Hive Observation | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Mid-Summer Update & Beehive Replacement Program

This year’s hive loss for me was astounding, but it did not really have an impact on my desire to keep beekeeping. It was really more of an Act of Nature that helped me to reduce my hive count (a goal that I had set out on, as of the end of last year.) After the big losses (around 50%), selling a dozen full hives and my normal increase for the year, I am down to 51 hives. It’s been a MUCH easier Spring/Summer and I should actually finish honey extraction this weekend. I have never finished in July! Well, maybe I did a decade ago, but certainly not in recent memory. Ideally, I hope to offload between 15 and 20 hives next year – this should get me to a much more manageable number for my current situation today (given family and general life demands). I will surely increase my hives again, sometime in the distant future, but look forward to running between 20 and 30 for the next decade or so.

Yesterday, there was an article in the Times Dispatch regarding bee loss – it looks like it averaged 60% for the state this past Winter!! At least I am not losing my mind – it was a tough one. The article did not point to a single issue, but I am quite certain there was one. I had too many hives that exhibited the exact same symptoms for me to believe otherwise. Plus, I have never had losses anywhere near what the state has until this past year. I have a hunch that a strain of nosema or something similar hit them hard (or maybe the weather created the perfect storm for that parasite.)

Regardless, the Spring ended up being one of my best for Nuc creation and survival. I am not sure if this was because I had less hives (and thus more time for the Nucs) or if it was the weather (it’s hard for me to believe that all that rain was good for the bees, but what do I know?) In addition, I feel really good about the hives that I sold, given they were stock that survived this previous, tough Winter.

The final observation for me is the low swarming season. Maybe I am about to get hammered with swarms, but I really have had VERY few swarms this season. In addition, I also received very few calls. This may all be coincidence (or maybe my hives are simply going to rock July and swarm away), but it is worth noting. I have several White queens out there, so something should happen in some of those hives. We shall see.

Lastly, the article in the paper pointed to a new Beekeeper program that is giving away full hives (from the state) to help offset some of the past Winter losses. I am really not sure if this is just equipment or it includes the bees, but it is worth checking out.

http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/plant-industry-services-beehive-distribution-program.shtml

Will June Be A Banner Month?

So far this year, nothing has happened according to plan. I know full well that many things (with honey bees) do not go ‘to plan’, but I have never seen so many things go awry. I was unable to get out to the hives this past weekend, so I am looking forward to seeing them this weekend. So far, I have not seen a ‘general major flow’. Some hives have put on a few supers, but the majority (as of May 19) were working 1 or 1.5 supers. I simply have not seen a ‘general flow’ where everyone puts on the pounds. Maybe everyone is full up right now, but I sort of doubt it, given the wet week we had last week. Will June turn out to be the real banner month for honey? We’ll see…

And what about Nuc’s?! Good lord. I’ve never had it this tough. I honestly think I have killed more queens then I’ve sold (in Nuc’s.) Couple this with the fact that a ton of my Nuc’s did not successfully raise a queen, and I am really far behind on the Nuc schedule. I have taken to combining strong Nuc’s with Laying Worker Nuc’s. The queen right Nuc takes over the other one and goes to town laying in them and filling them up. This allows me to split them about 3 weeks later and make a solid Nuc out of them. I have never done this before (but, I’ve never had so many Nuc’s with laying workers.) Between the weather and my personal life, it’s been one heck of a rough Spring. I hope my last starts thrive in June and I can finally finish providing what I promised!

Finally, how about swarms? I do not go on all swarm calls, but I use them as a measure for what’s going on out there. I’ve received the fewest swarm calls in 3 years (and I really only started to take them 3 years ago.) Of those calls, none have been banner swarms (maybe one). They say a ‘swarm in June is worth a silver spoon’ – I assume it was in a year like this one. I haven’t seen many silver spoons so far. Maybe in June…

Finally, what about the hive problems!? I have already had 3 hives turn up with failed queens after a swarm. Two ended up with laying workers (again, family issues kept me away from the hives longer than I had expected.) Fortunately, I had a few Nuc’s to combine them with, but that just set the Nuc program back further.

The bottom line is that this has been a tough year for me. I blame it on this weather. We actually had a frost warning in May. I’ve been gardening for decades and have never heard of something like that.

At any rate, thought I’d whine a bit. It provides some relief….

Did Someone Turn the Spigot Off?

This past week was a bit weird. I caught some bug from my lovely daughter – it is very painful for a beekeeper to get sick in May… More importantly, I noticed a couple of big changes this weekend. To begin with, the rate of wax build-up dropped substantially in my outyards in both Henrico County and Charles City County. I really only checked 3 yards, but two of them were my two strongest yards. The rate of wax buildup/nectar storage dropped by a large margin this past week, compared to the three weeks before that. My guess is that we’re going through the temporary lull until the next set of blooms hit towards the end of the month. But, we’ll see.

Returning to my home yard (which contains immature hives and a ton of Nucs), I made another (clearly related) discovery. The Nucs had pulled much more syrup this past week. Clearly, the weather or the available blooms made the syrup more attractive. I have even heard of a couple of cases of robbing (from new beekeepers, so this is not confirmed and may just be orientation flights! I remember my days as a new beekeeper well!) Regardless, all signs point towards something different. We’ll see how they look next weekend.

The honey harvest has been good thus far. I have taken something between 20 and 25 gallons of honey off of two outyards (and I did not take all honey supers from each.) I now have a bunch of empty (although wet) supers to super any hives that need it. I should have done this before now! It’s nice finally feeling like you’ve caught up!

Finally, I’ve been getting really good feedback on the Nucs. All of the work and patience are paying off.

No Brood! The Queen Isn’t Laying!

With the warm weather in Richmond, Va. this past weekend (it was 69 when I checked on the hive called Westover), I went around to pull some of the last remaining extra supers that I had on hives. I also took a peak at any hives that didn’t feel heavy. My goal was to simply go down to the brood nest and pull one or two frames in the center of the hives to check on the brood nest. To be honest, I had just gotten through doing a lot of reading on American Foulbrood (AFB)… For those who have not delved into it much, this disease has one really nasty effect – you can actually lose an entire apiary if it takes hold of just one hive.

Effectively, the spores spread into the honey. So, when the hive finally weakens to the point where it is robbed, the other bees in your yard take the tainted honey back to their hives and the infection starts all over again. To be fair, the State Apiarist has told me multiple times this year that AFB has been almost non-existent in Virginia this year. But, all I had to do was read up on it during a quiet moment one weekend and it’s been bugging me ever since (is that hive just light or is it really suffering from AFB? Will I end up losing the whole apiary if I don’t check now?!) At any rate, I went into a few hives for the last time (I have said this so many times that I’m probably the only one that really believes it at this point) until January.

The very first hive that I went into had next to no brood. Here we go, I figured. I found the queen and she looked great. The honey stores were fine and the colony was strong in numbers. No signs of deformed wings or anything weird. Basically, except for the lack of brood, everything looked great. At this point, I was actually irritated (what the heck?! these guys were fine 3 or 4 weeks ago! tons of brood! now, she just decides to fail on me?!) On to the next apiary with a weak hive, still cogitating on what I should do about this hive. New apiary, new hive – again, no brood!!!! Now I am starting to freak out. Then, I remember (I am getting old…hell, I am old) that it’s late November! We’ve had a couple of nights below freezing…the day length is shortening quickly…EQUALS the queen stops laying!

Heh. The weather was so warm that I really had pushed it from my mind that we were well into the Bee’s Winter. But, to squash any possible nagging doubts in the days/weeks ahead, I broke down all of the hives in that apiary (5 in total). Every one the same – always no eggs (well, if they were there, I missed them) along with either no capped brood or just a handful. My queens are taking their well-deserved vacation! They won’t start up again until the days start getting longer again, probably in January.

The real key to this is that I now realize that I do not think that I have ever been into the brood nest of one of my hives in late November, so I have never seen this before. Of course, I could be crying the blues come Jan/Feb if all of these hives do have a serious problem, but I am pretty comfortable that everything is good to go. Regardless, this little surprise has me determined to go into a brood nest in January. I sort of went into one last January, when I was trying to save the Albo hive (which did survive, but I whacked the queen in April) and slid the frames to the middle of the hive, pulling one of the outside frames before I did so. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.

IMPORTANT: I do NOT recommend that anyone reading this blog actually break open the brood nest at any time after October 15 and before March 1, especially not in January or February. When I do it, it will be on a strong hive that I can stand to lose if something goes wrong. But, I am confident (or is that foolish) that I can do it if I get a day in the 50’s (we always do) in Jan.

Possible Use for a Queen Excluder?

I recently had a fellow stop by to get a queen excluder. Although I do have a few, I only purchased one of them (the rest were given to me, for one reason or another.) I readily gave him one of the older ones without much thought. Before I got into beekeeping (and many times since), the more experienced beekeepers have advised that they do not use ’em. One fellow here in the Richmond, Virginia area said that he calls them ‘honey excluders’! Add to all of this the report from a new beekeeper, just this past May, that he actually opened his hive and could see a bunch of workers unable to make it through his excluder! In my mind, I was pretty sure that I would only use them in a queen production strategy that effectively has a hive create queen cells in a super that the queen is unable to get to. I would never use them on one of my Producer hives.

Well, I have changed my mind. After my honey extraction efforts this Summer, I have decided to experiment with a few honey excluders next year, but not exactly the way most folks use them. Two of my (honey) Producer hives had adventuresome queens that made forays into my honey supers. In both cases, this happened after the bees had capped off at least two shallow supers. In both cases, they didn’t totally ravage the honey supers with eggs, but instead made a run up one side of the hive, using two to three frames per super and then expanding a bit at the top.

It occurred to me today, while doing spot checks on many of my hives, that I might have been able to prevent this by dropping a queen excluder beneath the capped honey supers. Since I let my bees fill up one super before I place the second (beneath the full, capped super), I could easily begin to exclude the queen once a super gets squared away. This way, I am not ‘excluding’ the bees with the nectar when they actually NEED to get up into the super to fill it up. It should already be filled up! I will definitely give that a shot next year to see how it works out.

Let ‘Em Do Their Thing

I once read where Michael Bush, a big time beekeeper up North, said that he never replaced the queen from a swarm. He didn’t want bees that couldn’t figure out when it was time to supersede their queen and needed him to help them along. I have a ton of respect for Michael Bush and agree with him for sure, but I am not 100% sure that I will never requeen (the Albo hive comes to mind.)

Two queen cells — Am I Going to Get A Siamese Twin?

At any rate, I went into my only hive that came through the Winter with an issue yesterday (the one with a baseball sized brood nest, apparently a failing queen) to see what they were up to. There were definitely very few bees and only a handful of capped brood (I did not see eggs or larvae or queen). Amazingly enough, they had a pair of queen cells, side-by-side! It seemed like the old gal must have had enough left in her to push out two decent eggs and move along.

My paranoid nature has me wondering if these eggs were any good or not. I absolutely believe that the bees will choose a better egg then I would and they will make the most of any situation, but I have to wonder if the failing queen’s best is really any good or not. The hive was in ok shape, with several frames of honey and a fair amount of pollen (they really haven’t had much brood to feed). There may have been 40 capped worker cells, spread all over the place, and an equal number of drone cells. The bottom line is that this hive’s last hope rests in these queen cells. I was hyper vigilant to put them back in the hive carefully so as not to damage them.

As of right now, I only know that I had a pair of capped cells on March 20. If I assume the worst case scenario, those queens might not emerge until March 29. I will probably have to wait until April 1 to check and see. The key is that I absolutely must be ready with either a frame of eggs (from one of my Nucs with proven queens) or another swarm cell or two. Otherwise, this hive could be in real trouble. I may go down this weekend to check on them and simply give them a frame of eggs anyway, just in case. I hate to risk jostling those queen cells, but it’s probably the best course of action. That way, if those queen cells are no good, these bees can go to work on March 26 (with the new eggs) and possibly have a mated queen by the middle of April.

Only time will tell…

I never learn

Being a pop, a gardener, a beekeeper, a blogger and an employee of Dominion pretty much requires about 40 hours a day. These 24 hour days are not working for me. Regardless, I have been juggling it about and keeping on top of my bees (I should probably say ‘abreast of my bees’, as I am rarely on top of everything that is going on with them.)

As to my last post, I did lose both the Apple Orchard Nuc and the Blue Cottage Nuc. The first Nuc came from a July swarm (and it was definitely not worth a fly). The second Nuc was one of the Nuc’s that I purchased this past Spring. It was a ‘Nuc purchasing’ lesson for me, as it came with 1.5 frames of bees/honey/pollen. I gave it some capped brood from my other hives, but it simply never could get a leg up. I am confident that the problem was with the queen. I have seen this time and time again. A weak hive simply never thrives as it has a weak queen. This may not be the holy grail (i.e. I am sure there are exceptions), but it has held true enough for me that I will not sweat a weak Nuc going forward.

The combine with Moe and Apache worked like a champ. I think that queen went into a laying frenzy after the combine, but I have no hard data to prove it. I definitely found a ton of eggs that had been recently laid and do not recall seeing that when she was in the Nuc. I put an entrance reducer on the hive anyway, as it definitely is on the border of having too much honey to protect at the moment. I’ve been back a few times and it is all looking good.

I also moved the Berkeley Hive down to my Apiary at Haupt Store. Here is the meaning of the title of this post. I moved a strong hive down to an apiary with nothing but Nuc’s. You’d think even my small brain would work sometimes. Well, needless to say, I came back 24 hours later and found that hive attacking all of my Nuc’s. I couldn’t believe it. I blocked off the entrance and took them all down to my pop’s back fields and left them. As of yesterday, they all looked good, but I was unable to find queen or eggs in the Albo Nuc. I did find pupae, but no queen. I am hopeful she was just being her normal wiley self. I’ll check again later.

What’s the big lesson? I have been whining all Summer about the problems of having your young Nuc’s in a yard with established hives (especially once June gets here – even more importantly when you live the the desert that we call Varina.) I was able to finally give my Nuc’s some peace by getting them to a new apiary at a general store down in Charles City. But, it only takes a few months for me to forget my lessons, apparently. Taking Berkeley down to that Apiary was a bad call. I now know that you (well, maybe not you, but definitely me) really need to have what some call a Nuc Yard if you want to play with Nuc’s. They are a dream when you only have to worry about how well the queen is doing and how fast they are building up. When you have to worry about invaders, it literally becomes something that is on your mind when you go to sleep and when you are at work. Starting in the Spring of ’11, I will always have a dedicated Nuc yard.

But, this whole ‘dedicated’ business also creates a bit of a quandary. I have strong hives that I would like to breed, so to speak. When a Virgin goes off to breed (in a new Nuc, for example), you have no way of knowing who she will choose when she is 50 to 100 feet up in the air with a bunch of drones. But, you can increase the chances of good breeding by having good stock around. So, you want your strongest hives nearby when the Nuc’s send out their virgins. But, you do not want them to rob the little Nuc’s. My current plan is to try the ‘1 Mile’ theory. Drones will definitely go out several miles to mate. But, can an established hive mount a strong attack force when their home base is a mile from the destination? My experience so far is that they cannot. I have had Nuc’s on my family farm that were a half mile or three-quarters of a mile from an established hive and they had no problems. But, when put near one of these established hives, it became a nightmare.

I think that the close proximity (within 100 or 200 yards) creates the opportunity for a gang of bees to hit a small Nuc all at once. The Nuc cannot handle a gang. It does just fine when one or two come nosing around, but send in 100 and the Nuc is immediately overwhelmed.

Well, we’ll see. I have a cut out to do this Friday and it should be interesting. The key will be to save enough of their honey to help them through the Winter. The other key will be to keep them away from my established hives while they get situated during this past month…

Adding a Super to the Beehive

My Honey Bee yard in Richmond, Virginia (well, in Varina) continues to hop! The Berkeley Hive has pretty much been without an inspection for a month. This was the strongest Nuc that I picked up from Tom Fifer this Spring (well, the only Nuc with at least 4 frames of bees). When I installed them, I started them on the smallest hole in the entrance reducer and up’d it to the medium-sized slot once they covered 6 frames.

Up until this inspection, they had not demonstrated a ton of progress, but they continued to dutifully post guards at the exit, eat syrup and otherwise appear healthy (from the outside.) I never had to put a robber screen on them and was reluctant to open them up, due to the robbing that kept happening with my other hives (starting in June.) But, things have calmed considerably in my yard (I am wondering if the Albo hive was the big robber, as it is now at the Mountcastle Apiary,) so looking seemed like a good idea. In truth, they are eating me out of house and home (I have started to feed them 10 lbs of sugar mixed with 2 gallons of water, which approximates to something like 1.25 Sugar to 2 Water,) so I wanted to see what was going on under the covers.

I opened her up and immediately noted that they had filled out 8.5 frames! My rule is to put the second super on once they fill out 7 frames. They were working their tails off on the final 1.5 frames and now I was wondering if there was a swarm cell in there (bees were all over the place.) I was not using smoke and everything was calm, but I never do a full inspection of a hive that has a full deep without smoke at this time of the year. Those little things can get ornery if you don’t watch out! Plus, I really didn’t have a prepared deep super ready for them.

So, I left them for a day while I put together a few more frames to complete a 10-frame deep super. I also mixed a lot more syrup, as they were going through a gallon in sometime under 2 days (it was always empty 2 days later.) I wanted to start increasing the volume given to them, especially if they would take it. Ideally, I’ll get this top super fully drawn by October (boorah!)

Now, with smoker in hand, I opened them up to have a look. Again, very gentle and easy to inspect. They had 4 solid frames of capped honey, 4 frames of brood/pollen/nectar and a couple of frames that they were nearly finished drawing. I took a frame of honey and put it in the new deep, replacing it in the bottom deep with a frame of foundation. I made sure to do this as far from the brood nest area as I could. But, I also left the outside frames intact, as my honey bees can sometimes be difficult about drawing them out. Since this hive had drawn both out, I didn’t want to move them. The reason for moving this one frame up was to simply encourage them to start drawing up top. I have had 100% success with this strategy. Drop a drawn/working frame into an otherwise empty super and they bees start working the foundation around it immediately.

During the full inspection (remember, they were packed full in this deep and I wanted to be sure that no swarm cells had been started), I discovered that they had already done away with the old queen (or they cleaned the mark off of her.) I now had an unmarked queen in the hive! This is somewhat surprising, as the queen always seemed to be doing a good job. Makes me wonder if the old mark simply fell off of her. I will probably mark her on my next inspection.

The moral of this little side story about the queen is that you definitely do get better at finding queens as time goes along. In my first year, I rarely ever found the little mischief-maker. This year, I probably find her 3-out-of-4 inspections.

At any rate, once I got the new deep on top of the hive, I put a gallon-and-a-half of syrup on them. We’ll see if they continue to suck it down. I also did not increase the entrance. Normally, I would open the entrance fully when I put on the top super. But, I have recently been reading where a lot of folks keep the entrance reducer on year round. Add that to my recent robbing issues and I think I will keep it restricted to the middle setting for now. I look forward to seeing what I find in August!

The War is Over…for now…

Yesterday was an interesting experience, to be sure. Later in the day, after the Berkeley Hive check, I went out to check both the Southside Hive and the Blue Cottage Hive to see if they could use some more feed (more on this later.) After this check, I was pretty much harassed by a bee anytime I went out in my yard, no matter where I was. My house sits on a little over 3 acres of land. No matter where I was, a bee would eventually find me and begin to actively fly at me, in my face, hair and all of the rest.

Now, I know this wasn’t one bee. It sort of felt like it was one – perhaps from the Westover Hive looking to get even, but I knew that was nearly impossible. Something else was going on. I think, in retrospect, that I had alarm pheromone on me or in my hair from my adventures earlier in the day. When I would walk out into the yard, some nearby bee (who was simply out to get some nectar, pollen or water) would get a whiff of me and go into attack mode. It was more then a bit annoying and disconcerting.

At any rate, I took a good shower this morning and either the smell is gone or that lone enemy has gone back to its regular chores and decided to stop bothering me!

As to the late day hive checks yesterday, I was discouraged to find that the Blue Cottage Hive had not built up since the last check on June 7. Eleven days and not much to show for it. In addition, while pulling some of the empty (foundation only) frames to get to the center 3 frames, I found a moth. It was probably a wax moth. It was too wiley for me to smash, but it was a good reality check. I also saw the queen actually lay an egg on top of the comb! This could have been a reaction to my pulling the comb (perhaps she was in the middle of laying an egg when I pulled it), but I am becoming more and more convinced that this is a bum Nuc. The fact that I paid $75 for 2 frames of bees is a bit of an irritant. I seriously regret having recommended other folks to buy Nucs from the guy that I purchased them from. I can only hope that any of the new Beekeepers received a better deal then I did.

Regardless, we are definitely in a very dry period right now. I am fairly certain that build up will all but stop until the Fall (and will only pick up again at that time if we have some rain.) The bees are probably going to hunker down and slow down the egg laying and try to eke through the summer without eating into their stores so much.

I have a lot of things going through my mind after the last couple of days. To begin with, I am going to move the Blue Cottage Hive into a Nuc. They are too small to be in a 10 frame box and simply cannot defend against their many predators with so much space. I will move their 2 worked frames and the 1 drawn frame (that was full of brood) that I placed with them in week 1, into a Nuc. I will then add one new frame of foundation and one more frame of brood. The frames in their deep will be frozen in my deep freezer for a few days (and the brood chamber left out in the Sun, far away from my other hives), in case there are Wax Moth eggs in them (the freezing should kill them good). My goal for the Blue Cottage Hive is to get them strong enough to move to a deep brood chamber as soon as possible. But, I have heard of other folks over-wintering Nuc’s. So, I might be trying that trick. As to the queen, I would bet that she is simply a poor specimen. But, I cannot rule out that she is simply slowing down (from what? she never really got going!) due to the dry spell and end of the flow. I might re-queen these gals, if the opportunity presents itself.

In addition, this slowing of the build-up phase has me questioning the wisdom of splitting the Albo Hive. It must have really been bothering me, subconsciously, as the moment I came to the decision that I would not split them until we had a good rain (and maybe not, even then,) I felt much better about the whole ordeal. Splitting at this time of year is a risk. Given the dry and hot weather of late, that risk has really become too great for this stage of my bee career. For now, I will only deal with the Westover Splits. Next year, I will definitely play with doing some early Spring Splits.

Finally, this moth (which I am nearly certain was a wax moth – but it looked like any old moth to me) will be dealt with today. I will setup two traps along the back line, where most of my weaker/smaller hives are. We’ll see if we catch any.

Another Myth Buster – Moving a Bee Hive

Well, the old saying that you can only move a hive 2 feet or 2 miles is hogwash. Beekeepers in Richmond, Virginia and nationwide always advise that you should not move a hive unless it is a really short distance (2 feet or so) or a really long distance (over 2 miles.) The short distance is obvious, as the bees should be able to get a whiff of their queen in the new location (not to mention the fact that the old home is right there beside where they are looking!) The long distance is based on the general belief that bees forage out to 2 miles and know the lay of the land in this area. If you move them a mile, for example, they’ll go out foraging, recognize the area and return to their old home.

Well, I moved a hive about 80 feet (the Southside hive) the other evening and placed a cedar branch over the entrance. The next day, I had about 6 bees buzzing around the old spot. The day after that, I didn’t see a single bee there. But, the hive in the new location has bees coming and going like mad.

It is true that this hive was only recently moved to my property. Regardless, the success of this move matches other experienced beekeepers (such as Michael Bush), so I will bank on it going forward. Of course, I hope to not do a lot of hive moving.

At any rate, it’s off to the wood shop now. I need to build some more brood chambers!