Winter | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Winter Arrives – Removing Supers

We have snow hitting some of the western areas of Virginia tonight and it looks like the temps around Richmond, Virginia will drop into the lower 30’s over the next couple of days. This marks the beginning of Winter for this year. I feel pretty good because I have confirmed the following on all hives (with one exception – a hive at Pop’s, which is another story):

Good or Great weight (honey stores)
Strong brood patterns through last weekend
Evidence of a Queen (I am satisfied with finding larva)
Entrance reducer (both to keep the draft out and the mice out)
Ventilation chuck (more on this one in a future post)
Leveled and with a brick on the top
at least 8 inches off of the ground

What have I not done?

About half of my hives are on screened bottom boards (I am still not sure whether SBB’s are worth it or not). I have not put the plastic board on any of these hives (beneath the screen) to fully seal them
I have not reduced all of my hives to just the brood chamber (1 Deep and 1 Medium)

The last point is what prompted this post, as I continue to get emails/newsletters from various Honey Bee resources recommending to remove all extra supers before Winter. I think the primary reason to remove the extra supers is the space. You are making the bees patrol/cover an area that is too large for them. I suppose this makes it possible that they will need more resources to stay warm or that you are increasing the risk pests will get to the sections that the bees cannot adequately cover.

But, for the time being, I am not going to remove my extra supers that still have honey (capped or otherwise). Effectively, I harvested honey in September (after letting the bees clean these, I have removed them from the hives). Everything that was left was consolidated into a super or two above the brood nest. For example, I have one hive with 2 Deeps, 1 Medium and 1 Shallow. If all goes well, I will not have to mess with them. But, if I have a hive that needs a boost, I’ll take it from these guys (and a couple of other hives that I have with more resources then that need.) I might regret this, but for now I am not taking the general advice on extra supers.

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.

Let’s Experiment

Last Spring, there was a lot of consternation about slow build up. Of course, this was only on my part, as the bees went about their business with no worries whatsoever. Basically, both of my hives were building up at about the same pace, but I had spoken to (or emailed) other beekeepers in the area that were seeing more mass (more bees in their hives.)

During one such conversation, back in the Spring of 2010, a beekeeper from Buckingham mentioned that some folks in his neck of the woods would put light syrup on their hives in February to give the hives a jump start. The general theory is that you put a weak sugar-water solution (1 part Sugar to 2 or 3 parts water) on the hives. This makes the bees think that the nectar flow has started and they begin to ‘build up’ (a term that basically means the Queen starts to lay a bunch of eggs). By the time the real nectar flow starts, they will have a TON of bees and really be able to sock away the honey.

Since last Spring, I ran into a wizened beekeeper from yesteryear who put out buckets of syrup water in his apiary to get an early build up. As always, I am fascinated by simple approaches and decided to give it a whirl in one of my outwards.

Bees Eating Syrup from a Dog Waterer — Dog-waterer Turned Bee Feeding Station

I mixed up a batch of weak sugar syrup (10 lbs Sugar, 3 Gallons Water) and poured it into one of my old dog waterers. On Sunday, around 11 am, I placed it in a central area between the hives (it was as much as 40 yards from two of the hives and 30 yards from the other three). By late afternoon (right before I went to watch the Steeler’s get a whooping- booyah!), the bees had found it and were on it pretty thick. During lunch today, I checked in on them around noon and they were really putting the stuff down.

It will be interesting to see how this works. I am pretty sure that I never even considered feeding from outside of the hive (now or in the Summer) as I did not want to feed the feral bees. Now, I am having second thoughts. This was very easy and it did not cause any robbing (like it does, on occasion in late Summer, when the syrup is placed within one hive.) I may not ever feed in the Winter again (we’ll see how it goes with this experiment), but I will most definitely feed outside again (until such time as I figure out a good reason not to.)

Close Shot of Bees Feeding in February — Bee Jamboree at the Feeding Hole

I actually checked one of the hives and it appeared that they were storing it around the brood nest. I am torn about this behavior. I have a gut feeling (no evidence) that honey from real nectar is much better then my sugar syrup (even if I do have Better Bee in it.) This is the roughest time of the year for a bee, so why give her second rate food (assuming there is a difference between nectar and syrup)? But, on the other hand, it gives me a bit of comfort to know that they are socking away some stores exactly where they’ll need it if (quite honestly, I should say when) it gets cold again (at the edges of the cluster.) But, on the other other hand (is that three hands?), are they filling up cells that the queen might want to lay in? Ha! Who knows. The bees know and that’s all that matters.

Finally, I also put pollen patties on each of the hives in this yard (if brood rearing is going to ramp up, they are going to need some pollen! – well, they may need it if they were lazy last Fall and didn’t put enough away!) This brings me to my last observation for today – protein from the bird feeder! I had heard of it, but had never seen it. Folks have said that bees will sometimes scour bird seed, looking for a few bits of protein in the stray pollen. This past Friday, I found one of my bees (well, a bee in my yard anyway) doing just that! She was running in and out of the feeder, filling her legs up with some dust substance (which was pollen, no doubt – probably not the best, but still worth collecting in her mind.)

Bee In Bird Feeder Closeup — Yum! Bird Feed Pollen!

Are Your Bees Doing Ok?

As mentioned previously, my periodic hive checks in 2011 have (so far) indicated a nice honey store left on all hives (except the Westover Hive, which I cannot currently check – they moved up to the attic in early January…) But, I will continue to check on them, every time it gets into the low 40’s. The bees have had a cold Winter, following a fairly dry Autumn in the Richmond, Virginia area. They are at risk.

As an example, David Stover, an active Top Bar Hive beekeeper in ERBA, sent me the following email today. He agreed to let me post it here, for the folks that check in. I think it is a great Alert for us all – get out there and have a peak. Make sure your bees have some honey (and if they don’t, David also offers a quick recipe to get some food into the hive.)

I received a call from a beekeeper that had just discovered his hive had died out on Monday. I went over to help him take a look. Almost zero honey. The bees starved and froze. Lots of pollen, not that it did them much good. So this morning I made up a batch of Fondant. Checked my hive at home which had stored up what I thought was way more than enough to see them through the winter and it was almost empty of honey. A few frames with a little capped honey here and there but certainly not enough to make it through. I smeared fondant into the combs of three frames both sides, and the bees were on it pretty quickly. I did see a few frames partially filled with wet nectar so the bees have been collecting nectar somewhere when it has been warm enough.

I checked four other hives and all but one were in the same condition. The one hive that was fairly small had a good amount of capped honey. Just as a precaution I added some fondant to that hive anyway. The smaller hives I went through completely and did not see any signs of brood and not much pollen. All hives now have some fondant to help out.

So if you haven’t checked your hives you might want to take a look this weekend. Sunday is supposed to be in the 50’s and sunny.

Fondant Recipe:

1 part water
4 parts sugar
1/4 teaspoon white vinegar
I also added 1/4 teaspoon Honey-B-Healthy (just because I had some)

Put into big sauce pan. Bring to a boil while stirring the whole time to prevent the sugar from burning. Leave it to a gently boil for 5 more minutes or until it reaches 234 F. test with a candy thermometer if you have one. Take it off the heat and let it sit until it cools to 200 F. With an electric hand held soup mixer or whatever mixer you have beat the mixture until it turns sort of white and has lots of air bubbles in it (took about 5 minutes). Pour into a shall container and let it sit undisturbed until cool.

In Langs you can put it on top of the frames over the brood/cluster in a shall dish or on wax paper. (put some sticks in it so the bees don’t get stuck)

In a TBH I either smear it into empty comb or put it in a shallow narrow plastic dish, cut to fit, and slide it on the floor of the hive as far in as I can get it.

Thank the Lord for Good Weather

Last Summer, I set up one of my experimental apiaries down at Westover Plantation. I now actually have 7 daggone apiaries, if you include my home yard. Nobody needs this many apiaries, unless you’re trying to make money I suppose. In an ideal world, I would have all of my hives in one location, so that I could inspect/compare all of them with one trip. But, there are (at least) a couple of reasons to expand out beyond that initial apiary.

To begin with, if you want to try raising Nuc’s (especially those started after June 1), it is very hard to do so in a yard with established hives. The minute it gets dry (which seems to be in June these days, in my neck of the woods), the strong hives pretty much ravage the small Nuc’s. It’s really depressing to see, so I now allocate my home yard as my Nuc yard.

The second reason to try other locations is forage. During my first year, when both of my hives were in my backyard here in Varina, Virginia, my cousin started a couple of hives down in Charles City, Virginia, on land adjacent to my family’s farm. His hives really put away more honey then my two did. At first, I worried that I had a bunch of lazy bees, but I decided it was more likely that his bees simply had better forage. Even though my cousin’s land was only about 30 miles away, it was receiving substantially more rain then Varina. This was likely to be the problem.

So, I decided to prop up several apiaries, with one, two or three hives, in both Henrico and Charles City, to test it out. My goal is to watch how these apiaries perform and eventually reduce my outyards down to 3 at the most. But, that’s what I’m saying now and I seem to change my mind more often then my wife when it comes to bees!

At any rate, all of this leads up to the main activity of this weekend. My bees down at Westover Plantation were backed up against a small patch of trees that held an old elm tree last year. After I put my bees there, the elm tree fell over (my bees collect honey AND clear land, apparently.) Without this elm tree, the little patch of trees has little value and the farmers wanted to clear it to expand their nearby field. To get it ready for planting, they would probably need to get this done by early March. That meant I needed to move my bees in the Winter!

I have moved bees before several times, but never in Winter. The one problem with monkeying with your bees in the Winter is that you can accidentally kill or damage the Queen. Since it is the Winter, your bees stand next to no chance of getting a new queen going (they might not even have eggs the right age.) But, I had to move these bees and could not wait until Spring. I decided to wait for a warm day and the good Lord gave me one (two) this weekend. I moved them both and even dropped a pollen patty on them to give them a little jump start (they both have a ton of honey, as my back will verify, but I really have no idea how much pollen has been stored.) As a bonus, the owners of Westover Plantation gave me a lot of their bee gear (they had tinkered with bees years ago), which amounted to 3 or 4 full hives with honey supers and frames! All in all, this trip was a big success.

Unfortunately, bad news awaited me back home in one of the double nucs. No activity was emerging from one side, so I cracked her open and found one side to be dead. I immediately did a postmortem and discovered that they had died of starvation. I could even see little crystals of sugar in some of the comb. Apparently, they tried to use the sugar that I put down for them, but probably needed moisture to break it down. The bottom line is that they did not store enough honey in their frames to make it. There are steps that I could have taken (probably, not for certain though) that would have helped them to survive, but that’s the point. I took on this challenge to learn and this experience will be used to form my final conclusions come late March or so. One thing about this Nuc is that it was the only one to hold a non-local queen (it was one of the pair that I purchased last Summer – one for the Apache hive and this one.) This may or may not have had a part in it (maybe the queen rearer medicates and feeds his bees year round, so they simply could not handle it in my yards), but I am actually not that upset about losing this queen. It does not have the value (to me) of my local queens.

For now, my primary plan is to look forward to February. According to the forecast, we have a few days ahead of us that might once again reach nice temperatures in the day. I might use these to get a little more active with my remaining Nuc’s. I will probably also begin a little light feeding (1:1 or .5:1 Sugar:Water mixes) at one or two apiaries, just to see what happens. Well, more on that later.

The Mid-January Chores

As mentioned back in October, I generally let my bees alone until mid-January, when I wait for a day that reaches the upper 40’s and try to get out and look at as many hives as I can! The main goal at this point is to make sure that the cluster is surrounded by honey. We’ll probably have some long, cold weeks over the next two months and it’s important to make sure your bees have something they can nibble on (at the edge of the cluster) to keep the cluster fed (and therefore warm.) But, although it is hard to believe, you hear local beekeepers, every Spring, talking about Dead-out’s (a dead hive) with all of the bees face down in the comb, balled up in the hive, with lots of honey stores 4 inches away! Effectively, they went through a cold stretch where they ate up all of the nearby honey and it never warmed up enough to move the cluster – so they starved/froze to death! By making sure your bees have honey nearby in January, you are doing something to prevent this from happening.

My first goal was to check the hives at home (in the Wilton Apiary). Everyone looked great here but the continuing oddity was the Larry Hive. These guys come out with a vengeance when it breaches 42 or so. They have been doing this all Winter. At first, it made me think the other hives and double nuc’s were suffering, but it is clear to me that these ladies have a genetic trait that I do not have in my other hives. On the one hand, all of this activity might mean they need more food. On the other hand, it stands to reason that these gals will be out on the pollen and nectar first, during the cool days of early Spring. I’ll probably build a Nuc off of this hive or split it, to push these genes to some of my other apiaries.

Then, on to my two problem hives at the Mountcastle Apiary. During my spot check in early January, I checked the weight of the hives and cracked the inner cover on both of the hives at this new out yard. Per the earlier post, I had concerns about both of these hives.

My first task was to break the Albo Hive open. I expected them to be dead or nearly dead. I could then drop a super from this hive (full of honey) on the Westover Hive to give it some more food (in case it needed it.) To my surprise (and glee), the daggone hive had a nice sized ball of bees in it. I have never broken a hive down to the cluster before, usually taking a super or two off and looking down through the frames. I see now that this is not a good method if a hive appears to be failing. This hive was plenty strong. But, it did have a big problem. The cluster had formed on 4 frames directly against the southern side of the hive (probably for the warmth.) But, the frames to their north and directly above them were very low on capped honey. Time for some re-arranging!

I moved the frames one slot to the north and dropped a fully capped frame of honey on both side of it. I then pushed 4 more fully capped frames to directly above them. This worked well, except that they were very pissed. I had a bunch of bees all over me. Unfortunately, a couple stuck their stingers in my gloves and died, but the rest made their way back into the hive once I finished my business.

I then moved over to the Westover Hive to see if they were still in the upper deep. Of course, they were. The cluster had contracted by a couple of inches (radius), which made sense as the temps were higher when I looked earlier this month. I decided to feed these gals, as I am a big fan of this hive. It is from the tough little swarm that I picked up last April. I did the ‘lazy’ Mountain Camp method, pouring out sugar on a sheet of newspaper and then spritzing it with water (while I shield the bees with another sheet of newspaper, so I would not get them wet) until the sugar was good and damp. I had an old hive that was rotting along the edges, so I had cut it into several 1 inch spacers, to make room for this kind of situation.

All in all, this was a great day. I checked on a couple of other hives, which all looked good. Except for the double Nuc’s, I will next check in on them in February, when I might start a little feeding!

Winter Hive Inspections to Start 2011

Although 2010 went out cold and snowy in Varina, Virginia, 2011 came in like a Spring day. Jan 1 popped up into the mid-50’s with intermittent Sun and a little wind throughout the day. Effectively, it was a perfect day to peek in on the beehives, so that’s what I did.

All of the hives looked really good with a few exceptions, which I will explore later in my post. I was surprised by the fact that the majority had not even ventured into the upper supers yet. Most still had a fair amount of honey in their primary brood chamber and the honey was right where it needed to be. The clusters were in various places (they were not all on the east, west, north or south sides ), so nothing to be gleaned there. I did not break the clusters apart, but was able to find most of them by either removing the top super (or two, in some cases) or by simply looking down into the hive. The latter mechanism worked great on any of the hives that I put a white political sign under a screened bottom board. I could really see the bees against the white material.

The first exception that I found was at the Haupt apiary (only 1 hive here as of right now). This was a really strong hive with a full deep of honey above them. They were still strong (or so it seemed), but they had a ton of dead bees out front. This is not a huge deal, as I have seen dead bees in snow before, but I do not recall seeing this many. I wish I had snapped a picture of them. The one difference between this hive and the rest of my hives is that it basically has no protection from the North or West. It receives direct wind from across a large field. Could it be that this lack of protection is causing more fatalities? I am not so sure. Early on, I subscribed to the school that temperatures do not matter – lack of food matters. Until I leave that school, I will write this observation off to an anomaly. Another delta with this hive is the lack of direct Sun in the middle of the day. I must say that I have not been a fan of this location for some time now, so these doubts may simply be my subconscious building a case to move the location.

The second and third exceptions occurred at the Mountcastle Apiary. The Albo Hive is clearly suffering. They have a nice amount of honey, but the cluster is pathetic. I am not hopeful that this hive will make it. In truth, this Hive has never been a superior performer, so it is all for the best (I prefer to look at hive losses as ‘improving my gene pool’). The Westover Hive was a real anomaly. They were huge. More bees here then anywhere else (as far as I could tell.) The worst part about this was that the cluster had already moved up into the upper deep. This is definitely not normal (for what I am used to), but it may not be bad. A beekeeper to the west of Richmond had bees in his upper deeps in early December and he was not concerned. So, that’s one positive spin…

Finally, the Overwintering Nucs are doing great. I have some frames of honey for them (to be used in mid to late-Jan) and will continue to monitor them the most (for both educational and to help them make it through the Winter.)

So, where am I with all of this? The unprotected hive with lots of dead bees is educational. No work involved here – just wait and see. The suffering Albo hive is more of a ‘survival of the fittest’ scenario. Nothing to be done here but wait and see (I would have to be insane to feed an underperformer and encourage the propagation of these genes!). The Westover Hive is another story. I said that I would not feed my hives this Winter, but this queen has been too daggone strong for me to let perish due to lack of food. So, this is where my only ‘work’ lies in the coming weeks. They may need some frames of honey or some sugar (Mountain Camp Method), if they eat through their food. The hive felt heavy and I could see full frames of honey on the edges, but I did not break this hive apart (the cluster spanned from the top of the top deep all the way into the bottom deep – it was in the 50’s, so they were spread out a bit).

One final note for any new beekeeper reading this. The main thing, in my opinion, about doing Winter inspections is to never get into the thick (cluster) of the bees. Only mess with the edges. Folks will say that breaking the cluster is bad just because you do not want to mess with the dynamics of the cluster. Quite frankly, that’s not why I stay clear of the cluster. Within the cluster, near the center, is the Queen. I never put her at ANY risk in the Winter (where the heck can I get a replacement queen!?) So, I never go there. Guess I’m chicken=)

Christmas, Snow and Rearing Queens

Snow on the Geronimo Hive — The Last Snow of 2010 - Christmas at the Geronimo Hive

Christmas has come and gone, but a blanket of snow persists in the central Virginia area even today. I did not measure it, but it appeared to be about 4 inches of snow that came down between late Christmas day and the following evening. It was really the perfect snow for Christmas, blanketing everything (including the beehives) but leaving the roads mostly clear since the daytime temperatures had stayed above freezing since then. For the garden plants, snow is one of the best things around. It creates a blanket over the ground, effectively keeping it right at freezing (for the most part) even during the brutal nights when it gets down into the teens. But, does it help the Bees?

I doubt that snow has much effect on bees except that it provides water for the surrounding landscape, which indirectly helps the bees out. One of the things that folks up north worry about is snow that is higher (due to the depth) then the bottom entrance. Some folks (Michael Palmer, up in PA, for one) have switched to all or mostly top entrances to prevent this. Although I am not worried about snow covering the bottom boards of my hives, I am going to try a top entrance hive this year (2011) just for fun. I am interested in seeing how they work when it comes to managing the hives.

Thinking about the top entrance reminds me of one of my main goals of a beekeeper this time of year: identify and target achievable goals for the upcoming year. There are tons of things to do with bees. Many of the things you have to learn on the spot, as you are simply reacting to something going on in one of your hives. But, there are a lot of things that require planning. To do them all would be impossible (for me, anyway). To do them right, I need to identify the learning goals of the coming year and begin preparation in December of the previous year. For 2011, I have three main ‘learning’ goals.

Icicles hanging off the front porch at Wilton — Winter Setting In

My first goal is to dabble in Spring Nuc creation. I am currently thinking that I will attempt to start 4 Nuc’s the traditional way (traditional to me, at any rate), letting them raise their own queens. I will be happy with a 50% success rate, but will certainly take more! I will definitely keep one Nuc to watch it grow and might trade one for some local bees from another beekeeper, to continue to diversify my genetic pool. If more then two do well, I’ll worry about dealing with them later. The long term goal is to possibly start selling Nuc’s, but I will not sell them this first year, as this is a learning year.

The second goal is to start a Top Bar Hive. I have already cut a lot of the wood from an old fence to make it. The key will be getting some bees into it. Hopefully, I’ll get a swarm in April to use. Otherwise, I’ll figure out a way to transfer a hive from my Langstroths.

The third, and final, goal is to raise some queens. I received some queen rearing gear and books for Christmas that I am looking forward to trying. It included a system from Mann Lake which is basically the Nicot System and a queen castle (which is really a deep hive that has been divided into 4 cavities, each for a new queen). I hope to raise four queens, but will be happy (as with the Nuc’s) with raising just two. Again, I will use one myself and hopefully trade one for a queen from another local beekeeper’s stock.

The bottom line is that I have three goals in mind that I will begin working towards now. At this point, I simply want to do as much research as I can (to develop my initial plan for each goal) and to obtain/build/paint any gear that is necessary to make it happen. I want all of this in place by March 1 so that I can be working on my goals as of April 1!

All of this, of course, assumes that I am not wiped out (all of my hives perish this Winter)!

Winter Feeding Adventures

We have had a good stretch of fairly cold weather over the last couple of weeks in central Virginia. Here to the east of Richmond, it’s been dipping into the 20’s nearly every night. Although this used to be normal a few decades back, I do not recall a stretch of cold like this in December in the recent past.

So, how does this effect the bees? The key for the bees is really the daytime temperature. If it rises above 40 during the day, my bees move around a bit (within the hive) and get their nourishment. We did have several days, back-to-back, that did not breach 38, but it was not long enough of a stretch to cause the bees problems, in my opinion.

The key to remember is that bees rarely die from cold. They die from starvation. I read a study last year where a scientist put a few hives in a deep freezer where the temperatures were kept below -20 degrees! He made sure the bees had plenty of stores and monitored them. They did just fine.

How do bees starve? They can either run out of food or the weather stays very cold (daytime temperatures do not rise above 30 degrees) for a long time. I do not know for sure what ‘a long time’ is, but it is probably several weeks. Bees do not move much when it is really cold. So, they eat the honey around them to keep warm but it remains too cold to move over to another batch of honey (or to retrieve honey from another area and bring it back to the cluster.) In either case, no hive should be starving at this point. But, it’s good to keep in mind come Janurary-February. You can move frames of honey to the cluster (either from the same hive or even from another hive.)

At any rate, the main reason I decided to post boils down to a little situation that occurred yesterday. Basically, the temp’s jumped up into the mid-40’s. At around 40, my bees come outside to use the restroom and stretch their legs. In the mid-40’s, I do not have a problem cracking the cover to look in, as long as it is not too windy. By ‘look’, I actually mean just that: look. I am definitely not breaking the hive apart in any way. But, it’s only December and I know that none of my hives are in any trouble now (well, I do not KNOW this, but I do know that any hive having a problem now is beyond my control – plus, I really don’t want that gene pool anyway.) But, I do have a few Nuc’s that I am overwintering. These guys do not have the stores that my regular hives do and this is my first year overwintering them. So, I needed to have a look. I decided to keep this to one double-Nuc (a deep that has been split in half to hold two 4 frame Nuc’s.)

Well, I can tell you that they still have the energy to attack. I guess I was lazy, as I did not suit up. This basically meant that my neighbors got to watch me sprint away from my hive the moment that I opened her up. They came out, armed for bear. In the end, I got a look at both clusters and could still see a good amount of capped honey on the frames. I was actually sort of surprised, for some reason. I guess I have not really bought into this ‘overwinter a few pounds of bees on 4 frames’ idea. Despite my subconscious misgivings, these bees were doing great. Today, when it breached 40 again, I put two cups of sugar on both hives (1 layer newspaper on top of the frames, two cups sugar and then used a cone to direct a few spritz of water onto the sugar to dampen it a bit.) This is called insurance. I currently do not subscribe to doing this with a seasoned hive, but I am not that confident in these Nuc’s, so they are going to get the full guns this year. In future years, once I have more experience with this, I may change my protocol.

At any rate, the amusing story took place with moving this double nuc. As mentioned above, it got cold quicker then I thought it would. So, I ended up with 1 double Nuc down at the Goose Pond Apiary. I like to have my Nuc’s close. Plus, this Nuc didn’t receive the sheltered Southern sun that I give my home Nuc’s behind my huge patch of Burford Hollies. This area was the first to have complete snow melt after all of the snows last year. It really is the best wintering location that I have and I wanted these Nuc’s in it. The other problem was that I never took the mason jars of sugar water off of them (another issue with having a distant Nuc yard.) So, I had to move them and I didn’t want to break the cover and let any bees out before I transported them. I hoped that the jars were empty.

This was a learning experience (never ‘hope’ for empty mason jars), as neither jar was empty. Once I got the double nuc into the back of my Trailblazer, I immediately noticed sugar syrup seeping out of two corners of the hive. This was a potential disaster. I was not sure if any of the bees were even alive. But, if they were, I just introduced a major threat to them. Bees cannot get wet in the Winter as they simply cannot generate the internal body heat to deal with it. They die. In my mind’s eye, I could see both of my clusters covered in syrup at that exact point (although I did occasionally waffle to the notion that all of the bees were probably already dead anyway:).

I am not sure if this made any difference, but I simply jacked the temp in my trailblazer up on the way back to Richmond. Once I got there, I parked in the field beside my house and listened to the hive. I could definitely here the bees buzzing! They were alive! So, I let them sit in the sun, remaining plugged up in my car (the inside of my black Trailblazer always stays comfy in the sun). I took my Greenhouse temp monitor and placed it in the car, monitoring it throughout the day. It did get into the lower 70’s, but no higher. My goal was simple: If some bees did get doused, I wanted them to be at a temperature that they would ‘lick’ it off of one another. By around 2 pm, the weather was still in the lower 40’s and I could see bees at my other Nuc’s making cleansing runs. So, I put them out in the field, popped the cover quickly to get the mason jars, and opened the entrances. Who knows if this helped or hurt, but I am recording it here as another one of my adventures. The bees looked great today, so I do not think it hurt much – it may have helped a ton. I am good with it, either way.

I guess the next hive update will be in January, under the assumption that we have some days that climb into the 40’s and are not too windy (ideally, the sun will be out, but I do not make that a rule for Winter checks, just a nice-to-have.)

The Honey Bee During Winter

Per my previous post, Ann Harmon of Flint Hill, Virginia, came down the the November East Richmond Beekeeper’s Association to talk to us about how the Honey Bee reacts to Winter. If you think about it, the Winter months are a time when the Bee really sets itself apart from many of the other insect of the world. Presumably, the Winter months are the one of the reasons that we get a great honey crop. The bees work all Spring, Summer and Fall, storing honey for the months when nothing is blooming (usually Winter, but really dry months are another good time to use your stores when you’re a bee!)

When the days start getting shorter and the temperature drops, the bees begin to stay home more. All of the nectar-producing blooms are on the way out, so the drive to go out at dawn and forage to dusk wanes. As you might imagine, when you change from a job that has you in 4th gear, most of the day, to one where your primary job is keeping warm and producing a bit of heat yourself, the stress on the old body lessens dramatically. In addition, when you’re not out presenting a tasty little meal to some wayward bird or hornet, your life span also increases. For this reason, bees live for 3,4,5 and (very rarely) 6 months during the Winter months (as opposed to 2 months during the nectar months!)

Obviously, with fewer bees dying off, the drive to lay a bunch of eggs decreases dramatically. Not only are you in a situation where resources are thin, but you need a temperature of 92 degrees for eggs and larva to grow ( and it becomes really hard to keep a large brood next warm when it is 10 degrees F). The goal of the hive is to keep enough bees to keep the hive warm, but not so much that all of the stored honey is used up before the Maples and Hollies bloom in Spring. The decreasing day length and cooler temperatures begin to affect the Queen in October. By November, egg laying should be virtually stopped.

The bees form the cluster and hang on for the ride. As we all know, the days begin to lengthen around December 21 and this is the sign to the queen to start ramping up her egg laying. For the first couple of weeks, the rate barely creeps up (but it definitely should not be decreasing anymore at this point.)

Once the main cluster reaches 57 degrees F (or thereabouts), the bees form he cluster. They slowly begin to gravitate to one another, shaking their thoraxes violently to create heat (the thorax is where most of the bee muscle is, so this is effectively like doing ‘jumping jacks’ to increase their core temperature and give off some heat into the cluster. As more and more bees come together, a ball forms. The further you get from the center, the colder the bees become. By the time you get to the edge of the cluster, most of these bees are barely able to do much ‘shaking’. They begin to work their way back towards the middle of the cluster, taking in the heat of their warmer sisters, warming their bodies up to begin the cycle again, center-to-edge, edge-to-center. (And interesting side note about the ‘cluster’ is a term known as ‘balling’. Here, the bees form a small ball around a predator (like a hornet) and also begin to generate heat. They can actually cook the invader with this action and it is a defense mechanism used sometimes in non-Winter months.)

As mentioned before, the cluster maintains a 90+ degree temperature in the center, when raising brood. When no brood is present, the temperature can drop to the low- to mid-80’s.

To close this out, Ann Harmon mentioned a couple of management techniques that she has learned over the last few decades. One involves shims for ventilation. She keeps her screened bottom boards open during the Winter and create a good gap at the top to create an air flow, providing a mechanism to move the damp air out of the hive. As I have seen where scientists demonstrated where a hive could be kept at minus 30 degrees for several months without perishing, this practice does not surprise me. But, I think this kind of practice assumes two very important things. One, the bees have plenty to eat. They are going to need do so a fair amount of work to keep the hive warm. Second, there are periods of ‘warm’ (40 degrees plus) during the Winter that allow them to move over to new honey and/or move honey from outside frames to the cells nearest the brood.

The second practice involved Mouse guards and it was not one that I recall hearing before. She takes half-inch hardware cloth and cuts it to be a bit longer and a bit deeper then the entrance to here hive. She then staples this across the entrance, allowing the bees to go but keeping the mice out. She is both North and West of me (closer to DC), but she strives to have these on by early October (according to Ann, the Mama mouse is out looking for a nesting spot at this time of year.) She uses no other entrance reducers for her hives.

That sums up the points that I noted from the talk. I have recorded them here for prosperity more so then for any other reason. I will try many of the tactics above and also try other methods that fly in the face of Ann’s thoughts. But, it’s always good to hear the experiences of a long time beekeeper and take note of them as you cut your own path in the beekeeping world!