2013-07-04: Bee Independence Day

Taking advantage of the holiday, I decided to spend some quality time with the gals.  At the Satellite yard I saw that both hives had moderate bearding at the entrances and Goldenrod also had a band of bees loitering at the gap from the queen excluder.  One thing I like about this yard is that there are tall trees on the West side so around noon the site has shade which I hope keeps the bees (and any bee keepers wearing a suit) a little bit cooler and happier.

I think about 1 in 6 or so bees were bringing in pollen.

Goldenrod’s super was mostly filled, but interestingly the drone frame was undrawn.

  

Hodgepodge had not touched its super and I wonder if the thin plastic queen excluder I was using on it was too much of a disincentive for the bees to cross, so later when I put it back I put it on perpendicular so that there would be large unobstructed areas of travel in the front and back of the boxes.  But, during my inspection I also noticed that the drone frame was drawn and capped (so I cut it out).  Also I noticed what looked like swarm cells one frame over.  I didn’t know what to make of this, was it truly a swarm situation or were they replacing their queen.

       While I mulled over what to do with Hodgepodge, I went to the main yard to check on them.  I was just in time to see Red issue a swarm!  Fortunately the swarm settled on an easy to reach branch and I was able to capture it.  My process was to spritz the cluster with water (with a little Honey-B-Healthy for good measure).  Then to scoop and brush the bees into a deep in which I had the few deep frames I had to spare and which had a queen excluder on its bottom.  I then placed that on top of a medium with the few other frames I had to spare that was on top of a bottom board.  I placed a inner cover with the hole blocked and then a outer cover on top.  This set up essentially trapped the queen in the deep (sealed cover above and queen excluder below) without whom the swarm would not leave.  Thus ended the attempted revolt of the colonialists!

 

 

I checked on Red, the deep used to make the swarm box was the deep that I had on red to store excess frames and it had 2 honey frames in it, which looked like had been partially emptied by the swarm before leaving.  The super was very light, again, probably stripped by the swarm.  I did see some swarm cells.

Well, less than ideal but at least I caught the swarm.  I left to the yard resolving to build more frames so that I could perhaps split Red with its queen cells and to add a super to Goldenrod.  Lack of frames seems to be my bugaboo this season.

2013-06-15: The Fruits of Dumpster Diving

When I had set up the hives at the satellite yard I had just put them on several cinder blocks and (since I had not brought enough cinder blocks) a nuc box.  I could have just put them on the ground, but I don’t use hive stands and I like to have my hives off the ground.  I had meant to come back and replace the nuc box with a cinder block, but I kept forgetting to bring them down.  One day at work I notice a narrow shipping pallet next to a dumpster.  It was solidly built so I brought it home and then to the yard to place under the hives

The difficulty is that I was doing this with hives full of bees and honey, the former likely to get peeved if moved and the later just plain heavy.  The process ended up going surprisingly smoothly as I placed the pallet in front of the hives and was able to scoot each hive onto it (since the pallet was at about the same height as the blocks) and I was then able to slide the pallet back into place (thanks to the smooth planks of the pallet and the coffee bean bags I was using to keep the grass from growing up right under the hives.

  

I left the cinder blocks in a stack next to the hives.  This later proved useful as a convenient place to put items on, especially when trying to reach over the fence.  The pallet had a unforeseen benefit as I can slide my foot right into it when preparing to live a box off a hive.  This made the lifting significantly easier as the weight of the box was closer to my center of gravity and I could lift with my legs more than my back.   

2013-06-15: Fairy Dust

The overall mission today was to dust the hives with confectionary sugar to try to knock off the mites from the bees.

Purple/Aubergine:  Of the two supers, the newer one (medium) had some frames being drawn, but no honey yet.  The shallow which has been on longer had honey.

  

The drone frame had capped drones so I cut out the drone combs for the chickens.  Sugar dusted the hive.

   

Sage:  The new super not being drawn and there appears to be an odd yellow stain on the top bars.  The old super has a few capped cells of honey.  The drone frame had no comb at all.  Sugar dusted.

    

Dark Green (Holly?):  No supers.  Drone frame untouched. 

  

Only saw capped brood, no uncapped brood.  The unoccupied cells seemed to be filling up with honey.  Found some swarm cells, so this was probably the source of the swarm.  Sugar dusted.

   

Blue (Wode?):  New honey going in.  Some brood in core.  Lots of pollen coming in.  Sugar dusted.

  

2013-06-08: Seize the High Ground!

     I decided to give the hives at my satellite yard some attention and add drone frames to them.  I did not need to remove any frames as I was short of frames when I set them up so I had only placed 9 frames instead of 10 into the top box.  However, this led to Goldenrod building a mass of burr comb in the the empty space where the 10th frame would be.  I had to use my hive tool to separate it from the wall and then fish it out… sort of like the game ‘Operation’.

My father pointed out that there was a dead elm branch leaning over the hives that would need to be removed.

It was also very obvious that Goldenrod has many more bees than Hodgepodge.  

Back in my main yard I noticed that some ants have set up home on top of the inner cover of Sage.  With all the rain we have been having, their holes have probably flooded.

2013-06-01: Closing the Barn Door

Bees generally swarm when they feel crowded.  They can feel crowded for various reasons, but one obvious one is that they have filled up too much of their brood next with honey and the queen doesn’t have enough space to lay.  The solution for this is to get supers (boxes with frames intended predominantly or entirely for honey production or to swarm frames full of honey in the brood next with new empty frames (either empty drawn comb or undrawn foundation, the former I believe is preferred if you think they may decide to swarm before they can draw out foundation).

Obviously, I should have been paying more attention to my bees and have done either of these sooner.  I probably should have had a super on all of my hives back when the dandelions bloomed, but the season had gone from being stuck in first to kicking into gear very quickly.  So, today my plan was to get some supers on those hives!

I had some drawn comb from the previous year and I also spent much of the evening before assembling more frames.  I had also started to enact a scheme to make use of the shallow supers that I had got used,something I wouldn’t recommend but my mother had got them for free several years before from somebody who was getting out of bees and was just stacking them on the side of the road, this was while she was on the way home from the super discount green house sale and the car full of plants so she and my sis squeezed as many as they could into the Subaru and this has nothing to do with my bee inspection.  Anyways, back to the shallow sups, they are not as efficient as mediums but I decided that they might be a nice way to provide upper entrances and extra ventilation so I had drilled out some holes etc…  I also had prepped some medium supers as well.  Last year I had always put in 10 frames/super just like in the brood next.  However, I had read that, if the are already drawn, 9 frames can be placed in with a little extra space and the bees will fill them out a little bit farther so that they will be easier to uncap and there will be more honey per frame thus making the extraction process a little more efficient.  So I did that in those that I had drawn comb.  In other supers I tried to interspace drawn with undrawn foundation.. the drawn providing the guide so that the bees don’t draw out the comb in odd directions and hopefully the smell of used wax might lure the bees up to the supers. You will also note that I like to put the year I made the frame so that in the future I will have a good idea of which foundation should be replaced first.  This year I also had the idea of adding an M for mediums and S for shallows so when they are in storage, where I may have a mix of frame types in whatever boxes can hold them, I can just look at the tops and see how many I have of each rather than having to lift each one out to be sure.

  

I also decided to try something new by filling up a pointy tipped ketchup/mustard squeeze bottle with mineral oil in order to use to lay down a bead of grease between boxes and along the groove the frames rest on.  The hope is that the mineral oil will help to me to break the propolis seal in the future.  Also, if a little splashed oil causes grief to a few mites, so much the better.

Purple (aka Aubergine):Very full, bees some bearding in the front.  Removed the drone frame and replaced it.  The bees appeared to be putting some honey into the cells of the brood chamber.  This spurred me to put on two supers (a shallow and a medium).  I did not add an excluder in since the bees appeared to be filling up the brood chamber with honey I wanted the queen to have a space to lay.

  

Sage:  Shallow supper heavy but not yet capped.  Removed one frame in brood chamber to add a drone frame.  Added a medium super.  Left the offset thick style excluder in place since the bees seem to like having that gap at the top and its warming up enough so that the extra ventilation is probably helpful.

  

Dark Green (Holy?):  Pretty mehh…

Blue (hmmm.. should come up with a botanical name, Indigo?  Wode?):  Soso population, but some frames had plenty of capped brood.  Inserted the frame removed from Sage.

Red (Rose?):  Frames heavy with honey.  Did find some brood, put in             a drone frame and swapped out one honey frame with a frame that was half empty from the blue deep box on top of Red that I was using as a way to store frames.  Hopefully this will give them some more space to lay.

Yellow (Sunflower? Lemon?): I didn’t take any notes but the pictures look ok.

  

 

2013-05-31: Swarmiversary

I was at my desk at work and the phone rang.  I picked it up and it was my mother calling to tell me that they had spotted a swarm in the honey suckle 10 feet from the bee yard.  I was unable to leave work at that time and so they tried to catch it, but as I did not have a easy to use swarm kit ready, they had to resort to knocking some bees into a box with a few frames and hoping for the best.  But, they flew the coop an hour or so later so they probably did not get the queen.

Oh well.  Not sure which hive through it.

Interestingly, my mother checked her notes and we had a swarm just a few days earlier the previous year.  I need to keep this in mind next year.