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.

Father's Day is not a big deal for bees

Showers kept sweeping through the area so I did not open the hives up for an inspection since the hives would be packed with would be foragers and they would no doubt be in a grumpy mood. Instead I restricted my activities to counting returning foragers (13/min for Juno, 9/min for Artemis) and taking a few pictures.

The hives are located inside an old cellar hole. While the East and South walls have fallen away, the North and West are still present and they will hopefully provide shelter during the winter. The following picture shows Juno with the North wall behind it and the top of my parent's barn visible beyond.


The following is a picture of a visitor that I noticed in the fields all morning:


In other news. While up at my parent's, I did stop and talk with a local farmer who is very interested in having some hives located at his property. While I will very likely be unable to start any new hives until next spring, this is a very exciting possibility.

June 13th Inspection

I went to my parent's today to check on the bees and take my mother to a birthday tea. I went over to see what the bees were up to and was impressed at the activity in front of each hive. I then felt a sharp pain on the top of my head and thought that I might of been stung by a rouge bee. Afterwords though I decided that it was probably not a bee as there was no stinger, and instead it was probably a deer fly since they were out in force all day long.

I used a weed wacker to improve on the path to get across to the hives, though I didn't actually wack the grass near the hives themselves. Next time I will do a more thorough job, perhaps with a scythe.

In the afternoon I opened up the hives with my sister getting her first look at the gals. In both hives, there were some bees in the top box, however, in Juno a comb was being built in between frames (since there was extra space since I did not put in the drone frame last time). Artemis had a few smaller combs being built up in the in between frame space. I felt I had to remove the combs otherwise they would bind up the frames forever. Unfortunately, this killed a dozen or so larvae. But better now then when the entire comb has larvae. Added the drone frames (off to one side) to take up space to each hive until I can assemble the two deep frames that they need. Or, if I do a mite check later and find some I might leave them in there. Speaking of which, next time I work with the bees I should do a sugar dusting. The top of the bottom boxes had many bees. Cleaned off comb from the top of the frames. I peeked at the frames in the far side away from the nuc frames and they did not seem to be touched yet. I may have to continue sliding frames over. I seem to remember Russ mentioning something about that.

The pupae were a good sign that the queen is laying well.

I need to arrange the space around the hives better. There are a lot of flat rocks that I step on to get around back of the hives that wobble precariously. Also, a table of some sort, be it cinder blocks or stacked rocks, would be very useful for placing items on while working. I am constantly putting something down only to have to scramble to find it again, all the while the smoker is burning through its fuel.

I am starting to think that if things go well this year *crosses fingers* and I think that I will have the time, I may expand the apiary. Possibly by adding a third hive at my parents. But also perhaps finding alternative locations. My friend MB has expressed the desire for me to keep bees at his place in Fairfax. Also, I might try to work something out with farmers that are near either my parent's or MB. If I could have a loop to hit each hive in turn it might be too difficult. I am also strongly considering giving top bar hives a whirl. Especially if I can find a way to sell comb honey.


This is Juno hive:



This is Artemis hive:



This is the rouge comb in Juno hive.

Bees of the 21st and half century!

I have been playing around with the beetight online hive recording system recently. It was recommended by the VBA... well, by recommended I mean that it was a solitary bullet point in their last email. So far I am very impressed. It was very easy to set up the account and hives. I back filled inspection reports for the hives and already it can present very useful information at a glance. So I decided to take the plunge and upgrade to the pro version ($15/month) since there are some promised pro-only features that I would like, such as 'offline mobile apps' which I assume means something that I can put on my PDA so I can fill out the inspection reports and then synch to have it all go into the system. Also, I feel that it is important to support software developers when you use their software, especially when its so cheep.

If I had a smart phone I could in theory use their online app to enter my inspection information in the field.... but even if I did feel like spending that kind of cash, my parents life in a cellular challenged area so I probably wouldn't be able to use those features.

Now I am eagerly awaiting my account to be upgraded so I can play with whatever new features they have available.