

The Winter in Richmond, Virginia started out with a sledge hammer but appears to be going out like a tack hammer. It was really rough in December and most of January, but February has been uncharacteristically warm. Today, it appears to be heading into the upper 60’s and I really do not see much real cold in the foreseeable future (plus, we’ve already had nearly two weeks of weather like this!) We will no doubt see more cold weather, but March is just around the corner, which is the start of my favorite time with the bees!

As proof, I was finally rewarded with a few blooms over the past week! The crocuses started blooming around the 10th and I have had a few bees on them. But today, my early Maples started! Whoohoo! The bees have started to work the blooms a bit and I am hoping for a good brood build up. I expect to have a look at some of the hives in the apiary with the sugar syrup tomorrow. They have basically gone through 20 lbs of sugar (or what amounts to about 8 gallons of syrup) over the past two weeks and I am wondering what they are doing with it.

Now is really a good time to get some painting done. I have actually stayed ahead of this chore fairly well since last Fall, with a lot of painted deeps, mediums, shallows and nuc’s to show for it. But, I still have unpainted wooden-ware and now is as good a time as any to get that done, just in case. I am a firm believer in having twice as much as you think you will need and a little extra for any swarms or cut-outs that come along. One of the things that I am working on this weekend is equipment for two trapouts that I will be starting in March. I plan to use these bees to start several Nuc’s, if all goes well, so I want this stuff ready well in advance.

A trapout is mainly used to get the majority of the bees in a feral hive and eventually force the queen to leave the spot, due to no foragers returning. The beekeeper effectively takes most of the bees back to his yards and can then use them to start Nucs with queens from his best lines. The problem with trying this in early March is mainly that the bees will have only just started to grow their populations. So, you really only stand to get a fraction of the bees you might get if you started it in June (when the hive should be at max population.) But, that is all theory. There may be very good reasons to do it in March that I simply do not know since I have never tried it. Come April, I will have the results and it will be another lesson for the bee books!

Let’s Experiment

Last Spring, there was a lot of consternation about slow build up. Of course, this was only on my part, as the bees went about their business with no worries whatsoever. Basically, both of my hives were building up at about the same pace, but I had spoken to (or emailed) other beekeepers in the area that were seeing more mass (more bees in their hives.)

During one such conversation, back in the Spring of 2010, a beekeeper from Buckingham mentioned that some folks in his neck of the woods would put light syrup on their hives in February to give the hives a jump start. The general theory is that you put a weak sugar-water solution (1 part Sugar to 2 or 3 parts water) on the hives. This makes the bees think that the nectar flow has started and they begin to ‘build up’ (a term that basically means the Queen starts to lay a bunch of eggs). By the time the real nectar flow starts, they will have a TON of bees and really be able to sock away the honey.

Since last Spring, I ran into a wizened beekeeper from yesteryear who put out buckets of syrup water in his apiary to get an early build up. As always, I am fascinated by simple approaches and decided to give it a whirl in one of my outwards.

Bees Eating Syrup from a Dog Waterer — Dog-waterer Turned Bee Feeding Station

I mixed up a batch of weak sugar syrup (10 lbs Sugar, 3 Gallons Water) and poured it into one of my old dog waterers. On Sunday, around 11 am, I placed it in a central area between the hives (it was as much as 40 yards from two of the hives and 30 yards from the other three). By late afternoon (right before I went to watch the Steeler’s get a whooping- booyah!), the bees had found it and were on it pretty thick. During lunch today, I checked in on them around noon and they were really putting the stuff down.

It will be interesting to see how this works. I am pretty sure that I never even considered feeding from outside of the hive (now or in the Summer) as I did not want to feed the feral bees. Now, I am having second thoughts. This was very easy and it did not cause any robbing (like it does, on occasion in late Summer, when the syrup is placed within one hive.) I may not ever feed in the Winter again (we’ll see how it goes with this experiment), but I will most definitely feed outside again (until such time as I figure out a good reason not to.)

Close Shot of Bees Feeding in February — Bee Jamboree at the Feeding Hole

I actually checked one of the hives and it appeared that they were storing it around the brood nest. I am torn about this behavior. I have a gut feeling (no evidence) that honey from real nectar is much better then my sugar syrup (even if I do have Better Bee in it.) This is the roughest time of the year for a bee, so why give her second rate food (assuming there is a difference between nectar and syrup)? But, on the other hand, it gives me a bit of comfort to know that they are socking away some stores exactly where they’ll need it if (quite honestly, I should say when) it gets cold again (at the edges of the cluster.) But, on the other other hand (is that three hands?), are they filling up cells that the queen might want to lay in? Ha! Who knows. The bees know and that’s all that matters.

Finally, I also put pollen patties on each of the hives in this yard (if brood rearing is going to ramp up, they are going to need some pollen! – well, they may need it if they were lazy last Fall and didn’t put enough away!) This brings me to my last observation for today – protein from the bird feeder! I had heard of it, but had never seen it. Folks have said that bees will sometimes scour bird seed, looking for a few bits of protein in the stray pollen. This past Friday, I found one of my bees (well, a bee in my yard anyway) doing just that! She was running in and out of the feeder, filling her legs up with some dust substance (which was pollen, no doubt – probably not the best, but still worth collecting in her mind.)

Bee In Bird Feeder Closeup — Yum! Bird Feed Pollen!

Are Your Bees Doing Ok?

As mentioned previously, my periodic hive checks in 2011 have (so far) indicated a nice honey store left on all hives (except the Westover Hive, which I cannot currently check – they moved up to the attic in early January…) But, I will continue to check on them, every time it gets into the low 40’s. The bees have had a cold Winter, following a fairly dry Autumn in the Richmond, Virginia area. They are at risk.

As an example, David Stover, an active Top Bar Hive beekeeper in ERBA, sent me the following email today. He agreed to let me post it here, for the folks that check in. I think it is a great Alert for us all – get out there and have a peak. Make sure your bees have some honey (and if they don’t, David also offers a quick recipe to get some food into the hive.)

I received a call from a beekeeper that had just discovered his hive had died out on Monday. I went over to help him take a look. Almost zero honey. The bees starved and froze. Lots of pollen, not that it did them much good. So this morning I made up a batch of Fondant. Checked my hive at home which had stored up what I thought was way more than enough to see them through the winter and it was almost empty of honey. A few frames with a little capped honey here and there but certainly not enough to make it through. I smeared fondant into the combs of three frames both sides, and the bees were on it pretty quickly. I did see a few frames partially filled with wet nectar so the bees have been collecting nectar somewhere when it has been warm enough.

I checked four other hives and all but one were in the same condition. The one hive that was fairly small had a good amount of capped honey. Just as a precaution I added some fondant to that hive anyway. The smaller hives I went through completely and did not see any signs of brood and not much pollen. All hives now have some fondant to help out.

So if you haven’t checked your hives you might want to take a look this weekend. Sunday is supposed to be in the 50’s and sunny.

Fondant Recipe:

1 part water
4 parts sugar
1/4 teaspoon white vinegar
I also added 1/4 teaspoon Honey-B-Healthy (just because I had some)

Put into big sauce pan. Bring to a boil while stirring the whole time to prevent the sugar from burning. Leave it to a gently boil for 5 more minutes or until it reaches 234 F. test with a candy thermometer if you have one. Take it off the heat and let it sit until it cools to 200 F. With an electric hand held soup mixer or whatever mixer you have beat the mixture until it turns sort of white and has lots of air bubbles in it (took about 5 minutes). Pour into a shall container and let it sit undisturbed until cool.

In Langs you can put it on top of the frames over the brood/cluster in a shall dish or on wax paper. (put some sticks in it so the bees don’t get stuck)

In a TBH I either smear it into empty comb or put it in a shallow narrow plastic dish, cut to fit, and slide it on the floor of the hive as far in as I can get it.

Thank the Lord for Good Weather

Last Summer, I set up one of my experimental apiaries down at Westover Plantation. I now actually have 7 daggone apiaries, if you include my home yard. Nobody needs this many apiaries, unless you’re trying to make money I suppose. In an ideal world, I would have all of my hives in one location, so that I could inspect/compare all of them with one trip. But, there are (at least) a couple of reasons to expand out beyond that initial apiary.

To begin with, if you want to try raising Nuc’s (especially those started after June 1), it is very hard to do so in a yard with established hives. The minute it gets dry (which seems to be in June these days, in my neck of the woods), the strong hives pretty much ravage the small Nuc’s. It’s really depressing to see, so I now allocate my home yard as my Nuc yard.

The second reason to try other locations is forage. During my first year, when both of my hives were in my backyard here in Varina, Virginia, my cousin started a couple of hives down in Charles City, Virginia, on land adjacent to my family’s farm. His hives really put away more honey then my two did. At first, I worried that I had a bunch of lazy bees, but I decided it was more likely that his bees simply had better forage. Even though my cousin’s land was only about 30 miles away, it was receiving substantially more rain then Varina. This was likely to be the problem.

So, I decided to prop up several apiaries, with one, two or three hives, in both Henrico and Charles City, to test it out. My goal is to watch how these apiaries perform and eventually reduce my outyards down to 3 at the most. But, that’s what I’m saying now and I seem to change my mind more often then my wife when it comes to bees!

At any rate, all of this leads up to the main activity of this weekend. My bees down at Westover Plantation were backed up against a small patch of trees that held an old elm tree last year. After I put my bees there, the elm tree fell over (my bees collect honey AND clear land, apparently.) Without this elm tree, the little patch of trees has little value and the farmers wanted to clear it to expand their nearby field. To get it ready for planting, they would probably need to get this done by early March. That meant I needed to move my bees in the Winter!

I have moved bees before several times, but never in Winter. The one problem with monkeying with your bees in the Winter is that you can accidentally kill or damage the Queen. Since it is the Winter, your bees stand next to no chance of getting a new queen going (they might not even have eggs the right age.) But, I had to move these bees and could not wait until Spring. I decided to wait for a warm day and the good Lord gave me one (two) this weekend. I moved them both and even dropped a pollen patty on them to give them a little jump start (they both have a ton of honey, as my back will verify, but I really have no idea how much pollen has been stored.) As a bonus, the owners of Westover Plantation gave me a lot of their bee gear (they had tinkered with bees years ago), which amounted to 3 or 4 full hives with honey supers and frames! All in all, this trip was a big success.

Unfortunately, bad news awaited me back home in one of the double nucs. No activity was emerging from one side, so I cracked her open and found one side to be dead. I immediately did a postmortem and discovered that they had died of starvation. I could even see little crystals of sugar in some of the comb. Apparently, they tried to use the sugar that I put down for them, but probably needed moisture to break it down. The bottom line is that they did not store enough honey in their frames to make it. There are steps that I could have taken (probably, not for certain though) that would have helped them to survive, but that’s the point. I took on this challenge to learn and this experience will be used to form my final conclusions come late March or so. One thing about this Nuc is that it was the only one to hold a non-local queen (it was one of the pair that I purchased last Summer – one for the Apache hive and this one.) This may or may not have had a part in it (maybe the queen rearer medicates and feeds his bees year round, so they simply could not handle it in my yards), but I am actually not that upset about losing this queen. It does not have the value (to me) of my local queens.

For now, my primary plan is to look forward to February. According to the forecast, we have a few days ahead of us that might once again reach nice temperatures in the day. I might use these to get a little more active with my remaining Nuc’s. I will probably also begin a little light feeding (1:1 or .5:1 Sugar:Water mixes) at one or two apiaries, just to see what happens. Well, more on that later.

New Richmond Beekeeper’s Group

I have been given the honor of being the 2011 President of the East Richmond Beekeeper’s Association. My first meeting will be in February, so I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I wanted to do as ‘President’. We are a young group that has grown nicely over two years. So, as my Pop would say, ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!’

But, I want to do more then simply preside over meetings. So, I have decided to focus on ‘adding’ to what is already there, instead of changing anything. One goal will be to add to our methods of communicating to the public. Although I have lots of ideas on how to accomplish this, I have decided to create a Richmond Beekeeping Yahoo Group (Click Here to check it out and join if you like!) today. Email groups are certainly not the wave of the future (I’d say Facebook and other social media fit that bill), but they do still offer a great way for folks with a common goal to ask questions and get information.

Since I have not presented this to our club, no mention of the club exists in the group just yet. If the club gives the ‘thumbs up’, then we’ll link it to that group and let her roll. Either way, I think it has good promise, especially since the big beekeeping months are right around the corner!

The Mid-January Chores

As mentioned back in October, I generally let my bees alone until mid-January, when I wait for a day that reaches the upper 40’s and try to get out and look at as many hives as I can! The main goal at this point is to make sure that the cluster is surrounded by honey. We’ll probably have some long, cold weeks over the next two months and it’s important to make sure your bees have something they can nibble on (at the edge of the cluster) to keep the cluster fed (and therefore warm.) But, although it is hard to believe, you hear local beekeepers, every Spring, talking about Dead-out’s (a dead hive) with all of the bees face down in the comb, balled up in the hive, with lots of honey stores 4 inches away! Effectively, they went through a cold stretch where they ate up all of the nearby honey and it never warmed up enough to move the cluster – so they starved/froze to death! By making sure your bees have honey nearby in January, you are doing something to prevent this from happening.

My first goal was to check the hives at home (in the Wilton Apiary). Everyone looked great here but the continuing oddity was the Larry Hive. These guys come out with a vengeance when it breaches 42 or so. They have been doing this all Winter. At first, it made me think the other hives and double nuc’s were suffering, but it is clear to me that these ladies have a genetic trait that I do not have in my other hives. On the one hand, all of this activity might mean they need more food. On the other hand, it stands to reason that these gals will be out on the pollen and nectar first, during the cool days of early Spring. I’ll probably build a Nuc off of this hive or split it, to push these genes to some of my other apiaries.

Then, on to my two problem hives at the Mountcastle Apiary. During my spot check in early January, I checked the weight of the hives and cracked the inner cover on both of the hives at this new out yard. Per the earlier post, I had concerns about both of these hives.

My first task was to break the Albo Hive open. I expected them to be dead or nearly dead. I could then drop a super from this hive (full of honey) on the Westover Hive to give it some more food (in case it needed it.) To my surprise (and glee), the daggone hive had a nice sized ball of bees in it. I have never broken a hive down to the cluster before, usually taking a super or two off and looking down through the frames. I see now that this is not a good method if a hive appears to be failing. This hive was plenty strong. But, it did have a big problem. The cluster had formed on 4 frames directly against the southern side of the hive (probably for the warmth.) But, the frames to their north and directly above them were very low on capped honey. Time for some re-arranging!

I moved the frames one slot to the north and dropped a fully capped frame of honey on both side of it. I then pushed 4 more fully capped frames to directly above them. This worked well, except that they were very pissed. I had a bunch of bees all over me. Unfortunately, a couple stuck their stingers in my gloves and died, but the rest made their way back into the hive once I finished my business.

I then moved over to the Westover Hive to see if they were still in the upper deep. Of course, they were. The cluster had contracted by a couple of inches (radius), which made sense as the temps were higher when I looked earlier this month. I decided to feed these gals, as I am a big fan of this hive. It is from the tough little swarm that I picked up last April. I did the ‘lazy’ Mountain Camp method, pouring out sugar on a sheet of newspaper and then spritzing it with water (while I shield the bees with another sheet of newspaper, so I would not get them wet) until the sugar was good and damp. I had an old hive that was rotting along the edges, so I had cut it into several 1 inch spacers, to make room for this kind of situation.

All in all, this was a great day. I checked on a couple of other hives, which all looked good. Except for the double Nuc’s, I will next check in on them in February, when I might start a little feeding!

Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Author: Jones Tyler