Downsizing

I had replaced one drone frame with another about a month ago as part of the integrated pest strategy of removing drone larvae to remove mites. Ideally, the frames should come out every 21 days in order to keep the drones from hatching and releasing even more mites into your hive. During my last inspection I had peeked at the drone frame and they had not drawn it out much besides some bracing comb which I removed. So, I was only slightly nervous when I was not able to get up to the hive the weekend of 9/11-12 since I figured that they bees were taking their time building the new cells and then setting up shop for the drone larvae.

When I visited my hives with my sister this last Sunday (9/19) we were planning on removing the top box from the combined stack, removing some undrawn frames from the hive and replacing them with whatever frames in the removed box looked good, remove the drone frame, and perhaps do a sugar dusting.

Initial forager counting indicated only 78 bees returning per minute. Lower than I was expecting. However, later in the afternoon after the following inspection and when the sun had come out, I counted 150 returning bees! Now that is more like it!

The top box removal went well. They had about three frames with significant comb and honey. Two of which were able to be added back into the hive. The other frames were left in their box next to the hive to be robbed out by the bees. Hopefully this will allow the bees to top off the frames to the outside that the bees often leave empty if they have other options. Getting a colony through winter is more than just having enough honey in the hive, the bees also have to be able to access it when its very cold and they can't travel more than a few inches from the cluster.

The bees had completely removed the newspaper that had been used to buffer the two joined hives while they got to know each other. Only a fringe pinched between the wood was left. The queen excluder was removed.

The drone frame was fully drawn out. However, instead of drone larvae, it was filled with honey. Apparently the hive has decided that no more worthless loafers are needed this year. That would agree with our observations of the outside where there were a good number of drones hanging out outside the hive... perhaps they had been given the boot?

The bees were starting to get agitated so we did not poke around int he bottom box. We did a quick sugar dust to the top of the hive before closing up.

This inspection was the first use of coffee been bag strips to fuel the smoker. Once lit it worked like a charm, producing a steady smoke for a very long time. We also did not have to do the frantic puffing to keep it going like we had to do with straw... so less smoke induced headaches!

Soon winterizing will begin in earnest with a hole being cut in the back of the inner lid to improve ventilation (as recommended by Bill Mares in the bee workshop), trying to confirm that they have enough honey, inserting a front entrance barrier (to keep out the varmints), and to then wrap the hive. Also, I am still dithering about medications.

My mother will be feeding them 2:1 sugar water again as we work to try to get them as much food as possible.

All the President's Bees

While in DC last week, my wife and I were walking on the Mall. At one point I stopped to look at one flowering tree that had many insect pollinators on it. I wondered if the very large bumble bees were either drones or queens which should be out and about by this time. Also, I noticed many honey bees and it occurred to me to wonder if they were feral or if somebody nearby had a hive in the middle of DC. After a while we walked onto the next museum and I more or less forgot about the bees.

Today I was listening to a bee related podcast (the Barefoot Beekeeper in case you are curious). The host was interviewing a guest who told a story of how she had a meeting with the White House beekeeper.

Soooo..... perhaps if I had collected some of those bees and done bee lining to follow them home, they would have led me to a certain residence! Makes me ponder on a variant of '6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon' involving bees instead.

Action Taken

Saturday, September 4th, I went to my parents to check on the bees. The big question on my mind was if Juno would show signs of having a queen. The answer was a resounding no. No larvae, no eggs, and certainly no queen was visible. Also, during the inspection I twice noticed what appeared to be one bee attacking another and flying off with it. I suspect that might be a response to being frequently robbed by Artemis and/or a symptom of being queenless.

I tried to consolidate down to just one box, but there seemed to be just a few too many frames that had honey on them. Also, I was getting low on smoke. So, I put the frames back in and looked in on Artemis. She was doing fine with many more bees than Juno. I tried to take out the drone frame, but I should have taken out one of the outer frames first to provide more room. If I had, I would not have made a mess out of pulling the brood frame out since it had some bracing comb on it. That made the bees irate, and me with no smoke at that point. So I quickly put down the queen excluder on top of Artemis's top box, then placed two pieces of newspaper in which I had cut slits. Then I moved Juno onto of Artemis, making a bee high rise. The idea is that Juno is doomed since no queen and no eggs/larvae to make a new queen = extinction. So rather than loose those bees to a gradual death, they would be better off combined with Artemis where they could provide more bee-power for the goldenrod flow. But if I added them in directly there would be the risk of fighting between the hives. So, the newspaper will separate them for the time it takes for the workers to eat away at the paper. During that time the hive scents should mix... and the former Juno's will latch onto the scent of a queen and become honorary Artemis's.


A few hours later I saw what appeared to be foragers returning to both the bottom and the top (which I had left open mostly because there were a lot of bees hanging onto the inside of the top outer cover that had come off a frame I had propped on top of it). It occurred to me then that Juno's foragers returning from the fields would be likely to recognize 'their' hive, even with the increase in altitude, and would be able to enter through the top entrance without having to go through the Artemis entrance.

I touched base with my mentor via the phone today. He agreed that that sounded like the right thing to do. He also suggested that I order my wintering supplies in advance of the the workshop I will be attending Sept 11. I will hopefully have a chance to help him out with extracting. It would be good experience for me and its the least I could do for his help.

Good News and Bad News

I have visited the gals twice since I last wrote in mid July.

Shortly after my last post I became convinced that I was in danger of the bees, taking advantage of the feedings and the goldenrod blooming, filling up their frames with and running out of room for brood (this is known as being honey bound) with the possible danger of the bees swarming. So great was my fear that I spent my evenings assembling 10 shallow frames and 10 medium frames so that I could add a super to each hive. Taking advantage of a nice day, I sped from work on Tuesday, July 27th, passing huge patches of wild parsnip in full bloom along the interstate, to get home before it got too late. It turns out that the bees had plenty of room. I put a shallow super on top of Juno, more for the sake of putting it somewhere rather than storage. I also assumed that Juno would be the most likely to fill out as she had not lost her queen, though my mother reported seeing less activity in front of her. I also weed whacked and tidied up the area in general.

Later, I heard reports from my mother of odd behavior in front of Juno... behavior that got me wondering if there was robbing going on, which I thought a little odd since shouldn't Juno be the stronger hive?

On August 14, before settling down to having a family tea party, my sister and I opened up the hives. My sister had not yet had a chance to be part of a hive inspection and was eager to get up close and personal with the bees. Not having a spare bee suit, I had brought along a fencing jacket I had, figuring that it was white (and bees are less averse to white) and would provide decent protection since it covers the neck and arms well. So donning the jacket and the spare head netting, my sister wielded the smoker and the camera during the inspection.

We immediately had cause for concern with what appeared to be a large number of dead bees in front of Juno.




Also, she had a paltry 30 returning foragers/minute. Opening her up, I had no cause for cheer as we found many empty supercedure/queen cells. Apparently, Juno somehow lost her queen as well at some point. Further investigation showed no sign of brood in the many empty cells. I can only hope that there was a new queen in there somewhere and that she had just not gotten around to laying yet.




Closing up Juno, we turned to Artemis. Many bees greeted us as we took the top off of Artemis. After poking around we found vast expanses of new brood, little 'C'-shaped larvae at the bottom of the cells. Proof positive an active queen. After examining the photographs, I suspect that said queen might even be visible in the following blurry photo.




Some bad news was that I spotted (but did not photograph) my first varroa mite. While not unsurprising since almost all hives have them these days, it was sad to see it. With a mind to anti-mite procedures, I looked at my bright green drone frame that was chock full of capped drones. I decided to remove that frame and replace with another. Since the mites prefer drone larvae to lay their eggs on, by removing drone cells from the hive you can reduce the mite burden without undue impact on the hive.




My sister enjoyed her bee experience even though one bee got her in the knee (without so much as a 'En Garde!').

I have been scratching my head as to how I could have lost both of my original queens. Poking around, I have found mention that sometimes hives from nucs just decide to supersede their queen. So perhaps that is what is going on. Another possibility was that robbing in Juno was occurring and the queen got killed in the scuffle.

I intend to inspect Juno this weekend to see if there is any sign of new brood. If not, I will assume they are queenless and have run out of eggs so will be unable to make any new ones. In which case the Juno bees will be combined with those of Artemis to make one strong hive to enter the winter. If there are brood, I will probably try to come up with a way to feed that colony extra to try to get their numbers and honey reserves up before winter....

Other news, I contacted Mike Palmer today regarding ordering queens from him. He is a breeder of queens in Vermont. And while he wont be able to provide queens until June 15th (over a month later than other sources), they will be native queens rather than 'Southern Belles' that may not be up to the challenges of a Vermont winter. I will contact him again in January to get on his waiting list if I think I will need more queens. Additional queens will likely be needed if I do have to combine my hives as come Spring, they will likely be feeling a little crowded and may want to swarm. And even if I am not forced to split to avoid swarming, I do want to expand my the number of hives.

What's the latest Buzz?

Various people have asked me what has happened with the hives as I have not posted in a while. While I have made observations, I have not had a chance to update the blog till now.

My parents observed fewer bees flying around Artemis a few days after the last post. I observed the same behavior a week or so later. And this has continued over the last few weeks. I am hoping that this means that a new queen has been crowned and now Artemis is again queenright and thus, less agitated.

Following my mentor's advice to feed the bees to encourage more comb to be drawn out for the new queen to lay in, my parents have started to offer sugar water to the bees. We have two quart sized feeders that I bought on a lark when I picked up the bees. We had tried to feed the bees when we first installed them. At the time, they used them moderately, draining them after a few days and only a few bees at a time ever at the feeders. I wondered at the time if their lack of enthusiasm was due to either the feeders not being very enticing or if there was a much more alluring nectar source flowing at the time.

The first few days of feeding didn't show much promise. I had started to wonder if the feeders needed to be jazzed up with some blue landing stripes to encourage them to come and feed. However, I called my parents today and apparently, while one feeder only had a few patrons, the other feeder had around 80 patrons... it must have been happy hour.

I plan on visiting the hives this weekend and taking a peek. I would like to observe the status of the queen cells, look for new eggs and brood, and perhaps find the new queen *crosses fingers* in Artemis. I also should take a peek into Juno and see how things are there. Depending on how they are doing, I may consider adding supers to them, supers being any additional boxes placed on top of the brood boxes. Supers could be left on for additional food for the hives this winter or pulled off for human enjoyment. But I shouldn't bottle my honey until its extracted.

I am also considering giving Artemis a comb of brood from Juno in order to make sure Artemis has some new workers while the new queen's *knock wax* progeny develop. Mite monitoring should also be done at some point. I have not seen any so far, but I have not really looked hard.

Here are pictures from a week ago of the hives sporting their new (and freshly painted) top brood boxes.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen

I drove to my parents directly from work today in order to meet up with a fellow beekeeper who lives on my parent's road and was willing to check out my possible queen cell for me. I got there at 6PM. We suited up and opened up Artemis. We quickly found the frame in the brood box that had the suspect cell and he immediately confirmed that it was a queen cell. He spotted a few more on another frame in the upper brood box. We then proceeded to lift frames out of the lower brood box to discover even more queen cells. They are all capped and its a matter of time before the new queens will emerge and engage in sororicide till (hopefully) only one fit queen remains. We did not find any sign of the old queen, ie eggs, young larvae, the royal presence herself, so we suspect that I inadvertently squished her when I was dealing with the burr comb back in late May. If that is indeed the case, a new queen should take over the hive (assuming they don't all kill each other), and there will not be a swarm. After the last of the children of the old queen emerge, there will not be any new workers for almost a month, since the new queen will have to mate and lay eggs that will then take about 3 weeks to mature. I may take a comb of brood from Juno to give Artemis some reinforcements in that time of no brood.

Besides that, my comrade in smokers said that the hive looked pretty good with excellent brood (thanks to the old queen) and that the bees seemed very docile. He suggested that I feed them sugar water to promote wax building, but I don't think I can ask my parents to do that. And hopefully they are still getting plenty of nectar from the clover this is in bloom all around them in the fields. Titled the top covers on both hives to aid ventilation.

Good Night, Artemis-1. And flights of workers hum thee to thy rest.

Busy as a .. well.. you know

I took today off from work to have time to clean up the bee yard and work with them. Specifically the grass needed to be cut, the temporary top brood boxes replaced with the permanent ones, sugar treatment, and a general inspection.

What I observed when I arrived was that Artemis (the green hive) had a great deal of activity around the entrance compared to Juno. The forager count for Artemis was 28/30seconds or about 56/minute, which was actually not that much. Juno had about 41/30 seconds for 82 foragers returning every minute. It was perhaps one of these Junoese foragers who decided she didn't like the look of me and first headbutted my veil before setting in for a sting on my bare arm (I was not wearing the full suit for the counting). So, my first sting as happened and I am still among the living. Thus we can conclude that I am not allergic to bee stings.

Here is a video of the entrance of Artemis at the time (please note its tilted because of the way I held the camera).




After talking with my mother for a few minutes to pass the time while I waited to see if I would drop dead or not, I removed some of the lower limbs from the birch tree near the entrance to the bee yard in order to make it look more open and to be easier to enter. I then proceeded to use the electric weed wacker around the hives. This was somewhat nerve wracking and Artemis was looking feisty. After the electric trimmer ran out of juice, I had my father help me fire up the big weed wacker and I took care of most of the remaining grass. The bees seemed to tolerate it rather well, Artemis didn't change and Juno just had a moderate amount of buzzing around the entrance where several tufts of grass fell. I think I will still use the electric around the hives in the future just in case.

I let the hives chill for an hour before trying to open them. Inside Artemis I found some frames in the top box had been built out, while most looked untouched. I a cell jutting out from the surface.
At the time I assumed it was a drone cell. Only later did I start to worry that it might be a queen cell which could mean that my colony might swarm soon. If I could capture it or split the hive before the swarm that would not be too much of a problem, I was hoping to make splits next year anyways. However, if they fly off never to be seen again I will be left with a weakened colony to try to nurse back to health before winter.

Artemis's bottom brood box was thick with bees except for a few frames to the far side. I should probably try to integrate the undrawn frames into the box so they will get drawn out (and also make the bees feel less crowded and likely to swarm).



After removing some more burr comb (comb that the bees build between frames) I transferred the frames from the old top box to the new stylish box. The old box was one that my father had patched a month ago and I had wanted to replace it to one that was painted to match the bottom and was fully sound. I then dusted the top of the frames with confectionery sugar which is a way to combat mites, the sugar causes the bees to groom themselves as well as interfere with the mites' feet ability to adhere to the bees... both resulting in the mites falling off the bees and hopefully to their deaths under the hive.

Juno proceeded in a similar fashion as Artemis. No potential swarm cells were spotted, some burr comb removed, and the frames from the old top box (one my father had put together as a temporary box while we were waiting for the backordered boxes to arrive) to the new one. I had finished applying the confectionery sugar to the top of the bottom box and had turned to put the top box back on when I realized that I had the top box upside down, so the frames were not nested in the groove for that purpose. So I had to quickly take all 10 frames out and place them back in the old box, flip the new box, and then put all the frames back into it. Meanwhile the bees in the bottom box were rather annoyed with their sugar dust bath and were flying around in an agitated (and sugar dust covered) manner.

In the end, the hives were put to rights and I made my retreat. I have sent an email to my mentor to ask if he can check out the cell with me in the near future.

Here are pictures of the two hives with their snazzy new top boxes.