This is a category for things that I need a reminder for. There are mostly things related to Hive Investigations, but they can be related to any general ‘To Do’ item.
Now that my extraction fun is over, I have a good moment to rest and enjoy several of my other hobbies. The main task that I tackle in July focuses on my starter hives (those hives that I started this year that have NOT built out the brood nest yet). I try to watch them once a week, although it can go longer if things appear to be going well on the outside. I am primarily checking my top feeders, to add another gallon or two of feed. The goal is to get these hives with a drawn out Deep & Medium by October or so and let them roll through the Winter. Since these hives are in my backyard, it’s not a time intensive task at all.
The second task that I focus on is next year’s equipment. Although Winter is a great time to put frames together, I personally like to get my supers put together (for next year) from July to September. These are typically great months to paint, due to high temperatures and dry weather, so I like to knock it out now. I can honestly say that having all of your equipment ready in March is a true dream. You can focus solely on what your bees are doing, instead of hustling to get everything put together and painted. Plus, a super painted now does not ‘stick’ like a super painted a month before it is used!
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…
When Wade Murray purchased a Nuc from me, he videoed nearly the entire purchase which included a look at the Nuc that he purchased (which corresponded with my commentary about what you should look for when purchasing a Nuc) and a good period of Q&A as he was getting ready to start his first hive of bees.
June in my Bee-yards near Richmond, Virginia takes on a new dimension from the first few months of the year. To begin with, the workload reduces a lot. I am no longer trying to do a full inspection of every hive. In truth, some of the full inspections (top to bottom, pulling every frame) wane in early May. But, by early June, I am simply taking a super or two off to have a look at the super they are working on, in case they need another honey super. I rarely pop more then 3 frames from the super to get a good feel for where they are before I put it back. The only exceptions are the hives that need a bit of extra care (such as splits done in May.) I make sure to have a look at the brood nest (a few frames at least) once a month from now on.
The other change primarily takes place in my Home Yard. Most (if not all) Hive Starts in the yard should be out of here (and onto outyards) by the end of the month. As mentioned last year, I found it to be extremely difficult to start late season Nuc’s (or Nuc’s for overwintering) when I had a few full hives in the same yard (it became a robbing bonanza.) So, any increase for the year needs to be ‘out da door’ by the end of this month. I seriously doubt that will happen, but that’s the goal. I have 3 more hives leaving this Friday (that will put my outyards at 7 and my hive count at 23!), but there are 11 more starts still in the yard. At least 4 are on the verge of having ‘beekeeper regicide’ performed on them (which might convert them to the Overwintering Program) I think it is reasonable to expect me to go into the Winter with 30 hives and 3 or 4 Nucs for overwintering this year, but who knows what will happen.
I also ramp up my syrup feed (if I still have increase hives that have not drawn out the bottom deep and top medium) to a straight 1:1 mix. I have no idea why this is the case, but my bees draw wax fine in my backyard on 2 parts water to 1 part sugar until around the June time-frame, when they simply stop taking it (on average.) But, if I ramp up the mix to 1:1, they go back to drawing wax and sucking down the syrup. In truth, I should look into upping the mixture in May, because they take the stuff at a pace that is very much higher then the pace they were taking the 2:1 mix when I start it. Next year, I might start the new mix in mid-May.
In closing, the weather continues to be pretty good for the bees (nectar still coming in at a good rate!), although it is extremely hot for the beekeeper. I look forward to my first round of extracting in a week or two and will report back the successes (and, more likely, failures) then.
It’s been one heck of a Spring. My beekeeping pretty much consumes 80% of my spare time, although I have managed to get my garden in the ground. The weather in Richmond, Virginia has been super, in my area. We could use a bit more rain, but we’ve definitely had enough to keep the flowers blooming and full of nectar. Holly started blooming nicely in my area and the Tulip Poplar has been putting on a real nice bloom the last week. My supers are filling up quickly.
But, there have been quite a few lessons along the way. I learned a good lesson with raising queens from swarm cells. I cannot simply put a frame with bees and a queen cell into a small (3 frame) Queen Castle section and expect good results. In most of the sections, I only included that frame and a frame of honey and one with pollen. The problem, I believe, was not including a full frame of capped brood with each one. Of the 6 that I started, only two had a decent amount of brood (the rest where queen cells on the bottom of honey frames). Those two ended up with laying queens. The other four ended up with nothing that I could find. In all cases, I saw the queen the first couple of weeks after she hatched, but somewhere along the way, she vanished. Without the capped brood, I suppose there were not enough bees in the cell to tend to her needs. I may have monkeyed with them too much too, as I was enthralled with watching the progress (and those 6 starters were just experiments anyway – I wanted to learn.) On a positive note, all of the queens that I started normally (in Nucs with 1 brood, 1 pollen, 1 honey, 1 partially drawn empty and 1 foundation) have done very well. In fact, one of them is literally building up almost as fast as a swarm! That queen is on steroids. I only had one queen that I was not happy with (poor brood build up) and I killed her, letting them raise another one as we speak. The bottom line is that I am very comfortable making Nucs now and will definitely make a few to sell next year (I will probably sell a few this year, since I have more then I want at this point.)
Another lesson that I learned was to have patience with the queens. Most of my queens do not start laying on Day 25 and one waited until Day 41! I do think that I ended up losing a couple of viable queens due to my impatience this year (there were TONS of dead bees after two of my combines) and, looking back, I only gave the queens 31 and 34 days to show signs of laying. I really need to have patience with everything related to bees. I have been told that I have the patience of Job, due to the projects that I start related to growing trees and shrubs, but that is clearly not the case with the bees. When you know that the flow is on, you want all of your bees to be kicking at 200%. I am constantly worried that I need to do something with a hive or queen to make sure they are hitting on all cylinders. I need to remember my lessons from last year – let the bees do their own thing and stop messin’ with ’em!
I will close with a dumb error. The Westcastle swarm was building up strong. It was definitely the original, old queen (as opposed to a secondary swarm with a virgin queen) and she pretty much started laying on Day 1. Those bees were taking down the syrup nicely, as they build up all of the fresh wax. After about 10 days, they were 90% done with the deep and I dropped a medium on them. I put 2 gallons of syrup on them, thinking it would tide them to the next weekend. Once the week was up, I went to check the feeder and expected it to be empty so that I could give a peak inside (this hive was going to get moved to an outyard back on the 22nd.) But, only about half of the syrup had been taken… This was a drastic slowdown, but I figured it was because the main flow was on. Finally, I checked yesterday and there was still about a gallon left! Frustrated, I gingerly removed the feeder and attempted to pour it into a nearby pitcher. Finally, I could check on the hive. What the heck!?
To my dismay (cheered on by a couple of foul words out of my mouth), I had put a super full of empty, foundationless frames on them! Good lord. They had drawn wax all over the center of the frames, exactly perpendicular to how the frames sit (across several frames.) I had to pull it all out and put it in a tray in front of the hive. They began to work on it (getting the honey out to take back into the hive), while some tried to work on me (for messing up all of their hard work.) I marked the queen (Blue, for last year) and put a super of foundation on them. I’ll check the feeder in a couple of days to see what we have. Hopefully, they will go back to consuming a lot of it and drawing out the Medium. I want to get a frame of eggs from them to secure the bloodline and then move them to one of my Varina outyards (aka my honey and drone yards for the Nucs that I raise in my backyard.)
I guess that was not my last point, as it occurred to me that I have one other big lesson for this year. Four times, I have noticed swarm prep (either actual swarm cells or back-filling of the brood nest.) In all four times, I took the old queen and (in some cases) half of the queen cells. In all cases the bees swarmed anyway. Although I will take old queens with solid history in the future, it will not be because of a swarm management strategy. I will try something else on that. I can say that the one time that I did prevent a swarm (and who really knows if they were going to swarm or not) was when I took the old queen at the first sign of massive drone laying (something I had learned, this year, was a precursor to other swarm prep), it did stop the swarm and the bees appear to have built up nicely even without a queen through late March and early April.
But, who knows. I might be learning the exact wrong things. Regardless, I will continue to use my experiences to drive my adventures and mishaps!
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.)
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.)
It’s been a really wild week and the roller coaster ride continued through yesterday. Hopefully, I was able to get off this daggone thing. This will probably be a long post, but I want to get this stuff down (for future reference) before the old brain loses it.
Larry has been the focus of my ventures this past week, based on my assumption that it had cast two swarms. I finally was able to get into the hive yesterday, after work. After what I discovered, a bit of a history check is worthwhile.
Larry was a hive that I purchased from a fellow last year (along with the Moe and Curly hives). He was getting out of the business, didn’t treat and had hives for a good price. But (and this is key), he had a weird setup. He ran with Shallows over Deeps. I run Mediums over Deeps, so I dropped a Medium on the hives and put a feeder on them to help them out (it was July when I got them.) They never finished the Medium, although they did get some capped honey on 60% of the frames. I left them in a Deep-Shallow-Medium setup.
So, in late February, as I did my initial Spring chores, I swapped the Shallow and the Medium without looking at the frames (I could see capped honey from the top of the Shallow and was in a hurry, so I assumed it was all honey.) A week later, when I did actually pull the frames, I found a good bit of brood in 5 of the Shallow frames, with bees still tending them. So, I had a bunch of nurse bees in the Deep and fair number in the Shallow and a Medium super that was nearly full of honey separating them. At the time, I was annoyed that I broke up the brood nest, but the hive was so strong I let it be.
Well, I now think this has something to do with the strange occurrences in Larry. On March 19, I discovered swarm cells and took several frames from Larry, including several of the queen cells (that have hatched in Nucs already) and the old queen. Two weeks later, I hived two swarms from Larry, both of which are already building up nicely. I broke them apart yesterday and found 11 more queen cells (at this point, I would insert a very nasty word if I was not a God fearing man.) Very little brood is in this hive now and I could find no eggs or a queen. At this point, I became a bit frustrated (yes, I do become frustrated with these little wenches on occasion.) I took 6 more frames from this hive, each with at least 1 queen cell, and put them in my two new Queen castles (for raising queens later this year…assuming I ever get to that point.) I then took a Deep of honey off of the William Byrd Hive (they ended up with a Deep-Medium-Deep setup last Fall) and added the resources to these new setups. I am fine with losing some of these. It is more of an experiment then anything (I have one that is nothing but a shallow frame of bees – hardly any at all.)
Then, today, I go into my Nucs and the sections of the Queen castles and actually find TWO virgin queens on one of the Queen Castle sections (these are three frames wide, each). I took one and gave it to my weakest QC (Queen Castle) setup (the one with only a shallow of brood/honey/bees). I found two other queens that had hatched and even saw one in the midst of hatching! It looked to me like the daggone queen was face forward – the bees were tearing the cell off of her and I got a good shot of tail.
Being completely fed up with the daggone shallow (and now thinking that maybe I have two sets of bees working at odds with each other in the same hive), I took the daggone thing off the hive, made sure it had a queen cell and created a split with it (adding an empty Medium above it.)
The bottom line is that I now have 2 swarms, a shallow split, an old queen Nuc, 4 hatched queens (2 Nuc, 2 QC) and 3 setups with 1 or more queen cells from this hive – over a period of almost a month. And the original hive continues on! I’m not sure if I missed a swarm (or two), but I think that this last adjustment should set them back a bit. I am actually tired of this now. I just want them to go into build up (and provide a little honey maybe…Hello?)
I’m sure there would be many opinions on what is going on with Larry. At this point, I honestly believe that separating those nurse bees with a full Medium super of honey must have made them start acting like two different hives. They were all in swarm mode when I separated them and then continued on that path, separately, afterwards. Who knows. I have now removed the problem super (replacing with an empty Medium) and taken a ton of frames and bees from them. They have a lot of work to do. If they swarm again, so be it. That’s one for the wilds. My only focus on future checks for this hive is that they actually did end up with their own queen who is happy to stay around.
On another note, grabbing a queen is not a simple thing. It might be my fingers, but I couldn’t get a handle on the queen that was on a frame with another queen. Finally, she flew off. I saw her land on the frame again a few seconds later and ended up using one of those queen grabbers. I want to mark my queens this year. It is turning out to be much harder then I expected. But, the QC queens will give me plenty of practice.
Ideally, your typical beekeeper tries to manage his hives at or above 50 degrees F. Once you drop below 50, the bees are forming into a cluster (once she hits the mid-30’s, the full cluster is tightly formed). Opening a hive at that point can disrupt the cluster and expose your brood to low temperatures (killing it.) This is all well and good for the fellow who can look into his hives on any day that is suitable, but I am not in that boat.
Today, we do not expect the weather to get above 38 to the east of Richmond, Virginia. I work during the week and will be heading to Florida on a small vacation next weekend. Basically, Saturday (yesterday) was my last chance to look into the hives for at least 10 days or so. But, the temperatures were not expected to go above 49 degrees…
Well, temperatures be damned. I had things to do (as in hives that might be going into swarm mode!) and we’ll see if it has any long lasting negative consequences. For the most part, I tried to make my inspections quick, but some took longer then hoped. My primary goal for yesterday was to inspect the new Mosely Hive (Mandy, the lady whose property it is on, indicated that they were looking very active – as if they might be prepping to swarm), the Geronimo Hive and the Curly Hive for possible swarm activity. Finally, I wanted to look in on the weak/failing queen hive (I had decided that I would collect brood/eggs from one of my strong inspections to put in with the weak hive that had the siamese twins queen cells).
I found one queen cell in Geronimo – in the supercedure position. One queen cell in the middle of a frame does not a swarm cell make, especially at this time of the year. Although I never laid eyes on the queen, I did find eggs (standing straight up, which means (to me) that she was in action in the last 18 hours). Being greedy, I stole the frame with the swarm cell on it. Here was the only problem of the day – I could not find the queen in this box. She did not appear to be on the frame that I took, but I cannot guarantee it. The problem was the temperatures and the wind. Geronimo pretty much sits on a hill that overlooks Downtown Richmond and countryside to its southeast of the city, literally. It was really gusty and I knew that I was putting a lot of brood at risk messing around looking for the queen. I found several frames of eggs and decided that was enough. If I accidentally took the queen, the old weak hive would benefit from it and Geronimo would do just fine building a new queen.
Looking at the rest of the hives, I found no further evidence of swarm behavior (except a lot of Queen Cups in Curly). Finding the queens in both of these hives, I took a frame of brood, eggs and nurse bees with confidence (from both.) So, off to my weak hive to fortify it. Per the previous post, this (as yet unnamed) hive had a baseball-sized brood nest in early March, which only dwindled as the weeks went on. This is apparently the sign of a failing queen. Fortunately, I found two queen cells last weekend. Regardless, to be safe, I was bringing them 3 frames of brood, two with eggs and one with a queen cell on it.
I opened up the weak hive to find enough bees to cover 4 frames in the top and bottom supers – but only a handful of brood cells. I did pull the frame (carefully) with the Siamese queen cells and noted that both had been opened. 3 seconds later, on the same frame, I spotted the young princess! She was definitely not as big as most of my mature queens (but, it is highly unlikely that she had mated yet, which will make her abdomen bigger), but there she was – hopping about the frame, raising and lowering her abdomen (I think this was mainly to warm herself up.) This was encouraging, to be sure. I decided to give them one frame of brood with nurse bees (not the frame that might have the Geronimo queen) and take the remainder back to my house to start a ‘walk-away’ Nuc.
It will be interesting to see how this Nuc fares. Under ordinary circumstances (is there such a thing in Beekeeping?!), I would not try to start a Nuc on a day that is cool to begin with (probably at 45 degrees F when I finally put it together in my Nuc yard) which is going to be followed up by a day that will not get above 35 or so with rain/sleet to boot! It seems to me that the bees (from 3 different hives) are not going to get much time to organize themselves. The good thing is that we only have 36 hours of this mess, so hopefully there will be minimal casualties before they are able to take inventory and move on as a single hive.
As to the queen cell in the Nuc, I am ambivalent about it for the most part. In truth, I would sort of like them to be queenless for about 8 days, when I can drop a frame of eggs from a really good hive into them and let them start some queen cells for me. But, we’ll see how it goes.
My four (maybe 5) day Honey Bee weekend continues to be the adventure that my first day of beekeeping was. My goal today had simply been to put up 4 swarm traps and check my hives at Goose Pond Lane. One of those hives was acting very weird (baseball-sized brood nest on 4 frames) a few weeks back. I fellow beekeeper, to the west of Richmond, Virginia, mentioned it might be a failing queen. I wanted to see if that ole gal was still putting out a few eggs or not (if not, I was going to give them a frame from the Amped Up Westover hive, across the road. Well, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men…
Yesterday evening, I posted some more bee experiences and then checked on a couple of Richmond-area beekeeping blogs that I monitor. The fellow in Buckingham was making splits! I have been talking about making Nucs for weeks now – reading his post (matched with my experiences with the Westover Hive yesterday) had me thinking – I need to get on the ball! So, my first task today was to create at least one Nuc off of Larry.
As a reminder, Larry has a Deep, then a Medium and then a Shallow. I assumed that nothing but honey was in the Shallow and only a bit of brood was in the Medium. So, I went directly to the Deep. I had two Nuc boxes handy, but was only going to do one Nuc, unless I found a bunch of frames of eggs. Ha!
I started on the Deep and pulled one frame of pollen to match one of my frames of honey that I had pulled from a hive earlier this year. Three spaces left to find the queen and put her, with some brood and hopefully a bit of open comb (for laying) in. Made it through the whole Deep with a quick check and no Queen – is she in that Medium? There was nothing but honey in that Medium a ONE week ago, and capped to boot. But, maybe she was in there.
She wasn’t in there, but something of note was in there. The first frame that I pulled had the regular drone brood on the bottom of the frames. Most had been pulled apart when I separated the two supers. But, one looked odd. Looking back on it, I laugh at myself now. ‘Wow, I have never seen such a big drone – and hanging straight off the comb‘ was my first thought when I saw the exposed pupae. Then I looked closer. Daggone it! That’s a daggone capped queen cell! Sheesh. I had just read (maybe in Increase Essentials) the last night or two where, once in swarm mode, the old queen hits the road when the swarm cells are capped! So, now my mind is racing. Am I too late? Have they already swarmed? I found it hard to believe they had swarmed. Bees were 2 and 3 levels deep on some of those frames. Keep your eye on the ball, Jones.
Two more frames and now I am looking at 2 capped swarm cells and one they they are still feeding. Despair is setting in. Not sure what I am going to find, I go with the positive outlook and scan those frames real hard for the queen again. No queen. I place that frame in my spare Nuc (this one is now going to be a Nuc with swarm cells.) I keep at it.
Before I finish the Medium, I find two more frames with 2 or more swarm cells. I leave them in the primary box and keep looking for that damnable queen. Has she flown the coop? No queen, but she really went to town laying. They either ate that honey or moved it within the last week, as there was tons of capped brood.
Hitting the shallow, I am now committed to going through all of the boxes again. That queen can’t be gone! The shallow surprises me as it, too, is full of brood, although at a later stage then the Medium. Not a swarm cell on these (that I saw, anyway). Back to the Deep.
The bees in the Deep are pissed now. I am not smoking them, but a few come off and sting my glove. I am thinking this is because they have been without their queen (who must be in that worthless Medium). But, after going through 7 frames, I find her! Bonzai! Whoohoo! I put the grand ole lady into the original Nuc and then, feeling like the King of Bees, shook several frames of brood in both boxes. I double checked the honey/pollen stores in both Nucs and then fortified the original hive with several frames of foundation (they have some time to draw out the wax, waiting for their new queen(s) to come out.)
All in all, not what I planned for today, but I am feeling good about it. No matter what happens (unless I lose all three), it will be a learning experience. I might even go into Larry to steal one of the swarm cells (there are several capped and uncapped still in that box.) But, that’s a task for tomorrow.
