2011-07-31: Reaching for the Skies

[30 second counts 7 Juno, 59 Artemis, 42 Blue, 17 purple, 22 Red]

Today's plan was to add a 3rd super (medium) to Artemis since the supers already there seemed to be getting close to full (and I had just finished assembling the frames and thought 'why not!') as well as a third deep brood box onto Ceres. The deep on Ceres was not for honey, instead it was part of my plan to try to have each hive go through the winter with 3 deep boxes. 2 deeps are considered to be what is needed to get a hive through the winter here in Vermont, but a third deep would add a big safety buffer if the winter proved especially harsh. Also, Artemis went through the winter with 3 boxes and it worked for her.

Also, I wanted to experiment with increasing the ventilation of the hives, so I drilled a hole into the top of the super to be added to Artemis and the deep to be added to Ceres. The hole was drilled to 3/4'ers of an inch of I remember correctly, this was to allow them to be stoppered easily with a cork.

Here are the hives as they looked at the beginning of the day.

 

Juno had a trickle of foragers. I would have shaken out her workers previously, but I was afraid her laying worker would find her way into one of the nucs before the queen had a chance to assert herself (a laying worker should not be a problem in a hive with a strong queen).

 

Ceres has been gaining strength through the summer. Here is the top of the 2nd box before placed the third on top. Previously, I had seen bees only around one frame.

 

The double nucs (had a nice number of foragers coming and going, though things looked to be a little chaotic around the entrance... some kind of landing board might help land easier.

 

Here is Artemis standing tall with a new super on top.

 

Here is Ceres with her third deep box.

 

Here they are again at the end of the day.

 

2011-07-23: Movin' on Up

There were two visits to the hive today. One was around noon to see how they were doing, and a second one later on after I had painted the second stories for the double nucs so I could install them.

When I first arrived I noticed an odd cloud of activity in front of one of the double nuc entrances. I was afraid that I might be witnessing a robbing event. I went back to the house and donned my suit and returned, I was hoping that perhaps if I worked the hives and puffed some smoke I might break things up. However, when I returned I found that things looked normal around the double nuc, but instead there was a great deal of activity in front of Ceres (the blue hive). I didn't think it was likely to be a robbing event since that was a strong hive. 15 minutes later the activity was back to normal. *shrug*

 

 

I opened up Artemis and was happy to see brood, the best indicator that the new queen successfully mated and is now laying. While the interruption in the laying cycle will likely set the hive back, on the plus side it should also knock down the mite population since they need brood to breed.

 

As I stated in the beginning, I then took a break from the hives to put a couple of coats of paint onto the second stories for the double nucs. I like to have each hive to have its own color. Some say distinct colors help the bees find their hive. However, the biggest reason is that my mother and I like the look of the beeyard with each hive its own color. For the double nucs the distinct colors for each nuc also helps to make sure I don't accidentally put the wrong second story on the wrong bottom if I ever have both off at the same time (or if they tip over). The danger of that is that if the two queens end up in the same space I will likely end up with just one queen and a hive with no queen.

When the boxes were dry, I filled them with four frames each with new foundation for the bees to draw out. The theory is that these double nucs will draw out foundation very quickly and that I have to keep an eye on them so that they don't get crowded and swarm.

 

2011-07-16: Release the Queens!

[30 second counts 6, Juno, 90 Artemis, 40 Blue]

Artemis has many bees making use of the top entrance. This makes me think I should try to use top entrances with the other hives. Certainly it makes sense for foragers to be able to directly access the honey supers.

 

I was going to remove the drone frames from Blue but I observed that the bees have started to fill up the cells with honey so left them.

 

Opened up the double nucs to release the queens. The sugar in the cages had already been eaten away and the queens had been released. Each cage had a small piece of comb built off of it which I recall was an indicator of acceptance. The fact that the Artemis was likely queenless at the time I removed the bees meant that they would have been very eager to accept any queen at that time.

 

 

2011-07-09: Double Nuc and Queen Cells

I attended the VBA class on how to winter over a double nuc. There has been increased interest on beekeepers in Vermont overwintering more of their nucs instead of relying on buying nucs from the South to replace their winter losses. The logic being that local over wintered queens will be adapted for these region and more likly to get through future winters, fewer out-of-state nucs should reduce the risk of diseases and parasites being brought into Vermont, and its cheaper. Afterwards I was able to go home with the woodenware to make a double nuc and two queens to start the nucs with.

I assembled the bottom and slapped on a couple of coats of primer... final coats of paint will have to wait until next year then drove everything over to my parents.

I had decided to take the frames I would need to start the nucs from Artemis, being the oldest and largest hive. While working my way through Artemis, I discovered several frames with queen cells on them. I suspect that they were either supercedure or emergency cells. The later could possibly been caused when I found the queen previously when trying to remove drone frames and not knowing exactly what to do with her I dropped her into the gap of the removed frame and she might have gotten squished when I put a frame back in. This observation caused some consternation and caused be to beekeep mad, and I ground through the process of removing frames even as my smoke faded and I got stung twice. Looking back on it I regret not thinking abou the option of doing a split or asking any fellow beekeepers if they happened to need some queen cells. Lesson learned.

 

In the end the required frames were found, 1 drawn but empty, one of honey, one full of brood, and one with some brood and maybe some honey for each nuc. The honey frame is put against the divider inside of the box, the brood next to that, and the empty frame to the outside of the box. While it would seem at first counter intuitive to put the honey in the prime spot for brood (in the warmest part of the hive), the idea is that the bees will make use of this honey quickly and thus they will free up this prime real estate for the new queen to lay into. Speaking of the two lovely ladies, I tied a string to each of their boxes and did my best to embed the box into some empty comb and then stapling the other end of the string to the top of the frame to make sure it doesn't fall to the bottom. I then closed up the nucs (using white plastic grain bags with to cover the tops (it allows you to fold over once side while the other side still covers the other side of the box keeping the bees from mixing while you work on them) and using a queen excluder on top to keep bag down.

 

2011-07-01: Laying Worker in Juno?

[30 second counts Juno 12, 85 Artemis, 30 Blue]
Looked into the "Blue" hive, who maybe named Ceres, had some workers moving up into the second box.

 

Juno had eggs and brood, however many eggs apeared to have been laid porely (on the side of cells or multiple eggs in a cell). Found one queen cell in which a half dozen eggs appear to have been laid into. This is a strong indicator that there is a laying worker. The queen is either doing poorly or has failed/died. Mike Palmer's recomendation was to break up the hive and let the workers fly to the other hives since trying to requeen it will likely fail because of the laying worker.

 

 

 

2011-06-27: Flash Inspection

I took advantage of being halfway to Underhill on an errand to go visit my parents and look in on the bees. I was particularly interested in Juno hive (the yellow one) which was started from a nuc this Spring and has looked less robust than the other nuc, Ceres the blue hive. I got home around 7:30 and was with the hives a few minutes later.

I smoked Juno and opened her up. The bees were docile and I could see they had not done much of anything in the second deep box I had added to them. Putting that box aside I looked in on the first deep. In addition to the frames that came with the nuc, I had supplied it with frames that had been drawn out (or mostly drawn out) by the hives last year. Doing so should give a bee's leg up to them and it was something I had also done for the Ceres. However, since this comb was older it was darker and still had some debris on it that the bees hadn't cleaned up yet. Looking past those frames I pulled out some frames from the middle which were populated by the bees. I found some larvae, which was what I had been looking for so I know there is a laying queen. I didn't see a lot, but I didn't look at all of them since I was running out of light. I dusted them with powdered sugar for good measure and closed the hive.

I smoked and opened up Ceres. There I saw more bees than in Juno. They had not yet started to draw out the drone frame so I had no need to mess with them any further. I dusted them, just a sprinkle on the top of the top deep... not really a proper dusting, and moved onto Artemis.

I didn't smoke Artemis since I was just opening her to dust her. The bees there were less docile, probably due to the lack of smoking, and very numerous. I sprinkled the last of the confectionery sugar on the top of the super and decided that would be good enough today.

All of this took about twelve minutes. The burgers my parent's had made for me were not even cold.

I will have to make a decision about what to do with Juno in a few weeks when I have the double nuc class and will be bringing home a double nuc and two queens to populate it. Those queens will need a throng of subjects. I could rob some from Artemis and Ceres to fill the nucs. Or I could do what Mike Palmer does, he uses week hives to populate his splits and double nucs. The theory being that while you could drain the resources of a strong hive to supplement a weaker one, its better to leave the strong hive alone to maximize its production (since bees benefit from increased efficiency the more bees there are in a hive) and sacrifice the queen that is under performing since she likely has poorer genetics.

I will try to look in on Juno again this weekend. I will likely remove that second deep as they are not going to be using it anytime soon since they have plenty of empty drawn comb in their first deep box. I may also try to make more sugar to dust them with by putting regular sugar in a blender to make it fine enough for the purpose of getting mites to drop off. Then use this sugar to dust Artemis in earnest.

2011-06-18: Drone's Day

I went to my parents' for Father's Day Eve (since my father would be busy on the actual day driving my mother to a chicken swap). I had managed to finish assembling 10 deep frames over the past week to allow me to put another box on top of Juno. I was rather proud of my assembly as all the joints were nailed and glued, and I had not only wired the frames, but also managed to rig up a power adapter in such a way to heat embed the wires into the wax foundation for extra security.

The weather was very nice when we arrived and I put my frames around back on the porch where they would be easy to get when I started to work with the hives. I then went off to have lunch since it looked like a thunderstorm was getting ready to roll through. And sure enough one did! Not only was there thunder and lightning with heavy rain, but marble sized hail unloaded from the sky. Hail was sluicing off of the porch roof forming not-so-little piles on the lawn below.

After the storm had passed and time enough for the bees to start foraging again, I started to assemble my gear. I was very surprised to find that several of the frames I had left on the back porch under cover of the porch roof had in fact been peppered by hail and one in particular had big holes punched through it. I suppose hail damaged wax foundation can now be added to the long list of things that can go wrong while beekeeping! I decided it was probably fine to use as the bees would likely build comb across the gaps and since it was meant for brood boxes and would not have to go through an extractor like a honey super comb would it could get by with a little loss in structural integrity.

 

 

You can see the white hail in the grass.

 

I opened up Artemis and pulled out the drone comb I had placed in 10 days earlier. It was only halfway drawn out. So it will be a while yet before I will need to pull it to remove capped drones. I went ahead and transferred the frames in the bottom deep box (which was yellow) into a green box, taking the opportunity to clean up the frames a bit. They did not appear to be overly full of honey or brood. Also, I did not see any sign of swarm cells. So, cross fingers, they will not feel overly crowded going into swarming season, especially since I then reversed the boxes.

I then gave Artemis a sugar dusting before closing it up.

I then opened up the top of Juno and added the new deep box. Juno was did not have much bee activity as I was doing this. I think they probably did not need the extra box on top, but had the box and I do worry about getting caught up with other duties and being prevented from checking on the hives for an extended period. But the weakness of this hive makes me want to give it a proper inspection next time I am at the bee yard. I want to make sure that there are brood as proof that the queen is alive and kicking, and to see just how much progress they have made on the original 6 frames added to their box when I installed the nuc.

Both my mother and I agreed that the hives look very prim and proper not that they are properly color coded again. Another session with the weed whacker will likely improve the looks of the yard even more. Perhaps we will serve tea down there soon... maybe even scones!

 

Since then, I did a mite count on some of the drones from the frame I had removed on the 7th. I pulled 20 drones from their cells and three of them had mites. While to get a good proper count I really need to do 100 drones, this suggests that I have a moderate infestation at the moment. The sugar dusting should probably be done as often as possible and drone frames should also be used aggressively. This Fall I will certainly have to treat them.
I found this online tool useful:
https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/public/BeeDiseases/varroaCalculator.cfm