Beehive Reminders | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Always Start with Two

The weather around Richmond, Virginia continues to be outstanding. It actually hit 84 degrees today, breaking the previous record from back in the 1920’s. Dandilions are in full bloom, as are pears, peaches, plums and apricots. A friend down near Shirley Plantation indicated that her bees were covering the flowering quince in her neighbor’s yard. Basically, there’s a lot of forage out there (even though the official start to my flow, the tulip poplar bloom, has not happened yet.) My findings in the hive inspections for today only confirmed this – as well as reminding me that it’s a daggone good thing that I started my beekeeping with two hives in the Spring of 2009, and not one.

The general tone of today’s inspections included more hives with just a few capped drone cells (but nothing walking about) and more hives with dozens (if not scores) of capped drone brood and many walking about on the comb. The bottom line is that the hives are building up at different rates. I am a big fan of this early build up. I had one hive today (the Westover Hive) with 6 frames (back and front) of brood in the top medium AND 7 frames (not all were back and front) of brood in the bottom deep. It was nothing short of amazing, compared to my other hives (including my other strong ones.) The amount of bees about to come out of this hive is going to be like a volcano. I found the queen and cannot be sure if this is the same queen from last year’s swarm catch, but it doesn’t really matter. These bees are what I want.

They come from stock that made it through at least 1 Winter before I caught them
They have made it through one year with me, without a lick of medication or even a powdered sugar dusting.
They seemed lethargic during brief forays into the 50’s during the Winter (I hope this means they are frugal)
They build up fast in the Spring

There are other traits that I would like to have, but these are the primary traits that I am looking for at this time of year. I will take at least one Nuc off of them (I’ll probably swipe the old queen (Nuc 1) and a frame of eggs (Nuc 2)). I’ll need to get this done by next weekend – the congestion in that hive is about to go through the roof. I should put up a swarm trap down there this weekend.

The hive beside it (the one that showed more activity in January) is good ole Albo. When I walked up to it, I honestly thought it was my first hive casualty for the year. But, as I unceremoniously removed the inner cover with a loud snap, the tell tale hum of bees could be heard. They are small – maybe at 2 frames of brood with no drones at all – but they are alive. No doubt they will build up and once again fail to provide honey or enough bees for an increase. Albo was one of the first two hives that I started with in 2009. It’s sister hive, Geronimo, has continued to do exceptionally well, whereas Albo just barely survives a Winter (I actually fed them through last Winter, before I adopted my ‘James Bond’ strategy.)

Thank the lord for Geronimo. If I had started with only Albo, who knows what I would be up to today. One thing is for certain, I will be removing that queen this year. As of right now, this is the only hive that I will be requeening this year. They have enough genetic fortitude to make it through the Winter (which is enough for me to let them raise drones for the time being, if they want), but that’s it. I will be using the brood in this hive to fortify my Nuc’s and Queen-breeding boxes, as well as bait for my swarms and/or trap-outs. But, this bloodline will not be with me this Fall.

The final note about my inspections today centers around both the Westover and Berkeley Hives. Both have basically filled up the combs above them and were building honey comb between my inner cover and the top frames (I had not inverted the inner cover yet this year.) Westover had a bunch of comb because I had put a spacer in them to feed them pollen (something I am unlikely to do in the future, but that is a different topic for another day.) So, I have put supers on several hives today, all with some bare foundation to increase my wax stores. The way things are looking today, I would say we could have a real killer of a honey build this Spring (and I still have not purchased an extractor!)

There is an article one of the bee magazines this month about a French beekeeper that stopped medicating a few years ago. He suffered big losses the first few years, but his losses have dwindled substantially now that he has weeded out the chaff (letting those poor hives die off, along with their genetics.) He is actually looking to buy varroa mites, do he can subject his hives to them (and thus weed out more of the weak ones!) I’m not in the market for any varroa, but his experiences over the past couple of years simply cement my resolve to keep up the current plan.

It is clear to me at this point that I have 3 hives that are readying to swarm – and it could happen anytime in the next couple of weeks. I am seriously considering taking two Nucs off of each of those hives (one being the old Queen and one being a frame of eggs.) With my winter Nucs, I honestly have no idea what I would do with 6 more Nucs (plus, my goal was to only start 4). I might just do a simple split with one of these strong hives. We shall see. But, it’s time to go finish work on the last of my swarm traps. These things need to all be up by the end of the weekend for sure.

The Bee Adventure Continues

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)

At any rate, the beat goes on…

Swarm Management In July

As per the last post, it appears that the Geronimo hive either already swarmed or was preparing to swarm at the end of July. After making that post, I did a lot of online research and found that it is actually quite natural for bees to cast a swarm at this time, even though the odds of survival are low. It is very much as I wondered in the last post, ‘we will throw one simply because we can, and if they make it, we have performed our role in the grand scheme of Darwinism. If it does not make it, we are still strong enough to go into Winter with a good store and continue on next year, possibly even swarming again in the Spring.’

A chart of average/typical hive population actually shows this situation by having a brief population increase going into July/August and then a bit of a drop thereafter. There are a lot of interesting things to consider with this theory. To begin with, this could be considered a form of Varroa mite control. In a swarm condition, you might have 1 to 4 weeks without a single egg being laid. The mite breeds and reproduces in the egg cells, so a lack of said cells (containing fresh eggs or larva) means there is no place to reproduce. This is what the experts call ‘interrupting the mite cycle’. Since July and August are big times for mite increase, it is the perfect time to cast a swarm (probably a small one) and set your mites back just before you have to amp up to go into Winter. The overall theme of my thoughts here is that this type of behavior might be a type of ‘resistant’ gene behavior. It is not illogical to theorize that those bees who were most prone to swarm, when the Varroa mite first appeared on the scene, were the ones to make it through that devastating time. They managed mites by ‘breaking the cycle’ automatically.

You also have to wonder if these bees are not simply prone to swarming. As per my posts this past Spring, when I discovered that I did not have a marked queen, I had not really found that marked queen since July of last year. It was probable then (and even more probable now that I have seen this swarm activity in action) that they cast a swarm last July too. Perhaps these bees simply are prone to do this? In such a dire time (I have hardly had two inches of rain in both June and July, here in central Virginia – plus, June was the hottest June on record and we broke several ‘daily’ temperature records in July), why would bees swarm unless it was simply something they were going to do regardless? Do these bees ‘re-queen‘ themselves automatically?

Add these thoughts to the discovery over the weekend that the Albo Hive was not showing any inclination to swarm (although I will check them again in 10 days or so). They also had very strong stores (without any feeding whatsoever). Why were they choosing not to swarm (a logical decision in my mind, but still a question to ponder in light of Geronimo’s hell bent behavior to the opposite effect!) The real question was ‘what is different, outside of genetics’?

The primary difference is location. The Albo Hive was moved in late June or early July. Did this upset the balance of things? I am fairly certain that they also swarmed last Fall (although maybe it was later, so I have that to look forward to in the next 4 to 6 weeks.) The move could be it, but I am more inclined to believe that it was accidental swarm management on my part, while the hive was at the Wilton apiary. To begin with, I stole a frame of brood & honey from the Albo Hive in early April to catch my first swarm (which became the Westover Hive, and also the later split, the William Byrd Hive – I would call that a good investment). I took another frame from them for my first cut-out (a horrible investment for bees, but pretty good for lessons learned with the Southside Hive) and three more frames from them to do my late June split for the new queens (the jury is still out on whether this was a good investment or not – created the Bob Hive). Effectively, the Albo Hive lost a quarter of their brood frames (5 out of 20 frames in two deeps). When I looked into them this past weekend, they still had three frames to finish drawing out (although, to be fair, they were already storing resources in all frames – they simply were not fully drawn out.) Was this a swarm management tool? Only time will tell, but perhaps creating a late-June Nuc from a hive is a good way to do a bit of Fall swarm management.

At any rate, I have definitely learned one thing that I am taking to the bank (all previous comments are only theories at this time). You should go into your established hives in mid-July and maybe late-July/early-August (in central Virginia) for full inspections, regardless of how brutal the weather is. I did not do this last year and, it would seem, the bees were able to swarm/supercede, raise a new queen and go on with production without me even noticing – until the following Spring! I will be a bit more watchful in the future.

Late July Split

Today, sort of on a whim, I went out to check the Geronimo hive. It has been and remained my strongest hive since starting beekeeping in the Spring of 2009. At the last check, everything appeared to be going smoothly : 4 to 5 frames of pollen, 4 to 5 frames of capped honey in the two bottom deep suppers, 10 frames of drawn comb in the top medium super (with a few that had patches of capped honey). Add to this a healthy dose of eggs, larva and capped brood and I figured things were great. With the dearth coming on in the midst of a drought here in Richmond, Virginia, my expectations for today’s inspection were to find mostly the same with perhaps a bit less stored honey (they should be eating into some of the Spring stores now.)

Queen Cells — My Bees Decide to Cast a Swarm

Of course, that’s not exactly what I found. They did have a good amount of pollen and honey socked away, in addition to the fact that they were about half finished in drawing out a couple of frames of foundation that I had given them when I took some capped brood to start those Nuc’s for the new queens that I picked up last month. But, they also had about 10 swarm cells, 4 of which were torn open…

So, here we are in the worst time in the world for bees to go off and build a new hive and my bees have either already sent the original queen on her way (I did not find the little wench, but did find larva) or were about to. The fact that I found larva says that the queen has been here in the last week. She may still be in the hive. As to the queen cells that were torn open, they could mean a million different things (of course!), each dictating a different strategy by me!

For example, it is possible that they made hatched queens (and my old queen already swarmed), but these queens have not gotten around to killing the inhabitants of the other cells (I spent a good many minutes examining three of my larger, unhatched queen cells for evidence of Queen regicide). It is also possible that the bees tore them apart because of some failure of the queen larva (maybe she had some mites in there with her…) In fact, I have include a picture in this post that has to be an example of that. The cell’s cap is still intact, whereas the side of the cell is torn open… When a queen emerges, she comes through the end (well, that’s how everyone else’s queens emerge – it wouldn’t surprise me one bit of my queens did it differently from all of the bees of the last several hundred thousand years…) There are a million possibilities, but knowing the answer really wouldn’t help me with my current situation. I still had 7 or so cells, on frames all over the hive, to deal with.

Queen Cell Just Before Being Capped — Still Feeding this Queen Wanna Bee

I personally do not believe in destroying the queen cells unless you are so late in the season that the drone level may be too low to mate with the virgin. I had decided that I would try to find the queen and move her to a Nuc, where I could then take action later (my 4 Nuc’s for overwintering may need a queen at some point or maybe I would just overwinter 5 Nuc’s – but, judging from the issues with a couple of the Nuc’s, I was pretty sure that one would need a queen over the next month or so.) At that point, my hive would think they had swarmed already and the first queen to come out would just kill the others.

Unable to find my queen, it made more issues. If she swarmed, these other queen cells might be for after-swarms (what kind of insane bee swarms in this low nectar environment? I would bet big money that they would die out before Fall, if they landed in some tree hollow out there.)

Again, I had to focus. Deal with what you know. I had a bunch of viable queen cells and a probability that these bees might swarm again (or maybe were getting ready to swarm for the first time). So, I split the hive, giving equal parts brood, pollen and honey to both splits. I have come to grips with the fact that they are going to need feeding. I honestly was not looking to increase further this year, but now I am wondering about the Albo hive (my second strongest hive), out in Charles City at the Mountcastle Apiary.

At any rate, more to come on this developing situation tomorrow or Sunday. I do know that I will be a bit more active in looking at the strong hives in July going forward (when time allows.) I would have liked to have gotten ahead of this before the cells had even been capped. I hope to go through the splits again tomorrow and finally locate the queen, assuming she is still in there.

Failures and Successes : Moving Established Hives and a Rob-out

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 Westover split 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!

Where to begin…

My love of beekeeping is becoming an obsession, according to my wife. Regardless, I truly love it for the educational experience that it is. Everyday is a new experience.

Today, I created another new split, introduced queens to two new splits (one of them being the one that I created today), checked on the Geronimo hive after a long time letting them alone, received a swarm call and collected the swarm. That’s a lot for a day! As I want to record my experiences as a reference, I will focus primarily on the inspection and the splits.

My first task this morning was to introduce one of my new queens. Two days ago, Doug Ladd alerted me to a gentleman by the name of Bobby, outside of Rice, Virginia, that had some queens with some very good genetic history. I believe they are F1 hybrids off of a pure strain that is very hygienic (which means that they clean the varroa mite off of themselves or maybe remove larva with varroa in the cell with them.) I was interested in some new blood, so I made the trip yesterday and picked up two new queens. I now needed to have some hives to put them in!

I took the queen cage and wiped a tad of water along the edge, since I had made her wait over night on top of my aquarium. I then removed the plug that protected the candy and carefully pushed a small nail through the candy. Bobby advised me to do this, but I was very careful here, as I have read of other folks accidentally impaling their queen during this trick! I think you want to do it to give the bees an idea that they can eat through the candy to get to the queen.

So, I go out to the new hive, which I am going to call the Bob Hive, after my brother’s dog (since these bees came from the Albo hive.) The robber screen had worked and the hive entrance was working as expected now. I knew that I had to be quick. When Bobby showed me how he put the queen cells in, the little cage actually dropped into the bottom of the brood chamber (by accident, of course)! Bobby probably has decades of experience, but I decided to take a frame of foundation and wedge the cage between the wire (I do not embed) and the foundation.

I popped the top of the Bob Hive and removed the inner cover. As I grabbed a frame of foundation, a bee flew up out of the hive, landing on the queen cage and stuck its little tongue down into the cage!!! Ha! It’s supposedly a good sign when you see this, as it means that they are feeding her. But, who would have thought some gal would fly up a few feet above the hive and feed her! At any rate, I wedged the box into placed and lowered it into the hive. The bees pretty much swarmed onto the wire caging. I am not so sure that this was a good sign. They use the term ‘balling’ to mean an aggressive stance. They were so thick on the wiring that I couldn’t tell if they all had their tongues out or were biting at the cage. I had already decided that I would probably lose one of these queens, but it would be a great learning experience, so I pushed it into place, replaced the top and put a mason jar of MegaBee syrup on top. I’ll check back on them in a few days.

On to the inspection and new split creation. Cracking the Geronimo Hive, my absolutely strongest hive, made me once again realize the difference in my gentle hives and the Westover Hive(s). I broke that whole thing apart and do not believe one bee banged into my veil (vs. always a dozen or more when I go this deep on Westover). I will probably requeen the original queen from that swarm next Spring. At any rate, like the Albo hive, they had 5 or 6 Deep frames (both sides) of capped honey. They actually were storing a bit of honey in the Illinois super, so they are doing very well. The brood pattern is insane. If that queen decides to use the whole frame, she literally uses the whole frame. She doesn’t miss. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor. I picked 4 frames out of this hive, including one that was all honey, one that had a bit of pollen and some capped brood, one that was capped brood and larva and one that was sort of misformed (it was on the outside of the Geronimo Hive, and was partially drawn.) I replaced all of these with drawn foundation.

Finally, I moved all of Tom Fifer’s original frames to the outside of the brood chamber, for removal next Spring.

It should be noted that I was prepared with this split, having learned my lesson over the past few weeks. I set the new box up with a robber screen installed. I also created a cover that was easy to remove and replace, as I dropped the necessary frames into it. There was tons of fighting going on in the Geronimo hive as other bees came to steal their honey, but nothing on the new split (a marked difference from my past adventures of late!) A late season split needs careful attention.

Some 10 hours later, I put my second queen into this split, which I will now call the Apache hive. Unlike the Bob Hive, these bees didn’t even act like they noticed her. Not one of them got onto the cage. In fact, the majority of them were face down into the honey cells. I am sure this means something (besides simply that they were hungry), but I will have to wait until tomorrow or Monday to really know what it meant. I put a mason jar of MegaBee syrup on them and that was that.

Well, that was not that, as I was to find out when I received a swarm call around 6:30, but that story will have to wait until tomorrow!

Albo Hive Inspection & Blue Cottage Downsizing

I picked up a couple of new queens today (more on that tomorrow) to replace the queens in the Blue Cottage Hive and Pop’s hive. Basically, these hives have been under performing in my opinion. But, once I got home and mentioned it to Pop, he was incredulous that I had already given up on the grand ladies we picked up less then a month ago. He hasn’t kept bees in a couple of decades, but he has a bit more patience then I do! In the end, his comments were good as it caused me to give the Blue Cottage Hive another thorough inspection today.

This time, I took the time to note exactly where and how much she had been laying. After a good look, it is clear to me that she has pretty much laid in every available cell to her. The pattern is great. The problem is that she did not start off with enough bees to really get a good growth curve going. I have to go back to the old lesson that I have to relearn every month – leave the daggone bees be! I decided not to kill the old girl, but I did move the three frames they were working (really 2.5) along with one frame of foundation that they had started to draw out (about a quarter size,) into a Nuc.A Nuc only holds 5 frames and is a much more defensible position. I have run across several moths hanging under the lid of the cover or on a frame far away from the bees. These are probably wax moths looking to lay eggs (or maybe they already laid eggs.) I wanted to get the bees in a box where they consumed most of the space, hopefully giving them more of a chance to deal with these predators. Unlike the Southside hive, I rarely notice more then one or two small hive beetles here.

This hive will be an experiment for me. If they do not make it or build up enough, lesson learned. If they do, another lesson learned. Hopefully, they’ll get a full five frames drawn out over the next month and I can try to spend August to October getting them to fill out a full brood chamber. Like Doug said in a recent comment, it takes a worker bee 21 days from egg to emerging. The key now is to get them to draw out the remaining frames quickly so that they will get a good population going and I can move them to a brood chamber. Of note, they did have a nice dome of honey and a half frame of pollen. I will switch them to a MegaBee mixture shortly.

Now, I have two queens that need homes. These queens are supposed to be rocking queens, so I do not want to shirk them. I had checked the Southside Hive today, expecting to see a queen laying (although today is the earliest I would see that, according to the Bee Math). Instead, I found two more queen cells (that is really odd to me, as I cannot figure how they could have had any eggs in that hive that would still be in capped cells right now), in addition to a very old queen cell, in the horizontal position, from the original cut out! You’re supposed to put comb in at the same position (up-down) that you find it in the tree. I did not know this when I did my first cut out and just put it in however I could squeeze it. Apparently, they were in the midst of making a new queen when I did the cut-out. Sadly, I did not see that cell and put it in at the wrong direction. I imagine it has a dead queen in it now, although who knows. This might be the target for one of my new queens.

Finally, I had to get at least one small hive started for one of my queens. So, I did a full inspection of the Albo hive. Good lord. These bees are doing everything right but giving me honey. They had a ton of honey in the upper brood chamber and the queen was laying like a mad woman. The pattern was incredible in the bottom chamber. Bar-to-bar eggs. As a side note, I did notice what they call ‘backfilling’, a term Doug introduced me to. The workers have started to fill some of the cells that held brood with honey in the upper deep. As it stands right now, they have more then enough to make it through the Winter. But, they’ll surely eat into it over the next couple of months, so we’re not out of the woods yet. Regardless, this hive has received no feed (except what it probably stole from another hive) or other treatment. I will do a couple of dustings for mites in July/August, but that’s it. This hive has lots of promise.

My final task for this hive was also completed, as I moved all of the old frames that I started with last Spring to the outside of the hive. I will probably remove one or two this Fall, but will definitely remove all 4 next Spring.

Battle Wounds and New Queen Cells!

New Honey Bee Queen Cell — Lone Honey Bee Queen Cell

I spoke to quickly about the war being over. It is really crazy and impossible for me to explain, but I was once again attacked by a bee around my shed, late yesterday. Per my last post, I had previously figured that a few bees has stung my pants or shirt and left their alarm pheremone on me. I assumed that this was sending out a ‘come fight this big galook’ smell to all nearby bees, so I was being attacked both Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, even though I was 80+ yards from the splits (where most of the angry bees) and maybe 60 yards from my other hives (which were not getting riled as I looked closely at their landing boards (periodically) during the same period.) In effect, I was a walking pheromone sponge.

Well, yesterday I threw all of the work clothes in the dirty clothes hamper and washed down thoroughly before making my way out to do some chores. About mid-day, I went to paint a few more Deeps and, low and behold, here she came again! This time, I was tired of it and decided that I would let her sting me. I needed to know if it really was only ONE bee. Finally, she nailed me as I stood there with paint in hand. I stepped back and she kept coming out me (without a stinger now) and went so far as to land on my paint brush, as if to say ‘I own this place, bub.’ Eventually, she went off to die and I was finally left at peace. Not a single attack since then.

I know it sounds insane. I am not really sure I believe it. But, it appears that I had one bee from that split that simply was not going to let it go. A real anger management issue=)

One Capped and One Nearly Capped Queen Cell

Well, on to better news. With all of the hassle around the split hives (specifically the queenless one), I was not looking forward to the inspection today. But, I needed to confirm that they had started some queens. For the past day or so, I had actually started to hope that they had not started any new queens. I could put a frame of eggs from the Geronimo Hive, my strongest gentle hive. But, with the scorching heat, I had changed my mind and hoped that I would find them after all (and thus not be forced to break two daggone hives apart!)

It was on frame 4 that I found the queen cells. That’s right cellS! I found two completed cells, one almost capped and another that was just starting to be drawn out. This last one indicates that I definitely put a frame of very new eggs in with these gals, as the egg in that one is three days old at least! This is all good news. My guess is that one of these queens will hatch in about 10 to 12 days (it takes 16 (give or take) total days, from the laying of the egg to the emergence of the queen), which puts us at Jul 1 to 3. She’ll then chill out with the hive, exerting her authority (killing the other queens that have not hatched yet or even doing battle with one if it does hatch at the same time), and otherwise being useless. Finally, after 4 or 5 days (putting us at July 8), she’ll go out to find the love of her life. Ideally (although it could be later), she’ll be laying by the weekend of July 11. I’ll check them then and, if things are going smoothly, I’ll take them to Charles City to Pop!

I also placed a fresh deep chamber of foundation between the deep brood chamber (bottom) and the Illinois super (top). Finally, I filled up the feeder and let them be. This time, I used a lot of smoke and there was not nearly the same amount of aggravation. But, I did notice a ton of fighting on the landing board. Apparently, I let the cat out of the bag by exposing the hive and letting a bunch of other bees come in and try to steal from them. But, I have very little worries about them. They covered every frame in the bottom deep and several frames in the Illinois super. They are strong and will defend themselves (plus, they are really mean…)

Queenless Split Mad & Hungry

This morning, I made my way over to the garden to see if any of the veggies were showing signs of stress due to the dry period that I’ve been in (Richmond, Va has received some rain, but I have literally been without any rain at all for several weeks – which is really tough on the plants when you have scorching days in the 90’s). Before I even got to within 30 feet of the splits, I had angry bees coming at me. This is a first for me. Every hive that I have, up until yesterday, would let me get within inches of the landing board and take pictures, without getting mad. I am fairly certain these two wenches would have stuck their little surprise into me had I not hit the road.

For most of the morning, I have been trying to figure out what to do next. I need to look at the Berkeley Hive, but I will have to get suited up to do so, primarily thanks to the queenless split off of the Westover Hive. Bees are still in the air, mainly buzzing around where their old landing board was, but also buzzing all over the Queenless split. The real concern (I can get suited up, that’s no big deal) is that these bees might start robbing the young Berkeley Hive when I do an inspection. For some time, I kept saying that I would do it tomorrow, but I finally threw in the towel and went to have a look.

Fully suited, I was able to look at both splits again, both on the landing board and inside their feeders (I definitely did not want to open either right now.) Bees were all over me, definitely upset, before I came within 15 feet or so. But, none put a little stinger in me, primarily because of the bee suit and long pants. Both hives were eating, but the queenless hive had eaten the entire gallon in less then a day. I’m not sure what to make of this, but part of it is probably due to the dry weather. This is probably another ‘do not split your hives when’ rule that I have broken, but I am fine with feeding them copious amounts of sugar for several months, if no rain comes. I might even take Doug’s suggestion of mixing in some mega-bee, although (per my response to his comment) I have never been able to successfully do that before.

In fact, due to the amount of feeding that I might be doing this Summer, I am seriously considering taking Tom Fifer’s strategy of mixing .5 parts sugar to 1 part water. I am going to have to mix a ton of it and, according to Tom, that mixture is closer to nectar’s ratio then 1:1. We’ll see. For now, I am sticking to 1:1 with a tad of Honey Bee Healthy.

The other item of note (maybe of concern?) is that there is still next to no activity on the landing board of the queen-right hive. The queenless hive is covered with bees, but there is not a single one on the queenless hive. Since I could see them eating the syrup, I knew they were in there, but otherwise the hive looks dead. It isn’t, of course, but this is a good tidbit to remember for later splits.

But, onto the task at hand. The Berkeley Hive had nearly 7 frames of bees. 2 of them were only being worked on, but the rest were fully drawn and being used for one thing or another. I only looked at 1 of the frames that was being worked, as the bees from the Westover Hive were still harassing me. I saw one run into the frame that I was looking (she was mainly trying to find a way into my veil, but wasn’t watching to the aft and banged right into some bees on the frame of the Berkeley Hive. Man did they get angry. Up until that moment, not a single bee from that hive had acted upset. When that Westover Bee banged into their hard work, about 10 came off and went for that bee. They never seemed to go for me, but they didn’t have any time for that country trash messing with their stores.

At any rate, it was a good inspection. I removed the feeder that had smelled a bit a few days ago for cleaning and placed a brand new feeder with new syrup on them. I’ve been having a problem finding the right spacers to put on the back of the top feeder to provide a bit of ventilation. Yesterday, I picked up some washers for a trap out that I am going to start in July (or whenever we finally get a good rain) and used two of them on each corner. Stacked two high, it provides ventilation, but bees cannot come and go (and rob.) I’m sure the daggone Small Hive Beetle will use it to their heart’s content, but this hive is mostly clean of them.

That last bit does remind me of note that I want to make about the Westover Hive and forgot to yesterday. I did not see one single Small Hive Beetle when I did that split (and I was looking for them – especially the larva.) Again, it is a mean hive, but maybe that’s what it takes to deal with the problems of the world… On the other hand, stings really do not bother me. But, harassing me while I am in the garden is another thing. They better settle down once they get a queen cell started or I will take other measures. I cannot wait for a queen to hatch to get into my garden. Period.

First Bee Hive Split!

We have passed the mid-point of June and two of my stronger hives are clearly not going to produce any honey this year (well, that’s my estimation – here in Richmond, Virginia (although I am in Henrico), the main flow typically ends in June.) This year, with everything starting so much earlier, it seems logical to me that things will peter out a bit sooner then normal. My June Bearing strawberries were finished by the time June came around this year. My strongest hive has done a great job working a medium super, but I am doubtful of getting honey from this one either.

So, how to I make this a positive season? I decided that I would do a couple of splits. I wanted to give my Pop one split and keep one for myself. Since this is my first year with established hives, I also wanted to let one hive play out for the Summer, just to see what it would do. I decided to let the Geronimo Hive play out. I do not intend to mess with it and want to see what it will do. But, I will split both the Albo Hive and the Westover Hive for my two splits this year. Today, I tackled the Westover Hive.

What is a split? It is simply taking one hive and making two out of it. The complex part comes in ‘how to split.’ The ‘how’ means different things to most folks. For my split, it meant dividing the hive in two. Both of my two target hives have two full deeps (for the brood chamber) and one medium that they are working on (my attempt at getting some honey.) I will divide the frames between the two hives, making sure both have at least one frame of eggs and an equal number of brood and other frame types (stored honey, capped brood, larva, pollen, etc…) Then, the hive with the queen will build up, while the hive that does not get the queen will raise their own. Simple. Heh.

When you read or hear about most splits, they are done in the early Spring, just before the main flow. This is the optimal time to do a split and possibly still get a respectable honey harvest. Obviously, I am doing it after the main flow, which probably puts my splits at risk. My plan is to offer them a lot of feed over the next few months and hope that they build up to two deeps again and stock up for the Winter. We’ll see how it goes.

When I arrived at the Westover Hive, all seemed well. Actually, it seemed calm compared to other days. There was no bearding, but a very active landing board, bees coming and going at a rate of 4 or 5 every second. Since I had seen bearding most of the previous week on all of the hives, I went to check out the others to make sure something wasn’t amiss (did they just swarm?!) As it so happens, all of the hives had fairly empty landing boards (the Geronimo Hive was just starting to do a tad of bearding.) So, it was time to do the split.

The tools that I brought with me were my hive tool, a spray bottle of syrup, my frame clamp (for getting the frames out easier), a camera, and a brood chamber (to hold frames while I divided them up with two frames of foundation (in case I had a problem with Small Hive Beetles or otherwise needed to swap out a damaged frame). I placed four cinder blocks behind the parent hive, facing it, to place my two splits on. The scouts would want to come back to the original location. I decided to place both splits a few feet from this location to hopefully keep the populations fairly even.

I then pulled off the top of the parent hive and cracked the inner cover. Immediatly, about a dozen bee fighter jets came up out of the hive to give me the what’s for. This was more aggressive then I was used to and am definitely coming to the conclusion that this hive is my most aggressive hive. No more excuses. Regardless, I went to work.

I have become fairly oblivious to the regular flight of bees, wearing some shorts my veil and some gloves. But, by the time that I had dealt out 5 frames, I regretted that decision. Two bees landed on my knees and gave me a good stinging. In addition, I now had around a hundred bees buzzing me in the air (a hundred is a lot – when they are butting up against your veil to such a degree that you have a hard time seeing if their are eggs in the comb of a frame, you know you have some irritated bees!) After the stings, I retreated to the house for a drink of water and some long pants…

At this point, I may have made a mistake, but I am thinking that it will work out ok. On frame 6, I finally spotted the queen of this hive. I tried to get a picture, but she melded back into masses before I could get the camera focused on her. She was a big one, to be sure, and her wings looked just fine. But, this is where I learned a good lesson. I had already counted out 2 frames of brood and 1 frame of nectar/honey for both hives. On one, I had confirmed eggs. When I found the queen, I should have placed her on the other one. But, I placed her on the brood chamber that already had eggs. In my mind, I figured that I would find another frame of eggs for sure, but such was not the case.

As I went through the frames, I found several that were probably in the 4 to 6 day range, but did not confirm eggs again (I am sure there were eggs on some of these frames, but I did not spot them.) A 4 day old bee has just emerged from the eggs stage but is still viable for a queen (she is still getting royal jelly.) But, there is no guarantee that I placed such a frame in the queenless hive. I could have gone back to find the frame with the eggs, but the bees were really going crazy at this point. When I would remove a frame, a good 50 or so would leap into the air (joining the rest) and start the attack. The cloud of bees around me became thicker then when I did the tree extraction (I really wish I had gotten that queen now…) I have come to the definite conclusion that these bees are almost more aggressive then I would like (notice the word ‘almost’.) I would like to see how they do when they start the year with a full complement of bees (I am wondering if they will out produce the more gentle bees – they sure work hard.) The bottom line is that I am torn between wanting to breed their work ethic with not wanting to breed their aggressiveness. I would hope to get the former, but with my luck, would only get the latter!

Once I got the hives separated, I put a top feeder on both and put a full gallon on each. Up until today, the parent hive had been drinking about a gallon a day (I was feeding them in preparation for this split.) We’ll see how they do as two hives. It should be noted (for humor’s sake) that I received my second sting when putting on the feeders. When I bent down to grab one of the feeders, it must have opened a small hole in the suit, as I suddenly and eye-to-eye with a pissed off bee. An observer would have gotten a chuckle, as I ran across the field, disrobing as I went. This was a mistake, as a good 50 or so bees followed me and one snagged me on the shoulder as I rounded the corner. The one in the suit never did get me and I was able to set her free once back at the house.

Some other things to note:

I used the bottom board, cover and main brood chamber from the parent hive for the queenless hive
I put the queen right hive in the top brood chamber of the parent hive
I divided the partially (hardly) drawn super in half, effectively putting a medium on top of both hives.

At the end of the event, both hives faced one another with an empty deep between them. I placed a small twig in the entrance to both and stepped back to watch (through a mass of angry bees…) The queenless hive had a ton of bees come out on the landing board, but I did not see any of them fanning. Since this was the landing board from the parent hive, maybe it was to be expected. The queen-right hive had 1 bee come out of it while I watched. Otherwise, no activity. I actually had to check to see if I put the bottom board on wrong. But, it was true – no activity there. Finally, I filled up the feeders and got out of dodge. These bees were not happy. I think I smelled to high heaven of alarm pheremone (from my body, but primarily from my suit and gloves – I had seen a dozen sting the suit/gloves). I probably need to wash the thing now.

As to the egg situation with the queenless hive, I am not concerned. If I do not see a queen cell by next Monday, I will drop a frame of eggs from one of my other (more gentle) hives. I am now a bit worried about the frame of eggs that I took from the Westover Hive to queen up the Southside Hive. We’ll see how that queen does (assuming she hatches and mates successfully.)