Winter | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Ouch

It’s amazing how often I fail to follow my own advice…’sad’ might be a better way of putting it.

This past weekend, I held the second class in the annual Beekeeping 101 seminar that I do every year. Part of this session included a lengthy session titled ‘Managing Your Hive’ by me. There are several key points to this presentation, but one of them focuses on journals. They are very important and it is equally important to make sure you review them on occasion.

This past Sunday, I made another run of hives out in the hinterlands. Things are really looking up – hives are working on several frames (I have one hive working on 5 frames, but that seems to be the exception). When I say ‘working on’, I basically mean that the queen has brood (at some age) on the frames. This is a big ‘tell’ sign and a definite prerequisite of building Nuc’s (I want the queen to be working 7 frames before I pull a Nuc off of them.) Honey stores look good and things are shaping up nicely.

Then I gave my Overwintered Nuc’s a look…

I immediately noticed dead bees on the landing board of the 4th Nuc that I checked. Despite the fact that the loss is not going to be a big loss (in the scheme of things) it still felt like a gut punch. I pried the top off, hoping beyond hope that everything was ok. Once I got into the hive, I had the picture perfect view of a hive that was in the last throws of starvation. It was truly amazing. I literally have nearly 3 supers of capped honey in my basement alone – this doesn’t count a few supers that remain on hives (out in the ‘hinterlands’!) as bank supers. I really could not believe my eyes. I had checked all of my Nuc’s in January. I found that 2 of the ones that I created in August were light and had given both of them several Medium frames of honey. Was this one of them? Did they go through 3 frames of honey in one month?!

So, after breaking down the Nuc and prepping the frames for a quick (48 hours) freeze, I went back to the old journal to get an accurate look. And there it was… This was indeed one of my late Nuc’s. I had come to the conclusion in January that creating Overwintered Nucs in August was not early enough for me. They could get to critical mass, but they could not store enough honey for the Winter. So, I would only create them this late (in the future) if I had plenty of extra capped honey to give them. BUT, I had not gotten to this ONE hive in my January inspection. I had a clear note – check this Nuc asap – no visibility yet on the amount of stores left! I had checked all of the Nuc’s in my Nuc Yard but this one and KNEW it! But, due to life and other things, had forgotten this ‘to do’ item. Now, I have paid a painful price for it.

The truth of the matter is that ‘these things happen’, regardless of how often you might tell yourself that they don’t happen to me (this is actually the 2nd Nuc that I have had die on me due to starvation since I started doing Overwintered Nuc’s.) But, it is definitely a learning event. Starvation is something a beekeeper can prevent. Whereas I do not believe you should spend the Winter feeding your mature hives, I do believe that Overwintered Nuc’s should be fed and it’s really not a lot of work if you have frames of honey ready for them. It’s a failing on my part and I am taking steps today to prevent this from happening again in the future. To manage this, I am building a web app to track my hives and inspections here : http://www.richmondbeekeeping.com/index.php?page=testp . I hope to be finished by this weekend, at which point I can make sure that all hives are stored and tracked.

This should prevent future issues. We’ll see…

And So It Begins!

At the recent East Richmond Beekeeping meeting (held on Feb 12), one of my friends who hosts a few of my hives mentioned that the bees were on her First Breath of Spring shrub. I remember her mentioning this last year, in February I believe, and asked her to snap a picture. They arrived today! It’s great to see the little gals starting to bring in resources instead of being a total consumer, as they do most of the Winter. It’s certainly not enough to sustain the hives, but I’m certain it is getting them amped up a bit! I have already begun looking for this plant (it is also known as Winter Honeysuckle). I will probably plant 10 of them over the next few years, if I can find the space!

Although this is exciting news, we still have another few weeks of risk. I do not see much in the way of really bad weather, but you can’t rely on anything outside of 12 hours from now when it comes to the Richmond weather folks. Regardless, this was a great sign.

So, I really wanted to get out and look at a hive or two. My first obstacle was the daggone Gallbladder. That thing went south on me last week and the surgeons had to cut it out. I guess I have never had surgery like that before, but it sure is taking FOREVER to fully heal. I can walk around, but get tired really easily and can’t lift anything above 20 pounds (is there anything bee-related that weighs LESS than 20 lbs!?!) I decided to crack the only two ‘full’ hives that I have in the backyard. Both are really late Nucs (started in June) that I was only able to get a Medium super on in September. So, both remained in my backyard, which is not usual (I have a lot (well, 9 that are still alive) of Overwintered Nucs back there and like to keep full hives elsewhere!) My goal was to take off the inner cover and simply go through the Medium super, only lifting 1 frame at a time (I wish my frames had 20 lbs of honey in them, but they definitely do not.)

The first hive gave me a good show – walking drones, capped drone brood and eggs in drone cells! Walking drones is a huge find. I still have one of the February Nuc’s that I created last year and believe it is doing great, but I’m not going to do that again until I can see how long the queen in that hive really lives a productive life. But, this all but guarantees Nuc’s getting created in early March, weather permitting. It should be pointed out that the second hive had no Drones in the upper Medium and no evidence of drone brood or eggs up there. Both hives were equally strong, but one was already kicking into 3rd gear.

I am encouraged by what I found today. We’ll see what the next few weeks hold.

First Winter Loss and Deadout!

It had to happen one of these days, but I must say that it gives me little comfort in knowing that…

The weathermen claimed it would rise into the lower 70’s this weekend, so I used it as the ideal chance to check Winter stores in half of my hives. On Saturday, I focused on the Charles City hives (32 out there) and plan to tackle the Varina/Eastern Henrico hives today. I do not think it rose above 60 yesterday, so we’ll see how it goes today.

What is a ‘hive check’ in January? I suppose it means different things to different folks. For me, it primarily means that I approach the hive and lift it (tilt it) from both the front and back, to get a feel for the weight. This initial check is very valuable – some hives are obviously still chock full of honey (quick checks) and others simply require a visual inpsection (it’s hard to gauge some, so you have to go deeper in.)

The ‘quick check’ is simply taking off the inner cover and looking at the frames of the upper super to be sure you still see capped honey. In my yards, a heavy hive rarely has many bees up in the upper super and it is all capped. In those cases, I will break the upper super off of the top super and tilt it up, to make sure I see a bunch of bees doing their stuff (I know, I know, the nervous nellies will begin to run around screaming about breaking up the cluster – I don’t think it hurts them any when you have warm days.) The ‘deeper check’ involves actually pulling frames, sometimes on both the upper and lower supers.

I mostly only did quick checks yesterday, although I did run into a few that were questionable and one that was a goner (a first for me.) I dropped a super of honey (from last Fall) on 3 of the ‘iffy’ ones and broke down the ‘deadout’. I gave the questionable ones honey so that I would not have to mess with them again until late February or early March. The ‘deadout’ was a new experience. It was my second strongest hive this past year (honey-wise). I lost my strongest from Westover Plantation in July, so now I lost my second strongest too! Amazing.

The ‘deadout’ was very interesting, once I got over the sadness of losing her. To begin with, there were probably 20 or so bees in the hive. I am fairly certain these were the first of the robbers. I really must have just caught it, as the hive was still chock full of honey with very little evidence of robbing (torn cappings.) Maybe 15 bees were on the bottom board, dead – another 10 were dead, face down in the cells. As with all bee analysis, there are a wide array of possibilities, but I have learned to focus on the most likely. The most likely scenario (based on my hive journal) is that my monkeying with the hive in November either killed the queen or they swarmed really late and the virgin queen never made it back. The bees slowly died out and finally were two few to keep a decent cluster (to keep warm) and just died.

What about laying drones? That’s a pretty good question – if the queen really did fail/die, why didn’t I find a lot of drone cells or dead drones. My hypothesis is that it was so late in the season that the bees did not kick into that mode. Until I actually see drone layers in the Winter, I am sticking with this synopsis. The queen died or was a virgin and died on her mating flight (or didn’t get mated.) Some might say this looks like ‘absconding’. I personally do not think ‘absconding’ holds much water in the Richmond, Va area, so I have crossed that off the list.

At any rate, the next question is ‘what will I do with the current frames of honey and drawn wax’? I will let my wintering Nuc yard eat out the deep and, sometime later this week, freeze the frames on the Medium and put them aside for possible use in the Nuc’s or what-have-you.

Another 30 or so hives to check today – hopefully no deadout’s, but it’s part of the hobby. We’ll see.

Lessons for 2012

I was recently asked by an experienced beekeeper ‘what did you learn in 2012’? I have had a lot of time to reflect on that question, as I prepare my hives for the Winter (see a brief note on that task below.)

This year proved to be a banner year in the apiaries. I created several Nuc’s in February that all became nice, strong colonies. I sold all of them but one, as I wanted to see how long the queen remained a viable later on. There are two risks with creating a Nuc so early. One is the weather – this past Winter posed no problem here. The second is the possible lack of drones. This second issue may mean that the queens from those early Nucs were not mated enough to make it as long as they otherwise might. In my mind, there is no real way to determine this except to keep the hive for three years and make sure the queen doesn’t falter early. So, no likely update on this experiment until 2015 (or earlier if it turned out to be a failure!)

I also learned that, under good conditions, you can take more than 3 deep frames from a Deep/Med setup for a Nuc without slowing them down or even stopping them from swarming. In all likelihood, I will simply create more than one Nuc from my strong hives in 2013 (I have increased my Nuc boxes by a lot, to prepare for this possibility.) The key here is to not take so much that they flounder for a month trying to rebuild. So, instead of taking more than 3 at Nuc creation time, I’ll probably take 3 one weekend and another 3 some three or four weekends later.

The painful lesson centered on supers. I will never leave 4 or more supers of honey on a hive. My banner hive (out of 30 or so honey producing hives this past Spring) drew out and capped a little under 4 supers (2 shallows and 2 mediums) of honey. I was struggling during these months, trying to keep up with my bees, and never got around to pulling the supers until sometime in June. I cannot be sure, but it appears that the hive swarmed and the queen did not make it back (another lesson here is to check for a single frame of brood at every inspection). The hive was robbed out with a bit of wax moth and SHB in it, once I got to it in June. I deal with losses pretty well, but this one hurt. I had big plans for that queen/bloodline. I was also excited about 4 supers of honey! At any rate, I now know that I can never be sure that I will get to every hive in a timely manner. So, I will be unlikely to leave more than 3 supers on a hive at any given time.

For Winter Nuc’s, I found that early August is about the latest I should start them. I tested a few in mid to late-August and they were unable to fill out the second Nuc body with honey. I’ll let them make a go of it this Winter (as a test), but I’d prefer that they had more honey (I may give one of them a medium nuc of honey from one of my bank hives.)

Winter Prep

Winter prep for me basically involves a few simple tasks, none of which require a full hive breakdown. The first thing I check is honey. I pull a few frames from the top hive body (for me, this is almost always a Medium) and make sure they have a fully capped super. The second thing that I do is spot check the bottom super by pulling one of the center frames and making sure that I have capped brood. All the while, I am looking at as many bees as I can and making sure that nothing is amiss (currently, my main way to judge this is by deformed wing virus.) I then level the hive off (in case is shifted during the year) and make sure it is slightly leaning forward. Finally, I put on an entrance reducer (and a cover, if the hive has a screened bottom board – I stopped using these but still have a dozen or so out in the yards.)

Wintering Nuc Update

We had a few hours of sun today, before the drenching arms of Issac came through and it allowed me to check my Overwintered Nucs. I started 11 for this Winter, hoping to have 8 take (strong, laying queens) and 6 make it to next Spring. One had actually perished a couple of weeks ago (I have already combined it with another Nuc.) This one started getting robbed about 4 days after I created it. Since it was nestled among 4 others, I was worried the robbing would spread, but it didn’t. I even moved the thing and gave it another frame of brood/eggs from a donor hive, only to have robbing start up again. Experiences like these indicate to me that there is some kind of a ‘scent’ issue (the Nuc simply advertises that it is weak and available for robbing.) There are many possibilities – too many for me to touch on in this post. Regardless, I was down to 10 before I even got started! What irks me the MOST is that I tried to save it, even though I know better. It seems that some habits die hard and I am simply going to throw good bees after bad, every year, regardless of my experiences.

On a more positive note, all of the remaining 10 had a laying queen as of today. Of those 10, only 2 were slight laggards. I do not judge a queen by this measure, as a lot of a queen’s laying hinges on the resources available and coming in. These two Nucs may not have had the resources available to them to really lay. But, I start feeding my Wintering Nucs on Sep 1, so they all received two mason jars in an empty hive body on top. Depending on how the Nucs were set-up, I have differing strategies now.

Four of my wintering Nucs came from one hive that I broke down. This was my absolute nastiest, meanest hive. They could handle anything mother nature threw at them, didn’t like to swarm and could put honey away like nobody’s business. But, the second I opened this hive up (with or without smoke, morning, noon or afternoon), they would literally come pouring out of the thing! I never kept track, but I am willing to bet that if you counted up ALL of the stings I have taken from my hives, this hive accounted for over 50% of the total… They were so mean that I never could find the queen when I wanted to re-queen them (I typically do this in May, for an established hive). It’s hard to find a wiley little wench when all of her sisters are jabbing you from all corners! So, I chose this hive to create my wintering nucs from. As a side tale, I never found the queen IN the hive when I broke them apart. I actually found her afterwards, on the ground in a ball of bees, outside of the entrance to the hive. I wonder if she always jumped off the frame when I came looking. At any rate, she lost a head by my hive tool on that day.

But, back to the point, since these wintering Nucs came from an established hive, they actually started with a two Nuc body setup and with a decent amount of stored honey already there. My main goal with these hives is to see them cap off the upper Nuc. Based on my (limited) experience, this is will be a slam dunk for these hives. They’ll be set before the end of September and I probably will not check them again until January.

The other 6 Nucs are in single, deep bodies. I have the same goal for this group that I had for the ones previously mentioned – get a second hive body of capped honey on top of them! I plan to do a little experimenting here, dividing the group into 3 sets of 2.

Set 1 will receive my typical strategy. They will include 2 strong Nucs that will get 2 mason jars today to get them in the ‘nectar consumption’ mode. Once they finish these jars (I’ll check all Nuc feeders every other day or so), I’ll drop a second Nuc body on them with 3 or more drawn frames and one or two frames with foundation. I’ll continue to feed them my normal syrup setup until they draw/cap the entire upper Nuc body or until the end of October.

Set 2 will receive a revised strategy. They will be treated like Set 1, but receive all foundation for the upper Nuc. I am interested to see how much wax a Nuc will draw in September. These Nucs will receive Medium upper Nucs, as I can drop capped frames from some of my Bank supers on mature hives in late October, if this experiment fails.

Set 3 includes my laggard queens. My goal here is really to simply get them to fill out a single, deep Nuc. They are starting with all drawn wax, but they will have an uphill battle (at least I think they will) because of the low number of bees. I doubt they can get a really good nurse bee set until the end of September. They simply do not have a lot of bees to build up a good Winter cluster. I could ‘rescue’ these bees with a frame of capped brood from my mature hives, but I’d like to see them make a go of it. This is really a ‘resources’ experiment for me. I am trying to find the bare minimum that I need for a good success rate for wintering Nucs. These Nucs will receive a bit more attention from me, mainly because I don’t want to open them up in the Spring and find some pest has destroyed the frames. I may also give them some capped frames later on, depending on what I see (if I open them up and find a golf ball-sized cluster, I will not be trying to save them!)

Raising a Queen in the Snow!

Overwintered Nucs in Snow — A Single and a Double Overwintered Nuc in snow

Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia continues to be an adventure full of surprises. Last week, we rose into the lower 60’s – the weekend comes and we get 3 inches of snow! Ha! Although the snow was fun (I really didn’t think we had a chance of snow at this point, its been so warm), it was interesting to see that not a single hive or nuc had chill brood. They must be doing something right!

To add to the craziness, 3 days later it rose into the 70’s!! This was a real boon, as it afforded me the opportunity to open up a bunch of hives to see what was going on.

I started off at the Westover hives. I am constantly interested in the hive that was knocked over in Hurricane Irene last year. I found it, about noon on Sunday after the full brunch of the hurricane had hit us on Saturday. The bottom board (screened) was laying across the yard. The bottom hive body was literally on its side and the top hive body (and one honey super) were laying flat on the ground nearby. Bees were thick in the lower hive body (where I figured the queen must be) and had been able to escape robbing because of all of the leaves and tree limbs that sheltered them. I put them back together, leveled the hive and let ’em roll, not sure what would happen. After checking today, it didn’t set them back a bit.

Supercedure Cell — Honey Bees Dealing with a Failing Queen

Most hives averaged around 5.5 frames of brood. Nearly all patterns ranked from 8 to 10, with one 2 (this one looked like a failing queen) and one 5. I found one hive with 9 frames of brood – they will be the parent to my first Nucs next wekeend, if things hold out. Honey stores were great in all of the hives (I checked 9 full hives) but one. I did find a hive that was laying brood in the upper Medium, although the bottom Deep was full of honey (except for an empty area about the size of a baseball (maybe bigger) where they had laid brood at one time or another. Most folks would reverse this hive, but I purposefully let them alone just to see. I have my doubts about ‘reversing’, based on some readings of Brother Adam, so I thought I would run my first primitive experiment.

I also found where a couple of hives were drawing was and/or storing some nectar in the brood nest. For some, the latter is a sign of swarm prep. I marked those hives for another check this weekend (and probably next weekend.) I was surprised to see the wax draw – it was more then just a little. I do not recall how warm it has to be to draw wax, but I definitely didn’t think it had gotten that warm. I am clearly wrong, so probably need to read up on those stats again.

All in all, a good inspection day. For the most part, it was ‘good’ because I am no longer wondering what’s going on in those hives. But, that is a perfect opportunity for me to get on my soap box and espouse about my thoughts on early inspections!!! Depending on their goals, beekeepers have different reasons for going into the hives at this time of year. Most beekeepers (the newer ones) should have the simple goal of ‘what’s going on in there’ as a learning experience. As a basic ‘to do’ list, you go in to check the brood pattern, find drones, check honey stores (probably most important) and look for any signs of problems. I typically dissuade any of the 2nd year beekeepers that I mentor from going into the hives too early, as I would hate for them to accidentally kill their queen when no drones were about. I found one hive with so many drones this past week that I am confident that killing a queen right now is no longer a death sentence.

Case in point, one thing that everyone should be doing right now is checking brood pattern. It is particularly hard to do as a new beekeeper with one hive. But, you need to do it. ‘Pattern’ typically refers to two things. 1 (and both easy to assess and least important), how much of the frame does it take up. 2, how ‘spotty’ is the pattern. This one is more difficult, but very important. A queen should start laying in the center of a frame and work outwards, in a concentric circle. In the end, every single cell should receive an egg (until she stops building the circle – which might be small or large – not a sign of queen health, but a sign of how many nurse bees are about.) When they cap the eggs, you have a smooth, flawless circle of capped brood. Sometimes, the bees notice something wrong with a capped pupae and extract it, expelling it from the hive (many yards away.) This creates a small hole in the ‘brood pattern’. For me, a few holes is fine – I view it as good genes – they found pupae with varroa and removed the pupae, preventing or reducing the varroa cycle. But, if you find a lot of holes, it can mean that the queen is laying dud eggs. It’s definitely a problem, as these are all potential population for your hive and it probably means the queen was either poorly mated or is failing.

As it so happens, the very last hive that I inspected the other day had a very poor brood pattern and not nearly the amount of frames of brood that I consider healthy right now. I was debating on whether to kill my queen when I discovered that the bees were taking care of it! Right there on the comb was a queen cell! It hadn’t been capped yet, so I was actually able to see the mass of royal jelly they had put around the larva (hard to see in the pic)! Although I don’t mind killing a queen, I much prefer the natural process (my number one hive – 9 frames of brood and enough drones on the comb to fill up a nuc!) came from a queen raised by the bees in March last year. I believe in the process, so I was glad to see the bees taking action. The wild thing is that this was my meanest (most defensive) hive last year – I went in to kill queen multiple times in July/August, but could never find her. But, these bees were by far the most gentle bees that I opened on this day. Hard to say why this was (the old queen was still there). Maybe the prospect of a new queen had everyone in a good mood=)

In conclusion, the bees are really ahead of schedule this year, as everyone thought they’d be. I still plan to start a few Nucs next weekend, so more on that later.

First Log Entries of the Year

This has surely been the weirdest January that I have lived through in Richmond, Va – it is certainly the warmest in my memory (which really isn’t saying much…) We are getting frequent high’s in the 50’s, with occasional high’s in the 60’s, while Alaska and areas to the Northwest are going through one of the more brutal Winters on record! Regardless, we’ve finally been getting a few days with high’s in the 40’s again and this provides an interesting entry for the beekeeping journal.

One of the best things that I did as an early beekeeper was to begin making journal entries on my hives. It started with simple notes, such as date, weather, hive temperament and any unusual observations. As time went on, I added items (and removed some), including # of frames of brood, # of frames of resources, pests, number of bees with deformed wing virus, and the list goes on. It’s amazing how valuable this resource has been. Occasionally reviewing the old entries of a particularly strong hive or even a weak hive has been very educational. You are able to step back and view the big picture, instead of focusing (and frequently fretting!) on the individual events of the day. This has proven particularly invaluable in identifying the best hives to breed new colonies from.

One of the things that you can observe in a normal January is ‘Russian’ behavior. The Russian strain of Apis mellifera is known to fly at lower temperatures than the other honey bee strains. I like this trait and make a note of which hives fly in the upper 30’s (something I rarely see, except on a really sunny day) and the 40’s. All honey bees should be out doing their business once we hit the 50’s, but the lower temperatures are always of interest. Flying early is a benefit, in my opinion. I view it as ‘good work-ethic’, as it usually means they are out the door earlier in the morning to collect nectar in the early Spring (when temps can be low on occasion) and may work a bit later. It’s just an opinion, but I’ll keep tracking it to see if I find trends down the road.

Beginning Beekeeping Class in Richmond, Va

Bees enjoying maple syrup in Winter — Winter Nectar Source

It’s been a wild Fall/Winter, to be sure. The weather has never really gotten into a good ‘winter groove’ and there are frequently times when it simply feels like Spring! Today, the temps are currently approaching the mid-60’s…that’s about 25 degrees above the average High for this time of year in Richmond, Virginia. In truth, we always get a day that rises into the 50’s (at least) in January, but we really have yet to get any real Winter weather this year. We still have a few months to go, but it’s a far cry from last year. I really doubt that it’s going to be too bad.

What does this mean to the beekeeper? For one, folks call him about ‘swarms on the Maple trees’. As most beekeepers know, there is a zero percent chance that any hive is going to swarm in January. It may abscond because someone cut down the tree they were in or whatnot, but they are not going to be swarming. Add this bit of knowledge to the fact that I had already noticed the bees enjoying the sap coming out of my Maples and I was (hopefully) able to calm the fellow down. The woodpecker creates the holes and the sap (maple syrup) comes out when it warms up a bit. This draws the bees. Does this hurt the tree? As my Pop would say, ‘It didn’t help it any’, but I have never seen any long-term issue and my maples are huge (a good 4 to 6′ in width at the base.)

On a general, What’s going on note, we are ramping up the first Beginning Beekeeping class at the East Richmond Beekeepers Association. Over the past few years, I have received a lot of ‘come help me’ calls from folks in Richmond and the surrounding areas. When I get there, I have found that many of these folks (close to 75%) have actually attended another Beekeeping class held in our area. Sadly, their questions have always been very basic questions. This got me to thinking – I am willing to bet that these classes spend several days going over every single aspect of beekeeping. This is a worthy objective, but I believe that it causes some folks to miss the forest for the trees. In my opinion, there is a core bit of knowledge that a new beekeeper needs to know. This pretty much focuses on what to do with a hive from just before they get their Nuc/Package to about June or so. These early months are crucial. I postulated that maybe they were being taught too much at such an early stage. How about a class that really focuses on these early months with a follow up class (say in May) for some of the other information? So, I spearheaded a new class at ERBA.

December Dandilion Bloom — Who Says There is nothing blooming in December?

As a side benefit, I have really taken to a philosophy that merges Practical Beekeeping (as espoused by renown beekeepers such as Michael Bush) with Sustainable Beekeeping (heralded by Brother Adam, a beekeeper of yesteryear, but heavily promoted today about another esteemed beekeeper, Michael Palmer.) There are aspects to this philosophy that every beginning beekeeper should know. So, I decided to focus the class on this philosophy.

We start in February and I expect a great class! But, I plan to get a lot of anonymous feedback in case we miss the mark.

What’s going on in my hives? Well, many still have plenty of honey. I opened several hives today and actually pulled frames in the brood nest. Very little evidence of laying, actually, but tons of honey. All of this warm weather had me worried, but I guess the bees are holding their stores close to their vests. I also do not have any losses yet, but I am expecting them (if I get them) in the Feb/Mar timeframe. We have a fair number of dandilions blooming and they are bringing in some kind of red pollen (or were, in late December), so I am happy.

The cool thing is that the Big Fun Time in beekeeping is probably no more then 2 months away! Bonzai! I can hardly wait.

No Brood! The Queen Isn’t Laying!

With the warm weather in Richmond, Va. this past weekend (it was 69 when I checked on the hive called Westover), I went around to pull some of the last remaining extra supers that I had on hives. I also took a peak at any hives that didn’t feel heavy. My goal was to simply go down to the brood nest and pull one or two frames in the center of the hives to check on the brood nest. To be honest, I had just gotten through doing a lot of reading on American Foulbrood (AFB)… For those who have not delved into it much, this disease has one really nasty effect – you can actually lose an entire apiary if it takes hold of just one hive.

Effectively, the spores spread into the honey. So, when the hive finally weakens to the point where it is robbed, the other bees in your yard take the tainted honey back to their hives and the infection starts all over again. To be fair, the State Apiarist has told me multiple times this year that AFB has been almost non-existent in Virginia this year. But, all I had to do was read up on it during a quiet moment one weekend and it’s been bugging me ever since (is that hive just light or is it really suffering from AFB? Will I end up losing the whole apiary if I don’t check now?!) At any rate, I went into a few hives for the last time (I have said this so many times that I’m probably the only one that really believes it at this point) until January.

The very first hive that I went into had next to no brood. Here we go, I figured. I found the queen and she looked great. The honey stores were fine and the colony was strong in numbers. No signs of deformed wings or anything weird. Basically, except for the lack of brood, everything looked great. At this point, I was actually irritated (what the heck?! these guys were fine 3 or 4 weeks ago! tons of brood! now, she just decides to fail on me?!) On to the next apiary with a weak hive, still cogitating on what I should do about this hive. New apiary, new hive – again, no brood!!!! Now I am starting to freak out. Then, I remember (I am getting old…hell, I am old) that it’s late November! We’ve had a couple of nights below freezing…the day length is shortening quickly…EQUALS the queen stops laying!

Heh. The weather was so warm that I really had pushed it from my mind that we were well into the Bee’s Winter. But, to squash any possible nagging doubts in the days/weeks ahead, I broke down all of the hives in that apiary (5 in total). Every one the same – always no eggs (well, if they were there, I missed them) along with either no capped brood or just a handful. My queens are taking their well-deserved vacation! They won’t start up again until the days start getting longer again, probably in January.

The real key to this is that I now realize that I do not think that I have ever been into the brood nest of one of my hives in late November, so I have never seen this before. Of course, I could be crying the blues come Jan/Feb if all of these hives do have a serious problem, but I am pretty comfortable that everything is good to go. Regardless, this little surprise has me determined to go into a brood nest in January. I sort of went into one last January, when I was trying to save the Albo hive (which did survive, but I whacked the queen in April) and slid the frames to the middle of the hive, pulling one of the outside frames before I did so. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.

IMPORTANT: I do NOT recommend that anyone reading this blog actually break open the brood nest at any time after October 15 and before March 1, especially not in January or February. When I do it, it will be on a strong hive that I can stand to lose if something goes wrong. But, I am confident (or is that foolish) that I can do it if I get a day in the 50’s (we always do) in Jan.

Oct Swarm Has a Queen!

As posted back on the 19th, I actually picked up a swarm of bees this month in Richmond, Virginia! October? Well, I’ve been through that before. A swarm caught in August requires work to get through our Winters. One caught in September requires a lot of work and you are still at high risk. I would have to say that the chance that an October swarm will make it is next to zilch. Fortunately for me, I love a challenge.

Once I got the swarm back to my house, I put 5 frames of drawn wax with 5 frames of foundation in a Deep and placed a top feeder on them. Most will ask ‘why didn’t you put them in a Nuc?!’ It’s a valid question. The main reason I put them into the Deep was because of their need for feed. I know you can feed a Nuc, but I have found that my Beemax top feeders (for full-sized hives only – they have something similar for Nucs, but I do not own any) are the absolute best mechanism for me to get syrup into hives. It was Oct 19! I had no time to mess with an entrance feeder (plus, I was worried about robbing). So, I gave them drawn wax to immediately start laying in and foundation (in case they were a swarm and were ready to build wax, like Spring swarms do.) I dropped the feeder on them and began feeding them.

At the last moment, I dropped another deep frame that I had which was mostly honey but had been ravaged by SHB back in July. I had frozen the frame for 3 days and kept it in my basement since then. Although I knew some of the honey was shot, I figured some would be fine for them (I had already seen the bees clean out 2 similar frames when I placed them out in the open in my Nuc yard earlier in the year, so I knew there was value in what the frame had in it.)

The problem is that these frames have a different scent to them. It seems to really draw bees quickly, which I really didn’t think about when I dropped it into the October swarm. The next day, it looked like I had a robbing situation. As always (and usually to my detriment – and the bees!), I try to get into the heads of my bees – I figured that we have a new swarm of bees, moved about while being captured and now in a new location (trying to get oriented) and I have created a robbing scenario! Before they could even get their feet under them! Now, it’s going to be hard to follow my twisted logic, but hang in there…

Seeing what I thought was robbing, I looked closer and could see bees fanning OUT of the hive. At that exact time, I thought that this was the bees trying to get the scent of the SHB frame out of the hive, which (again, enjoy the roller coaster ride of my weird logic) was only inviting more robbers! I did my quick trick of dropping a wet towel over the hive and waited until nightfall to remove it and seriously reduce the entrance.

So, all kinds of things are going through my head now. On day 3, I finally figured out that it wasn’t robbing. It was merely flight orientation of a ton of bees (remember, the whole hive (experienced foragers included) had to reorient.) I know full well that you need to see a lot of fighting to know that there is robbing going on (which I hadn’t seen), but I figured (here I go again…) that the problem was that the swarm had never really made the hive their home – so they weren’t defending it yet. Oh well.

So, the weekend arrives and I go in to have a look. These bees were making really good use of the feeder and had basically put cured syrup (most of it was already honey) in ALL of the frames. What the?! Is the queen going to lay anywhere. Again, cursed with my brain, I began to think back on the fanning bees and dropping the wet towel on them. Did I have virgin queen in this swarm that had gone out only to be thwarted from returning by my towel?!?! I checked again – no queen and no place to lay. I could also see a few gals still fanning, as if to say ‘The grand lady will be coming home any moment now – keep sending our scent out there to guide her home!’

At this point, I was pretty sure that I had lost the swarm and would need to combine. But, I know full well to let the bees alone for as long as possible before enacting my own will upon them. So, I decided to give it another week.

Today, as the temps rose into the upper 50’s, I opened up the Deep to have a look. I actually had a Nuc setup nearby, as I expected that I would not find a queen and wanted to combine them with another Nuc that I have from an Irene cut-out. Much of the syrup in the frames had been moved, but no eggs. The problem was that it was still somewhat cold and there were a lot of bees in this swarm – they were very good at fully covering all 5 drawn frames. I find that lightly blowing on bees makes them disperse, so I was able to check a few cells to no avail. I did find where they were drawing wax (before today, if anyone told me a bee would draw wax in October, I’d think they were smoking crack), but nothing…until frame 4! The queen! There she was, inspecting a cell and inserting her abdomen into it! Bonzai! Patience, when it comes to bees, always pays off for me.

These bees have a tough road in front of them. I did not notice any pollen, but the bees were covering nearly every cell. They have about 20% of the honey that they will need for the Winter. They also are only now building up brood. I have no idea how hardy the current set of bees are (are they made up of Winter bees? how many are Winter bees that can make it to February?!) If I had more experience with October swarms, I’d know what to do. The wise man would probably kill the queen and combine with one of my hardy Nuc’s. But, I have never been called a wise man! So, we’re going to see how it goes.

What’s up next? Over the next week, we’ll have good beekeeping weather (temps closing on or even eclipsing 70). I plan to go out to the Albo hive and pull at least two Deep frames of honey. I also plan to grab a shallow or a medium off of one of the hives at Shirley Plantation (they have extra supers on them). This super will not be full of capped honey, but it will be at least 50% full, based on my last inspection. Finally, I will add a spacer on this hive and put a few pollen patties on them (I have the mix, but have never made them, so be ready for another adventure posted here in the next month or so.) I think that will give them the best chance at making it.

(I may initiate another plan, moving them to a 2 Nuc high setup – depends on how many deep frames I feel comfortable taking from Albo – plus, I do not have a Nuc spacer, so I’ll have to build one – another reason why this option is the least likely one….)