The State of the Queen at Blue Heron

In the 91 degree heat, I stopped by Blue Heron at 2:30 today. The queen cage was put in place on Thursday night. It's Tuesday and I thought the queen should be released by now. I opened the very calm hive to find the bees walking around in the area of the queen cage.

I lifted out the cage, but the queen was still in there!



The black tube that holds the fondant was eaten almost to the end. I thought by now they would have released her, and in a different kind of queen cage, they probably would have. The typical queen cage has about 1/2 inch of fondant between the bees and the queen. This cage has about 1 inch (see the black tube) of fondant. They have almost eaten all the way through it, but not quite.

I decided given the calm demeanor of the hive and the small amount of sugar left and the fatness of the queen (she's grown since Thursday) that the bees are accepting her. I could have direct released her at this point, but decided to leave her there and let the bees let her out in their own way.



This was a rather dissatisfying trip, so I took Hannah, my dog, and explored the community garden that the Blue Heron bees are pollinating.

I saw bees on onion flowers.



The bees were all over most of the flowering plants in the garden.



I also noticed straight cucumbers (denoting good pollination - thanks, bees).



Here's a view of the pathway leading away from the garden (and Hannah, of course).



Here's a view of half of the community garden that our bees at Blue Heron are pollinating.

A Little More Blue Heron Help

We really have needed three hives at Blue Heron as a teaching spot for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association. Another member, Cindy Hodges, offered to help us in an interesting way.

She offered a nuc that she had put together and in exchange, she wants her five frames back in August, leaving the queen with us. That way we get a start on a colony and she gets back what she originally had - five frames from one of her hives.

She wants, since she's not getting her queen back, to get a good frame of brood and eggs back in August with her frames.

I picked the bees up between some of the worst storms we've had in Atlanta in a month. I could hardly see through my windshield driving back and just hoped, hoped, hoped that a tree wouldn't fall on my car. As I arrived home, I put my key in the lock, turned it and at that very moment the power went out at my house for the rest of the night.

I took the bees out of the car and set them in my carport where they would be cool. I went into my dark house where I felt around until I found the box I had packed (because I'm moving soon) with all the candles! I just hoped the bees would be OK in the carport for the night.

I got up at the crack of dawn and took the nuc to the Blue Heron, setting the nuc on top of its hive box and removing the screen from the entry at 7:15 AM.




I returned to Blue Heron with Julia and Noah to install the nuc that afternoon.



The brood frames barely had any brood on them as you can see in the two photos below. I didn't look, but hopefully the empty cells had new eggs in them. I have my fingers crossed.



Another of the two brood frames with, as you can see, very little capped brood.



Noah is putting in the last frame in this photo below. It wasn't fully drawn out on the plastic foundation and had a little pollen on it.



Since there were still bees in the nuc box, Julia picked it up and shook it over the hive box. We then left the nuc box on its side to allow the bees to make their way into the hive.



I don't know how this new hive will do because it came with so few resources. We may need to reinforce it with frames of brood and eggs from other hives at our houses to get it to succeed.

But we are grateful that someone stepped up and offered us bees since we have both been on the swarm call list for our club all season and neither of us has gotten a call.



Below you can see the new hive with the nuc box beside it.

Trouble....Right Here at Blue Heron

We haven't looked at the Blue Heron hives in over a month and we were scheduled to do an inspection there on Saturday.   Julia, Noah and I went over on Sunday to see how things were going.

When we last looked in on them on May 8, we had lots of trouble:  Julia's hive was moving slow as molasses and hadn't showed signs of thriving in any way.  My hive had been split, but the split occurred after a swarm from the hive and neither side of the split successfully raised a queen.

At that time we recombined the split into one hive and gave them two frames of brood and eggs from Lenox Pointe to see if they would get themselves back together and raise a queen.  We purposefully left the hive alone for a month to allow them to calmly and successfully raise a queen.

Beekeeping is often a gamble - just like the trouble in River City in the video - only we are gambling that the bees will function the way we hope they will.

Since an inspection is scheduled for this coming Saturday, Julia and I thought we should see what's what at Blue Heron.  And we found out:

We got Trouble, right here at Blue Heron.....with a capital T and that rhymes with BEE - so there you have it, trouble, trouble, trouble.........

Julia's hive as you will see in the slide show below was full of honey.  As a matter of fact, they had run out of room and had back-filled all the empty cells in the brood box.with nectar,  The hive didn't have any larvae or eggs because the queen couldn't find space.  And we discovered this problem because of the rest of the Trouble.

We opened my hive at Blue Heron to find that once again they had failed to make a queen.  This hive has had no queen for two months now, but amazingly has not developed a laying worker - probably because they did make a queen but she didn't successfully mate or return from her mating flight.

We decided to get frames of brood from Julia's hive to give them - which is how we discovered her back-fill nectar Trouble.

So Noah and Julia went home (after Noah sampled a hive tool section of delicious honey from their hive).  I went home too to find brood and eggs in one of my home hives.

OK, you'll remember that Colony Square is now six boxes high and Lenox Pointe is doing well also.  I went into Lenox Pointe because it is smaller.  I went into the top three boxes and found lovely honey, but no brood or eggs.  I determined that the hive desperately needed another box so I put one on, but didn't find a frame to take to Blue Heron.

There's no way I would be willing to take all the boxes off of Colony Square to find brood and eggs so I turned to the small swarm hive.  In it I found that two of the brood combs were built in cross comb fashion, connecting the comb from one frame to a second frame.....more trouble.

I cut out the bad comb and rubber banded it back into a frame that I gave back to the swarm hive.  I took the half frame of comb (which held lots of eggs and very young brood) and gave it plus one more frame to Blue Heron (drove back over there and installed these frames).

We cancelled the inspection for this Saturday.  We made such disturbance of Julia's hive that we didn't want to disturb it again on Saturday.  In my hive, the bees need peace and quiet to develop a new queen.  I'm driving to Rabun County on Sunday and if Don has a queen, I'll stop and buy one from him.

End of the Week Hive Report So Far

Stonehurst Place:  Stopped there on Tuesday (one week from my last visit).  The bees were busily flying in and out but they had not drawn or used the frames in the top box on either hive.  Despite the way my bees are flying, the nectar flow must be slowing somewhat.

Home:  Also checked on Tuesday.  Colony Square had drawn and filled two of the 8 frames in the top box and was just looking at the rest of the frames in that box.  Lenox Pointe had drawn none of the frames in its top box. The swarm hive had not drawn any (they had been in the hive for three days at this point), so I made some sugar syrup and fed them inside the hive.

By yesterday, that baggie looked like this:

So today it was empty and so I replaced it with a full bag.

I opened up the swarm hive and the queen is laying.  I was relieved to see eggs.  I am so glad that the queen is there, but they have very little comb drawn - just about four frames in the top box and are not using the bottom box at all.

Next week I'll switch the box positions.

Blue Heron:  We had terrible weather in Atlanta last night so I didn't check on the Blue Heron this week.  The hive combination should have taken by now and the queen should have been raised.  (We combined the hives and gave them resources to make a queen on May 7).  However, we won't open that hive until June 19 when the next hive inspection is scheduled.  That way the queen has time to get out, get mated, and begin laying.

Rabun:  I'm going up to the mountains tomorrow and will check on the hives there.  It's about to be sourwood season, so I'll make sure they have honey supers ready for honey storage.

Topsy and  Linda T's Bees in South Georgia:  Haven't been to either in a while, but will go check on Topsy on Monday and will go to South Georgia in the next couple of weekends.  Greg is down there looking over the situation this weekend so I'm not too worried about them.

Blue Heron Inspection April 23 2011

Julia and I have conducted the second inspection at Blue Heron.  It happened on Saturday April 23.  We arrived to find that the city work trucks were occupying the space where we usually park so everyone at the inspection helped carry stuff from the BH parking lot to the community garden area.

We have three hives at the Blue Heron.  Julia has an active hive, installed from a package we picked up from Don in Lula, Georgia.  My hive over wintered and I split it on April 8.  At that time there was no queen in the hive - the hive appeared to have swarmed.  This is only 15 days after the split and each half of the split got a frame with several queen cells on it.

We didn't see signs of a laying queen in either side of the split - probably she is still in the mating phase.  We did see the opened queen cell in one hive and the bees were extremely calm in the other half of the split, so we thought the queen existed but wasn't working yet.

Julia took lots of pictures, so you can see what we did.  In the middle of looking through the second half of the split I dropped a hive tool that fell completely through the hive, through the slatted rack to the screened bottom board.  This upset the bees (duh???) and they were not happy after that.  I have worried ever since that the falling hive tool killed the queen.  Gosh, I hope not, but to be sure I'll take a frame of brood and eggs from a hive at home over to them in the next couple of days.

Here's the slide show:

Preparing Hive Inspection Gear

This week marks the beginning of my hive inspections for my hives in Atlanta. I spent some time on Friday getting my gear in gear. I washed all my hive tools and scrubbed their ends with a brass scrub. The yellow one was caked with propolis and took some elbow grease to get clean. I plan to wash used tools at the end of every inspection this year and I plan to carry a container of Wet-ones with me to wipe them off on site.

This is an effort to prevent disease spread from hive to hive.



What's in my hive bag? Two magnifying glasses are there to help people see eggs when I have people accompanying me on inspections.



I also carry, as you can see in the photo below, a propane lighter for my smoker, two permanent markers to write on frames or hive boxes if need be; a container of Benadryl for a sting reaction, a bee brush, a drape for the hive, some baby powder to use if I wear nitrile gloves; several hive tools, a container of thumb tacks, a pair or two of nitrile gloves, a couple of empty ziploc baggies, some rubber bands; a paper towel or two; and a jar of swarm lure that I made.




There may be a couple of other things in there - oh, yes, my Swiss army knife, a frame rack, some string, my leather bee gloves, a pair of pruning shears.

I bought this container at a knitting class I took at the John Campbell Folk School but I kept losing things in the deep pockets.  It never was a knitting bag, but is actually a tool bag - the knitting folks re-purposed it, but it didn't ever really work for me.  It works great as an inspection bag.



So I'm ready to inspect Blue Heron on Sunday and Topsy on Tuesday.

A Look at Blue Heron and I Miss the Smell of the Bee Hive

When I had the table at the science fair at Montgomery, I drove around for a couple of days with bee equipment in the back of my car.  I had a nuc with old comb in it; some honeycomb; some drawn frames out loose in the car.  Even my grandson, when he rode in my car a couple of days after the fair said, "Oh, Grandma, your car smells just like the bee hive!"

I miss that smell that goes with bee season, but spring is bursting out all over in Atlanta.  The flowering trees like cherries and pears are beginning to bloom.  Tiny red blossoms from the red maple are blowing down on the streets.

I went to Blue Heron and opened the hive for the first time.  I didn't do a deep inspection but did look at each box.  The top box was a surround for a baggie feeder and a Boardman (inside the hive).  The sugar syrup had not been touched.  The bees had not needed it despite our harsh winter.



I removed the empty box, put the sugar syrup baggie into a bucket, and removed the Boardman.  Of course that means for a couple of days until I took it out of my car, the car had that warm wonderful bee hive smell!

The top box had a little honey stored but the box below it was completely full of capped honey - and heavy as could be.  The bees were still living in the bottom 8 frame deep.  There was lots of capped brood and although you can't see it since my camera was operating at less than optimal, the open cells are full of brood.



I only pulled up two frames but felt great about the capped brood and larvae.



Concerns about this hive that must be addressed:
1. The full honey super above the brood box means that the queen is honey bound.  I need to checkerboard with empty frames or at least move the full box up to the top and switch the mostly empty top box with the second box.
2.  The honey box needs to be marked since that honey was made with "bee tea" and I don't want to harvest honey that isn't informed by nectar, but is condensed sugar syrup.
3.  This hive is doing well and I need to consider the possibility that it will swarm (thus the need to checkerboard).

Julia and I will inspect it and try to address all of the above issues.

First Look at the Blue Heron Hive in 2011

I bought a new veil for this year. It's a clear view all the way around with only a seam in the very back. It's so comfortable - nothing fell into my eyes, the hat didn't slip all over - I love it. I saw Jennifer Berry in one when we went last year to get our nucs and I couldn't wait to get one of my own. It seemed ideal to me not to have my veil be as much of an encumbrance as the ones I had.  Jennifer works the bees in a work shirt, a round clear veil like this, and cotton garden gloves.

My work shirt is one from back when my youngest daughter was a freshman at CU so it has a buffalo above the pocket and, I discovered today, is missing a button in a crucial place in the center of the button row. A work shirt is something that I can throw on over my other shirt and it is made of good, sturdy cotton material.  I wanted to wear something and didn't want my bee jacket since it has a veil attached.  I liked the way the work shirt and the veil felt and worked today so I'll try this combo again.

I really loved the veil.



Our purpose in opening the hive was to reassure ourselves that it was a hive that was up and running. We therefore didn't look deep into the hive. It's only February and we are likely to have another cold snap before spring has really sprung.  The bees need the protection of propolis to seal the hive against cold weather.  I did not need to break their seals just to see if the queen is laying.

I might have gone deeper into the hive if it were not the only surviving hive at Blue Heron.  I didn't want to risk anything today.  I am sure the bees have the space below the feeding super just the way they like it and I can wait to see how the queen is doing.

Julia took this wonderful picture of a bee returning to the hive with full to the brim pollen baskets. Must be from maple and maybe something else.



Inside we found that the baggie feeder I had left in December was still full and that the two pint jars were only half empty. Noah's theory was that the sugar syrup had crystallized over the holes and kept the bees from having access.



In the photo you can see the crystallized sugar over the entire lid. I scraped it off with my hive tool and returned the jar to the hive.



This is a hive that I don't plan to feed with the coming spring, but will let them finish this if they want to or can get access.

When we opened the holes in the feeder jar the bees gathered around the drippings.

It would have been hard to check anything with the feeder super so loaded up still.  I guess we could have lifted the box below up without looking into it but likely the bees are currently living in the box just under the baggie.

My plan this year is to get rid of the deep box and that will be easy to do if the bees have moved up into the box below the food.

Peter, who was there inspecting his dead hive, commented as we put my hive back together.  "Those bees are so organized, they must have a queen!"

While that doesn't matter in the least - they can be quite organized without a queen - it still felt good that they were alive and working together.

What does Starvation Look Like?

As the temperatures warm, many beekeepers are opening their hives to find that the hive is dead. The cause is frequently starvation.

Bees cannot move when the temperature is low - often they are immobile because it is too cold for their muscles to function. Honey can be plentiful in the hive and they will still die if the cluster is too small and the temperatures are too cold to move to the next spot where honey can be found in the hive.

We arrived at Blue Heron today (Julia, Noah and I) to find Peter, one of the other beekeepers there, looking at his dead hive. Here's what he found in the hive in the photo below. You can see the remaining bees all grouped together. They are dead and starved.

There is nothing left in his hive. The honey which was in the hive has either been consumed by the bees over the winter or robbed out by my hive, the only living hive at Blue Heron at the moment.



Here is a picture of starvation up close and personal. This is Julia's dead hive at Blue Heron. The bees die with their heads down in the bottom of the cells, usually with their probosis sticking out, as they lap up the very last drop of honey.



Here's an even closer look so that you can see how the bees are all head down together. There's plenty of pollen in this hive, as you can see on the right of the picture, but no honey.

Julia has ordered a new package for Blue Heron.  I have two nucs coming from Jennifer Berry and will put one of them here .  We'll have bees at Blue Heron this year, but Julia's hive and Peter/Kevin's hive are both dead as of today's inspection.


 In a way, that will make life interesting.  We can compare a second year hive to a first year hive (if mine remains alive).  We also might use my hive to make a split which could be interesting.

My wish is that we get some honey from Blue Heron this year - I'd like to taste it and we're entering our third year at this preserve (and so far, no harvest!)  But we have learned a lot.  And Julia, Noah and I have become fast friends - can't beat that as an added value to the experiment of Blue Heron!

Eager Bees at Blue Heron

In the low 60s today and the bees were flying eagerly out and into the Blue Heron hive. You can see loads of both yellow and white pollen. The yellow is probably from the red maple, currently in bloom. The light beige color is probably also from another maple. I am just relieved to see all of it and all of the activity.

My daughter reports that the bees are flying at Topsy at her house as well.





The hive went into winter with a deep and two medium boxes. The top box was a surround for baggie feeding and an interior Boardman feeder and I didn't remove it as winter began. If the bees are not in the deep box, I'll remove it this year at my first inspection. I'd much prefer to be in all medium boxes.

Blue Heron Bees are ALIVE and FLYING!

My Blue Heron bees are flying in the 50 degree weather.  I am so relieved.  It's not time to assume they will be alive in March, however.  We have strange months in January, February and March.  Some of the coldest weather I can remember in my 30 years in Atlanta has happened in March.  So we're not out of the woods, but wow, it feels good to see them flying.

The winter bee at this time of year is an old lady.  Winter bees in our climate may live as long as 150 days.  So these bees have been alive much longer than the 6 week life of their summer sisters.  They do look happy to be outdoors again, don't they!



The winter bee has a very different life experience than her summer sisters.  She has never felt the joy of following a waggle dance and actually finding the nectar source;  she has never felt the pollen particles all over her hairy body parts;  she has never felt the satisfaction of sucking the nectar from the heart of a flower and delivering it home to the hive.



Instead she has spent her days clenching her thoracic muscles in an effort to keep the temperature constant in the hive.  According to Winston, the physiology of the winter bee is different from the summer bee.  The winter bee has well-developed hypopharyngeal glands and fat bodies from consuming pollen in the fall.  This feature helps them live through the winter.

Nonetheless, it's interesting to me that her life experience is so different from that of her sisters.



It's so relaxing to see all the bees coming and going in the relief of the warmer temperatures.  I'll take food to this hive over the weekend.

Mysterious Marauder at the Blue Heron!

I stopped by the Blue Heron this afternoon. The temperatures are in the low 50s and I thought I might see some bees. I really miss my bees at home and wish I had a hive to watch everyday here as I used to.

When I arrived, Julia's hive was opened up with the hive top feeder exposed to the sky. The inner cover, the ventilated inner cover and the hive top were neatly stacked on the ground behind the hive. The hive top covered everything and was top side up, unlike we would place it during an inspection.

Wonder what kind of creature would do this? I imagine it might have been a raccoon whose paws/hands are small enough to push from under the hive top. But if a raccoon opened the hive, why didn't he stay around to drink the syrup?

Sadly the open sugar syrup swimming pool was filled with drowned bees. Julia had called me from the Blue Heron on Friday when the temperatures were in the 60s to say her hive top had been moved slightly off. I guess the marauder returned after she left to finish the job.

Julia and I decided I should dump the feeder on the ground to stop further drownings and put the hive back together. In removing the feeder, I slid the second box (I had no hive tool with me) and found to my sadness that the hive contains no bees. I called Julia again and we thought leaving the hive empty on its site might serve to lure a swarm in the spring.



See all the sad, dead bees floating in the syrup? These aren't my usual quality of pictures because I took them with my phone.



My hive had bees flying out of it. I tried to catch a picture when there were three or four on the landing, but I only caught this one (in ten photo opps!) Oh, well. There are bees in my hive. Let's hope they continue to live through the rest of the winter.