Posts by jajtiii | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Great VSBA Fall Meeting

The Virginia State Beekeepers Association had another great Fall meeting a few weeks ago, focusing on Honey Bee nutrition. The keynote speaker, Dave Mendes (President of the American Beekeepers Federation), focused on protein feeding. To his operation (of many thousands of hives that he trucks to California (Almonds) and the northern states (Blueberries & Cranberries)), feeding protein at the right time makes all the difference. His mantra is ‘good food + clean comb + good genetics = success’. I have long been a proponent of clean comb and good genetics, but have not focused much on nutrition. It has always been my belief that bees with good genetics will find the right food, unless the beekeeper takes it all (which I don’t.) But, I am starting to rethink this idea.

For a couple of years now, a successful beekeeper in Buckingham county that I collaborate with, has been talking up nutrition, specifically in the Fall (which was the theme of a couple of talks at the VSBA meeting.) I have always been reluctant to experiment with this, ONLY because of the SHB. I had found out early on that pollen patties in my hives in August meant SHB problems. But, Dave had an answer for that – you put your feed mix (he called it protein feed, as opposed to pollen feeding) into a wax paper bag with a single slit in it – giving the bees an easy area to defend. He also stressed that you only wanted to give them what they could eat in a couple of days. These two items have me thinking that next Fall I will give protein feeding another shot, in a hive or two. We’ll see how it works.

It only makes sense that giving the bees a source of quality protein at this time (early August for me) would be beneficial. In early August, they are raising the bees that will eventually raise the bees that go into Winter, or what I call the ‘fat bees.’ This is a critical time for all beehives, so a little extra quality feed can help. Dave Mendes recommended the publication ‘Fat Bees Skinny Bees’ by Doug Somerville (sp?), as this seemed to be the basis of his methods.

Another really interesting talk focused on Nosema ceranae. The researcher had found that it appears that this newest Nosema has been around longer then we had thought. In addition, it is starting to look like it is displacing Nosema apis. It’s hard to say whether this is a good thing or not. Regardless, we are seeing an increased presence of this virus, so they are watching it closely.

There was another great talk on feeding, by a fellow along the VA/NC line who focuses on selling bees and queens. He mirrored much of what Dave said, but was even more adamant about the early Fall feeding. He had found that feeding at this time was much better for the bees then any type of feeding in the Spring (syrup or protein) or even feeding during the Winter months. The bottom line was that he found that his bees came out of Winter much healthier with a focused, late Fall feeding. He also noted that the presence of Drones, Drone larva and Drone eggs was a big determinate for feeding protein at other times of the year. Bees with weak protein stores or sources would eat the Drone larva first, then the Drone eggs, for protein. A lack of both of these, in a Spring/Summer hive, was a sign that the quality of the pollen coming in was poor.

There were many other good tidbits of knowledge, but those are the ones that hit home the most for me at this stage. I want to start looking at Fall nutrition. We’ll see where it takes me!

My First Re-queening, Swarm Build-up and Nuc Updates

It’s been a wild week or two. Beekeeping can be very relaxing – I believe that you can do just fine with very little maintenance (I think more folks are discovering this, which is why so many people are coming to the hobby now). I, however, am obsessed with the hobby and am always doing one thing or another. I can honestly say that there is always something that I could be doing (and frequently am!) It’s great to love your hobby.

We continue to have splendid honey bee weather to the east of Richmond, Virginia. Temperatures remain warm, rainfall is adequate (enough to keep the blooms full of nectar but not so much that it washes out the flowers frequently) and the bees are swarming. This year, I have begun to see a pattern in my hives – about 10 days before initiating several swarm cells, I find a PILE of capped drone brood, all over the place. I initially came across this in March with my strongest hives (Westover, Larry and Geronimo) and have now run across it in some of my ‘mediocre hives’ (these hives are great – they survive the Winters with my ‘no treatment’ philosophy, but they are not booming. They are targeted for honey production and as queen cell builders). I have had too many swarm situations, actually, and gave a few swarm cells to a fellow down the road from me who had lost both of his hives over the Winter.

It is important to note that I do not think it is the end of the world if your hive swarms. In fact, I support it if you do not treat (get those genes out into the wild – before I go to the great Beeyard in the sky, I hope to see plentiful, strong feral hives!) But, I just like to take advantage of the inclination to swarm and create new hives or replacement queens! So, I have been trying to keep on top of them every 10 days. I think that I only lost out on one swarm – the Little Bighorn Hive (an offshoot of Westover that was building up nicely, just not booming – I let 2 weeks pass between inspections and those devious little gals slipped one through the backdoor, it appears.)

As to re-queening, I have actually never done that before this past weekend. Albo was doing horribly. I checked her again last Friday and she had gone back to ONE frame of brood! For a history check, they had two frames of brood the first week of March and still only had two frames of brood the first week of April! Ha. That is truly pathetic. They were making it through the Winter (so they had some good genes), but I needed to get those genes out of my pool.

Nuc B held the Larry Queen. She is a 1 year old queen (this is her second season) and she is spewing out eggs like nobody’s business in the Nuc. I have 8 possible starts (actually, 2 are confirmed – see below!) off of that queen (not including the original hive, which I ‘think’ has a queen – will know in the next few days), so I decided to combine the Larry Nuc (I put her in a Deep, surrounded by 5 frames of foundation) with Albo. Of course, it rained the night before, which meant I had to haul the entire hive (Larry was now sealed up (duct tape, window screen and a strap) in a deep, bottom board, inner cover and telescoping cover) about a quarter of a mile – too muddy to drive up the hill to Mountcastles! Regardless, once I got up there, I found Albo’s queen and killed her, dropping it into an old film canister (anyone remember them?) with rubbing alcohol. This is for Queen Juice, something I will use for swarm catching (a later subject.) I then placed the Larry Nuc on the bottom and Albo on the top, a single layer of newspaper between them (which I had cut a few swaths in with my hive tool, to let air through.) Oddly, the queen was mid-sized. This had me wondering if they superceded the previous one – but, I have seen no cell in the last month. The hive has never been even a Honey Producer, so I wanted it removed anyway.

The goal here is that Albo will notice they do not have a queen within an hour. Soon thereafter, they’ll dig through to the Larry Nuc and start working with that queen. This weekend, I will combine them back to one Deep and let them build up normally. I doubt that I will get any honey off of this hive, but I am happy to get the Larry Gene down in the country (and be done with the Albo gene.)

My first swarm of the season, the Westcastle Hive, continues amazing build-up. In 10 days, they drew out 90% of a 10 frame Deep (they are going through about a gallon of syrup every other day – gotta feed those swarms!) I have put a Medium on them now, but noticed a couple of fishy looking queen cups (like they were starting to work them up a bit). It is not uncommon for a swarm to supercede a queen after they setup shop (and the beekeeper doesn’t really know how old the queen is anyway.) But, I am very impressed with the brood pattern of this queen. If they do cap those cells, I’ll take the queen for myself and let her run a Resource Nuc for me this year. The bees have not been terribly gentle since I got them, but I have not smoked them either. I definitely want a couple of queens (at least) off of this queen before they officially supercede her. I am a big fan of swarm queens (if you get the initial swarm, you have a queen that made it through the Winter – if you’re REALLY lucky, it was cast by a feral hive, which you KNOW has not been treated! Booyah!)

Finally, I have found capped brood in two of my initial Nucs from 3/19!! I actually have journal entries from both Nuc’s (A & C) on 4/15 saying ‘[color] queen found’ (one is black and one is dark brown) and ‘no sign of eggs’. There is no mention of my frustration, but I assure you that I was frustrated on 4/15. I expected to find brood somewhere! I was wondering if I had a bunch of sterile drones running around in the woods near my daggone Nuc yard! Either that, or I have very prude queens. More then likely, the bees raised new queens after my move, which would put the math more in line. Regardless, I have two Nuc’s (confirmed) that are laying. The goal now is to let them be for another week (let the brood mature) and then move them into a Deep. They get to go to a Deep if they have good brood pattern and are modestly gentle (I am not militant about that trait, at this stage.) I am tempted to put some feed on both of them to help them finish drawing out the two frames of foundation they both have left (both are about 50% drawn at this point.)

Updates from the Queen Castles

It went into the upper 80’s today, in Richmond, Virginia. The honey bees were working hard and all starters in the home yard looked great. I had to get home to cut the grass and then check my Queen Castles. A Queen Castle is designed to help you raise queens. It is effectively a Deep Super that has been divided into three chambers, each with a half-inch (or so) hole that allows the bees to come and go (each hole is on a different side of the super.) Each section holds three frames.

Last week, I found a zillion queen cells in Larry (for the umpteenth time) and ended up taking a ton of them to stop the hive from perpetually swarming. I placed them in the pair of Queen Castles that I had invested in for raising Queens (I had this targeted for May), as I was out of Nuc bodies. That was 5 days ago.

Four days ago, I had checked them again to give them some honey (I had only put one frame in each, as I was really running an experiment, but then started to get paranoid that they probably didn’t have any foragers, so needed both pollen and honey.) In QC A, it looked like the queen cell might be damaged. But, in QC B, I found two brand new queens hopping about the frame (when they are small, they seem to run about a bit more and raise/lower their small abdomens a lot, making it sort of look like they are hopping.) So, I took one of the young queens and dropped it into QC A (what the heck – I still had another capped cell in B anyway.)

Today, I checked the QC’s again. This time, I found three with large or nearly large queens and one with a young queen. One had a queen cell where a queen had emerged but no queen was there (the amount of fanning they ALL did when I opened the hive seems to indicate to me that she was not home and may have perished on the mating flight) and the other had a queen cell that was still capped (and the capped looked weird, so I am not so sure that this one is viable.)

All told, I have 4 queens from this experiment. BUT (and this is key), none of the QC sections had many bees. In fact, I discovered that, in my haste (I was frustrated when I did this), I really only moved over frames of honey/nectar that the bees had built queen cells on. This means that many of the bees were probably foragers that returned to Larry, the mother hive, when they first went out. These bees cannot protect this honey, but I have never experienced robbing at this time of year. Small Hive Beetles, however, are a different story.

I need to formulate a plan. I will probably need a queen for at least one of my questionable hives in Charles City. But, I really wanted to be able to make that call next weekend (or this weekend.) I am pretty certain that these bees are at serious risk with so few gals. I even wonder if it could negatively affect the queen. The books that I have stress the importance of having a strong hive build the queen cells, but what happens if the queen emerges in a weak hive? Well, I will know soon enough.

The weather forecast for the next couple of days seems to indicate rain and ‘iffy’ beekeeping weather. More then likely, these things will need to wait until Thursday, when I can hopefully take some brood from a couple of my Nucs and maybe the Mosely hive near Shirley Plantation. One of them, I will leave alone just to see if it can make it with a handful of bees at this time of year (I doubt it, but who knows.)

The adventure continues.

The Back-up Nuc

The honey bee happenings in Richmond, Virginia continue at a fast pace. Most hives are building up nicely and I received another swarm call today (it’s nice to pick up swarms OUTSIDE of your backyard=). But, all is not cozy on the front.

Earlier this week, my cousin called to say that both of his hives had perished over the last three weeks. They were looking fine in mid-March, but both were dead as of late last week. It sounded like they starved (he said lots of bees were head first down in the cells and more were lying dead on the bottom board), but I really find that hard to believe (nectar and pollen have been available since then and the weather has been abnormally warm – they should have been able to get out and at least keep going – he did say they were small clusters.) I’ve heard folks say that most hives die in late March and I suppose one or both of his hives succumbed to it. It really bad because it was both of his hives, although he does have two packages coming. So far, he has purchased 4 packages and all 4 have perished, either after/during their first Winter or in their first Fall. This only firms my belief that packages are a very risky affair compared to Nucs.

This leads me to my thoughts of the day. The many starter Nucs/Queen Castle Sections have more uses then simply building them each into a hive of their own. Maybe having so many will not be such a bad thing after all.

I now hope to give my cousin one or two of my starter Nucs/Queen Castle Set-ups by the end of April (when I should be able to determine which are doing well and which are not doing well) to get his numbers back up. This is also somewhat selfish, as his hives are within 3 miles of three of my outyards. Getting him into some strong, local bees only improves the genetic pool in that area, which benefits me in the long run (as opposed to drones coming off of some queen that has never proven her mettle in central Virginia.) So, that’s one good use for the many starter hives that I have.

There are also other good uses for a spare Nuc or two in my inventory. I checked 7 hives this weekend. One, Albo, continues to do very poorly. They have not expanded past the 2 frames of brood that they had in early March. I found the lazy queen (with so few bees, it was like looking for a queen in a Nuc – pretty easy) lazily walking about the frames. No queen worth her salt would stay at 2 frames of brood over the past month, with the weather that we have been getting (and the honey she has in that hive.) This Friday, I will kill the Albo queen (and make Queen Juice, something that might help out my swarm traps.) I have never killed a queen before. On Saturday, I will take one of my virgin queens from Larry and add her to the hive. So, I have found yet another good use for the starter hives – replacing poor queens in my existing hives.

Also, Berkeley appears to have swarmed or failed in replacing a dead queen. I found very little brood and only one open queen cell – although it is clear that they did have a lot of brood over the last couple of weeks hatch (they expanded into 3 of the frames that were previously filled with honey). It is hard for me to believe that they swarmed, unless they really were honey-bound (it is said that bees can be surrounded by too much honey, which restricts their growth and causes them to swarm – I have never experienced it, until maybe now). Unlike Albo, this hive built up GREAT last year. I will do a real thorough inspection this Saturday and, if I find no sign of the queen, I may give them one of my virgin queens. I need to do the Bee math, as I really want genetics from this hive. Hopefully, a virgin queen is out there and getting her legs under her.

Another hive, Westover, also had no sign of a queen. I took their queen back in mid-March, to keep the good genetics and let them raise their own. Oddly, they only tried to raise one queen (at least two frames had eggs on them when I removed the queen). I expected to see two or three cells. Like Berkeley, I may give them a virgin queen this weekend or wait one more week.

Finally, the swarm call that I received on Sunday indicated that the bees had collected on the trunk of a tree. I thought I was going to need a frame of brood to entice them off of the tree (as I couldn’t shake them.) As it turned out, the trunk was narrow (small tree) and I was able to easily shake them. But, if I had needed a frame of brood, one of my stronger Nucs would have been the donor. Another great use for a Nuc.

The bottom line to all of these random notes is that I have definitely come to understand the value of having a Nuc or two available for emergency situations. Missing a queen? I have one that I like, right on hand! Although I do plan to grow several of these Nucs into full hives, I now am fairly certain that I will keep a couple on hand all Summer, just to be ready for special situations. They are a real resource bank.

Spotty Brood and Lots of Grumpiness

Yesterday, I attacked the ‘weak’ hive (I think I will start calling it the Albo Hive, after my brother=) to clean up the mess that I allowed to invade the hive last year. Upon opening up the hive, I was surprised to see that these bees were actually eating the pollen substitute. The Geronimo Bees (Hive 1) had given up eating on that stuff and I assumed that it was due to good pollen available in the wilds. Who knows. These gals are eating on it at a decent pace, so I left it on the hive.

I lit the smoker and suited up, as I figured things might get nasty when I delved into the lower brood chamber. But, I did not smoke them upon the breakdown of the upper Deep and all seemed ok. They only had a couple of frames of honey, but I believe this will be enough at this point (we are expecting 80’s for the next week or so). The weather could be a real boon for beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia. We’ve had a lot of rain and now we seem to be getting some good, warm temperatures.

Another thing to remember on the upper deep for the Albo Hive is that one of the frames is starting to come apart from the top bar on one side. This is one of the frames that is full of honey (so it is heavy) and probably is an accident waiting to happen. My goal will be to remove this frame and hopefully repair it once we get into mid-April or so (when I do not think they will need the honey.)

There was a lot of burr comb between the upper and lower Deep’s. I am not sure why this was the case, as they have plenty of room in the upper deep to build out more comb. Regardless, I turned on the smoker and began to remove all of this. Things got a little hairy during this episode, as every frame on the lower deep was covered with bees and the smoker only sent them scurrying for a second or two. But, I was able to get the burr comb off and begin removing and inspecting each frame.

During this adventure, the bees really got grumpy. I tried to remain calm and am sure that, without my gear, I would have gotten stung multiple times. On two or three occasions, I had to walk away from the hive and let them settle down a bit (once they get mad, smoke is only partially effective for these bees.) I had to remove a lot of propolis – a ton of it. I will be aware of this going forward. This stuff should be cleaned off each time you remove a frame.

Two other items of note (of great importance, actually) were the brood and a possible queen cell. Having just looked at (I am guessing) 7 or 8 frames full of brood in the Geronimo Hive last week, the spotty nature of this brood was definitely noticeable. The Geronimo hive had several frames that were literally full of capped brood – not one single miss. But, the Albo hive didn’t have a single frame that was chock full. Plenty were 95% full, but there were always a dozen or so empty cells scattered around. It gives the appearance of my queen being on drugs and missing here and there as she walks about the comb in a random (stumbling) pattern. This only confirmed to me that this queen needs to go.

I did also find what appeared to be a supercedure cell. It may have been what was left of the supercedure cell from last Fall, but who knows. I am hoping that this was a sign that they are going to raise another queen. The cell was in the upper half of the frame, so I left it alone and went about my business. I am certain that these gals would have died this last Winter if I had not intervened with feeding in the Summer, Fall and Winter. I will not intervene this year, so they better start getting it right.

What really got the girls mad was when I had to cut off the top part of some capped honey on one-half of one side of a frame that had ended up too far from its neighbor last Summer. Instead of light buzzing, they amped up to a high tenor and really started cursing at me, buzzing in my face and trying to sting my netting. But, I was able to get the frame trimmed down a bit and the frames fit very nicely together once I was finished.

All in all, this was a success. I did not find the queen, but did find eggs and larvae. I also located where they were storing nectar and pollen, near the brood nest. They should get to a decent start and, if they get a good queen, have time to collect a nice harvest during the flow in May. I did find some drone brood, so things are getting close.