Reversal of Fortune

These two beehives are the smallest in the beeyard this year.   They each have an interesting story.

The pink hive is a split from a larger hive [the blue and orange one in the back] that was bearding heavily and just decided to start building comb under the hive boxes.   Bearding is when you get a collection of bees hanging from the front entrance or sides during hot, humid days.  It's normal.

Bearding all night long, and then for days, and then weeks and building comb UNDER the boxes is not normal.   It meant a lot of pissy bees outside and a lot of extra pings for the beekeeper this season.

Eric and I decided enough was enough and we spent a miserable couple of hours removing the bees and their comb from under that hive and putting them in their own box to make themselves a new queen and new colony.    They did not come gently.

Every week for 4 weeks, I put a new comb of brood and eggs from another colony in there for them to make a new queen from.   They finally did.   And then that blasted queen refused to mate.   I checked on them week after week and finally 2 weeks ago decided to just write them off.   I couldn't find the new queen and was tired of stealing brood for them.

The green hive is a swarm we caught this year from our own hives.   It was small.   We put them in the box and they started doing what they do.  The queen was doing great, laying fine, drawing comb, etc.  Only thing was - they weren't storing any honey.   I figured they'd get the hang of it since they were increasing in size.  We are still in a flow.  There's time.

And then I walked out last week in time to see another swarm 30 feet up in a tree, very much out of reach.   Eric and I threw together a swarm trap and waiting.  The next day they came down to the trap but wouldn't go in.   They flew off again.   Then they flew back to it again.   I'd had enough watching and just put them in there.

They didn't act happy.   So I put in a frame of brood from another hive to anchor them until they got happy and then I noticed that that little green hive was awfully quiet.    Sure enough, this new swarm was that old swarm, which had absconded leaving three perfectly good frames of brood.

This is not good.   So I fed them a lot of sugar syrup and waited to see what they'd do.

Reversal of fortune.  I checked both hives today and wouldn't you know they've done a complete reversal.

The pink hive has a laying queen!   She's fat and beautiful and doing a great job.  Multiple frames of brood. They're storing plenty of honey and pollen.  This queen came from my favorite hive.  I'm hoping to see her build up and make it through the winter.

The green hive is languishing.   The queen is there, but laying multiple eggs in a cell, which the bees will take care of, but it's weird.   I put their old comb back in the hive so the could focus on laying and raising brood instead of building comb.   I'm still feeding them a lot of syrup.   I don't expect them to make it to fall, much less through the winter.

It's funny how things change.   In spite of my predictions, the bees will do what they will do.  They don't read the books or pay attention to the experts, or me.   They'll likely surprise me.

Another Queenless Hive

After dealing with the pink hive being queenless, [see the last post], I had a feeling I ought to go in and check on the bowtie hive and sure enought, I found it full of bees, but no brood, no nectar, no honey.  Probably no queen.  They needed help fast. This is what those laying nucs are good backups for.   So, even though I failed to raise backup nucs this year, I now really see what a great idea they are.   Next year, I'm going to do one or two for sure. 

I got into my strongest hive and pulled a full frame of brood out and an additional frame they had just started drawing, but which had eggs already in it.    I put those in the bowtie hive.   I also fed every hive 2:1 sugar/water.    If they have a lazy queen, then the brood and the feed should knock her back into action.   If they had no queen, then they now have the resources to make one.   Easy fix as long as I'm patient.   In a month they should be going and if I feed like crazy, then they should be built up enough to get through the winter. 

Fall Hive Inspection

Here are the hives all happy in their new site.   The bees took the move in stride and are busy as ever.   We did a full fall inspection early in the month and discovered some interesting things.

The 24 hour mite board check turned up 3 mites from each hive.   Also, some dysentery in the Hello Sweetie hive [probably from some fermented sugar water.]  The mite load is small enough that I don't have to treat this year. 

Both hives had tons of brood - the bottom brood box was pretty much packed full of brood. 

But no honey. 

Both hives had just barely started building any comb in the top box.   Each one had only a partial frame and no honey in it. 

No. Honey.   In Sep-freaking-tember.

I've been feeding all summer, the way they tell you to the first year of a hive.   And this is the most brood I've ever had, so that's great - but no honey is not great.   What do they think they're going to eat all winter?? 

I got on the forum and one of the more experienced beeks took some time to answer my questions and make suggestions.   He noted that I may have a 'benign predator problem' with wasps and hornets and maybe some birds.   'Benign' as in not a bear or teenage boy knocking the hives over and destroying everything, but rather something stealthy making regular small raids and keeping the bees busy doing the wrong stuff.

Which would totally explain why I've never had much brood until this year.   This whole year I kept only one small entrance open at the landing board because late summer robbing is an obvious problem here.  I turned the top entrance up [the one you see opens into the top box which holds the feeder, which the bees use through a screen, so predators can get into the top box, but can't get into the brood boxes.]   I have screened bottom boards for summer ventilation.     The one small entrance is all they have.   Both hives are trying to enlarge it.  We'll put a hardware cloth mouse guard over it soon for the winter.

Since we have a lot of birds, too, I put up some poles with those heavy tinfoil disposable cupcake tins tied to them.  [See pic in previous post.]  They make some noise and the reflection is supposed to scare birds away.  They've helped in the garden, so I put two near the bees, just in case.

The goldenrod flow is still on and a good hive can draw a whole super in a week, so I'm letting them try and feeding them heavy syrup [Michael Bush's 5:3] in hopes that they'll get busy and store some.  It should be warm enough for the next couple of weeks.  If they don't, I'll pull the top box and put on mega candy boards for the winter and keep a close eye on them.   We'll push them together, insulate and wrap the sides up tight with black geo textile for the winter and wrap the bottoms [with slider boards in] to reduce draft.

I'm hoping that the new location will deter the predators and help get them through the winter.    If so, then maybe next year I'll have big hives and a decent honey harvest.  These queens are Indiana queens, so I'm hopeful.  It'll be my fourth year.   I'm ready for big honey.

If the hives don't make it this winter, I'm going to try one more time, with Russian bees that I can get from Kelley Bee Supply in Kentucky.   I hear they're good stock for surviving Indiana winters.   

Newest Queen

We checked on the bees from the bee removal that we did in town and found a big gorgeous queen with a terrific laying pattern.   It's a small but productive and happy hive so far.    Plus, they were nice and calm. 

Here's a pic of a frame of brood with the queen on it.   You can see capped brood and older larvae that are almost ready to be capped.   The queen is out in the open, easily visible.   Can you see her?  Click the pic to biggify it.

Hive Split

May 1st I did a complete hive inspection of our remaining hive with Lily assisting.  I had seen a lot of mouse poop in the sugar we fed in February and feared there was a mouse nest in the bottom box, so I knew we'd have to do a complete inspection top to bottom to clean out whatever was in the bottom.

Also, now's the time to do splits, so I was planning on taking at least a nuc's worth off and hopefully splitting two nucs worth off.  

There were a lot of bees in the top box, so I just took the whole box off and set it aside on a spare SBB [screen bottom board.] between the Tardis and the lang.

In the bottom box there was a lot of evident mouse damage.   You can see how the mouse started on one side and ate the honey through center to the wax capping on the far side.  Smart, but seriously aggravating.

This is what I found in the bottom of the box. A whole lot of wax cappings, dead bee parts, mouse droppings and other debris.

But no nest!   The mouse must have had a nest elsewhere and just come in from the top regularly to feast. The debris was a couple of inches deep on the bottom.   I cleaned it all out.

I went through every frame in the bottom box and there was no brood at all.   I knew then that I wouldn't be getting more than one nuc's worth of split, but since we're down to only one hive, I figured that was better than nothing. 

I  left one frame of honey on the south end and left the rest of the frames out.  I'd be replacing them with the split.

The other box was full of bees. I decided to do an even split and a walkaway.

A walkaway is where you take some of the bees out and put them in a new hive and leave them alone to make a new queen.

An even split is where you take the frames and deal them like cards - one frame for the old hive, one for the new hive, etc. 

There were five frames full of capped brood, larvae and eggs.  I could see where the first brood had emerged already and those spaces were full of larvae again.   Good queen!

Click the pics for closeups of the larvae.

Here's a close-up of the eggs.  They look like grains of rice in the bottoms of the cells.  The cells are yellow because the bees are tracking pollen all over everything right now.







We did sight the queen - and she's gorgeous.  Very calm. 

We ended up putting her in the Tardis with two frames of brood.The other three frames of brood I left in the lang.


I made a couple of mistakes that you can learn from. 

1.  Lots of beeks talk about checkerboarding - where you put an empty frame between the drawn or full stuff to encourage the bees to expand the hive.   I did that with the brood - put empty drawn comb between the brood frames.

MISTAKE:   You want the brood in a tight cluster because it's easier for the bees to keep it warm.  I just split the hive, so there are many fewer bees to keep the brood warm and this is Indiana - no telling what the weather is going to do for the next few weeks.

Checkerboarding is fine for honey supers, but not for brood.   I went back in a few hours later and took the empties out and tucked the brood frames next to each other.   I thank Michael Bush's book for making this clear to me [The Practical Beekeeper - link on my sidebar] Having that book handy is like having a 24/7 mentor.

2.  I put the queen and two frames of brood in the Tardis, with 7 more frames of honey and partials and the follower board.   

Pollen that fell out of some cells during the move

MISTAKE:  The Tardis is in a different place - all of the field bees are going to come back to the lang, which will leave a lot of bees with the 3 frames of brood in the lang, but will leave the Tardis short handed.   Short handed for keeping the brood warm in a big box. 

I went in the next morning to see how much action there was in the Tardis and while the brood was well covered, there just weren't a lot of bees coming and going, so I quickly went back in and removed 4 frames.   Now they have a frame of honey, 2 frames of brood, then 3 more frames of honey and partials - 6 in all, then I put in the follower board to make it a much smaller space to keep warm.   [A follower board is a removable wooden wall in the shape of a frame that you use to make the space smaller or bigger as you need to.]


I figure that the two hives are now on roughly equal footing for different reasons.

The lang has no queen, but they have three frames of brood in various stages, plus eggs, plus all the extra field bees.

They were super busy coming and going the next day and I think they'll do fine.

I'll keep an eye on things and after three weeks I'll go in and make sure they've got queen cells. 

The Tardis has fewer bees and only two frames of brood, but she has the queen. And she's a good queen.   I'm hoping that will make up for it.

Also, the Tardis has a window at the back so I can easily monitor the numbers.  If I need to shake a few extra bees into the hive from the lang, I can. 




When I was all done, I put the rest of the bee candy on the tops of the frames in both hives and put supers around them, then put rocks on the landing board in front of the Tardis entrance so they'd have to go around them to exit and enter.  They'll re-orient.   Also those bees were fanning like crazy during the relocation [pic], so I think any bees that moved with the queen will stick with her.  



Fingers crossed everything will be fine and they'll be ready for the main flow in a few weeks.

New Queen Check

So, you know we had our share of problems with the flower lang hive.

Good. Gravy.

Drama, drama, drama. 

At our last inspection, things looked good in that hive - good laying pattern, calm bees.

And then we put the top box on the bottom box and the bees started roaring.

Roaring is not good.

I feared we killed the queen.    And a couple of days after that, I read Linda's blog, where the same thing happened to her and indeed the queen was dead when next she looked.

Crap.

So I decided not to panic.   [You guys from Beemaster will be so proud of me.]

And we did nothing.  [When in doubt - do NOTHING]

And we waited two weeks for another inspection figuring that if she were really gone, then the bees would make a new one and we'd see ripe queen cells when next we checked.

And when we checked, we found this.  

Beautiful brood comb.  Lots of larvae.

And the queen!

I'm so relieved!

These guys have started taking more syrup and I'm hoping that they'll have a good boom now just before the goldenrod blooms.

We have acres and acres of goldenrod and bees love it, so we might actually get a super of honey this year.   Fingers crossed.

Hive Repair - Tardis

Our Tardis hive is a horizontal hive body.    It looks like this.

The frames run the same direction as the bricks on top do.   21 frames fit into this box.   There is a center support on the bottom board and one on the inside of the cover.   The bottom support kept the frame that was in that position a bit high.

Turns out those supports were cramping the bees' style.   They weren't traveling freely through the whole box, just half of it.

And when we opened the hive at the last inspection, we found a lot of burr comb on top of that one side. 

What you see in the pic is only half of the comb.  The rest was attached to the lid.  They were unhappy when we took it away. 

Only honey comb was on the 'wrong side' of the hive.   No brood comb at all.   And the brood frames were getting smaller because they were getting filled with honey instead of brood.

It's a miracle we didn't find a swarm cell started up.   These bees were quickly getting honey bound.

So, we did some remodeling.    We popped the center bar out of the lid so they'd have easy access across the tops.

And Eric chiseled the bottom support waaaay down so they'd have bee space across the bottoms.  We also opened up another entrance right next to the old one that opens toward the 'wrong side'.

We also checkerboarded the 7 empty frames that they just wouldn't fill up by putting an empty after every two full frames.  That spread out the brood into the 'wrong side' and will hopefully get them moving through the whole box where they'll decide to expand the brood.

We love the horizontal hive bodies - so much easier to work than the langs.   Eric built this one and now we know how to tweak the design for the next ones.

Flower Lang Update

You might remember that we had a bit of trouble with the queen in our Flower Lang hive and we had to replace her.  

We checked on things again on July 1st and were very pleased to see this frame of capped brood.  

The brood is the stuff under the tan caps.  This is larvae that has been sealed up to metamorphose from a grub into an adult.   You can also see capped honey around the top edge of the frame.    The laying pattern of the capped brood shows a great laying pattern.  This queen is a good queen.    [We never did see her during the inspection.  Perhaps she hides as well as she lays.]

We also found this frame of honey.

The whitish stuff in the middle is capped honey.   Honey has a lower water content than the air, so the bees cap it off to prevent it from pulling moisture out of the air.   Honey's low water content is one of the things that makes it antibiotic and keeps it from spoiling.   Cool, huh!

The two rubber bands on the frame on the right side were used to keep some broken comb in the frame.  The bees built the broken stuff back into the frame and added on.   When they're tired of the rubber bands, they'll chew them off.

This honey probably has a lot of our sugar water in it.   This hive doesn't take nearly as much sugar water as the other one does, only a quart every 6-7 days, but it's still pretty likely that a lot of this honey came from the feeder and not the local flora.    It's a small hive.

TARDIS - Day 26: Capped brood.

Just to remind you, we took Lily with us this time to take the pics while we inspected the hives.    It was great to have Lily there to do the camera thing so we could focus on the bees.    Thank you, Lily!

I am happy to report that there was only one little bit of burr comb on this hive and we decided to leave it.   The bees are going to do what the bees are going to do.   We'll make sure it stays straight on the frames, but those little bump outs are not worth messing the comb for.

Unless someone with a lot more experience tells me otherwise.    Then I'll happily reconsider.

This week, this hive was all about capped brood.

Glorious, glorious capped brood.

We could see where the first batch of new bees has hatched out and new eggs have been laid in those cells.    This is great news.   Our blackberries have started blooming and the more bees there are, the better.  This is one of our best nectar flows of the year.    Acres and acres of blackberries.

Hopefully there will be enough new bees fast enough to store a lot up for the winter.  We'll see.

Here's a closer look at what's going on in the frames.    Blow it up for a good look.

The larvae are large and white and curled around in the cell.

The honey is shiny.   The capped honey has a smooth cap - different from the bumpy caps on the capped brood.

If you look closely you can see that the brood is capped with mini hexagons.  [It's easier to see in the second pic at the top]

When we pulled apart some of the frames, the bees festooned in three places.   It doesn't happen all the time and I'm always intrigued when it happens.   I need to find out why they do that.

The very last frame was one we had repaired last week.  The bees are doing their best to join it.

Almost there.  Only a bee width away from joining.

And here's the queen.   It was very cooperative of her to stand right next to that other bee so you can see the difference in appearance. 

We named her Liz X.   You Doctor Who fans can explain why.   

[We need a star whale hive....]

Hives - Day 19 Check

Blow these pics up for great details

Confession:    I was really tempted just to give you a couple of nice pics, brag that we found both queens and loads of capped brood and leave it at that.  

The truth is, I did just about everything wrong this time that I could.  Yep.  Pretty much I demonstrated that I have no bee finesse yet at all. 

At All. 

I felt like a bull in china shop.  Plus we were fighting the camera with veils and gloves.  Nothing went right.  Geez.   I should rename this part of the blog:  Rurification: We make stupid bee mistakes so you don't have to!

One thing - this time Eric started the smoker with a torch.   It totally worked!  Thanks, you guys at Beemaster!   A bunch of you said to fill it, torch it, pump the bellows like crazy, get a good flame, then put something on top [I used a skein of scrap yarn].   We had a charcoal briquet, some sumac berries, a bit of toilet paper and toilet paper roll, and some cardboard it in from previous attempts to light the blasted thing when Eric torched it this time.   We had plenty of great cool smoke for the whole inspection.   Woo-hoo!    Now I just have to learn how to use the torch all by myself.  

Anyway.   Here's the awful truth about how things went today.  

We opened the Tardis hive first, and the first thing I saw was burr comb.  Drat!  And this had been the hive that had great comb with no problems last time.   




We investigated and long story short,  when we put splines in the top bars, where the foundation is supposed to go, we put them in too low and the bees built off to one side instead of straight down the middle.  

LESSON:  If you use splines, leave only 1/16 inch or less showing.    We moved all the rest of the splines up so that they barely showed in the empty frames and on any that we had to do repairs on.




The bees were unhappy when I started messing with the frames and I really wanted to see how our repairs from last time worked before I did the same thing on the Tardis, so we closed that hive up and went to look at how the Flower Lang was doing with the repairs we had done on it. 

Remember that little comb on the frame with the double comb?   We repaired it by putting it in a frame with rubber bands.  It had come out anyway and was lying in the bottom of the hive.   And those rotten bees had built another little comb on the frame where we had taken the first one off.   Erg.  And they had built up the place on the other side that I had carved down. 

Really, what was I thinking?  I was nuts to think that they wouldn't.  

LESSON:   Cut out those burr comb bumps, don't carve them down and expect them to not come back.   This means I might have to wait until the comb is attached well enough to support it even if it's missing a bit of the center section.  Next time I'm going to carve it down a bit further for a few weeks until there's a lot more comb attached to the sides.   I'll keep moving the new [soft] comb to the center.  Then I'll cut out the bump out completely.

The next stupid thing I did was tilt a frame over on its side when the comb wasn't fully attached.  It was full of honey and brood and broke right off.   Dumb, dumb, dumb.

LESSON:  Don't tilt the frame until it's fully attached at all sides.  Better yet, don't tilt the comb at all.

It took a while to repair, and the temp was only in the 50s, so there's a good chance some of the brood got chilled.   Chilling the brood could kill it or cause deformities.   Another dumb mistake.  I wish I had realized that before I got done with the inspection.

LESSON:  Don't mess with the bees on chilly days.   Don't take out the frames.  Stay inside and read about bees and stupid beekeeper mistakes instead.

In all, in that hive, we had to repair 5 frames of comb.   I tried to leave the bees on the comb while I worked, but that wasn't always optimal for my concentration or their safety. 

When we got to the last frame, next to the wall that they had put burr comb on before,  we found that they had attached this comb it to the wall again with just a couple of inches of burr, but no extra comb on the wall this time.  And they had done a very interesting patch around to the comb in the frame.   It had sagged a bit in the center, so I centered it.  I have no clue whether it will work or not.




The good news about this hive is that we found lots of capped brood and a bit of capped honey.  And we found the queen.   We knew she was there, but it was nice to be able to spot her.    She's large and gorgeous.

When we were done, we scooted the frames together and closed it all up and moved back to the Tardis.   Lily came out and took over the camera while we were looking at this hive.   She took these last pics.

The Tardis had some comb on 8 of the frames, nowhere near full frames, but still lots of comb.   And plenty of capped brood!    We didn't see any capped honey in this hive.  

We did find the queen in this hive, too.   This makes me really, really happy, because I want to be a good queenspotter. 

And also, truth be told,  I felt like spotting the queen was the only right thing I did in this whole inspection. 

This hive had that one frame with a bit of burr comb on it.   I decided to just cut that section out completely and adjust the soft outer edge to the center.   We put rubber bands around it to support it just in case something happened after we closed things up.    I hope it works.

If some of you experienced beeks are so disgusted that you want to take my bees away, I wouldn't blame you.   So far, I've been a pretty pathetic beekeeper.