Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Mid-Summer Update & Beehive Replacement Program

This year’s hive loss for me was astounding, but it did not really have an impact on my desire to keep beekeeping. It was really more of an Act of Nature that helped me to reduce my hive count (a goal that I had set out on, as of the end of last year.) After the big losses (around 50%), selling a dozen full hives and my normal increase for the year, I am down to 51 hives. It’s been a MUCH easier Spring/Summer and I should actually finish honey extraction this weekend. I have never finished in July! Well, maybe I did a decade ago, but certainly not in recent memory. Ideally, I hope to offload between 15 and 20 hives next year – this should get me to a much more manageable number for my current situation today (given family and general life demands). I will surely increase my hives again, sometime in the distant future, but look forward to running between 20 and 30 for the next decade or so.

Yesterday, there was an article in the Times Dispatch regarding bee loss – it looks like it averaged 60% for the state this past Winter!! At least I am not losing my mind – it was a tough one. The article did not point to a single issue, but I am quite certain there was one. I had too many hives that exhibited the exact same symptoms for me to believe otherwise. Plus, I have never had losses anywhere near what the state has until this past year. I have a hunch that a strain of nosema or something similar hit them hard (or maybe the weather created the perfect storm for that parasite.)

Regardless, the Spring ended up being one of my best for Nuc creation and survival. I am not sure if this was because I had less hives (and thus more time for the Nucs) or if it was the weather (it’s hard for me to believe that all that rain was good for the bees, but what do I know?) In addition, I feel really good about the hives that I sold, given they were stock that survived this previous, tough Winter.

The final observation for me is the low swarming season. Maybe I am about to get hammered with swarms, but I really have had VERY few swarms this season. In addition, I also received very few calls. This may all be coincidence (or maybe my hives are simply going to rock July and swarm away), but it is worth noting. I have several White queens out there, so something should happen in some of those hives. We shall see.

Lastly, the article in the paper pointed to a new Beekeeper program that is giving away full hives (from the state) to help offset some of the past Winter losses. I am really not sure if this is just equipment or it includes the bees, but it is worth checking out.

http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/plant-industry-services-beehive-distribution-program.shtml

How Often Should I Check on these bees?

I get this question a lot when folks purchase a Nuc or a full Hive from me. It’s a good question and I remember well my own curiosity about how often, am I doing it too much or not enough, and so forth.

For any new beekeeper, I firmly believe that they should be going in and pulling every frame about once a week. Hopefully, they started with an honest-to-god Nuc (not a package or something that folks today call a Nuc which is just a package that has been queened by the seller) and have at least two of them. This is a rare opportunity to inspect an entire hive and only be dealing with between 4000 and 8000 bees. When the hive gets to full size, it will run from 30,000 to 60,000 bees and be an entirely different animal.

With so few bees, you will be able to reliably identify some of the key parts of the hive (capped brood, larvae, honey, pollen, etc…) You might even see your first egg or that elusive queen (it should be noted that I never laid eyes on the queen of either of my two first hives during the first Summer!) More importantly, this is the time to get comfortable going through the bees. By late June, the bees can become a bit agitated during inspections since nectar sources are low and all of their neighbors want to steal their honey! So, for the new beekeeper, once a week for 3 months is right on target. Even 2 months is good.

But, I do not believe this is necessary for someone who is experienced. For me, I make sure that I look into every hive at least once a month. By “look in”, I typically simply pull off all of the honey supers and the top brood chamber, pull the center frame from the bottom brood chamber and make sure that I see some evidence of the queen. Usually, larvae is good, but I do want to see capped worker brood (only capped drone brood can be a problem!) If I see that, I mark the hive for it’s next inspection in 4 weeks. Of course, there are other factors that might bring me back to the hive, such as checking honey supers or maybe creating late Nucs off of a particularly good queen line. But, these are all nice-to-have…my main Must Have is “check to be sure that I see evidence of a queen once a month”. If I do not see it on the center frame, I dig deeper to see if I have a problem.

Finally, since I am actively working on creating Nucs, I typically go into the hives once every two weeks during Apr, May and Jun. But, this is really just to create more hives.

Is it a split when you break it into thirds?

As I have started to sell full hives, a lot more full hives are in my backyard than normally at this time of year. In fact, I have usually moved any Overwintered Nucs (transitioned to full hives) out to other yards by the end of March. The yards are just full of Nucs. But, I have actually been moving full Hives to my backyard this year, as I sell off some of my force.

This is important because I did something yesterday that I have never done before. I was checking a hive that I was about to sell to make sure it wasn’t going into swarm mode. Of course, the daggone thing already had capped queen cells. I had checked it a month ago and, based on my experience, it should just be filling out about 70% of the hive bodies. But, this queen had other ideas. She had fully capped both upper hive bodies and the workers had created a bunch of queen cells in both. In the bottom deep, she had laid eggs in about 4 frames. Most were larvae, but none were capped.

Normally, I might create a Nuc or two when out in the field, but heck – this is my backyard. I can do anything I want, since checking on them frequently is very easy. So, I decided to take all three boxes and create hives. I have no idea if the queen flew the coop or not, but I ended up placing the two upper bodies, with lots of capped brood and queen cells, off on their own in the yard, with new bottoms and tops. I left the Deep where it was, to collect the returning foragers and begin building a queen from scratch.

At this time of year, it is hard to screw up, but we shall see. I will check the ones with queen cells in 1 week and the other in 3. I hope to have 3 hives at that point!

Drone Layer & Dual-Monarchy!

This year seems to be forming into a year of firsts (or maybe I was just too daggone blind to notice these things in the past!) In mid-March, I found a hive that would surely be ready for a Nuc by late March/early April. When I arrived, it was just barely able to create a Nuc, but I took one and noted that it should certainly be ready for a second Nuc by the third weekend in April. I did make a note that, given where this queen had been in mid-March, she really was taking her sweet time building up. She had done so well in February.

When I arrive this past weekend to take another Nuc, I very quickly find he queen. She is on a frame of eggs and capped brood that appears to be all Drone brood. So, I gently place the frame (with the queen) off to the side (actually, I just lean it up against the hive…), and begin to look for a few frames of worker brood and eggs. I find zero in the upper Medium. It is chock full of capped drone brood…

Maybe some folks will immediately say “Drone layer!”, but I sure didn’t. I had never had something like this before, in countless inspections. It was a White queen, but it never even dawned on me that I had a drone layer…until half-way through the bottom Deep! Now, I see that I clearly have an issue. I had thought the hive was activing strangely – now I can see why. Nothing but capped drone brood and eggs that are presumably drones. This isn’t the end of the world, but it was about to suck up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated!

Then, I come across what is definitely a worker frame. All small cells and no extension. I see eggs… I am now wondering if I should go whack that queen and make them create another one. I pick up one more frame and BOOM! There is ANOTHER daggone queen (not marked), clearly mated and doing her thing. She was laying (and had probably only been doing so for a week or so) in the bottom brood chamber while the marked queen was laying in the top brood chamber. I have heard folks say this can happen, but I had never seen it.

So, the bees took care of the problem. That hive is about to be flush with Drones (but the resources the workers have stored up will easily tide them over). Two more things crossed off of the bucket list – drone laying queen and two queens in the same hive!

Swarm “Prevention” and Nuc Creation

There are only a handful of things more distressful to a beekeeper than opening a hive for an inspection (or worse, to take a Nuc) and find the gals in full blown swarm prep mode! It has happened so often to me that I have grown use to the pain and actually simply expect it on many of my strongest hives each Spring.

Although, there are many documented methods of swarm prevention (and I believe that I have tried them all), it is my experience that you can rarely stop a hive that is set on swarming. So, I have mostly given up on fighting Mother Nature. Since I do believe that there are some queens that will not swarm if given enough space (and with population reduction through taking Nucs), I do make sure that all hives have at least one honey super by mid-March. Now that we are in April, most of my hives have 2 honey supers (well, at least the ones that have started to make good work on the original.) The hives that really go crazy (gang busters is a word I sometimes use), I simply focus on pulling as many Nucs off of them as possible, before the old gal heads off to my neighbor’s soffit:)

And so I had my first “scenario” on Saturday, when I went in to take a Nuc off of a hive that had really been rolling since mid-March (I already had two Nucs from the hive going along well.) I found the White queen, along with several capped or partially capped queen cells. In the past, I have played with taking the queen from the hive and all sorts of other things, but this time, I simply bid her farewell and good luck on her future journey, and placed her back in the hive.

But, before I did that, I located two confirmed queen cells in good shape (and in a position where there was no chance that I could harm them in my misadventures) and placed those frames aside – they were to go back in the hive and be the new queen for this great hive, when it swarmed. I then located queen cells on other frames and created two Nucs, shaking a lot of bees into both (I know a bunch were prepping for a little journey out into the hinterlands with my wayward white queen, so I got as many as I could.) At this point, I did something a bit different than I have done in the past.

For years, I create a Nuc and simply set it up in the same yard as the parent hive. I do that to this day and it works just fine. Some Nucs are no more than 5 feet from the parent hive. But, I have also discovered (over the years) that when I take a Nuc from a hive in Swarm Prep mode, I occasionally come back in two weeks to find the Nuc completely empty. Not a single bee. This seems to ONLY happen with Nucs from hives in swarm prep mode. It seems logical to me that somehow these bees hear their brethren issue a swarm and they simply go with it, leaving the Nuc empty! So, on Saturday, I actually sealed up both new Nucs and moved them a couple of miles down the road, to a different apiary. We shall see how this works. It can’t be worse than before (I hope!)

Losses and My Start to the Season

For many years, I have been very proud to record substantially less losses than the averages reported by the state. Through 2017, my worse year was a little under 18% losses – averaging more in the 6 to 8% range in other years. But, this year is clearly going to be different. I have checked around half of my hives and am definitely moving towards a 30 or 40% loss due to the Fall/Winter of 2017//2018. I have a lot more inspections to do, but the one big difference this year is the surprizing number of hives with tons of honey and just a handful of dead bees (with queen) found in the middle of them. In my view, the bees simply did not have enough bees to keep the hive warm. Maybe the hard Winter in January was too much for them. On the plus side, I like to view these kinds of years as Mother Nature’s way of weeding out the weak.

White Marked Queen — The two year old gets ready for Summer!

Many of my hives have queens with White marks, meaning they were born in 2016. Fortunately, those that made it are, for the most part, doing very well. In fact, I am now seeing large patches of capped drone brood, a sign that I use for starting my Nuc creation. In the past, I would wait for Walking Drones (see a drone or two walking on the frames), but I have found that queens raised during those early days are usually not as well bred (and don’t last as long.) But, if I wait a bit later (usually 2 weeks or so), for when the queens really start to lay lots of Drone eggs, I generally start to get much better queens. So, when I spot a grouping of 50 or more drone brood, it is a sign for me that it is time to start my Nucs (which will raise their own queens. Usually, I have created several Nucs by mid-March, so this year was a bit of an anomaly. I think this year has been more “normal” in many respects, compared to the last decade.

With that discovery, I created my first Nucs of the season and mark several hives for Nuc creations over the next two weeks. I generally wait for at least 7 frames of brood or eggs in one box (usually top) and evidence that the queen has started to lay in the second box (usually bottom) before I start taking Nucs. Several were within a week of being ready, but a few were ready today.

Based on the activity that I am seeing, it seems likely that Henrico swarms could show up by Tax Day. Of course, there will be the outliers that come earlier, but I am thinking that late April will be good for swarms (which I want more than years past, due to the losses of this year!) I am probably jinxing myself, so let’s hope for solid weather with the occasional rain for the next couple of months – no extremes!!

When a Hobby becomes a Job!!!

Eleven or twelve years ago, I decided to purchase a couple of Nucs to start on a beekeeping journey. This is also when I decided it would be fun to see what all this “blogging” was about and started a beekeeping blog (this site!). It was great fun that first year, dealing with two hives and reporting some of my insane conclusions in those early days.

Of course, two weren’t enough, so I expanded to 4 in year two and believe I may have caught a swarm or two. By years 3 and 4, I was experimenting with every type of “bee increase” you could imagine (nucs, splits, raising queens, etc…) As the years went on, those first two hives became 80 hives. As with all of my hobbies, I eagerly took beekeeping over the edge!!!

It was not until last July, as I once again spent most of my free time on the Summer weekends either extracting a seemingly never ended pile of capped honey supers or running down various tasks in a multitude of beeyards, that everything became clear – I had once again turned a great, fun-loving hobby into a daggone job!!!

As I write this post, it occurs to me that my activity on this blog also dropped off substantially as the hive count rose. I enjoy running on here, on this blog. But, just managing the hives (along with family, work and so on) was preventing me from really enjoying this small bit of fun.

So, I have finally wizened up and realize that an ideal number of hives for me runs at two dozen, not 7!!! Therefore, this year I will begin to sell both Nucs and fully operational hives. I am hopeful of reducing my count over the next couple of years to something that is more of an enjoyable hobby than a full-time job! I plan to update the site with the relevant information shortly, regarding how to reserve a hive or nuc, costs and so forth.

Hopefully this is also a sign of more posts here, and more dialogue with fellow beekeepers across Virginia (and elsewhere.)

Beginner Frame Observations

A new beekeeper swung by to watch some of my misadventures in the bee yards and started off asking me what all the numbers on the frames were. At one end of an open hive, each frame has a number, right now ranging from 10 to 17. These numbers serve two purposes – primarily, they tell me the year that the frame went into production. “12” means that this frame “went live” in 2012. The wax is about that old and it helps me to identify which frames go to the wax melter each year (and are then filled with fresh foundation). I start removing frames in year 5 and absolutely have them recycled by year 10. The numbers also tell me the direction the frame is in – it helps me keep them oriented in the same direction they were before I started a deep inspection.

The next question the new beekeeper asked was about the wires that ran horizontally through the frame. That observation caused even me to pause and look at the frame. As noted back in 2012 (posted here), I have long since stopped wiring my frames. It has been so long that I never even think about it anymore (and I have long since recycled nearly all frames with this wire).

When I started beekeeping, everyone told me you had to run a wire through the frame horizontally. This would prevent the drawn wax from falling out of the frame on hot days. I dutifully (one could call it blindly:) followed their instructions and wired all of my frames, both Deeps and Mediums. All was good!

My beekeeping hives continued to expand and I was soon creating tons of new frames. This was taking a huge amount of time, so I purchased a frame jig and started using a nail gun. Bingo! Huge time savers! I experimented with different frame types and this cut even more time. Soon, the lion’s share of my time, for each frame, was spent wiring the daggone things. No matter where I looked, I found no easy (faster) solution to this. Finally, it dawned on me. Did I really need to wire these things? If ever there was something to experiment with, this was it. So, I started small – maybe 10 hives without wires. Let’s see what happened.

I am happy to report that I have not created a wired frame since 2013 and have not had a single instance of wax falling out of my frames. I do have wire embedded (vertically) in the foundation that I purchase and feel confident that this is the real reason that my drawn wax remains secure. I have only recently started to attend some of the local beekeeping association meetings again, so am unsure if “wiring” is still suggested to new beekeepers. I can only speak from my experience – wiring hives may have been a must have in the past, but they are no longer necessary for me.

I Need a Queen!

Over the last 24 hours, I have gotten a bit over an inch of much needed rain and more is in the future! Per usual, I will likely go from complaining about not enough rain to fretting about too much rain! It seems I am never satisfied with what Mother Nature dishes out:) Regardless, my Nucs are rocking and, with this rain, I am betting that I will have many very strong Nucs in 2 weeks. No doubt, I will have more than I currently have demand for and am likely to post to Craigslist soon! But, that’s a good problem to have so I am not complaining!

Over the past few days, between swarm calls, I have received a lot of calls and emails about queens. For one reason or another, folks always seem to be looking for queens this time of the year. Instead of launching into my typical spiel about sustainable beekeeping and that everyone should have at least one Nuc, I will point folks to a past spiel on that score (see http://richmondhoneybee.com/nucs/nuc.html). Today, I will talk about the supposed “queenless state”.

First, I will pass on a recent experience from a great lady out in the country where I have a very successful apiary on the James River here in Central Virginia. She began keeping bees a few years ago, purchasing a couple of Nucs from me and has been very dedicated to the hobby and doing it correctly. She was actively in her hives and noticed, in early April I believe, that one of her hives had no capped brood at all – not even drone brood. She found open queen cells, but nothing else. If you remember your bee math, this means that there has been no queen in that hive for possibly 24 days (drones hatch then). In my experience, a new queen (post swarm) is laying before all of the drones hatch, but it is possible to have a couple of days between a queen starting to lay and the last drone hatching, in cooler weather. She was fairly certain she was without a queen, so she dropped a frame of eggs (from a nearby, queen-right hive) into the troubling hive. I advised her to go back 3 weeks later to see if she had an open queen cell (the bees should raise a new queen within 14 to 16 days, if they were without one.)

Instead, she found several frames of capped brood and a thriving hive. What happened here? Even though it appeared that she did not have a queen, she actually did. The young queen was simply slow to get started and working on her own timeline, like they always do! The key here is that she had an available frame of eggs to put in the hive, just in case. It was simply insurance. It turned out she did not need it, but it was reassuring that she did.

The ability to maintain your hives under queens of local stock cannot be understated. Purchasing queens from out of state, from differing geographical regions, increases risk to your hives in my view and experience.

Wet and now Dry!

Mother Nature is definitely the most fickle lass that I know! Last year, we had a very wet Spring, coupled with a bout of freezing weather in late April that I believe was the primary culprit in the struggles of the last year. Rain washes nectar out of plants – not a good thing for bees. The freezing weather whacked both my blueberry and strawberry blooms. I have to imagine that similar things happened to many weeds out in the wilds (weeds that my bees rely on for nectar). All of this lead to a below-average honey crop and difficulty in getting new hives to build up as they normally do.

Fast forward to this Spring. The lack of rain has enabled me to create what may be a record number of Nucs. I think I have 30 out in the field, or there about. With the exception of one that I let starve (like a fool – even noted in my journal that their “resource frame was light” and that I should feed these gals…), my Nucs seem to be doing really well. But, it has been unusually dry by my reckonning. Over the last 10 days, I believe I have received 1.5 inches of rain. Not terrible for a June or July, but pretty poor for an April. They do not even forecast rain in he foreseeable future.

Although I do not think that there has been any impact yet, I do believe that I will change my tune on that score by the end of next week if we still do not have rain. But, only time will tell…