The State of Bee-ing of the Swarm Hive

The swarm hive has cleaned house and now occupies one half of the box they are in. They had a raunchy collection of frames to work with so today I substituted some drawn comb on deep frames from my absconded Proteus hive from last year. I put those frames in the unoccupied section of the hive. The swarm bees were starting to draw wax and have been quite busy.
Bees with pollen laden legs are landing at the swarm hive every few seconds. Seeing this, I felt optimistic, because although this doesn't necessarily mean there's a laying queen and brood who need pollen, it can mean that. At the very least it means the bees are anticipating young if their queen is still a virgin.
I also moved the swarm bees onto the Country Rubes screened bottom board and they seemed quite pleased. I feel much better about their having a screened bottom board.

On this inspection, I didn't look closely at the bees and didn't look for the queen or eggs - I just wanted to see if the bees needed different frames and to see if they were doing bee work in the hive (building wax, making the place their own, etc.).

I also took another unused deep and set up another swarm lure hive. The new swarm hive took over my old swarm lure set-up, so now I have a new one. I put the solid bottom board and the landing stand from the new swarm hive and set them up as the base of this lure hive.

I also did an inspection on Bermuda and Mellona. Both had eggs, young brood, and lots of bees. Bermuda , the oldest of my hives, is burgeoning with bees. But both hives looked really good. Bermuda has four medium boxes on it and brood in every box. Mellona is building up more slowly, but building up all the same. Mellona has bees and brood in three boxes.

I do what's known as unlimited brood nest because I don't use a queen excluder and let the queen lay wherever she wishes.

On an interesting side note - I did not see one single SHB. When I first opened the hives this spring, I saw lots of them. I don't have any traps in the hives at the moment, but there is not a small hive beetle to be seen. I think this is an argument for a strong hive - great bees in charge, no evident hive beetles until at least later in the season.

So much activity in my bee yard!

The Sad Saga of the Flying Sugar Syrup

As a beekeeper, I've had lots of adventures that involved dropping. Last year I dropped a hive frame full of bees from my Proteus hive. Then there was the setting down of the small swarm hive in so many topsy turvy ways that the bees finally balled and killed the queen, blaming her for my mistakes.

This year it's sugar syrup. On Sunday I barely had time to open the hives to check on their food supplies. I wanted to replace the Ziploc baggies of sugar syrup. I filled two baggies, one for each hive, and set them upright in a 9" cake pan to carry them out to the hives. I took everything I needed out to the hives and then carried the cake pan and set it on the deck railing behind the first hive, Mellona.

I opened the top of Mellona and as I did, I heard a "PLOP" behind me. The bag of sugar syrup, off balance in the 9"cake pan, flopped over the edge of the pan like a fat Slinky and fell off of the deck. Oh, dear. These two bags represented 8 cups of sugar. I ran, beesuit and all down the deck stairs to rescue the fallen bag. It of course had hit the branches of the red tipped photinia on its fall to the pine straw below the deck.

The bag was leaking on all sides from the photinia slits. I folded the cuts to the center and raced into the house where I put this baggie inside another baggie and then emptied the remaining contents into the new bag. I carefully zipped the baggie shut and put what was left on Mellona.

This happened way too fast for pictures! Ah, the saga of my beekeeping adventures continues.

Woe is Bee

I'm hanging crepe in my beeyard. I sat eating breakfast this morning and thought, "Oh, my, there are no bees coming in and out of Proteus!" I had about 30 minutes before I absolutely had to leave for work, so I threw on my bee stuff and went out to the hive. I opened it to find to my dismay that there were only the few bees in the picture below. So sad.


I guess the queen must have died some time ago and they have been dwindling but I have been very busy and not paying good enough attention. I haven't looked in the brood box in several months. I can imagine someone would look in this bee-less hive and say COLONY COLLAPSE - but I know it's beekeeper neglect.



When I pulled the frame only these few bees were on it and there was one other frame with about as many. The hive was infested with wax moth junk (see below). I decided to try to rescue the few bees left when I got home tonight by combining them with another hive, but there were only a few bees left when I got home, so I did nothing.


I also opened Proteus Bee to find absolutely no bees. When I moved it last weekend, I probably was moving a hive full of robbing bees.

So now I have two hives and will be feeding them like mad between now and fall.
The only good news was that the hive had a SHB trap in it that was filled with dead SHBs.

The Return of the Small Hive Beetle and the Continued Saga of Proteus Bee

The small hive beetles are out in force. I got new plastic sandwich containers and used my soldering iron this morning to make 3/16" holes in the four sides of the box. I baited them with Sonny-Mel lure and put FGMO in the bottom. I put the traps in Proteus A, Mellona and Bermuda. At the same time I smashed 5 or 6 beetles in each hive and saw many more
.

I don't know how to think about Proteus Bee. Last week it looked as if they didn't have a queen but there were numerous opened queen cups in the hive as well as a ripped out the side queen cell. But most of the frames are drawn but empty and there are only about three frames with bees on them. I put the above frame into Proteus Bee from Bermuda. It has lots of capped brood and also has eggs and tiny brood around the edges.

There were two emerging bees on this frame. I found it amusing to think that they thought they were arriving in one hive and in fact will find themselves in another.

I looked all through Proteus Bee and just as I was thinking I should combine it with Proteus A and make them one hive again, I saw a cell with about 3 day old larva in it and couldn't. I'll wait another week to make a decision. It is now late in the season for them to build up enough to make it through the winter. Hmmmm, we'll have to see next week.

Proteus Bee Continued

I've been out of town for a number of days and today did an inspection on my hives, so there's lot to report. I've posted about a number of observations in several posts today. First I looked at Proteus Bee, the hive that came from the upstairs portion of Proteus when the hive had two queens.

When I opened Proteus Bee today, I looked at the frames in the top box first. There had been mostly starter strips in this box and the bees are festooning and building honeycomb.

As they build up their comb, they are also storing honey, as you can see from the right edge of the second picture.

The bottom box of Proteus Bee is the box where the bees originally lived in the big Proteus hive. This is where I put the frames of brood and eggs. Today every frame in the bottom box was emptied of bees, honey, etc, as you can see in this picture. I was discouraged. I had not seen bees entering the hive since I returned from my trip.

In the top box, however, they are building comb (see first two pictures) and they have capped and uncapped brood. I did not see any eggs, but did some young brood, but I am not sure there is a laying queen.

There were two opened queen cells. One was open on the bottom of the cell, indicating that a queen may have emerged. The second one, located right beside the first one, was ripped open on the side, indicating that the first queen emerged and then killed the queen in the second cell. However, it doesn't look as if anyone is laying in this hive. I'm not sure and didn't do anything today, but may add yet another frame of brood and eggs on the weekend.

Interestingly, this hive was the upper part of Proteus when it was a two-queen hive. The bees in this hive rarely use the front entrance, but mainly enter the hive through the top entrance. This also makes sense since the bees are living in the top box and not the bottom one.

Still a shape-shifter, like the god Proteus for whom the hive was named, I'll wait to see what happens with these bees. If they don't get more of a running start, I'll re-combine them with Proteus A before winter.

Today's Inspection

The small swarm hive was doing fine. Signs were there that the queen was laying well. There are plenty of bees. They are still ignoring the last three frames on the hive, but that's fine. They've only been in the medium 8-frame box for a week.

Proteus Bee is quite a different story. There is no sign there of a laying queen although I gave them brood and egg frames and had seen two queen cells in production on June 23. I didn't see a queen, and felt rather discouraged, but left them in their hive and gave them two more frames of brood and eggs from Bermuda in case they need to make yet another queen. I saw one open queen cell but no evidence of laying.

We've had really stormy weather over the early part of July and if she left on her mating flight she may not have returned. I want to give them a chance. Interestingly this hive was using the upper entrance when they were above Proteus A and I have noticed that the bees in this hive rarely enter through the front door - more often through the upper entrance!

In Bermuda, I found tons of bees and a super of honey with beautiful capped honey for cut comb. I learned a lesson in Bermuda. I found a frame that I had used rubber bands to hold in comb that broke. I had put that frame on the side of the hive box. The bees had fastened the comb to the side of the box. I won't put a repaired comb with rubber bands against the side of the box again. I took this out and will melt the wax - not put it back in the hive.

Today I went on the inspection with several medium frames constructed and with starter strips or full sheets of foundation waxed in. I am so glad because there were a number of frames I either moved or changed and was so glad to have the extras. I'll do that on every inspection going forward.

In Mellona I had tried to open the brood box by taking out the honey filled frames in positions 3, 5, and 7 and substituting starter strip frames. The bees had built comb in the starter strip frames and were filling it with honey.

However, in 2, 4 and 6, they had cleared out the honey in the traditional football shaped pattern and although the queen wasn't laying there, the groundwork was all done. I felt good about opening up the brood nest. Look how shiny the cells are now that they are empty of honey.

The Ongoing Saga of Proteus A and Proteus Bee

On June 6, I posted that Proteus had a solid box of honey between two boxes of brood. On Beemaster forum, the suggestion was that I put a queen excluder between Box 2 and Box 3 to determine if there were a queen in both boxes. I did that and on June 13 reported that there was new brood in both boxes, indicating that there were two queens.

On that same visit to the hive, I opened up the brood box in Proteus A by taking out the center 6 frames of honey and putting in starter strip and SC filled foundation to encourage the queen to expand rather than leave via swarm. Then I put the queen excluder between Box 2 and Box 3.

After asking around about splitting the hive vs. combining the hive, I decided to split the two hives and give each queen her own place. I did the split on June 16 and posted here that only after I had moved Proteus Bee into her own 8 frame medium hive, I thought about brood and that I had not noticed any new brood in Proteus Bee.

I think that action of opening up the brood nest was a mistake if I wanted to keep both queens alive. My guess is that the bees, with the hive now open top to bottom killed the queen in Proteus Bee before I did the split. I should have left the honey barrier until after doing the split. When I considered that I had not seen any new brood, I decided to add two frames of brood and eggs to Proteus Bee in case they were queenless and needed to make a queen.

Indeed, today when I opened up Proteus Bee, it is full of bees, no new brood, and they have made two supercedure cells, although in this case they did this not to supercede a queen but rather simply to HAVE a queen. Those locations were where the newest and best eggs were in the frame I gave them.

We're about through with the honey flow here. We're in the middle of a drought and I will be thrilled to have another hive. So like the small swarm nuc, I have another hive - this time a split - on its way to being queenright. Let's hope it works.

I watched Proteus Bee this week and found it disconcerting that I rarely saw a bee actually enter the hive. The two hives are side by side and bees would approach the entry to Proteus Bee and fly up and down in confusion. Sometimes they would even land on the bottom board and walk on the landing but then go into Proteus A.

Yesterday I saw a lot of bees orienting to Proteus Bee - must be new foragers - and the population entering Proteus Bee went up considerably. When I opened Proteus Bee today, there were plenty of bees. I had thought I might trade places of Proteus A and Bee to increase the numbers in Proteus Bee. I may yet do that but for now, let's see if the queen emerges.

Splitting Proteus into Proteus A and Proteus Bee

Well, today I split the two-queen hive, but I don't know if I did the right thing. I moved the top hive into an 8 frame medium. I moved the brood frames into the first box over the slatted rack and SBB and then put the second box above it, with the honey frames from the old hive. I tried to keep the brood in the same place in the hive.

After I did the whole transformation I started thinking that I didn't really see any larvae today in the upper hive (Proteus Bee) although there was plenty there on Wednesday. There's a picture to the right of the brood pattern which looked more filled out than when I saw it on Wednesday, but I'm not sure there was any new brood since Wednesday. For a few minutes I thought I should put it all back and just remove the queen excluder, letting them be one big hive.

Then I decided that I might as well go ahead and make a split even if the queen were no longer present. So I took a frame of very young brood and hopefully eggs from Bermuda and added it to the brood box in the new hive. I put the two hives side by side, in the way that Michael Bush describes an even split.

Although now in looking at the first picture I wonder if the queen isn't the bee in the middle of the first picture on the left side. It's out of focus so you can't really tell. Well, if she is, great, and if she isn't there, the new frame of brood gives the hive an insurance policy.

I figure that this way even if the queen is dead, they have the potential to make a new queen. I had a hard time finding brood and eggs in Bermuda, but I could add another frame tomorrow and may do so, just to make sure.

In the even split method, with the hives side by side, some bees may drift to the new hive. In about a week, I'll switch the hive positions and even out the drift and hopefully also even out the population.

I looked in Mellona, my best honey producer, and found that this hive was honey bound in the way that Proteus was. Above the brood box in Box 2 was a medium, frame to frame honey. In this hive, I tried something to open up the brood area. I took out frames 3, 5 and 7 and put in their place starter strip frames. This encourages the queen to move up.

While I was looking for brood, I saw a swarm cell on one of the frames, so I think that the timing of opening up the brood box is either right on target or too late. See the newer looking frames in the picture? Those are frames 3, 5 and 7 of starter strips that I have added.

I put these full frames of honey in the super above Box 2 (Box 3) in positions 3, 5, and 7. To do this I had to remove nectar filled frames from Box 3.

I set the frames aside that I removed from Mellona - they were filled with unprocessed nectar (where are they getting it in this drought?). The bees from these frames which were leaning against the deck rails made a cluster on the rail and I took their picture. The cluster was gone 5 minutes after I removed the frames.

I really didn't know what to do with the frames. I shook the bees off of one of them and gave it to the new Proteus Bee and took the other two inside the house. They are mediums and the two upper boxes on Mellona (the hive where I got the frames) are shallows, so I can't put medium frames in them.

This is a clear argument for using the same size box all the time. I have on Mellona two shallow boxes of frames for clean-up. In the next week or maybe even tomorrow, I'll add another medium box to Mellona for brood and will put the nectar laden comb frames in that box along with starter strip frames.

I also harvested 9 frames of honey from Mellona, my best producing hive this year.

I ended my time in the bee yard today by giving Proteus A a powdered sugar shake. Proteus A is the hive where on Wednesday, I took the clear picture of the bee with a Varroa mite on her back.

One of my Hives may be a Two-Queen Apartment Complex

Today I opened the Proteus hive (the one that made crazy comb earlier in the season) to see if I could make sense of the hive configuration. Here's what I had noticed last week:

*The bottom box was full of brood
*The next box up was full of honey, capped wall to wall
*The next box up had eggs and young brood
*The last box was an empty super with some honey beginning to be stored

I posted a query on Beemaster to see what might be going on. The responses included the possibility that I might have two queens - in effect one hive living on top of the other.

Typically in a hive the brood nest is continuous. The queen works her way through the frames in the bottom box and then moves up into the next box. In this hive a full super of honey separates the brood nest - this is not the usual formation in a hive. However, the bees are using only one entrance, for what that's worth.

Today I wanted to see if there were a laying queen in the upper box. In opening the box, a honey comb opened. I love the circle of bees sealing the edges of the honey spill and gathering it back up to use in the hive!

In the second picture you can see who I think is the queen, backed into a cell in which she is laying an egg. All of the cells to the right and upwards from the queen each have a single egg in them. If you look carefully you can see the eggs - they look like a grain of rice standing on end. There is only one egg in each cell, eliminating the possibility that this might be a laying worker (who often lay two or more eggs in each cell).

I also checked the small hive beetle trap on this visit and found no beetles in it or any of my other traps. A post on BeeSource (see Rob-bee's post at the bottom of the page) suggested that my holes aren't large enough for the SHB. They are supposed to be 3/16". I plan to take the traps out next weekend and enlarge the holes. The bees have propolized the holes in the trap on Proteus (the apartment complex hive).

I also am having a mild, mild infestation of SHBs this year. Last year they were everywhere by this time. I'm wondering if the hard freeze of 20 degree days we had the first week of April wreaked havoc on the SHB population.

Inspection and First Honey Harvest!

I had many jobs during the inspection today. I saw a bee on two occasions carrying out pupae from Proteus. I want it to get more sun to lower the possibility of disease like chalkbrood, etc. So my first job was to move Proteus back one foot into the sunshine. I took off the top three boxes and slid the bottom box, slatted rack and SBB to the waiting concrete block. It went well and I blocked the entrance with leaves to help the bees reorient.

Then I did my first honey harvest from Mellona. I took the oldest box and brought the frames inside for crush and strain. I left the box standing outside Mellona to get all the bees to return to the hive. I then crushed and strained the honey. I believe I will only get honey from Mellona this year.

Proteus has brood all into the third box and has done little work in the fourth box.


Bermuda has built itself back up well but is just now exploring the third box and isn't ready for a honey super....and then there's the small swarm which won't make honey this year - we just hope it survives.

Why is Proteus a Rusty Hive?

A few weeks ago I noticed that my Proteus hive was rusty on the top, unlike the other hives. I thought perhaps it was because I had a flower pot on top without a saucer. I removed the flower pot and wiped the top of the hive, but some of the rust stayed. The rust continues to be bright orange on the top cover.

Then I noticed the concrete pavers that I was using to lift the hive off of the deck surface had changed color from gray to rusty brownish orange. Hmmmmm.

There are three trees that my deck is built around - with circles cut in the deck floor to accommodate the tree trunks. The other two hives are near and under pine trees, but Proteus is under an oak tree. The oak sap must be causing the rusty effect.
I set up my ladder and attempted with my lopers to reach the oak branches to trim them. Well, I need a taller ladder or longer arms or a super-duper loper to reach these branches. One pitiful branch fell right at Proteus' front door before I gave up.

We're almost through spring and moving into summer. The sun hits the deck much earlier in the summer. Here in spring, the hives get touched by sunlight from early morning on but my house faces S/SE and it takes a while for the sunshine to hit the hives fully. That happens after lunch. But as we move toward summer, the sun is there earlier and may help with this rusty effect. Meanwhile, I'll just live with rusty Proteus.

Proteus Inspection Today - looking for messy comb

Remember that Proteus made a mess of drawing out comb from the starter strips? I had to go in and cut out bridging comb between the frames. They still are not perfectly straight in the center frames, but there was no bridging comb. I only cut a one-inch piece or two that was extending off of the edge of the frame too close to the next one, IMHO. Below is the first frame I pulled out (and thanks to my daughter, Valerie, for lending me her camera). Honey is being capped in this centrally located frame.

















The frame below is the one that was the messiest last week. They still are not on track, but mostly are working on filling the frame. The open comb is where I cut a sticking out piece of comb off.

















On the frames on the edge of the box, the bees are building good comb as evidenced by the picture below. There's hope for this hive. This medium box in which they made the mess is a newly built box and the frames are all newly built frames. The other new hive, Mellona, is doing a much better job. That medium box is an old repainted box and the frames are old medium frames into which I waxed starter strips. Wonder if the smell makes it better for those bees to draw straight comb? HMMM, I'll ask on Beemaster.

My bees are SO SMART!

So you'll remember that I panicked on Monday when I opened the hives to find that Proteus had built crazy comb. Mostly the bees had built up from the bottom rather than down from the top starter strips.....and they had built comb bridging from one frame to the other so that I couldn't remove any frame without making a messy, honey-gooey, drippy - well, you get the idea - in the hive.

After getting advice from my fellow beeks on Beemaster, I opened the hives again on Monday afternoon and cut all the bridging comb and moved it to the base of the frame.

Today, armed with rubber bands (the very large kind), I opened Proteus again with the plan of using the rubber bands to "tie" in the comb that I knew I was going to have to essentially cut and paste to remind my bees that comb should stay IN the frame - I think it's the equivalent of telling the bees that they have to color inside the lines.

Well, I opened the hive and those girls learn FAST. None of the combs had bridging comb between the frames. Some of the frames in the center where the mess was the worst were kind of fat, but still within the frame. There were only three with problems and I solved those by cutting and not with rubber bands. HOORAY


















I've always worked the bees with gloves on and today I only wore a glove on my left hand. It was freeing to have my fingers not have those leather extensions that the too-big gloves cause. I didn't get stung. BTW, it's cold in Atlanta today so the green thing on top of the hive is a pillow case that I used to cover the open hive while I worked on the messy frames.

















Not too bad, huh?

















In Mellona, the other hive with starter strips, the bees had chewed away the wax that I had put in the bottom groove of three frames, so I took it out altogether. I replaced frame #5 with a drawn out frame from last year to help them get the message about coloring within the lines. But the bees in Mellona don't seem to have the same mind of their own that the bees in Proteus have, so they probably would have done fine with just the starter strips.