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.
Today I decided to put some sugar water on my hives to give them a bit of a leg up. I purchased the Beemaster Top Hive feeder with some Christmas money provided by my family, based on recommendations from the fella at Dadant’s down in Southwest Virginia. I had issues with this, but first an observation.
When I approached Hive 2, I again noticed dead, partially formed brood on the landing area of the bottom board. Since this is the second time that I have found this on this particular hive, I posted some questions and this pic on the Beekeeping Forums. The folks there said this was nothing to be concerned about. In fact, one fella said this was a good sign. Brood dies as part of a regular thing (and the rain flushes we have been getting are a logical reason.) My picture demonstrated that I have good, clean bees that are doing their housekeeping right.
So, this was another bit of info to file away for another day!
Now, back to feeding. I combined equal parts (volume) sugar and water in the morning in a pan on the stove. I covered it and let it sit until lunchtime, when I put the food on the hives.
The first problem that I encountered was the megabee pollen substitute that I put on the hive previously. Bees were all over it and it was difficult to get off of the top board. Once I did this, I placed it directly on top of the frames. This was recommended to me by Wade at my beekeeping club. It seemed to work well. The problem was that I now had to get my hive-top feeder on it. With the pollen, it would not fit down on the hive directly. Finally, I went ahead and put my top-board in between the feeder and the hive. I have since determined that this is a problem, so I will have to figure out what to do with this tomorrow.
As a final note, I also went to put down my entrance reducers. Both Wade and Kenny (from the East Richmond Beekeeper’s group) advised that I should definitely get an entrance reducer on my hives. Feral hives would be working on my small hives when the Nectar Flow drops (as it should over the next month.) Unfortunately, they did not fit exactly (when I put the hives together, it appears that I should have put the entrance reducer in before putting the two side boards on the bottom board.) I will have to address this tomorrow too.
On Entrance Reducers, an experienced beekeeper mentioned that he has come to get absolutely huge hives from people who want to get them out of barns and trees. A lot of time, they all are coming and going through a hole the size of a quarter! His point was that an entrance reducer is fine all of the time. If there is even the slightest risk of robbing, he says you should put her in! More on this tomorrow.
Today was my monthly beekeeping meeting and it was extremely beneficial. But, before I record these notes, I must comment on the one check I made of the hives today. I only had a couple of minutes between work and the meeting, but something had been nagging me the whole day. The pollen that I placed on the hives last night was a little damp. I had simply placed it directly on the top board, without anything between it and the particle board that makes up the center of the top board. As I contemplated this during the day, I kept thinking that this was only damaging the board and that I need to move it to a small plate that I would sneak out of the kitchen so the wifee wouldn’t know about it.
Feeding pollen to my bees the first time
Well, I took two plates out to the hives and opened the top off of Hive 1. There must have been a hundred bees all over that pollen! They were going to town on it. Usually, I might have 6 or 7 bees between the cover and the top board. Now, there were a hundred and more! Needless to say, I left the girls alone and departed for the bee meeting. Moving this stuff onto a plate was not going to be a quick thing, as expected.
The bee meeting focused on Honey Extraction, but I picked up several useful tips in other areas from both the speaker and chatting with folks after the meeting. What follows are my notes:
Honey Extraction : When you do this, which most folks with established hives are doing now through July, you only want to use the frames that are 80% full (both sides) of capped honey. The rest is nectar and will mainly dilute your honey. The best honey has about 18.4% moisture, so you do not want a lot of nectar (which is nearly 95% moisture!)
Also, once you extract the honey, put the empty (but still dripping with some honey) in an empty box above the main hive. In a day or two, the bees will come up and pull all of that honey out and put it in their stores. It’s the best way to clean honey frames.
Nectar Flow: It turns out that bees will typically completely ignore both feed (Sugar Water) and honey during the nectar flow. This very much explains my experience with the spilled honey in mid to late May. I put some honey that had spilled on the floor on both of my hives. The bees pretty much ignored it (a couple of bees appeared to drown in it, actually!) Now, this activity makes perfect sense. The Nectar Flow (Spring) was on and they were busy at work.
The fella that gave the talk mentioned that this year was not a good nectar flow for his area (coastal Virginia). In fact, he was pretty sure it was over. Kenny, a wise member of our group, said ours was still on, but it was dwindling. It appears that early to mid-June marks the end of our Nectar flow.
When the Nectar Flow is on (Spring or Fall), the speaker hardly bothers his bees at all. He might lift the top cover to see what they are doing, but he does not smoke them or break the hive apart. This is the time that they need to be working 100% and any setback is not good. Another good tip to remember.
9 Frame Strategy: The speaker likes to use 9 frames in his honey supers. The bees will draw them out further and fill them with more honey. There were a couple of very important tangents to this advice.
1. When you do the 9 Frame Strategy, always start with 10 frames. Remove one later on, otherwise the bees (when started with 9 frames) will build comb all over the place (burr comb is an example.)
2. You want your 10 frame setup to be 10 frames pushed close together. They should, in fact, be touching. This will leave space to either side. This is a big lesson for me. When I first picked up my hives, the sequence went like this :
a. I went to my provider around 2 pm and brought a brood chamber full of frames.
b. We took 4 or 5 of his frames and put them in the brood chamber.
c. I returned at 8 pm to get my brood chamber and take them home
The problem with this was that I never opened them after putting the nuc’s in them. This meant that they were jostled on the ride back (and me carrying them around.) Needless to say, on my first inspection, they were not snug together and there was comb everywhere. I have still not rectified this, but Kenny advises this is something for me to do in the Winter, when I need to add a new Brood chamber for the bees to work. When I do it, put a Queen excluder between the boxes and the Queen will stop laying in the lower or upper chamber.
This gives me a chance to clean up the frames some, which I will have to do later this year.
Food: With the Spring Nectar Flow waning, I definitely should be feeding my bees, according to Kenny. I need to get my top feeders going tomorrow, if possible. Wade, another member of the Bee Group, advised that it’s a good idea to always do this with new or small hives. If they need it, they will use it. If Nectar is available, they will ignore it.
The sequence, according to Wade, is to put the pollen right on top of the frames. Remove the top board and put the feeder on top of the brood chamber. Finally, put the cover on (you do not need the cover in this setup.)
Ventilation: It is very smart to get some ventilation on your hive to help them keep the hive from overheating and it helps with curing honey (the bees rely on the flow of air to make this easier.) Wade said to drill a hole and cover it with number 8 hardware cloth. Kenny said to just put something about a quarter of an inch wide on top of the top cover ridge and rest the cover on it. Right now is a good time to do this.
The beekeeper that gave me my bees has many decades of experience with bees. He had a few hundred hives up until a year or two ago, when his health got in the way. He has a ton of no-nonsense knowledge, but getting information out of him is like pulling teeth! He’s very nice, but I think that he believes that most of the ‘new techniques’ are hogwash, but doesn’t want to say so outright. So, he loves to give an off-handed remark about it which is neither negative nor positive. He seems to like to talk about bees on occasion, but giving advice is not something he’s really on board with. It’s probably because I am so clueless he figures that I need to get some experience of my own under my belt. I am good with that and will continue to soldier on!
Regardless, the point of this blabber is that I specifically asked him whether I should feed my bees when I got home with them. I had read where a lot of folks put a 1-to-1 Sugar::Water solution and pollen on a new hive, to get them off to a good start. But, most of this advice was aimed at folks that received bees through the mail, which typically happens in mid to late-April around here. The thought is that the weather could be iffy and it’s a good idea to give them easy food to start.
But, I picked up Nuc’s, which you get a bit later since you’re getting local bees. I received my bee’s in what many call the Nectar Flow. Weather was good and food (nectar and pollen) was everywhere. But, I asked the beekeeper anyway. His only response was I’m not feeding my bee’s. So, I let it be and that was it. I should have realized that he was not answering me, but prompting me to figure this out for myself. I should have put more thought into it.
But, over the weekend I had some time to really read what a lot of regular first-time beekeeper’s are doing out there (on forums and discussion threads.) A bunch of them are feeding their bees and, with this easy food source, the queen will recognize all of the extra food and start laying more. This gets the hive rolling fast to take advantage of good times (which we are in right now.)
At any rate, I decided to feed my bees some of my pollen (of course, now I am wondering if the stuff is any good, as I had in in the garage and thought it was dry, cracker-like stuff and it appears that it is slightly damp…) I gave both hives a third of a piece this evening, placing it on the top board. We’ll see if this makes much of a difference. I might consider putting some sugar water on them later this week.
One final note that I wanted to record is the water drinking habits that I have witnessed over the past few days. Everybody always harps on how you need to keep water available for the bee’s (they use it to convert honey into food and, more likely at this time of year, to cool the hive.) You can either leave a faucet dripping all day or put out chicken waterers. I chose the latter, as the former will no doubt give me more well troubles.
Well, I think the only thing drinking out of my waterer’s are the birds and some mystery night-time visitors. I have never seen them on it. But, if I put some potting soil in a pot and water it, the soil will be covered with bee’s in NO time. They love some dirty water. I guess it’s easier for them to stand on the potting soil and suck up the moisture in it. Who knows. The bottom line is that I need to come up with a more permanent solution by July (when they will really need lots of water.)
At any rate, new experiences and lessons every day.
Thanks to a very troubling issue with my hounds, I had to spend a lot of time inside on this otherwise beautiful day. In my continuing effort to look for the positive, the one bonus of this day was that I had a lot of time to review various bee literature online and read some of the forum posts. This was extremely informative and I wanted to make this post to remind me of my goals for next week (yes, I have already decided that waiting two weeks is too long!)
1. Open each hive from the opposite side that I have been working them
2. Take a good look at the capped brood pattern of the queen
3. Be sure to look for any queen cells. It is highly unlikely that the bees are looking to make a new queen, but I keep forgetting to look!
4. Make a note of exactly which frames have brood (see if I can see Drone brood on the outside), which have capped honey and which have pollen.
Finally, if I have not done so already, give both hives a third off a piece of pollen and put the rest in the fridge. I also need to consider putting my feeders on top of them, as it appears that this is the best way to get some fast growth in the young, small hives (of which I have two.)
Well, it’s a learning experience for sure. Today, a bit before 3 pm, on a mostly Sunny day in the low 80’s, I decided to cut my grass. As I neared Hive 1, I suddenly noticed a ton of bees buzzing all over the thing! I cut the mower and got off to take a closer look (maybe the mower had upset them.) As I neared the hive, I was amazed at the number of bees buzzing around this thing!
To put it into perspective, I am used to seeing two to three bees coming and going from this hive every 5 seconds or so. Right now, there were probably a hundred bees buzzing all over the thing. I could see a bunch coming and going, but most seemed to be simply buzzing around the front of the hive, occasionally hitting the landing board and some even crawling around on the front of hive itself!
Needless to say, I thought we had problems. Looking at Hive 2, I could see a small number moving back and forth (maybe 1 bee every 5 seconds, which is par for the course here as this hive continues to show less progress from outside observations then Hive 1.) At first, I tried to call the fella that sold me the bees, but he was not in. I even considered posting on the bee forums (http://www.beesource.com/forums/), but was not really sure that my description would give them enough to go on.
So, back to the hive I went, watching from a few feet away, to see what I could see. Robbing was one of my main concerns, but I could see no fighting at all. Occasionally, one bee would seemingly feel out another bee, but I really think this was typical inappropriate feeling by the bees (maybe transferring pollen or even nectar.) Mostly, bees were just coming, going and flying all around the front. As far as I can tell, they were all workers. I did notice that some appeared smaller then what I was used to seeing (or so I thought).
Unfortunately, I had a dog issue today and had to go to the emergency vet at 3:30, so I was unable to readdress the issue until around 6 PM. When I returned to the hive, everything was normal again. We were back to 2 to 4 bees coming and going every 5 seconds or so and no sign of my original issue. Regardless, it was time for the weekly check-up.
Hive 1
Still working primarily on 4 frames. The two frames outside of the 4 central frames were starting to get drawn out with some honey and pollen. I did not see the queen, but only went about 5 frames into the hive before I decided to stop. I found lots of brood and more bees coming.
Hive 2
These guys are working on 5 frames now. It’s hard to figure what to make of this, but these guys look stronger from the inside. Again, lots of brood and more bees coming.
Conclusion: After looking in the hive and reading some posts on www.beesource.com/forums/, I am pretty sure that I have now witnessed my first training flight! It appears that bees, early on in their lives (before they take the role of forager) go out for a training flight on nice days between 3 and 5 (I think mine started around 2:15 to 2:30 this day.) I am confident that this is what I was seeing. These bees were taking one of their first orientation flights, and thus all of the hubub (and maybe I really did see smaller bees!)
All in all, learning about ‘Training Flights’ was a very good thing. I look forward to seeing more of them in the future. I may give them two weeks to get going this time, before my next check. I hope to have both of my next Deep’s built by then, so that we can look at adding some more room for the little gals.
We had a huge rain (3.5 inches in one hour) two nights ago and it has rained off and on since then. Yesterday, I noticed a few dead bees on the bottom board in Hive 2 and today I noticed a few more in Hive 1.
The most disturbing thing was the brood that I found out on the bottom board – partially formed brood. These had clearly died during their incubation. I am guessing this is due to the rain and hope this is only a minor setback.
Wow. I would have never thought that those little bees would make me so nervous. Now I can see why they recommend that new beekeepers open the hive every week for a month, to get used to it!
I took another peek at my bees this past Sunday, around 6 PM or so. It was a nice day (perhaps in the 80’s) with a slight breeze. The sun was shining, although we (the Bees and I!) were in the shade at this time of the day (which is why I chose it.) The goal today was to locate the queens.
On Hive 1, which I had opened a lot last week, I immediately saw the queen through the top board. She was crawling around on one of the middle frames and then took a move to the inside. I decided not to bother these bees anymore (although, in retrospect, I think they were bothering me, which is the real reason I decided not to go further!) Regardless, since I had opened them last weekend and moved them about, I decided that this weekend’s goal was done.
On Hive 2, which I only glanced at last week (without removing any frames), I took her apart. Once, the bees appeared to be a bit agitated (they were eyeballing me from the top of one of the frames), so I hit them with my new smoker (which I lit for this examination.) They made a huge buzzing racket and then retreated back into the hive.
This gave me the time to begin taking the frames out. These bees were still mainly on the four frames that I had purchased. The outermost frame contained capped honey, nectar and pollen. The second one that I looked at had a TON of capped brood in it, but still no queen. Finally, on the next frame, I found the little beeotch. Of course, she immediately started crawling around on all of the most dangerous spots (where I could roll her when I put the frame back). There was a lot of capped brood here too, so all was good. I put the hive back together and we were done.
Mission accomplished in Week 2, although I need to give these hives a much better look next week. I want to know exactly what is on each and every frame so that I can start tracking it a bit better.
Well, it is 8 and 10 days, respectively, since I picked up my two hives from a local beekeeper here in Varina, Virginia. This weekend, I cracked them open to have a look! Although I had initially decided to wait a couple of weeks, further reading indicated that every week should be my schedule, starting out. I need to get the hang of checking out my bees in these early days! After about 4 weeks (towards the end of June), I should drop back to about once a month or so.
Regardless, I decided to go without any of the gear that I purchased and was not stung a single time! The local beekeeper shoots for gentle bees, so I am hopeful of getting an easy-going group of gals that will not hassle me too much.
But, there was a problem. One of the hives had the center frames spaced out a bit and the bees were extending the comb a bit further then I’d like. Add to this the fact that the monkeys were actively filling the outer (upper, in this case) cells and I had a very hard time getting the frames back in.
I did, however, manager to pull out one frame (of four) covered with bees, but that is as far as I got. I should have brought my smoker!
Oh well, we’ll see how it goes next year.
Hive One
Arrived 5/15
Started with four frames
First check on 5/24
Weather was warm, overcast and we were experiencing a couple of sprinkles now and then
At least 5 frames being used (they were drawing comb on at least one of mine
A Frame of Bees
Hive Two
Arrived 5/17
Started with four frames
First check on 5/24
I decided not to pull the frames out of this one. The issue with the stuck frames in Hive One was enough to have me waiting for the next weekend, when I will have smoke!
Yesterday, I picked up my first hive of bees from Tom Fifer, a local bee master in Varina. From a Nuc, he transferred 4 frames of bees into my hive and showed me the queen with a green dot on her thorax. We left my Hive at his house until around 8 pm (when all of the bees had presumably returned home from foraging.)
I strapped the whole thing together with a ratchet and taped some hardware cloth in the entrance before I transported them back to my house (Heather accompanied me on the trip back to our house.)
Today, I got up to watch them and noticed only a little activity. The bees were coming and going in ones and twos; no guard bees were evident (by me, anyway) and several seemed to be scanning the hive sides on occasion.
Later, around 2:30 pm, I returned from a civic event to see much more activity. Workers were coming in and out at a rate of four or five every few seconds. They were definitely ‘making hay’ and I was encouraged. There was still no real evidence of guard bees. Either they were flying about the entrance or my hive has not gotten organized enough in these early days to have some bees to fill out those posts! I might open them up and take a look tomorrow.
