This year seems to be forming into a year of firsts (or maybe I was just too daggone blind to notice these things in the past!) In mid-March, I found a hive that would surely be ready for a Nuc by late March/early April. When I arrived, it was just barely able to create a Nuc, but I took one and noted that it should certainly be ready for a second Nuc by the third weekend in April. I did make a note that, given where this queen had been in mid-March, she really was taking her sweet time building up. She had done so well in February.
When I arrive this past weekend to take another Nuc, I very quickly find he queen. She is on a frame of eggs and capped brood that appears to be all Drone brood. So, I gently place the frame (with the queen) off to the side (actually, I just lean it up against the hive…), and begin to look for a few frames of worker brood and eggs. I find zero in the upper Medium. It is chock full of capped drone brood…
Maybe some folks will immediately say “Drone layer!”, but I sure didn’t. I had never had something like this before, in countless inspections. It was a White queen, but it never even dawned on me that I had a drone layer…until half-way through the bottom Deep! Now, I see that I clearly have an issue. I had thought the hive was activing strangely – now I can see why. Nothing but capped drone brood and eggs that are presumably drones. This isn’t the end of the world, but it was about to suck up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated!
Then, I come across what is definitely a worker frame. All small cells and no extension. I see eggs… I am now wondering if I should go whack that queen and make them create another one. I pick up one more frame and BOOM! There is ANOTHER daggone queen (not marked), clearly mated and doing her thing. She was laying (and had probably only been doing so for a week or so) in the bottom brood chamber while the marked queen was laying in the top brood chamber. I have heard folks say this can happen, but I had never seen it.
So, the bees took care of the problem. That hive is about to be flush with Drones (but the resources the workers have stored up will easily tide them over). Two more things crossed off of the bucket list – drone laying queen and two queens in the same hive!
Last November, a fellow contacted me from over in Stratford Hills (near the James River, off of Huguenot Road in Richmond, Va) to say that he had a couple of hives in his backyard that had not been tend in several years. The hives were rotting and he wanted to know if I could give them a good home. I told him that I’d come get them in March, when it would be easier for me to deal with them (at the time, I thought I might have to cut them up a bit, to move them, if they had wax all through several hive bodies.)
As it so happens, they were living in only one Hive Body (a deep). I moved them last night and opened them up to get them into a normal hive (and fix the frames.) It was sort of like a cut-out, but much easier. I was able to use rubber bands to get the comb into one of my hive bodies without much bee problems. They were probably the gentlest bees that I have ever ‘cut out’.
During the cut-out, I came across swarm cells on the second frame. Of the three, one of them was uncapped (the queen was out.) I assume that the bees had already swarmed, but I knew that I wanted to cut out the other two cells for Nucs. Two frames later and I had a pile of 4, capped swarm cells on the ground beside me. I had left a couple in the hive, just in case.
Fast forward to the last bit of wax and I decided to reposition the original hive so that I could get that last wax. SQUASH! I stepped right on the queen cells! It’s hard not to cry. The only positive thing is that I had left some in the hive and it was not a critical situation. The bees suffered no real loss. But, I sure did. Just having 4 queens off of this clearly strong genetic pool (plus, insanely gentle line) would have been a huge boon.
Oh well. Lesson learned. The next time that I cut queen cells out, they will go into a container that I cannot miss.
On a negative note, there were a bunch of small hive beetles in this hive. I do hope this does not become another lesson learned if these SHB start attacking my Nucs. I will put some traps that I have (and never really use) all through the hive tomorrow. I think the hive is dealing with them. but after cutting up all of that comb, some of which had honey, I will have to go into this hive every few days over the next many weeks, if not months.
Been really busy (bee-stuff and non-bee-stuff), so I have a bunch of updates regarding my Richmond, Virginia beekeeping adventures. To reduce boredom, I have tried to title each one separately below, so no one is forced to go through all of my dribble for the topic that really interests them!
Successful Swarm Trap!
This is hot on my mind and I couldn’t wait to post about it later. Anyone that has had the patience to actually read through my adventures for awhile knows that I put out swarm traps in the Spring. These are effectively homemade boxes the size of a Nuc that are screwed together tight and hang on a tree (some 8′ off of the ground.) In them, I put 1 frame of drawn wax (I use my old wax) and 4 or 5 frames of foundation (they were supposed to only hold a max of 5 frames, but my carpentry skills are nothing to write home about…)
In late March, I try to get my traps out within a quarter mile of my biggest outyards or known bee trees. The drawn wax is supposed to entice them and I put a drop of queen juice (simply a film canister with rubbing alcohol and the dead queens that I cull out of weak hives during the year.) By the end of June, I try to pull them to save any drawn wax that I can (sometimes the wax moths get in it and sometimes they don’t.) It’s not a loss, as the frames are my oldest frames that I culled from my hives, but I want to save the for the next year if I can.
Of the 6 that I put out this past April, I couldn’t get one of them (or, I wouldn’t) because it was covered in a thick patch of poison ivy that had grown up the tree (didn’t see that bit of nastiness when I put the thing up, because the leaves hadn’t come out!) I figured I’d either wait until Winter or get my pop to get it for me sometime (he’s immune to the ivy’s). With so little success, I had decided to start Nuc’s in each of my traps in the Spring of 2012 to get some good bee scent in them (and thus be more enticing to swarms.)
Well, the real point of this is that I went by that loner today (while doing some last minute checks on the hives) and found it FULL of bees! Ha! Success at last! I have no idea when the swarm came into the trap (well, I know it was after late June, when I last looked at it), so it will be interesting to see what they look like when I put them in a Nuc on Sunday. As long as the queen is laying well (and I’ll probably let them live even if she isn’t, as an experiment), they are golden. I have a ton of deep frames of honey to give them for the Winter (pollen is another subject – I do not have a lot of that to spare, so I hope they at least have that stored in the trap.)
Catching this one swarm has me pumped to build more of my traps this Winter!
July Nuc’s
Once July came around, I stopped selling Nuc’s (with the exception of one to an ERBA member who was interested in trying out a late Nuc – they are experienced beekeepers, so I sold it to them for a slight discount, even though I typically refuse to do so.) Most folks have always said that a July Nuc has next to no chance of growing to a full hive (and I have tended to believe them, because July and August are nightmares in central Virginia.)
This year, I purposefully tried to build up five early July Nuc’s using my simple techniques. One year does not a pattern make, but I was encourages. Each Nuc was fed with boardman feeders until they filled out their five frames fully. I then moved them to full deeps and dropped Maxant top feeders on them (I think this is the real key.) These feeders were easy to check and fill (pop the top, pour in the syrup) and I kept meticulous records of how much they got and how long it took them to eat it up – no hive went more then a day without syrup. These feeders can take nearly 3 gallons of feed, which makes it real easy.
Once they had drawn out at least 8 frames, they received a Medium of foundation, again with the feeder on top. Once they filled out 70% of the Medium, I moved them to an outyard. Of the 5 hives, 4 became full hives and were moved out before September 1. I would argue that the one that didn’t make it suffered from some bee problem (it may have been one of the paralysis viruses – the bees would flop out on the ground and not fly, or fly erratically at times.) They did not act right from nearly the start.
In conclusion, I think you can definitely build up a hive from a July Nuc (of course, I can only REALLY say this with confidence once I see them make it through the Winter.) I think the key is moving the big hives out of your Nuc yard once they fill out and using the top feeders (keeping them on syrup 24/7).
Irene Survivors
Irene gave me several hives, thanks to all of the trees that went down with bees in them in the Richmond area. I’m not happy that the trees went down, but (glass is half full) I am glad folks called me to cut them out. My last cut out was about 10 days after the hurricane. The tree had landed on its side and the comb had smooshed together. By the time that I got to them, most of the comb (literally 90% of it) was full of SHB and wax moth. I was surprised the bees had not absconded (the two hives I went to get the day before had both absconded because of the smashed wax.) I cut them out and hived them in less then 30 minutes, leaving about 4 lbs of bees with no resources (I mean NONE). The comb that I did get was empty – no brood, no honey, no pollen – they had been mostly robbed out after the tree crashed.
I took the poor lot home with me and gave them 3 frames of resources from my stash and left them alone for a week. I wasn’t sure if I had the queen (and figured she had died in the storm, which is why the bees had not absconded.) Amazingly enough, I spotted the little wench on the first inspection. She had actually laid eggs in every single open cell (I honestly do not know how the bees will be able to cover all of that brood, but will see how they did on Sunday.) I have given them two more frames of resources (deep frames partially full of nectar/honey with some pollen) and will be interested to see if they make it through the Winter.
Winterizing
I have Winterized all hives in Charles City County now, which comes to 23 hives. All have entrance reducers, a shim for ventilation and confirmed queens. I did not have to reverse any of them (all queens either were laying in the bottom deep or had just started to move down over the last month). I leveled several (some had definitely gotten off-kilter during the year) and checked stores one last time (well, I’m sure I’ll be back in each of them, to some degree, in October). That leaves 6 more hives in Henrico to do over the weekend and it’s Winter, here I come! My backyard is a mix of Nucs for overwintering, Nucs from swarms, Nucs from cut-outs and one full hive that I kept for fun (I’ll move her out next Spring, but I like to see what the bees are doing during the Winter when I go out into the yard.) It really comes down to 1 full hive, 1 partial hive (from the August cut-out) and 3 Nuc’s. I am only counting the 1 full hive for my Winter metrics (so, how many of 30 will I lose?)
Fall Honey Crop
I took a little under 10 gallons of honey off of the hives earlier this month! I’m sure this isn’t much to most beekeepers, but I am excited! For the first year that I actually took honey, I took between 20 and 25 gallons of honey! Wow! There still a fair amount left on the hives, but I won’t extract that. I have each of the ‘bank’ hives noted so that I can steal their resources come Jan/Feb in case my home yard experiments are struggling. All in all, I am feeling pretty good about the future…
Nuc List
My Nuc list is filling up, which is very cool. Folks are starting to see the value in local bees that are not medicated. My primary goal now is to make sure that I have enough Nuc’s built to produce the numbers that I need. I do not foresee a problem, but I like to be over-prepared. There is still a good bit of prime painting weather left in the season!
Master Beekeeper?
I took the Certified Level test last weekend. I must say that I am not confident about it, but am hopeful. The test wasn’t extremely hard, but some of the virus/disease questions were nothing more then educated guesses for me. Plus, they had an entire part based on chemicals, which I do not use. Fortunately, I had studied up on it. I am confident that I DID pass the field test, but will not know about the written test for some time.
So, that’s it. Another month gone and another month closer to Winter. Many more adventures to be had.
I went into a little over half of my hives this weekend, breaking them down (frame-by-frame) until I found a queen or eggs or larva. I have been hearing murmurings of starving bees (we have had a real drought in parts of central Virginia, near Richmond) and mite problems. I can’t speak to the latter (I do not treat for mites, so I rarely do a mite drop count – haven’t done a one this year), but I can say that none of my bees are starving (well, none of the 18 hives that I checked anyway). In fact, I am very pleased.
The bees that were bringing in nectar in late June ended up capping off another round of supers (well, one capped a Shallow and a Medium and another capped a Shallow), not including the substantial capped honey in the brood nest (Deep-Medium set-up). Unfortunately, that outyard was my first inspection, which gave me really high hopes for the rest of the yards. For the most part, nothing else came close to that first set of hives. Clearly, location makes a big difference (something about that location on the James – tons of blooming clover, I am guessing, with good rain (while the rest of us suffered!)) I am not sure if I will extract those supers or not at this point. I will wait until mid-September to make that call (and after I have checked all of my hives.)
Nearly every hive had capped 90% of the Medium of their brood chamber (again, I run a Deep and a Medium for the bee’s home, year round, so this is where they need to store what they will need for the Winter.) A few hives were sitting on uncapped Mediums (I’d guess 70% full), but these were all starter hives from this year (Nuc’s, swarms or cut-outs). I even found a few queens, although I wasn’t looking for them. The Berkeley Hive actually still has the old Blue Queen from last year. I’m sure they will look to swarm next year.
The goal of all of the work last weekend was to make a spot check on the bees. In some cases, these bees had capped Mediums in late June. Some folks had told me that bees will eat into these stores if they are left on the hive. I definitely did not find that. I ran this experiment in 4 different outyards, 3 of which I checked this past weekend. The bees did not eat into their stores. They didn’t add to the stores (in most cases), but neither did they eat into them. But, this is August and we still have the month of September to make it through. Regardless, I now know the 3 hives that I need to watch (late splits from this year that do not seem to have made a lot of progress in filling up their upper Medium’s), out of this initial run. I think it is good to go into the hives in late August to get a feel for what things look like. Verify that you have a queen and make a note of the stores. In my area, to the east of Richmond, I have never seen a lot of build up after August, so you pretty much need to have good stores now. It also helps you find queen problems (per my last post).
I am glad to be going into the Winter strong (so far.) I have a feeling that I am going to lose some hives this year (the law of averages – I haven’t lost a single one yet, except for a Nuc that I starved by not giving enough food…) More hives to check over the next couple of weeks and then (with the exception of my hive with the virgin queen) I doubt I will mess with them again before I do the Winter Prep in late September. Wish me luck!
SHB Follow-up: Per my July post, I ran into a bit of a SHB problem with one of my hives this year (thanks to my inept beekeeping!) I ended up combining the hive with one of my starter hives and using some SHB traps to try to keep them at bay. Of course I probably should be knocking on wood, but I inspected both hives in that outyard this weekend and things look really good. I probably noticed 2 or 3 SHB when I cracked the inner cover (this is NORMAL in my neck of the woods and not a problem if the hive is healthy) and found a ton in all of the traps. I think the bees kept them at bay and the traps probably helped out a bit. I removed the traps and let the bees continue on with their business.
This past weekend, I did my last deep inspection of many hives until August. There were plenty of good signs and it will be interesting to see how the bees do over the next few months. I harvested several 5 gallon buckets full of honey and still have two more hives to harvest from! It’s a pretty good harvest for me (considering it is my first, I guess anything is good), but I know a fellow in Buckingham that has already harvested 200 lbs of honey! I could take a bath in that much honey…
Small Hive Beetle Larva on Frames
In the inspections, I found several hives that were loaded with honey in their brood supers (Deep-Shallow, in most cases). In one (of three) hive that still has a ‘2 Deep’ setup, I found literally every frame in the top Deep was capped with honey. My back still hurts from moving that thing. I have some drawn deep frames now (see the sad story below) and will probably go out this weekend to swap out 3 frames with these empty ones. I do not mind a hive superceding in July/August – in fact I love it – but I do not want them swarming. A swarm in July/August is just a waste of bees. The chance of them establishing a colony that can last through the Winter is next to Zero. There’s simply not enough time to build up. So, by giving them a bit of space in the Deep, they should go back to work (and forget about swarming, since they have space again) and I’ll have to check them again at the end of the month to see if they are full again… Maybe I should have purchased the extracting basket for Deep frames (this is the one millionth time I have said I would never do X and then changed my mind weeks or months later…)
There were several hives that were also a bit light. Most of them were jammed full of capped brood, but they simply did not have the stores that I expected (or had seen on other hives.) This was not purely location-oriented, although I did find some locations to be better then others this year (but 1 year does not a pattern make – still, it’s good to record it.) Logically, the bees should not be bringing much in at this point, so you would think they will be net consumers of whatever they have. If August rolls around and they have less honey then this past weekend, this will be born out. But, I am interested to see if they can simply maintain what they have (and subsequently add to it during whatever nectar flows in the Fall.) I am also interested to see how much honey the heavier hives eat. Many folks have firmly told me that they eat into the stores come July. It makes sense, but I want to see it. Plus, I’d like to see if different bees eat into it more then other bees.
All in all, I checked on 18 of my hives. Most of them appeared to be doing well (some better then others) and I was able to make sure nearly all of the queens were marked, so that I will know for certain if a swarm/supercedure happens this July (I had some swarms last July, which I discovered after the fact.) But, there were two big problems.
The first problem occurred with Blue Byrd (a split off of William Byrd, which was a 2010 split off of Westover.) I mentioned in an earlier post that I had personally caused what appeared to be a minor Small Hive Beetle invasion on Blue Byrd. Well, it turns out that my efforts were all for naught (I took what I thought was the only problem frame and froze it – I didn’t see evidence of SHB on any other frames.) I checked this past weekend and Small Hive Beetles were in all of the frames. I never saw the queen (she should have emerged a couple of weeks ago) and the hive looked horribly. SHB larva (maggot loooking things) were going through all 9 deep frames of (mostly) capped honey and pollen. A few wax moths had even started to join the fray.
This was so discouraging at that moment that I had to put the hive back together and go sit down to think about what to do next. There were probably a couple of pounds of bees left, but nothing else of value. I have 2 other, strong hives nearby (that I had just done full inspections of and they were rocking.) This hive was like a ticking time bomb (that may have already gone off.) I bet several thousand SHB larva were crawling in it.
Well, after I manned up, I went back to my home apiary and picked up a brand new setup (deep, bottom board, top) and put 9 frames of foundation and 1 old drawn frame of wax (that I was going to melt this week.) I returned to the outyard and shook the bees off of the deep frames (and into the new setup) and put them in my car (they went directly into my freezer). I put the new setup in the exact same position as the old hive. I will return tomorrow or Thursday to have another peak. I am not sure if I should even risk combining them with another hive at this point – I am tempted to just shake them off in my home yard or in the outyard and then put the hive in my car to let it bake in the sun while I am at work. I may combine them just to experiment, but I may not be brave (or foolish) enough to try it. We’ll see if I see a bunch of SHB in them on the next inspection or not (I really wonder if they are doing anything, as I gave them no stores in the new setup.)
As to the frozen frames, it has been 72 hours and I am sure the SHB are dead (don’t listen to that nonsense about SHB living at -40 degrees.) But, each frame has those daggone larva in them. They say that a bee will not eat the honey after a SHB larva defficates in it. Well, I wasn’t about to put these frames into a thriving hive, but I did take one and put it (well away from any hives) in my home yard. I cut some cappings off and let it sit in an open super under my shed.
In 2 hours, the bees cleaned it like you wouldn’t believe. They ate every bit (I guess they tossed the dead larva on the ground.) I took the frame this afternoon and put it back in the freezer, just in case some wiley SHB laid a few eggs in it during the day. So, for the ‘glass is half full’, I should have 9 drawn deep frames that are empty. I have never had that many and it opens up some management strategies/options/experiments. Regardless, I would rather have my hive of bees back…
In addition to the SHB fiasco (just to recap from the earlier post, I am 100% to blame for this, by squashing that honey up against the side of the super and leaving it like that), the Geronimo hive was unable to make her queen. Again, blame the beekeeper, as I went into the hive 14 days after I put the eggs in to have a look and damaged one queen cell irreparably. I thought I could see others deeper in the hive and stopped the inspection, but I wonder now if that was the main one. She looked great, except that she was white and soft and not ready to be pulled out of her queen cell… At any rate, this hive was still holding its own, with a full Medium of capped honey and a full deep of empty (mostly) drawn frames! Sheesh. Well, this is why you start a bunch of Nucs in the Spring. I took one of the Nucs that I had recently put in a Deep and combined them with this hive. Normally, I’d say that I have a strong hive in that outyard now, but with the recent luck, I wouldn’t put any money on it. Hopefully, this weekend, I will find a combined hive with lots of stores and ready to build up for Winter.
So, several lessons this past weekend, about inspections (how to do them and when not to do them) and taking swarm cells from strong hives (that was why Geronimo ended up without a queen in the first place.)
Finally, I had my first robbing attempt this past weekend. The home yard has a couple of strong hives that need moving out and one of them has decided that their neighbor’s honey is better then going out and working to bring in their own. Again, I caused the problem. I use top feeders to great effect, but this time I put one of my migratory covers on top of the feeder. In addition, I left it open longer then I should (went back to get another gallon.) Finally, I did not have an entrance reducer on the hive (they were strong…) I came back to find robbing in full earnest. I had seen plenty of dead bees outside of many of my hives and new that robbing was starting to ramp up, but this was the first full scale assault.
Fortunately, I THINK I resolved it for the time being. I dropped a wet towel on the hive and waited until after dark to come and install a robber screen. This is VERY important. If you install one in the middle of robbing, the robbers who are in the hive will learn how to get back in (as they will have to leave from the new exit on the screen.) The next day, I found many bees trying to get back in, but the two days following have shown fewer and fewer would-be invaders. I think the migratory cover is not helping, as several invaders are always crowding at the cracks along the top trying to get in, as if they can smell the syrup through the cracks.
What are my lessons here? For one, I now do my feeding right before or at dark. Secondly, now that it has started in the yard, I need to get the strongest hives out of here this weekend. There is a robber (or two) about and I have found (from past years) that once you start moving hives out, one day the robbing just stops. It is clear to me that the main hive (or two) that is responsible was moved out of the yard. I’ll probably move 3 or 4 hives out this weekend, all to outyards with strong hives and start each of them off with robber screens (only 2 are to the point when I normally move them – fully drawn deep and 70%+ drawn medium.)
Overall, it has been a bloody past few days. When I step back, things still look great. I have to remind myself that you can only learn by experiencing the bruises (well, I can only learn that way.) So, I keep saying that it was a good thing to only lose 2 hives. Hopefully, I will not be back here later this month talking about similar lessons with other hives. I’d like to keep the Summer losses down – Winter is tough enough…
Another lesson learned for this old boy. I did a split of the William Byrd Hive back in late April. It was one of the hives that I had targeted for honey but had gone on a swarm rampage anyway. Come late-May, I did not see the signs that I liked and I dropped a frame of eggs into the hive, just to be sure (off of Apache, a good blood line). In the process of putting the new frame of eggs (I was in a hurry…), I removed the outermost deep frame and sunk the new frame of eggs in the center. Sounds logical, eh?
Well, the second from the outermost deep was a bit thick on capped honey. They had drawn it out too far and, on the frame that I removed, had simply not drawn it out much at all. This meant that when this frame became the outermost frame, the capped honey was actually touching the side of the Deep. No problem, I thought, the bees will eat this away and create a new walkway.
Bees may do that, but mine don’t. They let it sit (about 33% of the face of that frame), smashed against the wall of the Deep. This is what we call ‘Prime Small Hive Beetle mating ground.’ Basically, I noticed something of concern when I approached the hive. A brown stream of liquid was lazily running out of one side of the entrance. To be honest, I thought SHB immediately, but didn’t realize I was to blame (I figured the hive must be a goner.) Instead, the hive was strong as can be (for a split at this time of year), but that one frame had tons of SHB larva. Like an idiot, I scraped two carvings (with the hive tool) off onto the ground before I realized that the ground is where they pupate. Sigh. Once I regained my senses, I shook and brushed the bees off of it (oddly, this was the only frame to have two supercedure cells that had not been capped yet) and took it home to go in the freezer. I’ll figure out what to do with that thing later.
At any rate, I will never push honey comb up against the side of the super again (on purpose, at least.) I could not believe the sheer number of SHB that had gone to town in that little protected spot. Obviously, I need to get another frame of eggs on this hive and watch them very closely.
I must make every mistake there is to make in beekeeping…
I have finally had a few moments to devote to my bees and there is much to record.
The easiest hives to check are obviously on the home front (the Wilton Apiary) and all were doing fine except the Little Big Horn hive which was on the verge of a major wax moth (and some SHB larvae) incursion. This hive was a split off of Geronimo, done very late in the year. The single reason that I did it was because of finding nearly a dozen swarm cells in the hive in late July. I had been concerned about them from the start, as they never had many bees out front. I had thought this was primarily because they did not receive the foragers in the split. They have a queen, which I assume was from one of the swarm cells, but they simply never recovered. As of the latest check (within the last week), there were not enough bees to protect all of the honey and pollen (the wax mouths were not on the 3 frames that the bees occupied, but they had started on most of the rest of the frames.)
As with anything related to bees, you simply cannot draw a definitive conclusion off of one incident because of all of the variables involved (well, you can if you have a thousand hives that you can judge, which I don’t!) It does, however, reinforce my other experiences with July splits. They are not for the faint of heart, at least not when you have a drought going on. I did freeze all of the frames (except the ones that the bees protected) and still have them in the chest box now. It will be interesting to see if the bees (whatever hive I drop them on) will still use the honey. It still looked good to me, except for the webbing and moth/SHB eggs on it here and there.
The four established hives looked great, with at least 50 lbs of honey on all of them and no sign of problems with varroa. I did drop some 2:1 mix on Geronimo, as they had not finished drawing out two deep frames that I had stolen from them for a swarm in early July.
As to Mountcastle, both the Albo hive and the Westover hive looked very strong. Albo has enough honey (1.5 deeps and one medium) that I will probably be able to use some of it for emergency feeding of my Nuc’s.
The Haupt hives, all of which are Nuc’s, are a mixed bag and I am not certain whether they are strong or not. Apache is definitely strong (more on that one below), but the other three are a bit of a question mark for me. They only have five frames, so it’s not like they can have a lot of honey anyway. But, Bob and the Blue Cottage Hive both have a ton of capped brood (2.5 to 3 frames worth), so it appears that they are prepping for winter. I will probably have to feed them all winter. The Apple Orchard Hive is probably a wash and I will combine it soon.
As to combining, I have long been debating about whether to combine two weak hives or not. Many old timers tell you that combining two weak hives just creates one weak hive. It is better to pinch the queen on the weak hive and combine it with a strong hive (just to give the strong queen/hive an added boost for the Winter.) I can sort of see their point, but I will probably test it out every so often, just to see what happens.
But, when I checked the Westover Aviary yesterday, I found out that the Moe Hive was without a queen. I had not checked it since August 2, so I do not know when they went queenless. No capped brood. No eggs. Tons of honey and nectar. A medium amount of bees. Now, there is always a chance that they swarmed and the virgin queen was somewhere about. But, I never saw her and the Moe Queen was an unknown. This whole hive was a new genetic pool. On the other hand, I had a strong Nuc (Apache) with 5 full frames and a ton of bees. I decided to combine Moe with the Apache hive and hope that the Apache hive would prevail. I picked up the hive from the Haupt’s aviary and placed it on the bottom of the Moe Hive, with a single layer of newspaper between them. The Apache hive has one of the resistant queens that I picked up outside of Jetersville this past Summer, so I hope that this queen does prevail. If it does, the hive will basically be set (Moe had a deep and two shallows that were about 80% full of honey – I’d estimate a 100 lbs of honey altogether once you include what Apache had.)
I wasn’t able to check Curly, as a tree had fallen over it. The tree didn’t touch the hive, but it basically surrounded it with its limbs/leaves. Bees were all over the landing board, so I feel good about them. But, I have received permission from the Westover Plantation landowner to cut the tree up this week sometime, at which point I’ll check on Curly.
My main plans right now, outside of the Westover tree, are to move an established hive (I am thinking Berkeley) to the Haupt’s apiary (I want a strong hive to put my double Nuc on) and to do something with the Little Big Horn bees and Apple Orchard bees (a combine of some sort)
Walter Kelley Bees recently sent out their July newsletter (I recommend it) with a brief snippet on the small hive beetle (SHB). Now that I have had more time dealing with this pest, I am a bit more relaxed about it. They are definitely something to watch out for, but a strong, healthy hive deals with them just fine. Even my smaller hives are (so far) dealing with them effectively. Regardless, as an owner of livestock (or ‘pets’, if you look at them that way), I believe it is good stewardship to ease their way in any fashion that you can, provided that it does not inhibit or alter the natural way of things to any great degree.
As an example, I am quite confident that my honey bees could go find water on their own, without my assistance. But, I ease their labor by providing fresh water in my home beeyard, which they gladly use a lot. It’s not a huge savings, but instead of needing to fly a quarter of a mile away to a nearby, large creek (or a neighbor’s pool…), they can make the trip in under a hundred yards.
So, I am passing on this fairly easy tip that was in the Walter Kelley newsletter, which seems like a great way to ease your bee’s journey in this world. I have not tried it yet, but probably will before the Summer is out.
From the July issue of Walter Kelley Newsletter:
A home-made trap that is somewhat effective consists of a piece of corrugated “plastic cardboard” that is placed in the top of the hive, between the inner cover and frame top-bars. Some beekeepers use off-label chemicals in these traps, but the traps are also effective with no chemicals in them. If the material is cut into 1-inch wide strips with the corrugated tubes running cross-wise to the strip, then placed on the top bars of the hive, SHB will seek refuge from the bees by crawling into the tubes, where they will be trapped by the bees using propolis.
The reason there are adult SHB running around the top bars of a hive is because they have been released from their propolis “prisons” by removing the inner cover. This puts these adults back into play, so to speak, whereas they had been removed from the equation before their release. The bees imprison the adult SHB by trapping them between the inner cover and the top and building a propolis enclosure around them. By giving the SHB corrugated plastic in which they may hide – and be trapped – the SHB will not be released by removing the hive top.
[–End Quote–]
Hopefully, this little tidbit is of use to other beekeeper’s out there.
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 weather in Richmond, Virginia continues to be miserable, although the temperatures dropped a bit today from the upper-90’s to the upper-80’s in eastern Henrico. The drought is really bad. I noticed some golden rod blooming, but most other things look like they are more interested in simply surviving as opposed to putting on blooms. A big front is headed our way and appears to be creeping to the east. We might actually get some rain tomorrow!
Today was a busy day in my bee world. The first story centers around a trip to Charles City and a rob-out. I have decided to reduce the number of established hives in my home yard (I suppose I should call it the Wilton Apiary, as I now have three locations with hives.) I had moved two of my most recent splits (Apache and Bob) to Charles City last weekend, to hopefully cease the robbing, to a small pond on my folk’s land. This is what I will call my Goose Pond Apiary, after the natural swimming hole that my grandfather built on the property. I had identified another spot, about a mile or so away, on a piece of land that my father and aunt own, which we call Mountcastle, so this will be my Mountcastle Apiary. It is here that I wanted to place two of my established hives, along a cut-over that is about 4 years old and about 400 yards from a beaver pond.
Although I have moved Nuc’s and single super (always Deeps) hives before, I had never moved an established hive. All of my established hives are working two deeps (full) at least. I cannot pick that weight up, so I needed to get them on a trolley. To do that, I would have to break them apart. Sealing them up for the move and then breaking them apart to move them would have defeated the purpose (bees would have surely been everywhere.) So, I took a different course of action.
Around 10 am, yesterday, I broke the Albo hive apart and placed them on the trolley, about 3 feet from the original location (and 1 foot down). The bees were pretty good about it, considering my normal adventures with opening hives this time of year, and everything went smoothly. I now had the hive setup, on the trolley, and the foragers were slowly finding their way back to it. The plan was to come back after dark, screen up the entrance and use a tie-down to ratchet the whole thing together and then ratchet it (again) to the trolley. Of course, it didn’t work out as expected.
Right at dark, I checked on the hive to discover that they were bearding all over the front of the bottom deep. A solid mass of bees – in the dark! I kept going back every 30 minutes and could see no change. I could not screen up the entrance without losing a ton of bees. Finally, I went to bed and set my alarm for 4 am to check again. I vaguely recall the alarm going off and being very annoyed with it, as I yanked the plug out of the wall and went back to sleep…
So, come morning, I went out to check on them. The beard was gone at 6:15. I was somewhat frustrated and didn’t even screen up the entrance. I toted the hive onto the trailer and off to the Mountcastle Apiary I went! I was able to get them on a decent spot on the ground and step back and watch. After a few moments, several bees came out and began to fly around. This hive has a ton of stores, brood and eggs. No matter what happened in this ride, they should be fine. One hive down, one to go.
Since I was in Charles City, I decided to swing by the Goose Pond Aviary while I was at it. I wanted to see how much syrup the hives had eaten. The Bob Hive was fine. It was still working on the syrup. I briefly looked in and there were a lot of bees covering the four frames. Things looked good. The Apache Hive, however, looked desolate. I opened her up and found about 50 bees and no honey, brood or anything (except a few small hive beetles…). Amazingly enough, I also found the daggone queen. Bees were piled up in the front of the deep and in the robber screen. The food was all gone. It appeared to me that I had a definite rob out. This hive was suffering to begin with. I guess moving it did not help out much.
I took the hive back home and decided to try to start one more split. It’s unlikely that I can get it to stick, but this time I will not be dropping a frame of honey into it. I actually took one frame of bees and capped brood, each, from Geronimo and the Queen-right Westover split (I am going to simply call this one Westover from now on, since they still have that huge, black queen that I picked up with my first swarm) and one partially drawn frame that had some bees on it from the Queen-less Westover Split. I now have them in a Nuc, completely sealed up (I sprinkled a few drops of water on the top of the frame and put them in the shade.) They are not really ‘sealed up’, as they have a robber screen (so they have access to air), but they cannot leave the hive, nor can anyone get in. My plans for this one will hopefully be to combine it with the remains of the Apache Hive tomorrow (or I might just catch the queen and drop her into the queen cage that I picked up from Bobby, doing a normal queen introduction.)
I returned home for some serious work. I needed the frames for the new split and this was the perfect reason to go ahead and do some inspections. I have started to track my inspections in a notebook, since I have too many hives to track them well in this blog, so the highlights include:
The Westoversplit is strong. They are working on the top Illinois Super (they are running a Deep and a Medium super) with lots of honey and pollen stored.The William Byrd hive (the queen-less Westover split) is slam full of bees, although I know that they are fairly old. I did notice where one of the queen cells was torn apart, although I could see no evidence of the other two that I noticed 19 days ago. After some hard looking, I found a frame of eggs. I never did see the queen and did not see any capped brood or larva, but I am thinking that is normal. This will be my first successful queen rearing in my own yard, so I am very hopeful. The William Byrd hive has so much nectar and honey stored that I was tempted to take some, but I didn’t. When I split them, I gave them a few of the frames from the Medium Super that was on top of the parent hive. The next day, I dropped a deep between the bottom deep (with all of the bees) and the Illinois super. They have so far only done very minor work on the middle deep. I took two frames of honey and moved them up into the top deep and replaced those with the barely drawn frames from above. I hope this will encourage them to begin work on these frames.
As expected, the Geronimo Hive was very strong. They had nearly finished drawing out the two frames of foundation that I snagged from them for the original Apache split. They had several frames that were solid pollen (and I noticed several bees laden down with pollen on the frames.)
The final note regards the Blue Cottage hive. They have grown respectably to a 4.5 frame Nuc. I moved them to a full deep today and took the Nuc’s for my new split experiment. Unfortunately, I did find wax moth larva on the bottom and killed them all. I will have to watch that hive a bit closer. I am thinking about moving it, along with the Westover Hive, out to my two new apiaries this evening. We shall see!
