Mellona and Bermuda

These two hives are my standby strong ones. Mellona is entering her second winter. Bermuda is entering her third. She has barely made it through both of her winters, but perhaps this one will be the best one yet.

I've been worrying a little about Mellona. She has always looked weaker than Bermuda - less bees on the front porch and always looks a little on the low numbers side. Today there was brood everywhere - capped cells and brood in all stages of development.



On this frame you can see five emerging workers - they're the bees coming out of the cells face forward. The nurse bees are going into the cells headfirst!



In the picture below you can see larvae in all stages of development.



I was tired and needing to shower and go to work when I got to Bermuda so I only took this picture. The brood is obviously still in process - so that's good. I noticed in Bermuda there are two boxes each of which had half of its frames filled with honey and the other half empty. On my next inspection I'll combine the two boxes.

The combination will be a little problematic because one of the boxes is a medium and the other is a shallow....this is the argument for using all the same sized boxes. I had to put a box on in a hurry when I was on my way out of town and grabbed a shallow by mistake since all of its frames were there. But next time around I'll put the shallow frames in the medium box and hope for as little burr comb as possible!

I just noticed the stick in the bottom left of the frame. I believe this is a box that I started with popsicle sticks as starters and the stick must have fallen out of the slot and been incorporated by the bees into the wax comb!

It's the Little Things.....

At Young Harris Beekeeping Institute this year, I heard two different people talk about making splits in the summer to disrupt the varroa mite life cycle and to take care of your bees. One of the problems for me with using nucs to make splits is that the nuc I own is a deep (as most nucs are) and I am trying to move to all medium boxes.

The vendor at Young Harris, Brushy Mountain, offers a medium nuc that comes with two boxes. I ordered two at the meeting. I have to confess that when they arrived, the nucs looked like doll houses for bees. I've left them unbuilt for a couple of months.

Yesterday I needed to harvest some honey for a panel that I am going to participate in at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting tonight. As I thought about bringing in the honey and thought about how heavy a full super (medium) is, I remembered the bee doll houses.


I built two of the boxes right away. BTW, the medium nuc is a two box nuc, each a five frame 6 5/8" depth.



What a joy it was to carry the honey frames into the house in these small boxes - so much lighter. The boxes are designed for five frames and if I were doing it really correctly, I would have placed a space holder fifth frame in each of the boxes since I was harvesting an 8 frame super. However, it's only a few steps from my hives to my back door, so I brought the light, light (comparatively) boxes in one at a time.



Although I plan to use the medium nucs I bought to make splits, I will also be using them for honey harvest carrying going forward!

As Paul Harvey Would Say, "And now, The Rest of the Story...."

Last night I left the broken branch swarm with access to the cardboard box in which I planned to collect it. I spread a swipe of my swarm lure in the cardboard box and I sprayed the bees who were still on the ground with 1:1 sugar syrup. I hoped for the best and determined to see what happened the next morning.

Well, today is the next morning and lo and behold, the bees were all in the cardboard box!

So I suited up and put Dylan (who spent the night at my house) in his bee veil. His job was to watch from the sunporch door.



Here's how the bees looked on the underside of the cardboard "ramp" I had in frustration simply put inside the cardboard box last night.

I picked up the bee-covered cardboard and shook them into the patched together hive box I have for them. The rest of the day, Dylan talked about "Gwamma dumped the bees!" It was pretty impressive to see the whole lot of them fall as one into the hive box. You can see how they filled the space.


I don't have any more medium frames and these two medium 8-frame boxes were painted and ready to add to other hives. I only had five medium frames left so I added two drawn comb shallow frames and a shallow frame of honey. I had to do something with these bees today, though, so this is the best I could devise.

I used the bottom board from a 5 frame nuc that I have - so in this 8 frame box, the last three frames (the shallow ones) are bottom-less. The box needed something to support the bottomless side, so I used a 2 X 4 on the bricks below it to balance out the nuc bottom board. I used two deep frame end bars to make a shim on the outside edge to keep the hive from shifting. I had no wood at all so I used a plastic mite count tray to serve as a temporary top and put a flower pot on it for good measure.



I have more boxes and frames on order but the earliest any of that will be here is at the end of this coming week.

When I came back in the house, I called PN Williams, a local supplier, and arranged to buy from him some medium frames, a screened bottom board, an inner cover and a telescoping cover. He doesn't carry any 8 frame equipment, so I will have to make yet another arrangement tomorrow. I'll put my last 10 frame medium box on the bottom and move the medium frames from the current bottom box into it. Then I'll use a 2X4 as I did with Melissa to allow the 8 frame boxes to sit on top of the 10 frame. I'll still have an inner cover and top for the 10 frame but I'll manage.

New medium hive boxes on Proteus and Mellona

This morning before going to work, I put new medium hive boxes on Proteus and Mellona. You can see the new level on each hive below. These boxes each have 10 frames fitted with starter strips of 4.9 mm foundation. I followed the process I used earlier to cut the strips (using my quilter's rotary cutter).

















You might notice that I still have the deep on its side in front of Bermuda (a shadow of its former self). I am not sure if the bees stored any pollen in those frames and I am going to leave it accessible to them for a while.

















In about a week when the tulip poplar begins to bloom, I'll put honey supers on Proteus and Mellona to get honey production going. The weather has been hot and dry, so I also refilled the water source for the hives.

Added Medium super to Bermuda and Destin

April 28, 2006: Built and painted medium supers. Built foundation frames for one of them (Destin) Will install tomorrow. Better build shallow supers before I leave for the Folk School – they may need them sooner than later.

April 29, 2006: Took FOREVER to light smoker – must get cedar chips. Thought dryer lint might work as well. We used to use that at Girl Scouts.

When I lit smoker and opened Destin, they had built comb above the inner cover. Also saw 3 small hive beetles – or some kind of beetle on the inner cover. Brushed them off but couldn’t find them to kill them. Destin has drawn out the comb on 8 of the 10 combs and is starting on the outer edge – perfect candidate for the new medium. I put it on with great relief.

I looked at Bermuda but it isn’t built out as much – about 6 frames are fully drawn. They haven’t touched 1 or 10 but have begun expanding wax on 8 and 2. I still think I’ll go ahead and add the super just for consistency and because I’ll be at the Folk School for a beekeeper class next weekend and won’t be able to work with the bees.

Early afternoon built frames for the super on Bermuda.

Waited until the end of the day to put on the super. Much easier to light the smoker this afternoon. Must get some chips. They are still busy bees in Bermuda but not as crowded or vigorous as Destin.