Feeding Records | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Nuc Check – Queen Cup and Cranky

Berkeley Hive
Found larvae, eggs & capped brood
Did not find queen
The bottom deep was wall to wall capped brood (the outside frames were nectar/honey)
Bees had finished Tom Fifer’s 4th frame and were working on two of my frames, effectively on 6 frames now.
Found 1 queen cup. Hive was a bit crankier then I am used to when it comes to a Nuc.
Pests: Spotted and squashed one large small hive beetle.

Since my last, multi-hour adventure with all of the hives, I have decided to break my inspections of the hives up a bit, giving me less hives to check per adventure. Today was the first in the rotation and I chose the Berkeley Hive, one of my new Nuc’s.

This hive has been showing good, eating a nice bit of syrup and having good activity at the entrance all week. Since I have them next to the cantankerous Westover Hive, I keep a close eye on them to make sure that no robbing is going on. Interestingly enough (or, I should say sadly enough), I did witness evidence of a bit of fighting right after I hived them, but that was not due to robbing. I have 3 top hive feeders (4 more were ordered a week ago, so more are on the way) and I had lent one to Pop for his Nuc. That left me with two for my Nuc’s but I was using one on the Westover Hive. I had let it go dry, but when I moved it from one hive to the other, about 8 bees from the Westover Hive were still in it. I went ahead and plopped it on top of the hive and hoped they would join the workforce of the Nuc. Well, instead (at least one of them) they went on a commando mission (or maybe my bees attacked them.) Regardless, the reason I know this is that I saw one bee leave the hive and jump around on the landing area with another bee attached to him. As I watched, I realized the other bee was a black bee from the Westover Hive, but it was attached to the Berkeley Hive bee (believe it or not, but it appeared to have its mouth securely fastened to the Nuc bee’s wing!) As the poor battle-worn veteran tried to deal with this nuissance, I used my hive tool to cut the dead bee in half (it was attached to her wing, remember?) Unfortunately, having the head of one’s enemy attached to your wing is not a good feeling, as she jumped to the ground and began hopping around, rolling over and doing all sorts of other things to get it off. I couldn’t help any further without damaging her, so I left her be. I hope she worked it out!

Regardless, the inspection was good. The bees had done a good job of finishing out the 4 frames they came in and were working on two more. One was really getting a good draw. I never saw that rascal of a queen, but found both larvae and eggs. The eggs were dead centered and solo, so no laying worker nonsense. I also found one queen cup and one worker was really doing something in there, sticking her head down a good way. There was nothing for it, at this stage, so I did not really investigate. I’ll be sure to locate that frame (second to last of the originals from Tom) a week from now to see what we have going. I have heard that supercedure is a common practice for packages and it happens with Nuc’s too. I have no idea what I’ll do if that cup becomes a cell…

Now that the investigation was over, I put a gallon of syrup in the feeder and let them be. I must say that they were flying about in an angry manner, although I saw none actually land and try to sting me. There was a lot of posturing, but I have learned to ignore that. A storm is brewing to the NW, so maybe that had them on edge.

Syrup out again!

The Westover Hive now has me wondering if they are pulling a prank on me. They are eating syrup like I have never seen a hive suck it down. The real proof will be in the next inspection, which I hope to do over the next few days and certainly on Friday at the latest. I will probably break the whole hive apart for the last time until July or something. Realistically, I just hope that they have drawn out a good portion of the top Deep and capped a bunch of honey. In a perfect world, they have drawn out 8 or 9 frames and are ready for a daggone honey super! I will put one on them, just to see what they do, but I will probably look to do a split of this hive.

This is my first swarm, so I have nothing to compare it against. I wonder if the very nature of a swarm is to build up this quickly. I can only compare it to the two Nuc’s that I picked up in May of last year and this hive is beating them hands down. This makes me wonder if this hive is a better ‘bee’. Or is it just the nature of a swarm? The other variable is the weather. Is the weather so much better this year that all bees are building up nicely? The proof will be in the pudding when I open up the two established hives this weekend. They should have done some serious work on the supers by now. If they haven’t, it will be more of an incentive for me to do the split on the swarm and try to increase my apiary with that gene pool.

Who knows. Come this weekend, I’m sure I will have some totally unexpected experiences and embarking on a course of action that I could not have foretold.

Hive 1 : Filled Feeder

This morning I filled Hive 1 up with sugar syrup. I put about a container and a half in their feeder. This is not a good measure, as a container is a kitchen pitcher that I have. The next feeding I will use something that I know what the volume of it is.

The goal is for them to eat all of this up (this hive eats like the devil) by this weekend when I hope to get MegaBee supplement into the hive.

Honey Bees Eating Syrup and Another Training Flight!

Although I have been waffling on looking at the hives this weekend, I finally decided to basically let them be with respect to an actual frame inspection. I did, however, observe them externally on several occasions and frequently checked the hive-top feeders that I put on them earlier this week. As always, the two hives are not working at the same rate.

Yesterday, I had checked both hive-top feeders a couple of times. I never noticed any bees eating the syrup. In fact, except for 1 lone bee flying around in the feeder section in Hive 2, I never noticed any bees in the feeder section at all. This all changed today (I wish I had snapped a picture of it.) In Hive 1, the bees were in the feeder entrance thick as flees! In Hive 2, nothing. The more that I read up on feeding, the bees take up the syrup to help them build out more comb. Next weekend, I should see a substantial increase in comb. Hive 2 continues to struggle, at least from external observations.

As a final note, I once again found the bees outside of Hive 1 doing the Training Flights and actually snapped a picture this time. The picture definitely does not do justice to this event. Honey Bees are all over the place, climbing on the front of the brood chamber and flying all about in front of the thing. It appears to be a very positive sign.