The new year came in and things really started hopping in my beekeeping adventures. I was able to tackle a lot of the tasks that I slate for Jan and Feb, but end up rushing to complete in late March or even April! Things were going so well that I decided to go ahead and add a post and maybe become a bit more active on my blog this year.

Low and behold, I find out that the daggone thing has been down for a couple of months. After a bit of legwork, I discovered that the site was not recoverable and had to rely on back-up’s. Despite being in IT and knowing you need to take regular back-up’s, my last good backup was from 2013! Argh.

But, all things considered, I think it worked out fine. I have not been very active the last few years, so I am fairly certain that I didn’t lose much in this debacle. I still have some clean up work to do, but hope to begin relaying some of my bee adventures soon!

About 3 weeks late, I was finally able to start the first queen rearing program this past weekend. Today (well, yesterday, given the fact that my daughter woke me up and I’m unable to get back to sleep at this ungodly hour!) was Day 5 of my Nicot system.

The Nicot system utilizes a little contraption that you confine the queen in, for a day, so that she can lay eggs in it. You then take her eggs (the system has these little ‘cups’ that she lays in) and  place them in a ‘starter’ hive to get going – that’s a VERY high level overview of what’s going on…

For me, yesterday was Day 5 in the system. I had to create a queenless scenario in one of my hives and install the cell frames. Today, I will need to actually move the egg cups onto the cell frames.

Although I have never tested this out, I have read in a few places that the best queens are ‘started’ by a queenless hive. Since I plan to ‘start’ my queens on Wed, I wanted to create a queenless situation on Tuesday and give the bees a day to really get worked up over losing their queen. My current method (I am, by no means, an expert here and continue to try different ways to achieve the best results) is to start with a hive that is on 2 Deeps and is going strong. I locate the queen and place her in the bottom Deep. Once she is secure, I turn the whole hive around and face it backwards. Finally, I place a bottom board on top of the lower deep, facing forward, and put the final Deep in place.

If you can picture this, both of the Deeps remain but they are now separated into two groups of bees. On the bottom, with the entrance facing behind, the queen continues working and building. Up top, with a new entrance facing forward (although a little higher) is the other half of the bees, who now have no access to the queen below. They shortly go into emergency replacement mode.

It is important to have some nurse bees up top, where the queens will be started. But, I will really dump them up there tomorrow. For right now, I simply want to make sure there are two masses of bees (on brood), one without a queen. I face the entrance of the new queenless hive in the same direction as the original entrance, to get most (if not all) of the foragers. I want this mini-hive to be roaring for the eggs they are going to receive a day later.

Finally, I drop my cell frame into the queenless hive. The real goal here is to make it familiar to the bees. It will smell like ‘part of their hive’ and be easier to accept when I add the eggs tomorrow.

Finally, I have a few hives with the Deep/Deep setup. Their main purpose is to house my queen systems. When I was going around to determine who would hold the queen frames (I am doing several this year, so would like several hives to ‘start’ and ‘finish’ my queens), I did find another deadout! Argh! I didn’t have time to really get into the hive, but will do so tomorrow. My losses continue to creep up and it is painful, but it’s more emotional then anything else. I also came across a few double deeps that are great examples of queens to watch. They were really just barely working on 5 or 6 frames in the whole hive (frames with brood). The hives that I chose had brood on 13+ frames. It’s key to understand what ‘is roaring’ and what is ‘whimpering along’…

Per the previous post, someone recently asked me about what they needed to be prepared for getting bees this  Spring. After we talked for awhile, the first thing that I realized was that he had not ordered his bees yet.  My previous post went over how you get your hives but, as  mentioned by Doug, I got lost in the explanation and forgot one of my primary points of the initial post – no matter how you are getting your bees, order them right now. Nuc’s run out quickly and, from what I have been told, packages also run out from the best suppliers. So, get your orders in now.

Now, as to the point of this post, when I was talking to this gentleman who was expecting to get bees in the Spring, he asked me what  kind of ‘Nuc hive body’ to buy. This made me realize that the whole process of actually ‘installing’ your bees might be confusing to some. So, I will review it (at a high level – I recommend further research and talking to your local club members of course!) now.

With my preferred method, purchasing a ‘Nuc’, you are basically getting four or five frames of bees with a queen. The term ‘Nuc’ really refers to the size of the hive body that is used to ‘grow’ the bees. Although some folks might give you a cardboard box that holds the 5 frames, I have never heard of someone actually selling a wooden Nuc hive body with the 5 frames. So, you are really just getting 5 frames (they are going to be Deeps unless you specifically work out something else with the seller), so you are going to need a Deep hive body (w/top and bottom) to put the frames in. Since a Deep holds 10 frames, you are going to need to purchase at least 5 other frames to go in the Deep to fill it out (with your five frames of bees.) Check with your supplier, as they may want you to ‘swap frames’ with them, so you have to give them 5 empty (foundation only) frames for their 5 full frames of bees. If this is the case, your initial Deep Hive Body should also  have 10 frames of empty foundation (5 to go with the 5 you will get from the seller and 5 to give to the seller.) This will give you the bare necessities.

If you are getting a package, it is pretty much the same deal. A single deep with 10 frames (and top/bottom) will get you started.

Most folks (including me) would recommend getting your expansion gear now too. As a first year beekeeper, I recommend getting another Deep so that your bees can expand their broodnest to a second level once they get going. I would also get a medium or a couple of shallows in case you have a banner year. You can make the call on what you do with this, should the occasion arise, but I am pretty militant about not taking honey off of any 1st year hive, regardless of what happens.

This should get you started for a great learning experience. I should close with a couple of other thoughts.

1. There are a lot of folks that use the ‘all Medium’ strategy. This really means that you do not use Deeps or Shallows but instead use nothing but Mediums for all of your bees. I do not use this strategy, but have nothing against it. My personal advice is to start with what has always worked (2 Deeps) and make up your mind about the Medium strategy once  you have experience with bees (maybe in year 2 or 3.)

2. I pretty much talk about ‘One Hive’ in this and the last post. I am a huge believer in getting two hives, especially if you are getting packages. Once you get going with Bees, they are good little soldiers and make it fine from year to year. But, at the start, there are all sort of variables that can cause problems for you and most of them are beyond your control (Doug mentions a poor queen in a comment to the previous post). Get two hives so that a casualty does not leave you completely bee-less. You’re going to lose hives once you get into it and you’ll come to adjust to it. But, losing all of your hives in year 1 is a good way to give up on the hobby, which would really be a shame. In addition, you have something to compare to. It really helps with the learning experience.

That’s it for my ‘getting your bees’ posts. I have really only scratched the surface here and interjected some of my own opinions in several points. So, this is not designed to be the final resource, but just an ‘FYI’ for anyone thinking about getting into bees. Good luck!

The Small Hive Beetle is another one of those lovely gifts that beekeepers received from across the seas. The critter originated in Africa. Oddly, one would expect that the Beekeeper’s of Europe would have encountered them as well, but maybe the beetle could never survive the trip through the Middle East…

At any rate, this Bug likes to eat sweet stuff. Fruit, honey, sugar water…you name it. As an adult, it will sneak into a beehive and lay eggs in an out of the way location. Once the eggs hatch, a nasty little larva crawls around and eats honey, comb and brood (that’s right…brood…) The honey bee fights it off, chasing the parents out of the hive and cleaning up the eggs. I am guessing that they will also kill the small larva if given the chance. Once the larva is full, it crawls out of the hive and digs into the ground, mutating back into the beetle (see my Small Hive Beetle page for thoughts on nemotodes that might fight this.) Then, it just flies back up and starts laying eggs again…

But, this all assumes a strong hive. A weak hive can fall behind the beetles and end up with a nest of larva climbing through everything. To make matters even worse, they defecate in the wax and this is one substance that the bees turn their noses up at. They will not clean it  out and can/will eventually abscond from a hive that is full of these little beasts.

Now, back to my beekeeping adventures near Richmond, Virginia. The Small Hive Beetle (aka SHB) has been slowly working its way up the coast over the past several years. Like the Varroa Mite, it can overwinter in the warmth of the hive’s cluster. But, it has had a hard time getting a toehold in the more temperate regions (it is a tropical bug, after all.) Still, the State Apiarist noted that central Virginia had its first SHB around 2005. He says that they will cover all of Virginia soon enough, so get ready for them.

Well, I have them. I had them last year, but only a few running here and there. This year, they seem to be everywhere. I think the early warm season gave them a bit of an advantage. Tomorrow, I will take a look at my small hives to see how they are faring, but the reason for this post centers on the Southside Hive.

About 6 days ago, I decided that I should give the Southside Hive some pollen substitute to help them get going. I had just sucked them out of a tree and they had no resources at all. I could see that they were storing nectar, but was unsure if they were getting enough pollen. Like an idiot, I tore off a small chunk (maybe the size of a silver dollar) and pushed it through the entrance (I could not lay it on top, as I have a hive top feeder on this hive right now.)

Well, I checked the pollen sub this morning, to see if they were  using it, and found that they were not. Instead, as I pulled it out and turned it over, about a dozen SHB larva were crawling all through it! Ugh! These things are nasty. I wish I had snapped a picture, but I was so pissed that I dropped them on a rock and smashed the living bejesus out of them. Hopefully, I caught this in time and did not endanger the hive any. But, it has me wondering what is going on under the feeder. In addition, I thought I noticed a weird smell from the Berkley Hive the other day (it also has a top feeder – another thing that attracts the cursed bug). At the time, I thought that maybe the syrup was getting ripe (you cannot leave the feed, which is basically water and sugar, out in this heat for too long before it begins to ferment.) But, they were almost finished and I just figured I would swap that feeder out for a clean one tomorrow.

At any rate, this post reflects a big lesson for me. Once SHB weather is here, do not feed Pollen Sub. In this case, the bees will have to make it on their own. Natural Selection. If I give them the sub, I am only stacking the deck against what might otherwise be a strong gene pool. At any rate, I hope that I do not have to cull frames tomorrow, to get rid of a SHB problem. I might be going to the store to get some materials for a homemade trap…