Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Removing a Honey Bee Hive From a Tree!

Wow, what a busy weekend. Between Friday and Saturday, I received 3 calls about possible feral hive removal. One turned out to be a nest of bumble bees, but the second was quite a whopper. A gentleman a bit to the south of me had a tree in his front yard get hit by lightning. It cracked the tree and made it a bit of a hazard to his neighbors and him, so they had a tree removal service come out on Friday to deal with it. Once that big boy hit the ground, bees erupted everywhere!

Unfortunately, the tree service decided to spray the bees and pour gasoline on them. They then left and decided to wait for Monday, when they figured the bees might be gone. Having been sprayed, these bees were not ideal, but I am game for trying to help any bee along, so I took the job on. What a job it was.

On Day 1, I arrived with all of my gear and immediately realized that I needed a bigger saw (I needed Pop’s Bow Saw, but it was in Charles City, and I was not up for that trip.) So, here was a section of tree about 20 feet long with bees coming out of two holes, some 5 feet apart. This tree was every bit of 3′ in diameter and more when you included the occasional knot. Finally, the thing was living just a few weeks ago and not a bit of it was rotten.

At this point, I was still expecting a young hive. I sort of figured that no hive could survive a lightning strike and these bees must have taken up residence after the tree split. I expected to find a lot of white comb, but not a lot of bees. Of course, I was way wrong.

To begin with, these bees had comb running a good 6′ in the tree, in a center cavity about a foot to 14 inches wide. There was a TON of comb. But, I am getting ahead of myself. I had thought to slowly cut away sections of the tree until I got to the bees. But, this tree was too big. Cutting away one section was a serious nightmare. Just rolling a section was a back breaker. So, I decided to go right at them. I was putting the queen at risk, but I had no option. The tree removal service would be back on Monday and try to kill them again. I aimed the saw between the two exit holes (about 3′ to either side) and cut her in half.

Bees were flying everywhere. Somewhere along the line, some homeless guy showed up on a bike and proceeded to give me advice, claiming bees didn’t sting him. A few minutes after I cut the tree open and started getting comb, he hit the road, cursing about the stings….

I methodically removed comb, placing it (with rubber bands) in my empty frames and into a hive. I filled up about 6 frames with brood comb and pulled a lot of honey comb and left it off to the side (I advised the home owner not to eat the stuff, as who knows what the tree service sprayed down there and what was contaminated.) I never saw the queen, but got a lot of it with nurse bees and left it beside one of the split logs.

A few hours later, I came back to find the bees still in the two sections of the log and also in my hive. The queen was not in my hive to be sure. So, I pulled out the bee vac. I was able to get 3 or 4 pounds of bees and left with my hive, setting them up at home when I returned.

The next day, the hive (I will start calling this one Southside) was pretty cranky. I cannot be sure, but I do not thing they had a queen. So, back to the site I went, sharpened saw in hand.

This time, I cut the two original sections in half again (much easier now that my slack rear end had finally sharpened the saw). One section had the most bees and they were clumped up a lot. Out come the bee vac and once again, I sucked up another few pounds of bees. This time, I got a ton of them and I may have even gotten the queen. Upon returning home, I dropped them in the Southside hive.

Nuc Check – Queen Cup and Cranky

Berkeley Hive
Found larvae, eggs & capped brood
Did not find queen
The bottom deep was wall to wall capped brood (the outside frames were nectar/honey)
Bees had finished Tom Fifer’s 4th frame and were working on two of my frames, effectively on 6 frames now.
Found 1 queen cup. Hive was a bit crankier then I am used to when it comes to a Nuc.
Pests: Spotted and squashed one large small hive beetle.

Since my last, multi-hour adventure with all of the hives, I have decided to break my inspections of the hives up a bit, giving me less hives to check per adventure. Today was the first in the rotation and I chose the Berkeley Hive, one of my new Nuc’s.

This hive has been showing good, eating a nice bit of syrup and having good activity at the entrance all week. Since I have them next to the cantankerous Westover Hive, I keep a close eye on them to make sure that no robbing is going on. Interestingly enough (or, I should say sadly enough), I did witness evidence of a bit of fighting right after I hived them, but that was not due to robbing. I have 3 top hive feeders (4 more were ordered a week ago, so more are on the way) and I had lent one to Pop for his Nuc. That left me with two for my Nuc’s but I was using one on the Westover Hive. I had let it go dry, but when I moved it from one hive to the other, about 8 bees from the Westover Hive were still in it. I went ahead and plopped it on top of the hive and hoped they would join the workforce of the Nuc. Well, instead (at least one of them) they went on a commando mission (or maybe my bees attacked them.) Regardless, the reason I know this is that I saw one bee leave the hive and jump around on the landing area with another bee attached to him. As I watched, I realized the other bee was a black bee from the Westover Hive, but it was attached to the Berkeley Hive bee (believe it or not, but it appeared to have its mouth securely fastened to the Nuc bee’s wing!) As the poor battle-worn veteran tried to deal with this nuissance, I used my hive tool to cut the dead bee in half (it was attached to her wing, remember?) Unfortunately, having the head of one’s enemy attached to your wing is not a good feeling, as she jumped to the ground and began hopping around, rolling over and doing all sorts of other things to get it off. I couldn’t help any further without damaging her, so I left her be. I hope she worked it out!

Regardless, the inspection was good. The bees had done a good job of finishing out the 4 frames they came in and were working on two more. One was really getting a good draw. I never saw that rascal of a queen, but found both larvae and eggs. The eggs were dead centered and solo, so no laying worker nonsense. I also found one queen cup and one worker was really doing something in there, sticking her head down a good way. There was nothing for it, at this stage, so I did not really investigate. I’ll be sure to locate that frame (second to last of the originals from Tom) a week from now to see what we have going. I have heard that supercedure is a common practice for packages and it happens with Nuc’s too. I have no idea what I’ll do if that cup becomes a cell…

Now that the investigation was over, I put a gallon of syrup in the feeder and let them be. I must say that they were flying about in an angry manner, although I saw none actually land and try to sting me. There was a lot of posturing, but I have learned to ignore that. A storm is brewing to the NW, so maybe that had them on edge.

Nuc’s Installed & Honey Bee Hive Investigations

I received the call from Tom that the Nuc’s were ready and picked them up last night, moving two to my apiary at home and taking one to Pop (Alex and I gave him one for Christmas.) Today was a busy day, looking at hives and squaring away the new Nuc’s, so let’s get to the records.

Charles City Hive (Pop’s Hive)
One of three Nuc’s received from Tom, we placed it under a Walnut tree near Pop’s garden, right up to one of the cow pastures. I advised him that the chance of getting shocked every time you looked at the Bee’s made this an inappropriate spot. He mumbled some words that I cannot relay on this site, basically calling to question my intelligence. Heh. We’ll see….

This Nuc was weaker then the one that I picked up from Tom last year. The bees were basically on 2-and-a-half frames. I couldn’t do a full inspection, as Pop started to freak out thinking that I was messing with them too much. Oddly, one actually stung me (Pop said he would have stung me too). I don’t wear my gear, gloves or veils when working Nuc’s and, up until this day, have never been stung. It wasn’t a big deal, but Pop thought it was funny. I was sorry that one bee killed herself to get me, as the Nuc didn’t have a bunch of bees to begin with. Once we get back from the beach (for Memorial Day), I might drop a frame of brood/nurse bees and a frame of honey from one of my hives into this Nuc.

We put the top feeder on them and Pop decided he would go without an entrance reducer.

Albo Hive
It is pretty clear to me that I will not get honey this year off of the Albo hive. The top deep has 7.5 frames drawn out, all but one full of honey and most of it capped. The one exception was a frame that had one side with a round patch of capped brood towards the bottom of the side. Since I found eggs and larvae in the bottom deep, I am guessing that the old Lady came up top to lay a few eggs when things were tight (full of eggs, larvae, pupae) below. Now that those bees have hatched, She is apparently working that area again (down below).

The honey super was just touched a tad, a bit of wax on two frames drawn out. Not much of a difference from the last inspection. Given this progress (or lack-thereof), I might split this hive in a week or two. The real question is ‘what does June hold?’ If I listen to the common word, the flow winds down over the next 4 weeks and it seems unlikely that the bees can draw out a full Illinois super and fill it with honey. I’ll have to think on it. I have 5 hives now. Do I want to increase this year?

Blue Cottage Hive (new Nuc)
This is one of the Nuc’s that I picked up last night. It is definitely the weakest Nuc that I have heard of. I almost wonder if Tom made a mistake. One frame of brood and one-and-a-half frames of pollen/nectar. This frame is actually so weak that I initially thought they had absconded when I was setting up, as not a bee came or left in about 30 seconds while I was preparing to do the investigation. Although I found capped brood and eggs, I did not see the queen (this absolutely shocked me, as there really were very few bees in this box.)

I put the entrance reducer on this one (and I might follow up with a robber screen). It would not take much to ‘do this hive in’. I also put the top feeder on and put a little syrup in (I doubt they can eat much, as there are not many to eat!) This pretty much confirmed my thoughts about moving some brood/nurse bees and a frame of honey to the Nuc’s to help them along. This will probably be the task for next weekend.

Westover Hive
The queen in this hive is a laying fool. To recap, they had been sucking down syrup over the past few weeks and I expected to find a lot of capped honey. Instead, I found about 7 fully drawn frames in the top Deep and all but one had brood in one stage or another (although mostly it was capped brood.) This was good, but it had me concerned that maybe the queen had moved up and wasn’t moving down. But, once I got to the bottom deep, I did find larvae in earlier stages then what was up top.

These bees have really exploded as far as population is concerned. I put on a honey super, just to give them room, but they are another candidate for splitting. It really depends on what June is going to hold for me. This hive is the ‘meanest’ of my hives. They always get antsy and send out a few bombers. I was very gentle with them this time and they still had a few that would have loved to stung me. These are my hottest bees, but they are also my hardest working bees. I will not get rid of this queen while this is the situation. I am thinking that letting them raise their own queen gives me the opportunity to get the hard working gene (that they have) with a more gentle gene (that my other hives have.) We’ll see.

Since I have only 3 top feeders (and have not made an inverted jar feeder yet), I only had two at home, having given one to Pop for his Nuc. So, I removed the top feeder from this hive to give it to my other Nuc’s. Once I decide whether to get more top feeders or use inverted jars, I might feed them some more (the top deep is not really fully drawn out yet.)

Geronimo Hive
As always, this hive had so many bees that it was impossible to find the queen. Several frames were two and three bees deep. They were literally crawling on one another. No sign of swarm cells and the honey super was hardly touched, so I am feeling good about this one. I will probably wait two more weeks to see if there is any chance of getting honey this year. If the outlook remains bleak, I will use this hive to fortify my weaker Nuc (the Blue Cottage Hive.)

Berkeley Hive (new Nuc)
I placed this new Nuc next to the Westover Hive (well, about 5 feet from it, but on the same foundation), so I called it the ‘Berkeley Hive’, after the plantation on the James that is just up from Westover Plantation is Charles City County. Of the three Nuc’s that I picked up from Tom, this one fit the bill as being a strong Nuc. There were 2-and-a-half frames of brood/bees and one-and-a-half frames of capped honey, nectar and pollen. Lot’s more bees here and what I sort of expected in the other Nuc’s. In fact, an orientation flight was taking place during the inspection which had me concerned (for a second) that the Westover Hive was on a raid. This Nuc is probably going to do very well. I did not find the queen, but really didn’t look hard (I was tired from looking at the other hives!), but did find eggs.

I put on the entrance reducer and also the feeder, giving them a good dose of syrup. Some of the bees from the Westover Hive were still in the feeding section, but I am hopeful that they will just join the current workforce.

Fortification (create a Nuc or not?)

As mentioned above, it is clear to me that I am going to need to fortify my Pop’s Nuc and the Blue Cottage Nuc. They are very weak. Starting a Nuc in late May is rough. Starting a weak one in late May seems like a one-way road to failure. So, I want to put one frame of honey and one frame of brood (with Nurse bees) in both of these hives. The problem boils down to my existing queens. I still have not developed the skill to be able to consistently find my queens. So, if I grab a frame of capped brood, I might accidentally grab my daggone queen! The queen is normally working the frames where she is laying eggs, but I can guarantee you that my queen will be hanging out on the capped brood frame.

So, how to deal with that? The first option is to take a lot of time and actually find the queen in the donor hive. I only do a spot check (maybe 30 seconds), but I have seen where some folks take 10 minutes. I am not a big fan of that option. The second option is to actually create another Nuc. If I take two frames of honey, two frames of capped brood and one frame of eggs and drop them into a Nuc, something is going to happen. Either queen cells show up in the Nuc (that’s what I would expect) or queen cells show up in the donor hive (whoops! I took my queen by accident and moved her to the Nuc!) In either case, I should be able to fortify the two existing Nuc’s without worrying about ‘fortifying with a wayward queen’.

At any rate, I have the weekend to think about this down at Nags Head.

Final Thoughts on the Hives (too much time!)

The full inspections that I did today took entirely too long. Working three established hives takes more time then I have (not to mention the coming baby, which is going to suck up even more time next year!) So, I need to develop a new plan. The first stage will be to break the hives out into two groups, so that I do an inspection every week, on one group or the other. The second step will be to reduce the number of hives that I fully break down during a given inspection. I am going to have to build an app for this blog that will schedule these things out so that I can track them accurately. More to think about….

Syrup out again!

The Westover Hive now has me wondering if they are pulling a prank on me. They are eating syrup like I have never seen a hive suck it down. The real proof will be in the next inspection, which I hope to do over the next few days and certainly on Friday at the latest. I will probably break the whole hive apart for the last time until July or something. Realistically, I just hope that they have drawn out a good portion of the top Deep and capped a bunch of honey. In a perfect world, they have drawn out 8 or 9 frames and are ready for a daggone honey super! I will put one on them, just to see what they do, but I will probably look to do a split of this hive.

This is my first swarm, so I have nothing to compare it against. I wonder if the very nature of a swarm is to build up this quickly. I can only compare it to the two Nuc’s that I picked up in May of last year and this hive is beating them hands down. This makes me wonder if this hive is a better ‘bee’. Or is it just the nature of a swarm? The other variable is the weather. Is the weather so much better this year that all bees are building up nicely? The proof will be in the pudding when I open up the two established hives this weekend. They should have done some serious work on the supers by now. If they haven’t, it will be more of an incentive for me to do the split on the swarm and try to increase my apiary with that gene pool.

Who knows. Come this weekend, I’m sure I will have some totally unexpected experiences and embarking on a course of action that I could not have foretold.

A Gallon of Syrup in 2 Days!

I am honestly not sure what to make of this, but I checked the Westover Hive top feeder (just to see if they were eating from it) and it was empty! A bunch were all in it, licking up the scraps, but the syrup was bone dry. There were a couple of ants, but not a ton (so, they could not be the source of this hunger.) The last couple of days have been sunny off-and-on with cloudy weather and the occasional spurt of rain (I picked up one-tenth of an inch yesterday). Maybe this weather had them holed up. Whatever the reason, I went with it and put a gallon-and-a-half in there for them to work on. Hopefully, they are using this stuff to fill out that top deep. I look forward to the next inspection (probably mid-week.) I’ll have to break them down completely, just to see what is going on (my queen should be two or more years old, so I am half-way expecting them to try a supercedure at some time.)

At this rate, I might be doing a split on this hive in June!

Westover Hive Update

I couldn’t get out at lunch, but the weather was so nice in Central Virginia (when I got home from work) that I decided to give them a quick, late afternoon check. I was only going to break a few frames out of the top deep, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal.

The swarm has definitely started to make a little progress on the top deep. They had tear drop-shaped sections of about 3 frames (both sides) drawn and capped with honey. Although the Albo hive had started to work on their honey super at the bottom of the super, this hive started at the top (of the Deep). The sections probably take up about a third of each frame face. Also, a fair amount of each frame also had a lot of area that they were just starting to draw out and (rarely) store a little nectar in.

Once again, these bees did not sting me, but they are definitely on edge. They are nowhere near as gentle as my two purchased, 1 year old hives. There is always a bee checking me out and she rarely bores of this task (unlike the two other hives, where they go back to work after buzzing around me for 15 seconds or so.) I did not use any smoke this time, but was a bit nervous with my shorts on. I am probably being too paranoid about these bees, but they keep the adrenaline flowing!

Put a gallon and a half of syrup in the top feeder and left them be. I must say, they have a ton of bees inside the hive, although they do not have anywhere near the amount of traffic that I see at the Albo and Geronimo hives. I’ll check them again next week. I would sort of like to actually find the queen, just to get a look at her (some folks claimed that the reason that the swarm was on the ground was because the old gal couldn’t fly – I’d like to see if I can actually see some evidence of this problem.)

The Westover Hive is Keeping Me on my Toes!

We received a nice rain over the past few days here in the Richmond, Virginia area. I personally picked up an inch and 3 tenths. This is not a ton of rain, but it literally fell over a period of about 20 hours. It was a perfect rain, soaking in to the last drop. This is going to be a boon for my gardens and, I would guess, the bees, since the nectar producing plants should really have the resources to work at full steam now.

I decided to check the feeder on the Westover Hive, just to see if they were making progress. I do not know what the cause was (either the rain kept them inside, the new brood hatched out and increased the population or they simply decided to start using it more), but they have finished off all of the syrup. A gallon in a week and a half is pretty good, for this time of year. I am now wondering how much of that second deep they have drawn out. It is really impossible for me to entertain the idea that they are going to fully draw that out before the end of May, but who knows. I like the thought of a bunch of country (feral) bees working their tails off.

I’ll make up another batch of syrup tonight and give them a look see tomorrow or Friday during lunch. I know it is not drawn out yet, but I need to know what kind of progress they are making. This daggone hive could swarm again if I do not keep an eye on them!

Bee Slaughter

Once again, the bees pay a terrible price for my education! It wasn’t all that bad, but it wasn’t pretty.

James Kiser, a member of the East Richmond Beekeeper’s Association that lives just down the road from me, stopped by to watch me check my hives. As I did a full inspection of all three hives last week, I was only doing some quick checks this week (I currently do full inspections every two weeks during the flow, although a bud at work, Doug Ladd (a beekeeper with more experience then me who lives to the west of Richmond), recommends a full inspection every week – something I may try if I start losing hives to swarms), but James was interested in watching since he is getting his first Nuc from Tom this year.

At the last ERBA meeting, Kenny Andrews recommended simply turning the top Deep on its side to check for swarm cells. Since the only goals for the look at the Geronimo hive this week were to check for swarm cells and see if they were working the honey super (Illinois super in my case,) I turned the top Deep on its side and bees poured out of the side and several were squished on the top of the bottom deep (which I was using as the base, like an idiot). I ended up moving it over on top of the super (which was still untouched, although bees were all over it this time) to have a look. I think I should have made sure that the frames were perpendicular to the ground because all of the frames swung to one side, probably messing with the bees on the frames (one of which could have been my daggone queen!) I stuck with it, though, and smoked the bottom and could not see any evidence of swarm cells. All in all, a ton of bees died and I am only somewhat confident that no swarm cells exist. This hive is so chock full of bees that it really must be thinking about swarming. I will probably take some time from work during lunch this week and do a full inspection. The one plus to this is that they never got mad. I couldn’t believe it, with all of the squished bees. I guess they have come to the sad conclusion that the dopey animal that messes with them each week is simply going to kill a few of us and we might as well go on about our business until the fool leaves! I don’t know how Kenny does this trick, but I will not be trying it again until I get more advice.

As to the Albo hive, I was only checking the honey (Illinois) super. This hive had less activity at the landing board, but they had just started to draw out some of the honey super. It was definitely a positive sign. I might get some honey this year after all! Doug has planted the seed about splits in my brain and I want to get some honey before I do it.

Finally, the only goal with the Westover hive was to remove the top feeder. They were not using it when I checked last Wednesday and I wanted to get it off. The only reason I had it on was because of some fairly wise beekeeper online saying that he feeds them until they draw out the two supers (Deep’s in my case) that they will live in. These bees, as of last weekend, had drawn out the bottom deep and had just started the top deep. But, I didn’t want to keep that syrup on them if they weren’t using it (it will ferment eventually.) But, as it turned out, I had 20 to 30 bees in the well with about a third of them eating the syrup. So, I left that on and that was that (unlike the Geronimo hive, these bees do not put up with a lot of shenanigans, so I am more inclined to let them do their thing without my mucking about in there.)

James didn’t get much of a show, although he was definitely surprised that the bees didn’t make more of a fuss during the slaughter at the Geronimo hive (actually, I was surprised about this too.) I think it put his mind at ease a bit about working his bees in the future.

In closing, I received a flier on a Beekeeping Seminar being given by one of the contributors to my bee knowledge (some of which is on this blog), Doug Ladd. It’s going to be given in Buckingham County on June 19 of this year and will include a lot of good stuff for a new (and experienced) beekeeper, including working hives and other items.You need to RSVP by June 9th – I have included the official flier here : Buckingham County basic beekeeping II seminar .

Honey Extraction

The Richmond Beekeeper’s Association had their meeting last night, focusing on supering your bee hives and extracting the honey that your bees build out. An experienced beekeeper named Bob gave most of the presentation, however Kenny from ERBA also contributed. It was a very good discussion, although I almost passed out due to allergies or something. I honestly do not know what the heck was going on with me. I played 11 holes of golf prior to the meeting and thought I was coming down with the plague. Fortunately, I seemed to have lived through last night and feel ok this morning (I took an allergy pill last night.) The older I get, the more my body acts up on me.

At any rate, I forced myself to take a few notes for future reference. There was a general discussion of equipment, starting with the Honey Extractor (I had hoped that there would be a discussion of ‘How to Harvest Honey without an Extractor‘, as I am not in the mood to make that investment right now.) The primary tidbits that I picked up on the Extractor were to always purchase Stainless Steel and it doesn’t take long to need more then a 2 Frame Extractor.

The talk then went on to Capping Knife. Bob was an advocate of an electric knife that could be operated (tuned on/off) with a foot petal. Issues apparently arise when you use one of these things as they can burn the honey when they get too hot. Bob dealt with this via a foot pedal, which he would use judiciously (only turning it on for brief periods while working, instead of keeping it on all of the time.) As to this, Kenny advised he never used the knife and just used the scratcher (or some thing that looks like one of those metal combs that kids put in their back pockets.)

Regardless of the tools, the first step in the process is to get the Honey Super on your hive. In the Richmond, Virginia area, you want to make sure that you have at least one honey super on your hives by April 15 (although some of the folks claimed April 1 was the day this year, due to the unseasonably warm weather this year.) The primary flow, as mentioned in a previous post, starts in early May.

Once the bees have filled the super up with honey (you want to have a frame that is mostly capped), you remove it from the hive (probably replacing it with another super). I have definitely written on this blog about possibly leaving the supers on until the Fall. Folks at the Richmond Beekeeper’s meeting were not in favor of this for two reasons. One, you want to extract honey when it is hot. July and August are perfect. Honey runs/drips well in this temperature. Two, if we have a dearth (or maybe they were saying that anytime this can happen), the bees will start to eat into their stores, removing the honey from the supers. This second problem is a bit of a mystery. If you take their food that they would have otherwise eaten, won’t they go hungry? I guess those people just feed the bees sugar syrup for the rest of the Summer/Fall. At any rate, if you subscribe to this view, you want to get those supers off by the end of June (when the nectar flow in the Richmond, Va area will be over.)

When you go to get the honey supers, it is important to get the bees out of the supers. Bob mentioned things like ‘Bee Off’ or ‘Bee Away’ or something like that. Basically, these items smell so badly that the bees leave the honey. Heh. I am pretty sure you will not catch me using something like that. Fortunately, Kenny mentioned that he just smokes the padoodle out of his honey supers (sending most bees back into the main hive), then he shakes his frames (shaking the bees back into main hive) and uses a brush for the last few still there. Someone mentioned a blower, which I may investigate down the road (in that distant future when I actually get some harvested honey…)

Once the bees are out of the Super, you need to store it somewhere while you finish working the bees or getting other supers. The key is to have a top and bottom that are bee tight. Otherwise, a bunch of bees will run over and steal the honey out of your super while it is on the truck.

Now that you have your honey, you return to the honey extracting setup and go to work. The first thing is to decap the honey (using the electric knife or hippie comb) over a plastic tub which can catch the stray honey and cappings. Once all of the caps are off, place the frame into the extractor and give her a whirl. The honey will drip out and flow into a bucket (that you need to have setup with a double strainer (rough, then fine). This is the Stage 1 honey. Folks like Kenny (and probably like me, once I get some honey to try) will let this honey sit for a day or two before pouring it into bottles. This lets the last of the wax and bee particles float to the top. But, Bob actually strains it one last time, through a terry cloth or something. This really pulls out all of the tidbits.

Once you are done bottling, you want to clean up very well. Otherwise, according to the folks at the meeting, you will have a Small Hive Beetle paradise and a real mess the next time you extract.

That pretty much sums up the notes on Honey Extraction. The final tidbit that I picked up (by picked up, I mean noted to consider later, as I do not know very much about bees – not even enough to accurately judge the information (usually conflicting!) that I hear from various beekeepers around the area and on the net!), was that a lot of those beekeepers use an ‘Illinois Super’ (this is what I call a honey super) and a Deep for their hives. Basically, I would have already filled that up on both of my hives (I use two Deep’s.) I am a bit leary of this approach, as I think that Tom advised two Deep’s. I might try this setup on one of my new Nuc’s and watch it over the next few years.

Splits and Other Tidbits

The East Richmond Beekeeper’s Association had their May meeting this evening and the focus was splitting beehives, creating Nuc’s and tidbits about swarming and other beehavior. Kenny was the focus, which is always good as he has a ton of experience. It would have been good to have Tom here, too, as he is probably doing tons of splits and Nuc’s at this exact moment (which is probably why he couldn’t make it!)

Kenny defines ‘splits’ literally, which makes sense although I had never looked at it this way. For him, a split is taking two deeps and creating a hive from each one. Interestingly enough (or maybe it is sadly enough), I have only just recently had a queen start laying in the top Deep. Clearly, this is normal behavior for a strong hive. Regardless, when you have brood and nurse bees in both boxes, it creates an ideal scenario for a ‘split’. Kenny’s method is to find the queen in the upper Deep and move her back to the lower Deep. Then, take the upper deep and make a new hive out of it. The whole concept of ‘finding the queen’ is not something that I do casually. In fact, I would have to say that I do it ‘by accident’ currently. I have been advised that this will change as I become more experienced.

But, with this low likelihood of finding a queen, I am more likely to spin Kenny’s strategy a bit by simply locating frames of eggs and making sure that both Deeps have at least one frame of eggs. This way, whichever box is missing the queen will have the proper tools to build their own queen. The key here is to check back in five to seven days for a queen cell (or two.) Bee math says that the egg will turn into a larvae on Day 3/4, be capped on Day 7/8 and hatch out as a queen on day 16/17. Then, the young gal apparently meanders around the hive getting her legs under her (and probably looking to kill any other queens that have not emerged from their cells) for about 5 days before she goes out on the town to find a lover. 26 days after the split, I should be seeing eggs. But, Kenny mentioned that he has seen it happen on Day 35, so it is best not to give up hope immediately (I’m guessing that I would freak out by Day 29 anyway!) I think you can probably test the theory by dropping another frame of eggs (from another hive) into the new split and see if they try to raise another queen (in which case I might want to follow up with a frame of capped brood if I can spare it, just to keep the population of nurse bees strong.)

Kenny also mentioned the idea of moving the hives a long distance. But, as Michael Bush (online) and Doug Ladd (occasional blog reader) have advised, you can move them a short distance and still have high rates of success. I can move them a long distance to my family farm in Charles City or two one of my friend’s farms, but I kind of doubt that I will on the first tries (this year or next.) I am fairly certain that I will try Doug’s method my first time.

Kenny also demonstrated a home made Cloakboard, another method of doing a split and/or raising queens which involves keeping the hives together. I am still in the research mode for raising queens and have no opinion on this method at the moment.

One of the most educational bits (for me) tonight was the advice on how to check for swarm cells (I am keeping an eye on the Geronimo hive for a possible swarm – it is unlikely, as I believe the queen is young, but I have learned my lesson on banking on my expectations!) To begin with, he advised that most swarm cells are made in the upper Deep. This was brand new information to me. To check for them, you do not have to invade the hive with a full inspection. You simply have to lift the top Deep and place it on its side where you can look for the cells with a good vantage point (they should be on the bottom on the upper deep.) I am probably going to do this on the coming weekend, just to see how it goes. I like this idea as I really have no need to break the frames of this strong hive up anymore.

There was also a lot of talk about swarms. Wade had found nine swarm cells in one of his two hives. Kenny had apparently been catching swarms all week. Anne had even just picked up a swarm a week or so ago and put it in a top bar hive (where it had already drawn out 12 frames!!!!) I actually finished my first swarm trap (a 6 frame, custom made Nuc that I could hang at 8′) this very evening. I am going to put it in Charles City this weekend (or maybe put it over at 1699 on Thursday if I can get another one built tomorrow night.) I hope to post back more on this experiment in the future.

Finally, I met two folks that have visited my blog at the meeting tonight. One, David, lives up the road and is looking to get into bees. He has apparently spoken to Tom (I’m thinking Tom’s list must be a hundred long!) In addition, I met Doug Ladd and his folks. I think his folks come to the meeting regularly, but Doug belongs to another club down to the west of Richmond. The beekeeping community is getting larger and it’s a blast chewing the fat about bees.

For the purposes of recording observations, we are going through a bit of a cool spell now, with at least a few more days in the low-70’s. The main note here is that they are calling for storms in a couple of days. We are definitely getting dry now and I do not believe that the nectar of anything but trees and well established shrubs will last to any great degree if we do not get rain in the next week (of course, I am mainly concerned about my garden and plants, but I want the bees to have a full plate too!)