Spring | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Walking Drones and New Lessons

Wow, what a Spring in Richmond, Virginia! It is true that this is only my third Spring as a beekeeper, but I have been a gardener and son of a farmer for over 4 decades (which is my whole life…) This Spring is unusual, but it is really working out well for the bees (so far.) The forecast continues to be fairly mild and the only big risk at this point would be an extended cold period (by extended, I would say a solid week of temperatures not rising above 40.) Even a week of that would not necessarily be devastating. Two weeks would probably set all of my hives back though. I am paranoid by nature, but my experience with gardening tells me that such an occurrence is not realistic at this point. So, time to really get into managing my bees!

I’ve been really under the weather the last few days, but managed to get out and check one of the Varina hives this afternoon. My main goal was to grab a few frames of honey from one of my stronger hives and drop them in my winter Nuc’s. Since this is my first year with Winter Nuc’s, I continue to be a tad paranoid about them (I simply do not know what to expect.) So, I walked out to open the Larry hive to grab a few frames of honey off of them.

As a backdrop, Larry ended the season with a Deep, a Shallow and then a Medium (bottom-to-top). They were one of my reserve hives – a place to grab honey if I needed it somewhere. They also have proven to be frugal and early risers, two traits that I am really starting to like. They do not seem to eat a lot of honey over the Winter and they get to work at about 41 degrees – a good 8 to 9 degrees cooler then my other Varina hives. I have never medicated or even put powdered sugar on them and they seem to be thriving. I want to get some offspring off this hive. I may even raise queens from it.

At any rate, back to the point (I can go on endlessly about ole Larry…) Last weekend, I checked Larry and found 5 frames of pretty solid brood. Not wall to wall (a thin edge of honey/pollen along the edge), but pretty daggone good. They say a hive makes up its mind to swarm a month in advance and I am pretty sure that Larry’s mind is made up. This excites me, as I look forward to the challenge of preventing the swarm while harvesting some swarm cells for some Nucs (of course, a month from now I may be singing a different story.)

So, as fate would have it, I had pulled each frame of the top Medium and found nothing but full honey. I skipped the shallow super (big mistake here) and went to the deep, finding tons of brood and a whole lot of capped drone cells. I wanted to get that Super off of them (why that super was in that spot is another story and another lesson for another day), so I swapped the shallow and the medium, moving the shallow from the middle to the top. Now, it was easy to get at and the bees should move up into the Medium.

Ha! Those bees had already moved into the daggone shallow, as I discovered when I peeled off 4 frames to give to my Winter nucs. Basically, I did the HUGE no-no : I separated the brood nest. It is only by the grace of god that the weather has been favorable, as the bees have had to cover brood in two supers, separated by a medium super! I may have inadvertantly messed up the swarm urge, which would be a shame. Tomorrow, when I hope to feel a little better, I will try to rectify my mistake and get them back together.

But, the one big bonus that I found was walking drones! On the two little shallow frames that I pulled with brood, both had a few drones on them, walking around! That’s huge news for my Nuc experiments. I am currently going with the rule of thumb (you’ll get differing opinions on this, as with everything) that it takes 14 days from hatching for a drone to become a romeo. My other rule of thumb is that it takes 20 days for a Nuc with eggs to send forth a good queen who is looking for a romeo. Basically, I could start a Nuc today and she would have some drones out there to mate her!

So, one of my goals for the season begins a new phase this weekend, as I will start two new Nucs as part of my experiment. It only seems logical to me that waiting another week or two will really give all bees a chance to get a bunch of drones out there (and thus increase the odds of getting a good mating), but I want to experiment. I will start a couple of Nucs each weekend into April and watch how they do. Let the experiments begin!

Maples are Blooming!

Bee On Crocus Bloom in February — Enjoying a little Early Season Forage

The Winter in Richmond, Virginia started out with a sledge hammer but appears to be going out like a tack hammer. It was really rough in December and most of January, but February has been uncharacteristically warm. Today, it appears to be heading into the upper 60’s and I really do not see much real cold in the foreseeable future (plus, we’ve already had nearly two weeks of weather like this!) We will no doubt see more cold weather, but March is just around the corner, which is the start of my favorite time with the bees!

As proof, I was finally rewarded with a few blooms over the past week! The crocuses started blooming around the 10th and I have had a few bees on them. But today, my early Maples started! Whoohoo! The bees have started to work the blooms a bit and I am hoping for a good brood build up. I expect to have a look at some of the hives in the apiary with the sugar syrup tomorrow. They have basically gone through 20 lbs of sugar (or what amounts to about 8 gallons of syrup) over the past two weeks and I am wondering what they are doing with it.

Now is really a good time to get some painting done. I have actually stayed ahead of this chore fairly well since last Fall, with a lot of painted deeps, mediums, shallows and nuc’s to show for it. But, I still have unpainted wooden-ware and now is as good a time as any to get that done, just in case. I am a firm believer in having twice as much as you think you will need and a little extra for any swarms or cut-outs that come along. One of the things that I am working on this weekend is equipment for two trapouts that I will be starting in March. I plan to use these bees to start several Nuc’s, if all goes well, so I want this stuff ready well in advance.

A trapout is mainly used to get the majority of the bees in a feral hive and eventually force the queen to leave the spot, due to no foragers returning. The beekeeper effectively takes most of the bees back to his yards and can then use them to start Nucs with queens from his best lines. The problem with trying this in early March is mainly that the bees will have only just started to grow their populations. So, you really only stand to get a fraction of the bees you might get if you started it in June (when the hive should be at max population.) But, that is all theory. There may be very good reasons to do it in March that I simply do not know since I have never tried it. Come April, I will have the results and it will be another lesson for the bee books!

Westover Hive Enjoys a Drink

I couldn’t stand it at work and had to run home to check the new Westover Hive during lunch. They were busy bringing in lots of pollen and I found a ton of them up in the feeder, drinking the sugar water down. I am dying to take a look inside, but have committed to leaving them alone until this weekend. I’ll probably check the feeder every day, to make sure it does not run dry. Things appear to be working great here, but I am worried since I cannot see what they are doing. Presumably, they have started some comb and the queen has already laid in it. It will be amusing to see if they have already laid in the honey frame that I dropped in there to entice them into the hive.

I also did a quick spot check of the Albo hive to see if they had started to draw out the honey super. Nothing yet. Didn’t even see a bee on any of the frames (I just removed the inner cover and did a spot check.)

Spotty Brood and Lots of Grumpiness

Yesterday, I attacked the ‘weak’ hive (I think I will start calling it the Albo Hive, after my brother=) to clean up the mess that I allowed to invade the hive last year. Upon opening up the hive, I was surprised to see that these bees were actually eating the pollen substitute. The Geronimo Bees (Hive 1) had given up eating on that stuff and I assumed that it was due to good pollen available in the wilds. Who knows. These gals are eating on it at a decent pace, so I left it on the hive.

I lit the smoker and suited up, as I figured things might get nasty when I delved into the lower brood chamber. But, I did not smoke them upon the breakdown of the upper Deep and all seemed ok. They only had a couple of frames of honey, but I believe this will be enough at this point (we are expecting 80’s for the next week or so). The weather could be a real boon for beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia. We’ve had a lot of rain and now we seem to be getting some good, warm temperatures.

Another thing to remember on the upper deep for the Albo Hive is that one of the frames is starting to come apart from the top bar on one side. This is one of the frames that is full of honey (so it is heavy) and probably is an accident waiting to happen. My goal will be to remove this frame and hopefully repair it once we get into mid-April or so (when I do not think they will need the honey.)

There was a lot of burr comb between the upper and lower Deep’s. I am not sure why this was the case, as they have plenty of room in the upper deep to build out more comb. Regardless, I turned on the smoker and began to remove all of this. Things got a little hairy during this episode, as every frame on the lower deep was covered with bees and the smoker only sent them scurrying for a second or two. But, I was able to get the burr comb off and begin removing and inspecting each frame.

During this adventure, the bees really got grumpy. I tried to remain calm and am sure that, without my gear, I would have gotten stung multiple times. On two or three occasions, I had to walk away from the hive and let them settle down a bit (once they get mad, smoke is only partially effective for these bees.) I had to remove a lot of propolis – a ton of it. I will be aware of this going forward. This stuff should be cleaned off each time you remove a frame.

Two other items of note (of great importance, actually) were the brood and a possible queen cell. Having just looked at (I am guessing) 7 or 8 frames full of brood in the Geronimo Hive last week, the spotty nature of this brood was definitely noticeable. The Geronimo hive had several frames that were literally full of capped brood – not one single miss. But, the Albo hive didn’t have a single frame that was chock full. Plenty were 95% full, but there were always a dozen or so empty cells scattered around. It gives the appearance of my queen being on drugs and missing here and there as she walks about the comb in a random (stumbling) pattern. This only confirmed to me that this queen needs to go.

I did also find what appeared to be a supercedure cell. It may have been what was left of the supercedure cell from last Fall, but who knows. I am hoping that this was a sign that they are going to raise another queen. The cell was in the upper half of the frame, so I left it alone and went about my business. I am certain that these gals would have died this last Winter if I had not intervened with feeding in the Summer, Fall and Winter. I will not intervene this year, so they better start getting it right.

What really got the girls mad was when I had to cut off the top part of some capped honey on one-half of one side of a frame that had ended up too far from its neighbor last Summer. Instead of light buzzing, they amped up to a high tenor and really started cursing at me, buzzing in my face and trying to sting my netting. But, I was able to get the frame trimmed down a bit and the frames fit very nicely together once I was finished.

All in all, this was a success. I did not find the queen, but did find eggs and larvae. I also located where they were storing nectar and pollen, near the brood nest. They should get to a decent start and, if they get a good queen, have time to collect a nice harvest during the flow in May. I did find some drone brood, so things are getting close.

Honey Bee’s Bringing in Pollen

Over the last couple of days, I have noticed a lot of pollen coming in. The usual gray, but mostly yellow with some a fairly deep red. The red could be the Maples, while the yellow could be the dandelions that have started to pop up here and there. I still have no idea what the gray is. Both hives seem to be active in bringing this in at a good pace. There is also a fair amount of activity on the landing board, possibly young bees doing some training flights.

As noted previously, the weak hive (which I fed syrup all Winter) has a Top Deep that is nearly full of honey (about 7.5 frames full of capped honey.) My reading online indicates that this could be a problem known as ‘honey bound’, where the queen has no place to lay because of all of the honey. This can trigger swarming activity. Kenny at the ERBA and a few folks online advised me to put a couple of empty frames of drawn wax (or simply foundation, if this is all I have – which it is, being a new beekeeper) in the center of the Deep’s, placing the ones currently there (which are full of capped honey) into the freezer for use later.

So, I ventured out over this past weekend to do just that. But, once I was able to get the top off, I noticed that I had some empty frames on the side. So, I swapped the empty frames for the full ones, right in the center of the Deep. I also stopped feeding them a few weeks ago, so the thought is that they will draw this wax out and start to move up. We’ll see…

Now, on to Hive 1, the strong hive. Up until this past weekend, I had thought that it was also honey bound (although I had stopped feeding them last November or December. But, when I went to swap out some empty frames this past weekend, I found that most of the frames in the upper Deep were actually empty! I now believe that my casual observations of the frames (without breaking them out of the Deep) was faulty. I even found two bees that were head first in the cells, as if they had starved (I didn’t poke them to see if they were alive, but doubt they were.) They still had a little capped honey, but not a ton (maybe 3 frames worth.) This was a pretty good lesson, as these guys could have starved. I should have been looking more carefully.

Since this hive, what I have been calling the Strong Hive, had so many empty, drawn frames that I only did a little re-arranging. Last night, I made up a batch of syrup and added 1 Teaspoon of Honey-Bee Healthy per quart. I put two gallons on this hive, thinking that they might need some assurances with the possibility of low food. I went back later this afternoon and didn’t find anyone on the syrup. This is odd. Either it was a little too chilly or they simply didn’t want it (maybe that lemon smell of the Honey-Bee Healthy freaked them out?!) Only time will tell. A couple of days in the high-60’s and low-70’s are coming up soon, so I hope to see some feasting then.