Sustainable Beekeeping | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Winter Thoughts and Requeening

So, the season has wound down and the bees are put to bed. Although this might be considered a quiet time for the beekeeper, for me it is one of excitement and more work! The excitement centers around the coming Spring. That season is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most exciting time to be a beekeeper when you have hives that are overwintering. The work centers on taking inventory of the last season, planning for the coming season and repairing or building any equipment for increase or new experiments. Although the bees sleep over the Winter, I certainly don’t!

While reviewing my notes (at this point, this includes multiple notepads, a computer app and various scraps of paper in my ‘hive’ file!), I took at look at some of my early strategies and how I had planned to let them evolve as my hive count increased. The central theme of my early increase strategy (‘increase’ simply is beekeeper jargon for methods that he uses to increase the number of hives that he has, like splits, nuc’s, etc…) was simply survivability. I didn’t care if a hive produced only a little surplus honey or if they were a bit mean – I simply wanted the hives that could survive our Winters without any medication or feeding. My goal was to begin to flush my ‘bee genetic pool’ with the survivor traits.

But, starting this past year, I began to weed out some of the hives that didn’t meet certain other standards. By weed out, I simply made sure that I did not create any Nuc’s off of them or increase off of them. They still have the survivor traits, so I want the genetics (I let ’em live to send drones out for my queens).

But, one of the things that I noted this year were the blue queens that survived through the Summer and led hives into the Winter. Out of the 30 or so queens that I started the year with, 5 blue queens came into the year and 2 blue queens made it to this Winter. This is significant on many fronts. To begin with, many beekeepers requeen regularly. A blue queen was born in 2010 , a white queen in 2011 and a yellow this year (2012). Most beekeepers who follow the requeening strategy went into the Winter with yellow queens. Those who went into the Winter with white queens will probably requeen next year. The strategy is based on two theories. One, a young queen increases the survivability chance of a hive over the Winter. Two, a hive is less likely to swarm in the Spring with a young queen.

I do not dispute either of these facts, but I think that this strategy may be a major misstep for the beekeeper that is looking to build apiaries with bees that can survive the various issues of our time without medication. The fact that queens are unlikely to live longer than 3 years is a factor of our times, not of the honey bee. I have been told, back in the day, that queens lived 5 or 7 years. But now, with the confluence of diseases, pests and pesticides, they are unlikely to make it past the 3rd year. So, beekeepers manage to those stats, requeening and removing the chance of having a queen fail over the Winter and thus kill the hive.

But, what if you let those old queens have a go of it? Wouldn’t those old queens be carrying the best of the best, when it came to genetics? Wouldn’t these queens be the ones that you would love to raise your next queens off of? I think so. It is true that my management techniques do not allow a queen of that age to sit in the same hive through their entire life (all of my blue queens from this past Spring went into Nucs before August, allowing the primary hive to raise a new queen to continue on with), but they still have survived. These are the queens that I want to breed my next round of queens from. This is how my strategy has evolved.

Of course, the blue queens in my apiary may not make it through the Winter. Fortunately, I have enough hives that I can sacrifice a few in the pursuit of knowledge. But, I sure hope they make it. Ideally, one will come roaring out of Spring like a young queen and provide me with a bunch of new queens and Nuc’s.

Of course, Spring is a long ways off. Other ideas could cross my mind and change the whole plan. But, that’s why Winter is so fun, as a beekeeper!

Do You Have a Nuc?

I am a firm believer that every beekeeper who has had a hive live through one Winter should have a Nuc – 12 months out of the year. Over the past 6 weeks, I have run into maybe a dozen or more beekeepers (personally) that could have used one, but didn’t have one available.

Everyone is familiar with the early Spring Nuc’s. Many folks start their beekeeping career by purchasing one from another Nuc. I sell many Nuc’s for this exact purpose. So, if you have no inclination to ‘sell Spring Nuc’s’, why would you need the daggone thing?! Because ‘selling Nuc’s’ is not the real reason that folks raise Nuc’s. The real reason is to create a Sustainable Beekeeping program.

If you are in your first year as a beekeeper, you will hopefully have little need of a Nuc. In addition, your main goal is to get your new hives built up – taking a few frames from this new, growing hive is not a good idea. Your goal is to get your hives through the Winter. If you do that successfully, you’ll begin a part of your beekeeping career that will be rivaled by little else. The last thing you want to do is to put this wonderful experience at risk. So, this post does not apply to the first year beekeepers.

So, what’s this stuff about ‘sustainable beekeeping’? It focuses on one simple fact – using your own resources (bees) you build an apiary (or multiple apiaries) that enable you to meet all ‘bee’ needs that you have with your own bees. If you want to add a few hives, you build them from your own hives. If something goes wrong, you fix it with resources from your own hives. Many folks believe that the only way to do this is if you have a few dozen hives. But, that is wrong. You only need 2 hives and one Nuc.

So, how is it that you would have a Nuc on every day of the year and why?

It all begins with the Spring Nuc. As your bees come out of Winter, you will have at least one hive that is doing well. They have moved up into the top box (by that, I mean that the queen has started laying up there) and the bottom box is full of brood coming on. At this time, you take 2 frames of brood and 1 of honey. The brood frames need to have pollen in them, otherwise you’ll need to add a frame with pollen. One of the brood frames must have forager eggs. When you transfer the bees, a bunch will come with them, but you still need to shake a frame or two of bees into the Nuc box. Nurse bees have never flown before and will simply call the new Nuc their home. Nurse bees are also critical in the raising of a new queen, so you want to take frames with brood (uncapped is best) and shake them hard into your Nuc, getting as many bees as you can into it. Of course, you must identify and set your queen (the frame she is on) asside (yet another good reason to mark you queens) first, as you do not want to shake her into the Nuc. I put foundation for the rest of the frames. I always do this with March/April Nucs, as it gives the bees something to do as they wait for the new queen to hatch, mate and finally start laying.

At this point, you have created your Bank. You put bees in and can take them out in the future, if you need them. The bees will create a new queen that will hatch in around 16 days. I typically go into the hive on Day 21 (it’s always a factor of 7 because I have to do my day job during the weekdays!) and make sure I find an open queen cell. Once found, I leave them alone (I am not looking for the queen, yet…) for another 2 weeks. At that point, I expect to find eggs and larvae. If I don’t, I give the Nuc ANOTHER frame with capped brood and eggs (eggs being the key.) This time, I shake the bees off into the parent hive – I am not trying to bring more bees to my Nuc. If they have a queen that is simply taking a while to lay or maybe I missed the eggs with my old eyes, they’ll raise the brood and simply add it to their force. BUT, if the queen was eaten by a dragon fly or otherwise perished, they’ll raise a new queen from these eggs. I start the process over again (wait 3, and then 2, weeks). If you miss these checks and the queen didn’t make it, you’ll end up with a Nuc that has laying workers, an entirely other problem.

So, now you have your Spring Nuc. Since you’re not raising them to sell, you do not feed them and let them build on their own. They’ll do just fine. They may even swarm, which is not a problem (they’re just your bank). The main thing you need to do with them is to check them for a queen every 3 to 4 weeks. That’s it. In truth, just look for capped brood. The second you don’t see capped brood, drop a frame of eggs in her! Done!

So, why do this? It’s not a lot of work, but why do it at all? For one, you have a mated queen (local, to boot) ready to go if one of your main hives has a problem. Queenless? You have an answer with your mated Nuc queen. Did a main hive swarm and you aren’t sure if the new queen made it back? Give them a frame of eggs from the Bank Nuc. Do you need to bolster a colony because of some mishap? Give them a frame of capped brood from the Bank Nuc. You have now taken the first step towards ‘sustainability’. You need no outside resources to keep your hives going during the Summer.

So, July comes along and you have this Nuc on your hands. You can sell the thing (a little to offset the cost of beekeeping), let them have a go of it through the Winter or you can start an Overwintered Nuc. An overwintered Nuc for me is a way to cull my hives of underperformers and its an insurance policy against Winter loss. The Overwintered Nuc is an Insurance Policy (not a bank). Strictly speaking, you want a Nuc that is lead by a Queen that was born in late July (in our area – around Richmond, Virginia). I break up my weak hives to create them, but if you have your Bank going, you can simply pinch your current queen and turn the Bank into an Insurance Policy. I am a firm believer in Overwintered Nucs. They have a brand new queen that really never gets to pour it on before Winter Prep starts. She has to downshift almost immediately and stay mostly idle through the Winter. I can assure you that queens like this come out of Winter like no other. One of my best Overwintered Nucs from last Winter has two drawn deeps, 2 mediums of capped honey and a 3rd medium that they just started to draw before the Nectar flow became a dribble. By creating an Overwintering Nuc, you have an insurance policy against the loss of a main hive over the Winter. If things go well, you can sell it for a premium to a new beekeeper (I think that 150% normal Nuc rates is very reasonable – Overwintered Nucs have huge value) and then start your Bank the next day (the Spring Nuc.)

So, that’s my rant on Nucs. Every beekeeper should have two hives and a Nuc. That’s how to be successful and it also is a great way to help the bees by having local bees as your bank/insurance policy.

Nicot & (My Bad) Timing

I finally decided to give the Nicot system a go. I need to get a picture up, but it is basically a queen rearing system. You confine the queen in a small box where she lays eggs. You can then take the eggs and easily put them on bars that the bees will draw queen cells from (that’s a real high level overview, which I may delve into deeper if I actually have some success!)

One of the things about any queen rearing system is timing. There are certain tasks that must be done at a certain time – you can’t wait one day or do it one day earlier. Once you commit, you have to perform each task exactly when it should be completed.

For me, this meant that I had to move my 1 day old larva into the rearing frame (a frame with crossbars that lets you attach the eggs to it, so they can draw out the cells) and then into the Starter Hive (I hope to go into this more later). The bottom line is that I had to open 1 hive, get some stuff out of it and then go to another hive and put the stuff into that hive.

So, what’s the big deal? Well, for one, we had the VSBA Spring Meeting this weekend. So, I had talks and stuff going on all day. Fortunately, there was a 2 hour break for lunch.

Next, the two hives were 25 miles apart (that’s lesson two for me). That meant I would be pushing it to get all of this done.

Finally (and most beautifully), it was raining…

All in all, I can say that it was a bit of a cluster. I do believe that everything went as well as it could and am hopeful for a good batch of queen cells from this experiment. More later.

The Back-up Nuc

The honey bee happenings in Richmond, Virginia continue at a fast pace. Most hives are building up nicely and I received another swarm call today (it’s nice to pick up swarms OUTSIDE of your backyard=). But, all is not cozy on the front.

Earlier this week, my cousin called to say that both of his hives had perished over the last three weeks. They were looking fine in mid-March, but both were dead as of late last week. It sounded like they starved (he said lots of bees were head first down in the cells and more were lying dead on the bottom board), but I really find that hard to believe (nectar and pollen have been available since then and the weather has been abnormally warm – they should have been able to get out and at least keep going – he did say they were small clusters.) I’ve heard folks say that most hives die in late March and I suppose one or both of his hives succumbed to it. It really bad because it was both of his hives, although he does have two packages coming. So far, he has purchased 4 packages and all 4 have perished, either after/during their first Winter or in their first Fall. This only firms my belief that packages are a very risky affair compared to Nucs.

This leads me to my thoughts of the day. The many starter Nucs/Queen Castle Sections have more uses then simply building them each into a hive of their own. Maybe having so many will not be such a bad thing after all.

I now hope to give my cousin one or two of my starter Nucs/Queen Castle Set-ups by the end of April (when I should be able to determine which are doing well and which are not doing well) to get his numbers back up. This is also somewhat selfish, as his hives are within 3 miles of three of my outyards. Getting him into some strong, local bees only improves the genetic pool in that area, which benefits me in the long run (as opposed to drones coming off of some queen that has never proven her mettle in central Virginia.) So, that’s one good use for the many starter hives that I have.

There are also other good uses for a spare Nuc or two in my inventory. I checked 7 hives this weekend. One, Albo, continues to do very poorly. They have not expanded past the 2 frames of brood that they had in early March. I found the lazy queen (with so few bees, it was like looking for a queen in a Nuc – pretty easy) lazily walking about the frames. No queen worth her salt would stay at 2 frames of brood over the past month, with the weather that we have been getting (and the honey she has in that hive.) This Friday, I will kill the Albo queen (and make Queen Juice, something that might help out my swarm traps.) I have never killed a queen before. On Saturday, I will take one of my virgin queens from Larry and add her to the hive. So, I have found yet another good use for the starter hives – replacing poor queens in my existing hives.

Also, Berkeley appears to have swarmed or failed in replacing a dead queen. I found very little brood and only one open queen cell – although it is clear that they did have a lot of brood over the last couple of weeks hatch (they expanded into 3 of the frames that were previously filled with honey). It is hard for me to believe that they swarmed, unless they really were honey-bound (it is said that bees can be surrounded by too much honey, which restricts their growth and causes them to swarm – I have never experienced it, until maybe now). Unlike Albo, this hive built up GREAT last year. I will do a real thorough inspection this Saturday and, if I find no sign of the queen, I may give them one of my virgin queens. I need to do the Bee math, as I really want genetics from this hive. Hopefully, a virgin queen is out there and getting her legs under her.

Another hive, Westover, also had no sign of a queen. I took their queen back in mid-March, to keep the good genetics and let them raise their own. Oddly, they only tried to raise one queen (at least two frames had eggs on them when I removed the queen). I expected to see two or three cells. Like Berkeley, I may give them a virgin queen this weekend or wait one more week.

Finally, the swarm call that I received on Sunday indicated that the bees had collected on the trunk of a tree. I thought I was going to need a frame of brood to entice them off of the tree (as I couldn’t shake them.) As it turned out, the trunk was narrow (small tree) and I was able to easily shake them. But, if I had needed a frame of brood, one of my stronger Nucs would have been the donor. Another great use for a Nuc.

The bottom line to all of these random notes is that I have definitely come to understand the value of having a Nuc or two available for emergency situations. Missing a queen? I have one that I like, right on hand! Although I do plan to grow several of these Nucs into full hives, I now am fairly certain that I will keep a couple on hand all Summer, just to be ready for special situations. They are a real resource bank.

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.

Getting Your First Bee Hive [Overview]

A nice fellow from a recent ERBA meeting contacted me the other day about getting bees and what were the next steps. After an email or two, he secured a couple of Nuc’s and is ready for the bees that will hopefully come his way this Spring. His initial assumptions did get me to thinking that the whole process is not well documented. Some might think it is a decision that they can make in the Spring, which is far from the truth. So, I thought I would lay out a general outline of how it works. There are exceptions and this is fairly high level, but it should prove helpful to some folks.

There are four basic ways to get your hands on some bees. When I say ‘bees’, I literally mean the mass of workers, drones (maybe) and queen that make up the group of bees that you are going to start with. For the vast majority of folks, they get their bees by either buying a Nuc (Option 1) or a Package (Option 2) of bees.

‘Nuc’ is short for ‘Nucleus Hive’ and pretty much refers to a small hive body (When I say ‘hive body’, I am typically referring to the structure that the bees live in) that only holds 5 frames. To create a Nuc of bees, the seller takes a few frames from his existing hives and puts them in their own separate box (the actual Nucleus Hive Body), without a queen. They either raise their own queen or perhaps the beekeeper takes a queen from a swarm cell that he has taken from his existing hives. The point here is that the queen is usually from the seller’s own stock and the bees hatch her out, being by her side from day one. After about a month, the queen should be laying and the existing bees expanding into all 5 frames of the Nuc. I am a big fan of Nuc’s. You have a queen from your area (presumably she has traits that make her well suited for the environment) and a band of workers that have worked with her from the start. They are already a team.

A Package (Option 2) refers to a cardboard box of bees that you purchase from someone who is usually from another state. You receive a few pounds of bees in one package and a queen in another. This group is not a team yet (most of the time, the queen was not raised by the bees that were sent to you, so your bees have not become a team with your queen yet). Part of the initial job for a beekeeper who orders a package is getting them into a wooden hive body and then, over the next few weeks, making sure the bees and queen become a cohesive unit (i.e. your bees don’t kill your queen, thinking she is an enemy.) You also do not know if this group of bees has any genes that have thrived in your environment (typically, they are raised down South somewhere). I have never purchased a Package, but I have friends that have. So far, my bees have done better.

A third way to get some bees is to purchase an entire hive from another beekeeper. Most of the time that you see something like this advertised, it is simply a larger version of a Nuc. The seller has taken a bunch a bunch of old frames, filled them with bees without a queen and let them raise their own queen. The seller can get a higher price (double or triple) then what they would get for a Nuc. Getting a full hive, you have a lot of the same advantages of a Nuc, except you do not have an opportunity to learn from watching a hive grown from 5 frames to 20. There is so much value in these early lessons that I do not believe a new beekeeper should start with a full hive.

The final way to get some bees is through capture. These take the form of catching a Swarm, doing a cut-out or trying a trap-out. You are basically getting feral bees. I love these kinds of bees, but you once again do not get all of the great learning experiences that you get with a Nuc. A swarm can teach you a lot, but you have to really make sure that you have a queen after you catch the swarm. And, if you do not, you will not have any frames of eggs to give the bees to help them get started. So, although I believe you can learn a similar experience with a swarm (as with a Nuc or Package), I do not believe a new beekeeper should use this as their sole way of obtaining bees at the start.

So, that covers the main points about getting the bees. Since I am a Nuc man, I will spend a few minutes explaining ‘how to purchase a Nuc.’ The number one thing you want to do is to get it ordered right NOW! In fact, I would order my bees in the Sept/Oct timeframe, to ensure that I got them. If you wait, the entire order will be spoken for and you’ll be waiting another year.

The number 2 thing to do is to get a couple of deeps and frames to fill them. You will be bringing you deep to the seller and he’ll put those bees into your box (or he’ll give you a cardboard Nuc, but you’ll still be moving the bees into your empty Deep.

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.

Hot & Bearding

It’s hot as Hades today in Richmond, Virginia, reaching 95 degrees on my gauge. Beekeeping is only fun on days like today when you’re just watching from afar. Regardless, I had to do a couple of checks to see what was going on in the Albo and Geronimo hives. I built another medium (Illinois super) box of frames last night and put foundation in them this morning. I wanted to make sure they were not close to filling of their current supers up. If they were, they would be going into the ‘it is daggone crowded in here’ psychosis and might decide to swarm. Putting an extra, empty super on top would give them the feeling of lots o’ space and keep them happy.

I cracked the Geronimo Hive, which I had seen working the one super on top, hoping to see a bunch of capped frames. Unfortunately, my luck continues to hold and it really does not look like they have done much work beyond my last look. All of the frames have some drawn comb on them, but none of them are fully drawn out and (with my brief inspection) I did not see any capped comb. Oh well. It would appear that I will not get any honey off of these guys, but I am going to continue to let them work at it this year, just to see how it goes. I did not drop any super on them. Of note, these bees were all over the landing board and some were actually hanging off of it, latching on to one another and creating a ‘beard-like’ look on the front of the hive. This is a common occurrence, although most folks worry that the bees are getting ready to swarm and fly off. Instead, they are just cooling off. I’d go out on the porch for some lemonade too!

The Albo Hive had not even touched the super on top. In fact, I briefly removed the super and noticed that they had not yet drawn out the last frame on the top brood chamber. This is the hive that I am going to consider splitting. They are not my strongest hive, but they are still a solid hive. I think that most of my hives did not get a great start, due to how late I received them last year. I am hopeful that next Spring will be a different story. I am thinking about feeding these bees just to see if they will draw out this honey super for next year.

Finally, I replaced the feeder on the Blue Cottage Hive. This weak hive has shown a lot of progress over the past week to ten days. I now see bees on the landing area and coming and going with more frequency then my initial investigations. I am pretty sure that dropping that frame of brood from the Westover Hive was a big boon. It should be noted that I momentarily thought the Westover Hive was robbing this hive, as I could see the blacker bees coming and going (a color that I mainly have in the Westover Hive.) Then I remembered that I had taken brood from them…so, these are some of that brood already going to work.

Not an extremely eventful post, but good for the journal and future reference.