Category: Swarms

First Full Inspections of the Year

With the weather being what it is, I had decided to start my full inspections in the middle of February (instead of early March, per usual.) A full inspection means that I open the hive and pull every frame. What’s the big deal? There are two big reasons why doing this in February (in a normal Winter) is a risk. One involves the cluster. I will break whatever cluster they have, by pulling every frame. In a normal Winter, this might set them back severely. They are unlikely to be able to form the cluster quickly again and, assuming we hit a week where the highs were in the low 40’s, a bunch of baking brood would likely die as the colony would not be able to keep them warm enough. But the second reason why this is typically ill advised is much more important. Whenever you do a full inspection, you are necessarily pulling the frame with the queen on it. This means you may kill her by accident. Normally, in mid-February (in my experience), no drones are about. This means that a new queen cannot be mated. Therefore, killing your queen in mid-February is normally a death sentence for the hive. Thus, only the foolish or those with a high risk tolerance (they don’t mind losing a hive or two if it furthers their knowledge of honey bees) will break a hive up this time of year.

So, why would I go into 10 hives today (well, 6 hives and 4 overwintered nucs)? The weather has simply been very unusual for Richmond, Virginia beekeepers this year. Based on my calculations (which, as ludicrous as it may sound, are based on a hybrid Maple’s blooming date this year, vs previous years), I thought that Drones might be walking on the comb as of today (and I mean exactly today!) So, I took the risk. I figured that I would be unlikely to kill any of the queens, but worse case could only be one dead queen. I was willing to take the risk.

I started out going through a full hive. I found capped drone brood (= drone walking on the comb by March 1 for sure). Stores were great, population was great and brood pattern was at a 10 (I ran into several 8’s that day and one 5, but this one was a 10 – Grade A Queen and definite Nuc parent.) I then hit my 4 Nuc’s. All looked good except for 1, which was literally slam out of food. They had a small brood nest (but the pattern was a 9) and no food. This was the swarm that I found in one of my deeps in the shed last Fall. You can’t expect a Fall Nuc to build up much, but these guys were completely out (I had a Nov swarm that had more). This got them a 2 on the Winter Stores scale. We’ll see how they score out by March. But, the bottom line is that they will live to March because of my inspection today. When I found them without any honey, I dropped a fully frame of capped honey from the hive that I started the series with. That will get them by for 2 or 3 weeks (based on their population), when I’ll check ’em again.

At this point, with the exception of the one nearly starved Nuc, I had found Drone cells (capped) in the one hive and all Nucs. Opening the last Nuc, I figured to find the same. Wait? What was that? A Drone just starting to make his way out of the cell!! In truth, only his eyes were visible. Being the lazy male that he is, the workers have to cut him out of his cell. So, there he was, smiling at me. This means drones will be walking on the comb in a day or two!!!

Why do I care about walking drones? This is the number one flag for Nuc makers. If a Drone is walking on the comb, you know with near absolute certainty that Drones will be flying to Drone Congregation Areas in 14 days. You also know that it takes a Queen 16 days (give or take a day) to hatch and another week (at least) before she heads out to be mated. So, if you see walking Drones, you can start a Nuc on that very day and feel comfortable that Drones will be out to mate with your virgin queen when she is ready! So, walking drones are critical for Nuc makers and Queen rearers.

So, seeing one trying to poke out was encouraging. But, I was not that excited, as I had expected to see one walking…wait..what was that?! A big, fat beggar drone making his way among the workers looking for food! And this was just a Nuc! Ha! Drones are out in central Virginia! Booyah! (Man, I love this time of year.)

For me, I like to wait a week or so after the first Walking Drone so that I get more drones out there for my queens. I have no idea if it makes a difference or not (I will experiment one of these years, but not this year.) So, my target date for the first round of Nucs (March 3 to 5) is holding steady!

All in all, the inspections went well. I didn’t get deep into several of the larger hives, as it started to get a bit late. If you go into a hive and break her apart , they need some time to get back together even in this kind of weather. I don’t like to break them up inside of 2 hours before sunset when the temps are going down into the 40’s or lower that night. Regardless, all hives are alive and (with the exception of the one Nuc) with more then enough stores to make them to the holly bloom. Dandilions are blooming now (although I do not see my bees working them.)

We’ll see what March has in store, but I’m going on record saying that this will forever after be known as the Year of the Swarm. It is very clear to me, based on full hives and nucs, that the bees are ramping up very strong right now. I am confident saying that swarms will happen the first week of March around Richmond, Virginia. I’d bet big money on it.

 

October Swarm?

It’s October 19. For a Beekeeper in Central Virginia, that typically means we have had our first frost. Most blooming things are dead or dying, nectar has stopped and only old, dried pollen remains for the next few months. So, if you are a honey bee in Central Virginia, swarming today would really be a bad idea. Typically, no resources to build a new nest with and no resources to (then) store in the nest for the Winter.

Be that as it may, I received a swarm call last night. A nice fellow in the parts Department at Royal Chevrolet on Broad Street called to say that they had a ‘basketball size clump’ of bees on the fence in the back lot. Being a bit of a skeptic (this is October, after all…), I was pretty sure this was not honey bees. But, the fellow was adamant. Said they had been flying all over the place in a bit whirlwind earlier in the day and then settled on the back fence. I have to say that this had me wondering – that DOES sound like a swarm. But, in October?

Today, I left work about 11:45 and rushed over there to check (Brian had called at 9 am to say that they were still there, although a bit lethargic from the rain we received last night). Box in hand, I hived an above average sized swarm. It probably was the size of a basketball and maybe a bit bigger! Very docile bees (I think because of the temperature and the fact that they were a bit damp), but healthy nonetheless.

The odds of this thing making it over the Winter are pretty slim. I can augment them with honey tomorrow, but I do not have any spare frames of pollen. It looks like I will need to feed them pollen substitute over the Winter – although I have to wait until a frost comes to reduce the chance of a SHB infestation. On the plus side, I had a bunch (6 or so) of empty, drawn deep frames that I was fretting about (wax moth over the Winter) and now they are part of a new hive. I do not have high expectations and they will probably be more work then they are ‘monetarily’ worth, but I will enjoy the challenge. If they live, I’ll get another shot in the gene pool. But, to be honest, I think I picked up 3 other swarms from that area this year anyway. The bee population to the west of the Powhite out a bit past U of R is pretty healthy it seems.

This hive will, of course, be called ‘The Ole Chevy’. My best guess is that this is not a swarm, but an example of absconding. The hive’s original home must have been disturbed somehow, so they up and left. We’ll see. More updates to follow as the Winter passes (hopefully.)

Wild Times in September

Been really busy (bee-stuff and non-bee-stuff), so I have a bunch of updates regarding my Richmond, Virginia beekeeping adventures. To reduce boredom, I have tried to title each one separately below, so no one is forced to go through all of my dribble for the topic that really interests them!

Successful Swarm Trap!

This is hot on my mind and I couldn’t wait to post about it later. Anyone that has had the patience to actually read through my adventures for awhile knows that I put out swarm traps in the Spring. These are effectively homemade boxes the size of a Nuc that are screwed together tight and hang on a tree (some 8′ off of the ground.) In them, I put 1 frame of drawn wax (I use my old wax) and 4 or 5 frames of foundation (they were supposed to only hold a max of 5 frames, but my carpentry skills are nothing to write home about…)

In late March, I try to get my traps out within a quarter mile of my biggest outyards or known bee trees. The drawn wax is supposed to entice them and I put a drop of queen juice (simply a film canister with rubbing alcohol and the dead queens that I cull out of weak hives during the year.) By the end of June, I try to pull them to save any drawn wax that I can (sometimes the wax moths get in it and sometimes they don’t.) It’s not a loss, as the frames are my oldest frames that I culled from my hives, but I want to save the for the next year if I can.

Of the 6 that I put out this past April, I couldn’t get one of them (or, I wouldn’t) because it was covered in a thick patch of poison ivy that had grown up the tree (didn’t see that bit of nastiness when I put the thing up, because the leaves hadn’t come out!) I figured I’d either wait until Winter or get my pop to get it for me sometime (he’s immune to the ivy’s). With so little success, I had decided to start Nuc’s in each of my traps in the Spring of 2012 to get some good bee scent in them (and thus be more enticing to swarms.)

Well, the real point of this is that I went by that loner today (while doing some last minute checks  on the hives) and found it FULL of bees! Ha! Success at last! I have no idea when the swarm came into the trap (well, I know it was after late June, when I last looked at it), so it will be interesting to see what they look like when I put them in a Nuc on Sunday. As long as the queen is laying well (and I’ll probably let them live even if she isn’t, as an experiment), they are golden. I have a ton of deep frames of honey to give them for the Winter (pollen is another subject – I do not  have a lot of that to spare, so I hope they at least have that stored in the trap.)

Catching this one swarm has me pumped to build more of my traps this Winter!

July Nuc’s

Once July came around, I stopped selling Nuc’s (with the exception of one to an ERBA member who was interested in trying out a late Nuc – they are experienced beekeepers, so I sold it to them for a slight discount, even though I typically refuse to do so.) Most folks have always said that a July Nuc has next to no chance of growing to a full hive (and I have tended to believe them, because July and August are nightmares in central Virginia.)

This year, I purposefully tried to build up five early July Nuc’s using my simple techniques. One year does not a pattern make, but I was encourages. Each Nuc was fed with boardman feeders until they filled out their five frames fully. I then moved them to full deeps and dropped Maxant top feeders on them (I think this is the real key.) These feeders were easy to check and fill (pop the top, pour in the syrup) and I kept meticulous records of how much they got and how long it took them to eat it up – no hive went more then a day without syrup. These feeders can take nearly 3 gallons of feed, which makes it real easy.

Once they had drawn out at least 8 frames, they received a Medium of foundation, again with the feeder on top. Once they filled  out 70% of the Medium, I moved them to an outyard. Of the 5 hives, 4 became full hives and were moved out before September 1. I would argue that the one that didn’t make it suffered from some bee problem (it may have been one of the paralysis viruses – the bees would flop out on the ground and not fly, or fly erratically at times.) They did not act right from nearly the start.

In conclusion, I think you can definitely build up a hive from a July Nuc (of course, I can only REALLY say this with confidence once I see them make it through the Winter.) I think the key is moving the big hives out of your Nuc yard once they fill out and using the top feeders (keeping them on syrup 24/7).

Irene Survivors

Irene gave me several hives, thanks to all of the trees that went down with bees in them in the Richmond area. I’m not happy that the trees went down, but (glass is half full) I am glad folks called me to cut them out. My last cut out was about 10 days after the hurricane. The tree had landed on its side and the comb had smooshed together. By the time that I got to them, most of the comb (literally 90% of it) was full of SHB and wax moth. I was surprised the bees had not absconded (the two hives I went to get the day before had both absconded because of the smashed wax.) I cut them out and hived them in less then 30 minutes, leaving about 4 lbs of bees with no resources (I mean NONE). The comb that I did get was empty – no brood, no honey, no pollen – they had been mostly robbed out after the tree crashed.

I took the poor lot home with me and gave them 3 frames of resources from my stash and left them alone for a week. I wasn’t sure if I had the queen (and figured she had died in the storm, which is why the bees had not absconded.) Amazingly enough, I spotted the little wench on the first inspection. She had actually laid eggs in every single open cell (I honestly do not know how the bees will be able to cover all of that brood, but will see how they did on Sunday.) I have given them two more frames of resources (deep frames partially full of nectar/honey with some pollen) and will be interested to see if they make it through the Winter.

Winterizing

I have Winterized all hives in Charles City County now, which comes to 23 hives. All have entrance reducers, a shim for ventilation and confirmed queens. I did not have to reverse any of them (all queens either were laying in the bottom deep or had just started to move down over the last month). I leveled several (some had definitely gotten off-kilter during the year) and checked stores one last time (well, I’m sure I’ll be back in each of them, to some degree, in October). That leaves 6 more hives in Henrico to do over the weekend and it’s Winter, here I come! My backyard is a mix of Nucs for overwintering, Nucs from swarms, Nucs from cut-outs and one full hive that I kept for fun (I’ll move her out next Spring, but I like to see what the bees are doing during the Winter when I go out into the yard.) It really comes down to 1 full hive, 1 partial hive (from the August cut-out) and 3 Nuc’s. I am only counting the 1 full hive for my Winter metrics (so, how many of 30 will I lose?)

Fall Honey Crop

I took a little under 10 gallons of honey off of the hives earlier this month! I’m sure this isn’t much to most beekeepers, but I am excited! For the first year that I actually took honey, I took between 20 and 25 gallons of honey! Wow! There still a fair amount left on the hives, but I won’t extract that. I have each of the ‘bank’ hives noted so that I can steal their resources come Jan/Feb in case my home yard experiments are struggling. All in all, I am feeling pretty good about the future…

Nuc List

My Nuc list is filling up, which is very cool. Folks are starting to see the value in local bees that are not medicated. My primary goal now is to make sure that I have enough Nuc’s built to produce the numbers that I need. I do not foresee a problem, but I like to be over-prepared. There is still a good bit of prime painting weather left in the season!

Master Beekeeper?

I took the Certified Level test last weekend. I must say that I am not confident about it, but am hopeful. The test wasn’t extremely hard, but some of the virus/disease questions were nothing more then educated guesses for me. Plus, they had an entire part  based on chemicals, which I do not use. Fortunately, I had studied up on it. I am confident that I DID pass the field test, but will not know about the written test for some  time.

So, that’s it. Another month gone and another month closer to Winter. Many more adventures to be had.

September Swarm?

As often mentioned here, I do not do a lot of hive management after June. Usually, I’m in a hive once a month at most after the busy season (at least that’s how I currently do it.) There are risks to this approach, as with any approach. I wonder if I experienced one today!

Last weekend, I went to inspect the one weak hive that I should have whacked and converted into a couple of Nuc’s. This is actually one of the three Nuc’s that I purchased from another beekeeper in Varina last year (3 Nuc’s that were very inferior in my opinion, now that I have some experience in this stuff.) I overwintered the thing and let her start to build up. Unfortunately, by July, she had not done that well at all. I had wanted to requeen this hive in 2010, but the owner (my father – he ‘owns’ the hives but I manage them 100%) did not want to kill the existing queen. I think he felt sorry for her. Come this Spring, the Nuc appeared to be building up pretty nicely and I promoted her to a Deep and let her roll, eventually putting a Medium on her. In the end, that hive did very little after the initial build up. I let my father over rule me last year and this year (he still wanted to let the hive try to make it), but I will not do it in 2012.

Regardless, my father had put a feeder on the hive (as I always say, if you have to feed them this time of year, they are either new hives (this one was not), you took too much honey in the Spring (this one never had supers to even put honey in) or the queen is inferior (that’s my vote.)  At any rate, I had looked at his feeder and decided that these bees couldn’t even take feed like a good hive. So, I was going to give the hive one of my ‘storage’ frames (a Deep that had a little honey and a little pollen on it). I wanted to get them storing honey from that feeder.

Well, when I got out to the hive last weekend, I found that they had finally figured out how to take the syrup and were working it hard. I decided not to bother them and took my deep frame back to my home yard. Having a ton of chores, I took the ‘storage frame’ and put it into one of my old Deep boxes and went to work on my yard (why do today what you can put off to tomorrow…ugh!)

Of course, I forgot about the frame until yesterday, when I noticed a ton of bees going into and out of that Deep. Well, it appears the starter hives in my backyard have found that daggone Deep – I FORGOT about that daggone thing! Last night (when robbers would be home and I could safely get the frame), I felt horribly (again, laziness seems to be the theme of this post) and put it off for tonight…

This morning, I was set to go out and put some entrance reducers on a few hives in Charles City (and I need to check on the queen of two more hives before I am satisfied) and decided to get that daggone frame now, using my bee brush to get the bees off of it and dropping it into the freezer for a few days in case the SHB or wax moth had gotten some eggs in it.

WHOA! I pulled the top off of that Deep and there were a few thousand bees all clumped on it. This wasn’t robbing! It was a daggone September swarm!

So, there you have it. For one, this is the first September swarm that I have been involved with (a fellow beekeeper in my area said he picked one up a few years ago, about the size of a baseball – this one was bigger then that, but only a little – a bit bigger then two softballs). Secondly, I assume this was from one of my starter hives (all of those queens were marked, so I will know in a week or two when I inspect them), but this goes back to the original risk – I wasn’t fully inspecting these starter hives and missed this swarm. I’ll have to check them all over the next week to make sure a new queen came out. It would really be cool if it turns out to be from a nearby feral hive (but I doubt it.)

At any rate, I moved the swarm into a Nuc and gave them 3 more frames of fully drawn wax (with some resources.) They only have one frame of foundation, which I gave them since most swarms like to draw out wax like monsters. Finally, I put both a boardman and a top feeder on them. The goal is for them to fill out this Nuc before the end of September and then I’ll drop another Nuc with resources on top of them. I normally do not overwinter Nuc’s like this, but I have the resources to do so and it should be good fun (I don’t think many September swarms make it – but I plan to give these guys a big shot!)

No Queen!

This is not an uncommon exclamation in my neck of the woods (Henrico County, to the east of Richmond, Va) – I doubt it’s uncommon anywhere. A beekeeper goes into a (previously strong, in many cases) hive, only to find no eggs, no larva and no capped brood. It’s been a grueling summer (insert year) and there simply has not been enough time (or energy) to put on a bee suit, sweat 10 buckets of water and go through an irritable hive of bees (no bee likes to be inspected in July!) In many cases, the beekeeper suddenly noticed a decrease in activity and decides to have a check. In a few cases, it is simply a matter of a cool day (and a chance to finally have a peak without the risk of expiring!)

You open up the hive and things look good. We see some stored honey, although maybe the bee population is a bit low. You finally get into the lower brood box and alarm bells start to go off. Not only do you not see eggs, but you also do not see capped brood. Vast areas of the brood nest remain open! What the devil is going on!?!? The first response (typically – based on queries I get from the occasional new beekeeper) is that the queen is dead and all is lost!

In truth, if you do lose your queen in September (in our area – Central Virginia), you are in a pretty tough pickle. The queen should be ramping up production of the first few Winter bees in early September. These bees are fatter and meant to live a bit longer then the normal bee. They are not designed to forage so much as to provide warmth and go get a bit of water or maybe some old grass pollen in January. Few born in September make it to the next Spring, but they are the first wave that will eventually propel your October & November bees all the way to February and March. This is the beginning of Winter prep and its very tough to be without a queen at this time of the year.

But, I have found that many of my strong hives (even with space) go queenless in July-August. I actually believe it is good for them and for the lands around my hives. Today, I began my first Winter checks. I went to check a new outyard in Varina, Virginia. I had take two starter hives (one from the Larry super-Queen and one from a hived Swarm) to this spot in early July. I wanted to see how they were doing. Both hives had done really well with regard to pollen and honey. You want to be sure that your hives have a good store of both when going into the Winter. A late August check is not a guarantee in my neck of the woods, but I use it to identify clear danger hives. Last year, for example, I found one and combined it with the Apache hive. That hive ended up being a super strong hive this year. I doubt the weak hive (Moe) would have made it otherwise.

The very first hive that I opened had a medium that was 90% full of capped honey. Interestingly enough, this was nearly exactly what they looked like in early July (I did a test this year and measured honey stores in early July to see how much my bees would eat in the awful weather of July and August). They had barely touched it. In addition, they had a couple of deep frames that were both 90% full of capped honey and 3 frames of pollen (not full frames, but mostly pollen.) From just those notes, I’d say these gals were ready to make a good go of it this Winter. But, the next ‘note’ was important. The entire brood nest (maybe 6 frames) was empty except for a handful of capped brood (and I do mean a handful – maybe 50, all told.) I must admit that I would probably have freaked were it not for what I found on the very first frame (Deep) that I pulled. A small, unmarked queen! I have my notes that I marked a large, brown queen in May (White), so I was certain this was a new queen. I knew something was up when I found her on the first frame – the old gals somehow always manage to get on the LAST frame during the inspection.

So, noticing a few capped brood, I decided that I had a real virgin on my hands. She probably had not even done a maiden flight. And that’s the kicker. Had I opened the hive a week from now, during (say) 3 pm or so, I probably wouldn’t have found her. But, I would have found no eggs and no brood. Without any other knowledge, I might have freaked and combined them with one of my Nucs for overwintering. But, I have seen this before. For whatever reason (either my area, my line of bees or bees in general), some of my hives will cast a swarm in July, regardless of the weather. I seriously doubt the swarm did very well (hot and dry with no blooms out there), but I do have a new queen. I am not so sure they did swarm, given the number of bees, the lack of any sign of a queen cell and the abundance of capped honey (they didn’t take much with them, if they did swarm). It could have been a supercedure. Regardless, I have a new queen and (big benefit) my bees just went through a dearth of eggs which should set the mites back substantially. A perfect time for a perfect storm.

But, the main reason that I’m glad that I checked is that I know to go back to this hive in 2 (3 at the most) weeks to check for eggs. This outyard is my most distant Varina outyard, so only 1 hive is within 3 miles. The owner had told me in June that they hadn’t seen a honey bee in years. So, I need to cross my fingers for a good mating.

Biggest Swarm of the Season

As mentioned in several earlier posts, I picked up a huge swarm from a buddy’s apiary just down the road from my house back in May. After finally getting around to processing the videos on my camcorder, I have been able to isolate a video of the catch. As always, the signature ‘underwear shot’ is included – my blog readers will be happy to know that I have purchased suspenders to prevent this from being a feature of future videos!

Laying Worker/Workers, Dud Swarm and World Record

The temperatures to the east of Richmond, Virginia felt like 200 degrees when in full sun, in my bee gear. Makes me appreciate some of the advice that I received early on (and foolishly dismissed): bees may like it in full sun, but I like to be in the shade when I do my inspections, an experienced beekeeper once told me. Normally, I set my hives with their northern/northwestern backs to a good, deciduous tree, which gives me a bit of a break from the heat in the late afternoon. But, in my Nuc Yard (where I keep all young hives, Nuc’s or otherwise), I have to place them where I have space, which is frequently in a Sunny position all day long!

Normally, I do not do a full inspection of my entire Nuc yard every week (I did one last weekend and the next one is scheduled for next weekend.) I do check my regular Nucs every 4 to 5 days, but the rest do not get checked as frequently. But, after the bee inspection, I had to get in there to straighten the frames and square them (the inspector was not as particular about this when he was going through my hives…something I obviously noted and needed to correct this weekend.) It was a fairly eventful inspection, to be sure.

My first check was the Estes Swarm, a swarm about the size of a pine cone that I ‘caught’ (maybe the term is ‘pocketed’ for this size swarm…) after I noticed the queen crawling around on my hand after I broke the branch off that the bees were hanging on to show to a friend. Maybe I never caught the queen (I never laid eyes on her after I got back home) or maybe she was a virgin that never returned from her love voyage. Either way, it has been over 3 weeks since I caught them and I should have seen eggs (and I should have seen her by now, given the size of the bees.) I ended up combining them with a teenage Nuc (basically a Nuc that had done well enough to advance to a Deep and was on the verge of needing a Medium.

My next inspection was worse news. I had created a Nuc with two deep frames of brood, both of which had at least one swarm cell. The problem, I think, was that I overloaded the thing with Nurse bees shaken from a couple of hives. The thing was busting out on Day 1 and I should have done something about it (lesson learned.) I am pretty sure they swarmed (maybe twice) when the queens came out as the bee number reduced a lot in about 10 days and I never found a queen. I haven’t reviewed my bee log, but I know that I had identified the problem over two weeks ago and given them a frame of eggs from a proven hive (Apache). I noticed a queen cell sometime later and hoped to find a laying queen today. Instead, I find tons of capped drone…tons of it. I see eggs laid dead center of many cells but cannot find the queen to save my life. With all of that drone brood, I was suspicious, so I started to inspect lots of ’empty’ cells. Finally, I find the tell-tale sign of a laying drone (probably more then one) – 3+ eggs in a cell. I checked the hive (a third time) for a queen (hoping against all odds) and found more of these daggone cells with multiple eggs. I have notes about what to do in this situation and now laugh at them (I wrote them without much experience). There is no way that I am going to put a frame of brood/eggs into this Nuc every week for 3 or more weeks (I might as well create 3 new Nucs instead.) I think this advice is if you have a full hive that has laying workers – it doesn’t make sense to do this with a Nuc. So, I combined them with a nearly mature hive (mature means a Deep and a Medium that is a week or so from being moved to an outyard.) I marked the queen in that hive, so we’ll see if they combine well or not (you gotta learn sometime.)

So, two Nuc’s (well, 1 real Nuc and 1 swarm that was in a Nuc) were a bust and those were the first two hives I inspected. Not a good start. Fortunately, the rest of the inspections went fairly well except for two near miss issues with marking new queens (I fumbled BOTH jobs and ended up leaving the ladies alone for a later marking – all the while hoping I didn’t damage them.) One Nuc is ready for sale, which a fellow is coming by to get tomorrow. I also upgraded 1 to a teenager (moved to  a full Deep.) The rest are doing fine with good laying queens that should be ready for action within the next two weeks. I want to get these done with by July 1, when I will embark on my Overwintering Nuc program.

One really positive note is something that I honestly would have a hard time believing if I read on someone else’s blog, but I am going to relay it anyway. On May 23, I received a call from a beekeeper down the road that one of his hives swarmed (I had already picked up a swarm from one of his hives earlier this year, so this was number 2). I couldn’t believe the size of this swarm (I will get a video up on it shortly.) This thing was big by my standards and  it was tough getting them in the single deep that I brought along. When I went to pick them up, a solid pound of bees or more were hanging all over the front of the hive (I have never had this happen before.) Since they were not in the hive, I couldn’t tape them up, so I gingerly strapped the hive together and transported them in my car, while they hung on the front (thankfully, I did not get into an accident…) The next day, there were still a ton of  bees hanging all over the front, so I decided to give them a Medium of foundation. I was a bit concerned about this, as I was basically giving this hive a full deep and a full medium of foundation – that’s a lot of space for a new swarm. What would they do? Would they just draw out the center frames of each box? Would they only focus on the top Medium (just below the feeder)? I gave them a single gallon of light (2 parts water:1 part sugar) syrup (all I had mixed at the time) and watched them occasionally during the week. The inspector passed over this box, so I had not looked in them since the 23rd. Today, I checked. To my complete amazement, they had drawn out every single frame on both boxes (although the outer frames on both supers were only half drawn)! I was amazed. They filled out a full brood chamber (for me, which is a Deep and a Medium) in a little over a week with ONLY 1 gallon of syrup! (It should be noted that the inspector was surprised by the nectar my bees were bringing in – he has a yard at VSU which was not bringing in much, a surprise to me). The wild thing was that I did find the queen but she had only started laying eggs – not even any C-shaped larva (that I could find, anyway.) Normally, I would have expected to see something just about capped at this point. It must have been a virgin, which is hard to believe – this could not have been a ‘secondary’  swarm. The hive that cast a swarm this big as a secondary swarm would have to be 10+ supers tall!

But, it was two weeks ago (I think) that the same fellow called me about a swarm, but when I got to his house, he advised that they had all just flown back into his hive. It makes me wonder if the old queen was in that swarm and somehow died or failed to make it to the initial landing branch (and perished in the process.) Maybe she was with them and when they went back to the hive, the virgin killed her. Who knows (I certainly don’t.) In the end, I put a shallow on them just in case and now have to figure out when I will move them to an outyard. I rarely have a hive this big that I have to move and am pretty certain it will break my back.

In closing, it reminds me of the old saying that a swarm in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, but a swarm in July ain’t worth a fly! This was definitely a silver spoon (and maybe a fork too!) In my book, it is a World Record.

 

My First Re-queening, Swarm Build-up and Nuc Updates

It’s been a wild week or two. Beekeeping can be very relaxing – I believe that you can do just fine with very little maintenance (I think more folks are discovering this, which is why so many people are coming to the hobby now). I, however, am obsessed with the hobby and am always doing one thing or another. I can honestly say that there is always something that I could be doing (and frequently am!) It’s great to love your hobby.

We continue to have splendid honey bee weather to the east of Richmond, Virginia. Temperatures remain warm, rainfall is adequate (enough to keep the blooms full of nectar but not so much that it washes out the flowers frequently) and the bees are swarming. This year, I have begun to see a pattern in my hives – about 10 days before initiating several swarm cells, I find a PILE of capped drone brood, all over the place. I initially came across this in March with my strongest hives (Westover, Larry and Geronimo) and have now run across it in some of my ‘mediocre hives’ (these hives are great – they survive the Winters with my ‘no treatment’ philosophy, but they are not booming. They are targeted for honey production and as queen cell builders). I have had too many swarm situations, actually, and gave a few swarm cells to a fellow down the road from me who had lost both of his hives over the Winter.

It is important to note that I do not think it is the end of the world if your hive swarms. In fact, I support it if you do not treat (get those genes out into the wild – before I go to the great Beeyard in the sky, I hope to see plentiful, strong feral hives!) But, I just like to take advantage of the inclination to swarm and create new hives or replacement queens! So, I have been trying to keep on top of them every 10 days. I think that I only lost out on one swarm – the Little Bighorn Hive (an offshoot of Westover that was building up nicely, just not booming – I let 2  weeks pass between inspections and those devious little gals slipped one through the backdoor, it appears.)

As to re-queening, I have actually never done that before this past weekend. Albo was doing horribly. I checked her again last Friday and she had gone back to ONE frame of brood! For a history check, they had two frames of brood the first week of March and still only had two frames of brood the first week of April! Ha. That is truly pathetic. They were making it through the Winter (so they had some good genes), but I needed to get those genes out of my pool.

Nuc B held the Larry Queen. She is a 1 year old queen (this is her second season) and she is spewing out eggs like nobody’s business in the Nuc. I have 8 possible starts (actually, 2 are confirmed – see below!) off of that queen (not including the original hive, which I ‘think’ has a queen – will know in the next few days), so I decided to combine the Larry Nuc (I put her in a Deep, surrounded by 5 frames of foundation) with Albo. Of course, it rained the night before, which meant I had to haul the entire hive (Larry was now sealed up (duct tape, window screen and a strap) in a deep, bottom board, inner cover and telescoping cover) about a quarter of a mile – too muddy to drive up the hill to Mountcastles! Regardless, once I got up there, I found Albo’s queen and killed her, dropping it into an old film canister (anyone remember them?) with rubbing alcohol. This is for Queen Juice, something I will use for swarm catching (a later subject.) I then placed the Larry Nuc on the bottom and Albo on the top, a single layer of newspaper between them (which I had cut a few swaths in with my hive tool, to let air through.) Oddly, the queen was mid-sized. This had me wondering if they superceded the previous one – but, I have seen no cell in the last month. The hive has never been even a Honey Producer, so I wanted it removed anyway.

The goal here is that Albo will notice they do not have a queen within an hour. Soon thereafter, they’ll dig through to the Larry Nuc and start working with that queen. This weekend, I will combine them back to one Deep and let them build up normally. I doubt that I will get any honey off of this hive, but I am happy to get the Larry Gene down in the country (and be done with the Albo gene.)

My first swarm of the season, the Westcastle Hive, continues amazing build-up. In 10 days, they drew out 90% of a 10 frame Deep (they are going through about a gallon of syrup every other day – gotta feed those swarms!) I have put a Medium on them now, but noticed a couple of fishy looking queen cups (like they were starting to work them up a bit). It is not uncommon for a swarm to supercede a queen after they setup shop (and the beekeeper doesn’t really know how old the queen is anyway.) But, I am very impressed with the brood pattern of this queen. If they do cap those cells, I’ll take the queen for myself and let her run a Resource Nuc for me this year. The bees have not been terribly gentle since I got them, but I have not smoked them either. I definitely want a couple of queens (at least) off of this queen before they officially supercede her. I am a big fan of swarm queens (if you get the initial swarm, you have a queen that made it through the Winter – if you’re REALLY lucky, it was cast by a feral hive, which you KNOW has not been treated! Booyah!)

Finally, I have found capped brood in two of my initial Nucs from 3/19!! I actually have journal entries from both Nuc’s (A & C) on 4/15 saying ‘[color] queen found’ (one is black and one is dark brown) and ‘no sign of eggs’. There is no mention of my frustration, but I assure you that I was frustrated on 4/15. I expected to find brood somewhere! I was wondering if I had a bunch of sterile drones running around in the woods near my daggone Nuc yard! Either that, or I have very prude queens. More then likely, the bees raised new queens after my move, which would put the math more in line. Regardless, I have two Nuc’s (confirmed) that are laying. The goal now is to let them be for another week (let the brood mature) and then move them into a Deep. They get to go to a Deep if they have good brood pattern and are modestly gentle (I am not militant about that trait, at this stage.) I am tempted to put some feed on both of them to help them finish drawing out the two frames of foundation they both have left (both are about 50% drawn at this point.)

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.

Lesson 1 for 2011 – Swarm Prevention! Ha!

After hiving two swarms yesterday (and splitting a Nuc), I was ready to get home and do another equipment check. I thought that I had more then enough for any possible increase this year, but am now beginning to wonder. I might be making a trip to Chatham (my nearest Dadant location) sooner then I thought. I might rig a few things together with some of my spare lumber for the time being. But, I think I am good…

A swarm of bees on a thuja branch
Larry casts another swarm

So, I get home to check on my swarms. Both were silent, but so were the rest of my hives. It was close to 6 PM and the temps were around 60 F. I really expected to see more activity, but I guess the bees were calling it early today. I checked the hive top feeders and saw plenty of bees from both swarms eating up the sugar water, so they were there — just calling it for the day. Finally, on a whim, I decided to check some of the many evergreens (thuja’s, hollies, magnolias, and cryptomeria to name a few) for another possible swarm. The first daggone one I checked (a Thuja Green Giant) had a swarm! This was also close to Larry, so I guess they swarmed again! I hived them quickly and saw another setup (Deep, 10 frames foundation, Bottom Board, Top and Inner cover) get used up! Man! Things are starting to get a bit squirrelly.

I was just telling James, a nearby beekeeping buddy, yesterday that I always like to have more then I need in case of crazy events. Now, when I expected to increase by maybe 5 or 6 (1 of my own overwintered Nucs, 2 Nucs of local bees that I plan to get in a trade for my other surviving overwintered Nucs and 3-4 Nuc experiments), I am already looking at 8 new hives (3 swarms and 5 nucs) before I have even traded for my two new Nucs! That’s 10 new hives and we really aren’t in swarm season yet! Wow! I know bad news has to be somewhere in my future – but let the good times roll while they can!

One thing that I have learned is that a hive really is going to swarm once it sets its mind to it. Larry was building up stronger then any of my other hives. Then, on March 19, I notice a bunch of swarm cells. Thinking that I knew what I was doing, I took the old queen on a frame of brood and a frame of brood for Nuc B, and then a frame of brood with two swarm cells and a frame of brood for Nuc C (my first Nuc to hatch a new queen) from the hive. I also shook two frames of brood from this hive. Just writing that out makes me shake my head in amazement. I took a bunch of bees AND the queen. In my mind, this would have signaled the hive that they swarmed and the remaining queens would fight it out to ‘rule’ Larry when hatch time came. Instead, it appears that Larry is casting one swarm after another. I now even wonder if I caught the main swarm, as none of them have been as big as the Westcastle swarm.

In retrospect, I now wonder if I should have split the hive and removed more of those swarm cells. Next time, I will try a different strategy just for the sake of experimenting. I can’t really complain this time, as I wanted genetics off of Larry and now I have 4 new queens (assuming a queen emerged in Larry and is still in there!) and the old queen. I had planned to use this queen to produce the eggs/queens for my Summer Nucs (for Overwintering). Now, I will probably look to the Mosely hive or maybe Geronimo (I wonder if they have swarmed…)

The main lesson here is that you need to be prepared to change your plan constantly as a beekeeper. Keep a goal in mind and have a plan, but pretty much expect the plan to change nearly every week. Just keep your eye on the ball!