Laying Worker/Workers, Dud Swarm and World Record

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Apiary Inspection & First Nuc Sale

If you’ve followed this blog over the last couple of months, you know that I have been blessed (or was it cursed?) with several very strong hives that tried to swarm throughout late March and early April. From these events, I created a multitude of Nuc’s, experimenting with each start. My goal was to really learn about Nuc Creation by doing what is recommended and many things that are not. I started some with lots of resources and some with next to no resources. I played with the amount of Nurse bees and the amount of capped brood. I knew that I wanted to sell Nuc’s in 2012 and I wanted to start to get a feel for it.

The problem with this plan is that I started more Nuc’s then I really wanted to increase my hive count by this  year. At the time, I figured that my success rate would not be that high, so it would work itself out in the end. But, my success rate was higher then I had thought. In the end, I started 14 Nuc’s. Of those 14, 10 made it (when I was expecting 5 or 6.) Of the survivors, 6 or 7 are showing the kind of strength that I would be confident to pass along. So, that left me with at least 1 or 2 extra Nuc’s, beyond my increase goal. Since several folks have contacted me about getting Nuc’s, I decided to sell 1 (and may sell a couple more over the next week or so.)

When you sell a Nuc, you have to get your apiary inspected by the state Apiarist. He came by this past week and went through a majority of the starters that I have in the backyard. This was no small task, as I have 17 starters (caught swarms, trap out Nuc’s, my Nuc’s and 1 cut out.) In the end, he passed my apiary and said things looked great. He did find small hive beetles, but I told him that they were pretty much in all of my hives, but not to any great degree. Interestingly enough, he conceded that they were in most folk’s hives, but they were more like a Wax Moth. As long as you have healthy bees in a space that they can maintain (i.e. you don’t super them too  soon), the bees keep them in check. All in all, it was an interesting experience.

A new beekeeper, by the name of Wade, showed up to get his bees and we moved the frames from my Nuc to his hive. I am glad that I could sell him a Nuc as he may have resorted to a package next year (as mentioned a lot on this blog, I am not a fan of packages at all, especially for new Beekeepers.) The Nuc was great. The queen was working on her 2nd batch of brood and two frames were wall-to-wall capped brood on both sides. One contained some capped brood along the edges and lots of eggs/larva in the center. The final two were resources. Basically, this Nuc is getting ready to explode (I had wanted to sell the Nuc last weekend, but the timing did not work out right for the purchaser – I was worried that I would find swarm cells!) I am confident that this Nuc will do very well for Wade and his family. It’s a queen off of Larry, so it’s some of my best stock.

Another Trap Out Nuc

This  year, I started a trap out in a nice neighborhood in Richmond called Windsor Farms. A couple were moving into a house last Fall and discovered a bee hive in a huge tree in their backyard. Although an avid gardener, I am not an expert on trees, so I do not know the name of it, but it has very deep, ridged bark. This is a very important point for trap outs, as I was to come to find out.

At any rate, I advised the home owner that a trap out last Fall wouldn’t work (might as well kill the bees.) It had been a horrible Summer with very little rain and I had my doubts that a hive could build up enough stores if you trapped them out at this time. He was very cool about it and said we could knock it out the following Spring (2011).

Trapouts basically utilize a rolled-up cone with wire that is about a quarter inch square. The whole idea is that the bees crawl from the tree (the wide end of the cone) to the exit (a narrow end, about the size of two drones) and leave the hive. When they return, they go back to the base (but on the outside) and cannot figure out how to get back into the hive (smell drives them to the base of the cone.) It’s like a crap trap, but in reverse.

The beekeeper then sets up a hive with the entrance right near the cone and the bees, after failing to get into the hive all day, go into the hive (or trap out.) Most beekeepers put a frame of capped brood into the hive with the bees to entice the ‘trapped out’ bees to stay in the trap hive body.

Last year, a fellow in Buckingham introduced me to a slightly modified version of this trick. Instead of running a cone out of the hive, you run a piece of PVC out of the hive (tapped up all around it so that this is the only way the bees can leave) into the bottom of the trapout Deep. The bees have to climb through your foundation/comb to get out and cannot get back in.

I took an old Medium and drilled a hole for the PVC into it. I then placed my ‘cone’ so that bees leaving the PVC pipe would have to go through the cone and would not be able to return in this fashion, being trapped in my hive. The real benefit of this method (or so it is said) is that the queen will eventually leave through the pipe and remain in your hive (you get bees as well as  the great genetics of a wild hive.)

Well, I set this up in late March and started to watch. This is where the ‘ridged’ tree comment comes in from before. It was extremely difficult to block up the ridges and the bees continued to get back into the tree hive (a bad thing, as the hive in the  tree is only going to leave once their resources dwindle.) After about a month, I figured I had it blocked off. I took four frames of bees from them 10 days ago and another 4 frames last weekend. The first 4 I gave a frame of eggs and they raised it  nicely (some of the foragers must have converted back to Nurse bees! The second set I actually gave a frame while they were in the trapout and they raised their own queen.

The crazy thing about all of this (and it was a bunch of bees that  I took each time) is that the owners pointed out a new hole in the tree (some 5′ below the original hole (now taped up and funneling bees into my hive) and on the backside of the tree. The hive was doing just fine, based on the bee traffic. I have glued this up now, but it probably needs another round of silicone, wire, tape and staples.

It’s been a fun experience and I hope to get a couple of more Nucs off of them before I get (cross your fingers) the original hive and (maybe) the queen. I will do a lot of things differently next time, especially if it is a deeply ridged tree.

2011 : Banner Year for the Ladies

It feels like I start every post with this but : everything continues to hit on all cylinders for honey bees in central Virginia. A long time beekeeper in our bee club (the East Richmond Beekeeper’s Club) mentioned that this was the best flow since 1993 for our area! The ‘flow’ simply refers to the time of the year when the most nectar is available in the flowers. For us, it is really the Spring. The state apiarist indicated that we used to get a Fall flow, but haven’t had one since the 90’s. The bottom line is that your bees have the best opportunity to build up some honey for the beekeeper at this time of year.

I’m not sure about how good it is compared to previous years (this is the first time that I have really collected honey off of my hives), but the hives appear to be doing well. As mentioned previously, those hives that successfully lived through the Winter, but had no other outstanding quality, were targeted for honey production (those with other qualities were used for Nucs and increase.) All of these hives have finished a Shallow, a few have finished a Medium and one is finishing its second Shallow. The fellow near Hopewell (old-timer who indicated it was the best flow in many years) mentioned something about 150# honey on his hives. I can pretty much guarantee that I do not have that much honey on my hives. Regardless, I should definitely have enough honey for personal consumption and for gifts, which is my main goal.

I am really interested in seeing how long ‘the flow’ lasts this year. I have heard folks say that it pretty much dribbles out by early to mid-June. July 1 is the target day for removing honey (I purchased my first extractor a few weeks back – hope I didn’t jinx myself!)

This coming week, I will have my first ‘inspection of the apiary’. Due to the extra increase, I have decided to sell at least one Nuc this year (I am thinking I will sell 5 before it is all over). You have to have the state apiarist come check out your gig when you sell bees, so I contacted Keith Tignor on Thursday and he tentatively agreed to come out during the coming week. It should be interesting to see how this goes.

Nuc building, Patience with Queens & Laughable Errors

It’s been one heck of a Spring. My beekeeping pretty much consumes 80% of my spare time, although I have managed to get my garden in the ground. The weather in Richmond, Virginia has been super, in my area. We could use a bit more rain, but we’ve definitely had enough to keep the flowers blooming and full of nectar. Holly started blooming nicely in my area and the Tulip Poplar has been putting on a real nice bloom the last week. My supers are filling up quickly.

But, there have been quite a few lessons along the way. I learned a good lesson with raising queens from swarm cells. I cannot simply put a frame with bees and a queen cell into a small (3 frame) Queen Castle section and expect good results. In most of the sections, I only included that frame and a frame of honey and one with pollen. The problem, I believe, was not including a full frame of capped brood with each one. Of the 6 that I started, only two had a decent amount of brood (the rest where queen cells on the bottom of honey frames). Those two ended up with laying queens. The other four ended up with nothing that I could find. In all cases, I saw the queen the first couple of weeks after she hatched, but somewhere along the way, she vanished. Without the capped brood, I suppose there were not enough bees in the cell to tend to her needs. I may have monkeyed with them too much too, as I was enthralled with watching the progress (and those 6 starters were just experiments anyway – I wanted to learn.) On a positive note, all of the queens that I started normally (in Nucs with 1 brood, 1 pollen, 1 honey, 1 partially drawn empty and 1 foundation) have done very well. In fact, one of them is literally building up almost as fast as a swarm! That queen is on steroids. I only had one queen that I was not happy with (poor brood build up) and I killed her, letting them raise another one as we speak. The bottom line is that I am very comfortable making Nucs now and will definitely make a few to sell next year (I will probably sell a few this year, since I have more then I want at this point.)

Another lesson that I learned was to have patience with the queens. Most of my queens do not start laying on Day 25 and one waited until Day 41! I do think that I ended up losing a couple of viable queens due to my impatience this year (there were TONS of dead bees after two of my combines) and, looking back, I only gave the queens 31 and 34 days to show signs of laying. I really need to have patience with everything related to bees. I have been told that I have the patience of Job, due to the projects that I start related to growing trees and shrubs, but that is clearly not the case with the bees. When you know that the flow is on, you want all of your bees to be kicking at 200%. I am constantly worried that I need to do something with a hive or queen to make sure they are hitting on all cylinders. I need to remember my lessons from last year – let the bees do their own thing and stop messin’ with ’em!

I will close with a dumb error. The Westcastle swarm was building up strong. It was definitely the original, old queen (as opposed to a secondary swarm with a virgin queen) and she pretty much started laying on Day 1. Those bees were taking down the syrup nicely, as they build up all of the fresh wax. After about 10 days, they were 90% done with the deep and I dropped a medium on them. I put 2 gallons of syrup on them, thinking it would tide them to the next weekend. Once the week was up, I went to check the feeder and expected it to be empty so that I could give a peak inside (this hive was going to get moved to an outyard back on the 22nd.) But, only about half of the syrup had been taken… This was a drastic slowdown, but I figured it was because the main flow was on. Finally, I checked yesterday and there was still about a gallon left! Frustrated, I gingerly removed the feeder and attempted to pour it into a nearby pitcher. Finally, I could check on the hive. What the heck!?

To my dismay (cheered on by a couple of foul words out of my mouth), I had put a super full of empty, foundationless frames on them! Good lord. They had drawn wax all over the center of the frames, exactly perpendicular to how the frames sit (across several frames.) I had to pull it all out and put it in a tray in front of the hive. They began to work on it (getting the honey out to take back into the hive), while some tried to work on me (for messing up all of their hard work.) I marked the queen (Blue, for last year) and put a super of foundation on them. I’ll check the feeder in a couple of days to see what we have.  Hopefully, they will go back to consuming a lot of it and drawing out the Medium. I want to get a frame of eggs from them to secure the bloodline and then move them to one of my Varina outyards (aka my honey and drone yards for the Nucs that I raise in my backyard.)

I guess that was not my last point, as it occurred to me that I have one other big lesson for this year. Four times, I have noticed swarm prep (either actual swarm cells or back-filling of the brood nest.) In all four times, I took the old queen and (in some cases) half of the queen cells. In all cases the bees swarmed anyway. Although I will take old queens with solid history in the future, it will not be because of a swarm management strategy. I will try something else on that. I can say that the one time that I did prevent a swarm (and who really knows if they were going to swarm or not) was when I took the old queen at the first sign of massive drone laying (something I had learned, this year, was a precursor to other swarm prep), it did stop the swarm and the bees appear to have built up nicely even without a queen through late March and early April.

But, who knows. I might be learning the exact wrong things. Regardless, I will continue to use my experiences to drive my adventures and mishaps!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates from the Queen Castles

It went into the upper 80’s today, in Richmond, Virginia. The honey bees were working hard and all starters in the home yard looked great. I had to get home to cut the grass and then check my Queen Castles. A Queen Castle is designed to help you raise queens. It is effectively a Deep Super that has been divided into three chambers, each with a half-inch (or so) hole that allows the bees to come and go (each hole is on a different side of the super.) Each section holds three frames.

Last week, I found a zillion queen cells in Larry (for the umpteenth time) and ended up taking a ton of them to stop the hive from perpetually swarming. I placed them in the pair of Queen Castles that I had invested in for raising Queens (I had this targeted for May), as I was out of Nuc bodies. That was 5 days ago.

Four days ago, I had checked them again to give them some honey (I had only put one frame in each, as I was really running an experiment, but then started to get paranoid that they probably didn’t have any foragers, so needed both pollen and honey.) In QC A, it looked like the queen cell might be damaged. But, in QC B, I found two brand new queens hopping about the frame (when they are small, they seem to run about a bit more and raise/lower their small abdomens a lot, making it sort of look like they are hopping.) So, I took one of the young queens and dropped it into QC A (what the heck – I still had another capped cell in B anyway.)

Today, I checked the QC’s again. This time, I found three with large or nearly large queens and one with a young queen. One had a queen cell where a queen had emerged but no queen was there (the amount of fanning they ALL did when I opened the hive seems to indicate to me that she was not home and may have perished on the mating flight) and the other had a queen cell that was still capped (and the capped looked weird, so I am not so sure that this one is viable.)

All told, I have 4 queens from this experiment. BUT (and this is key), none of the QC sections had many bees. In fact, I discovered that, in my haste (I was frustrated when I did this), I really only moved over frames of honey/nectar that the bees had built queen cells on. This means that many of the bees were probably foragers that returned to Larry, the mother hive, when they first went out. These bees cannot protect this honey, but I have never experienced robbing at this time of year. Small Hive Beetles, however, are a different story.

I need to formulate a plan. I will probably need a queen for at least one of my questionable hives in Charles City. But, I really wanted to be able to make that call next weekend (or this weekend.) I am pretty certain that these bees are at serious risk with so few gals. I even wonder if it could negatively affect the queen. The books that I have stress the importance of having a strong hive build the queen cells, but what happens if the queen emerges in a weak hive? Well, I will know soon enough.

The weather forecast for the next couple of days seems to indicate rain and ‘iffy’ beekeeping weather. More then likely, these things will need to wait until Thursday, when I can hopefully take some brood from a couple of my Nucs and maybe the Mosely hive near Shirley Plantation. One of them, I will leave alone just to see if it can make it with a handful of bees at this time of year (I doubt it, but who knows.)

The adventure continues.

The Back-up Nuc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Hive Wears Me Down

It’s been a really wild week and the roller coaster ride continued through yesterday. Hopefully, I was able to get off this daggone thing. This will probably be a long post, but I want to get this stuff down (for future reference) before the old brain loses it.

Larry has been the focus of my ventures this past week, based on my assumption that it had cast two swarms. I finally was able to get into the hive yesterday, after work. After what I discovered, a bit of a history check is worthwhile.

Larry was a hive that I purchased from a fellow last year (along with the Moe and Curly hives). He was getting out of the business, didn’t treat and had hives for a good price. But (and this is key), he had a weird setup. He ran with Shallows over Deeps. I run Mediums over Deeps, so I dropped a Medium on the hives and put a feeder on them to help them out (it was July when I got them.) They never finished the Medium, although they did get some capped honey on 60% of the frames. I left them in a Deep-Shallow-Medium setup.

So, in late February, as I did my initial Spring chores, I swapped the Shallow and the Medium without looking at the frames (I could see capped honey from the top of the Shallow and was in a hurry, so I assumed it was all honey.) A week later, when I did actually pull the frames, I found a good bit of brood in 5 of the Shallow frames, with bees still tending them. So, I had a bunch of nurse bees in the Deep and fair number in the Shallow and a Medium super that was nearly full of honey separating them. At the time, I was annoyed that I broke up the brood nest, but the hive was so strong I let it be.

Well, I now think this has something to do with the strange occurrences in Larry. On March 19, I discovered swarm cells and took several frames from Larry, including several of the queen cells (that have hatched in Nucs already) and the old queen. Two weeks later, I hived two swarms from Larry, both of which are already building up nicely. I broke them apart yesterday and found 11 more queen cells (at this point, I would insert a very nasty word if I was not a God fearing man.) Very little brood is in this hive now and I could find no eggs or a queen. At this point, I became a bit frustrated (yes, I do become frustrated with these little wenches on occasion.) I took 6 more frames from this hive, each with at least 1 queen cell, and put them in my two new Queen castles (for raising queens later this year…assuming I ever get to that point.) I then took a Deep of honey off of the William Byrd Hive (they ended up with a Deep-Medium-Deep setup last Fall) and added the resources to these new setups. I am fine with losing some of these. It is more of an experiment then anything (I have one that is nothing but a shallow frame of bees – hardly any at all.)

Then, today, I go into my Nucs and the sections of the Queen castles and actually find TWO virgin queens on one of the Queen Castle sections (these are three frames wide, each). I took one and gave it to my weakest QC (Queen Castle) setup (the one with only a shallow of brood/honey/bees). I found two other queens that had hatched and even saw one in the midst of hatching! It looked to me like the daggone queen was face forward – the bees were tearing the cell off of her and I got a good shot of tail.

Being completely fed up with the daggone shallow (and now thinking that maybe I have two sets of bees working at odds with each other in the same hive), I took the daggone thing off the hive, made sure it had a queen cell and created a split with it (adding an empty Medium above it.)

The bottom line is that I now have 2 swarms, a shallow split, an old queen Nuc, 4 hatched queens (2 Nuc, 2 QC) and 3 setups with 1 or more queen cells from this hive – over a period of almost a month. And the original hive continues on! I’m not sure if I missed a swarm (or two), but I think that this last adjustment should set them back a bit. I am actually tired of this now. I just want them to go into build up (and provide a little honey maybe…Hello?)

I’m sure there would be many opinions on what is going on with Larry. At this point, I honestly believe that separating those nurse bees with a full Medium super of honey must have made them start acting like two different hives. They were all in swarm mode when I separated them and then continued on that path, separately, afterwards. Who knows. I have now removed the problem super (replacing with an empty Medium) and taken a ton of frames and bees from them. They have a lot of work to do. If they swarm again, so be it. That’s one for the wilds. My only focus on future checks for this hive is that they actually did end up with their own queen who is happy to stay around.

On another note, grabbing a queen is not a simple thing. It might be my fingers, but I couldn’t get a handle on the queen that was on a frame with another queen. Finally, she flew off. I saw her land on the frame again a few seconds later and ended up using one of those queen grabbers. I want to mark my queens this year. It is turning out to be much harder then I expected. But, the QC queens will give me plenty of practice.

Lesson 1 for 2011 – Swarm Prevention! Ha!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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