Where I Bee

I don't think I've posted this year about my hives and where they are.

I have one hive at Chastain Conservancy.  It's a teaching site for my bee club and Julia, Noah and I all have hives there.  I have one hive that was made from the swarm that a beekeeper donated to the teaching cause.  It came to us on April Fool's Day and has done well.

I checked on it today, planning to take a frame of brood and eggs from it to another hive.  BUT they had requeened themselves.  I found the opened queen cell and many others that had been opened.  The bees were quiet and contained.  They had many cells cleaned and polished waiting for the new queen to start laying.

This must have been a well-regulated plan in that they had two frames of capped brood, about ready to emerge (dark biscuit) and probably their new queen is in the process of her mating days right now.  This means that when the capped brood was laid, they made a queen cell from one of those eggs.  The queen emerges in 16, compared to 21 for the worker, so she has emerged (before the remaining brood laid on the same day) and should soon start laying.

So I didn't take a frame from them!                                  

I also have two hives at my friend, Tom's house.  These were the Bill Owens hives that I got at auction in September, 2013.  These two hives were doing great as spring began.  Since they are in deep boxes and don't have medium supers, I was unable to spread out the brood nest when we added the first new boxes to these hives.  Both hives swarmed.  

I captured both swarms which are now in my backyard.  The hives at Tom's are probably not going to produce much honey this year although both hives have two full boxes of honey on them.  They are struggling with post-swarm.  They swarmed on March 30 and April 9, respectively.  

The front hive (March 30) apparently failed to get a good queen and is now queenless.  We have put in one frame of brood and eggs but on inspection on Monday, did not see any evidence of a queen cell.  The hive was quiet and has not developed a laying worker.  I will take another frame of brood and eggs over there to it tomorrow.  I wanted to today from the Chastian hive but they were not in any kind of shape to do that.

The back hive (swarmed April 9) has a queen who is up and running and has been laying but they are slow to rebuild.  These hives have had the same number of boxes on them for the last three weeks when many other hives are adding a box a week.

I have two hives at the Stonehurst Place Inn.  One of them overwintered and is doing well, making honey, expanding, etc.  I will check on them tomorrow as well.  I last checked them a week ago.  The second hive at Stonehurst is a nuc that I got rather late (4/27) from Ray Civitts.  They have now been installed three and a half weeks.  I don't expect honey with this late a start.

(For anyone keeping tabs, we are up to five)

I have two hives in Rabun County at my friends' farm.  Those hives were installed on April 26 and May 3 - again unlikely to get much honey with this late start, but the flora in the mountains is about three weeks behind Atlanta, so if the bears leave us alone, maybe we'll get something from these hives.

I was in the area this past weekend and stopped to add needed boxes to each hive.  The moving straps are to make us think we are keeping the bears at bay!  I think a determined bear might argue with both us and the bees.

In his backyard, Jeff has two hives that we got from Buster's Bees when I ordered them in December, thinking my hives would not make it through the winter.  We installed them on April 11.  He is mostly managing those but he and I keep bees together.  They now have new boxes on them - maybe two - I'm not certain.

The other two hives from Buster are at the Morningside community garden and are rocking along.  I gave each of them a new box yesterday.  They were installed on April 26 and now each is composed of three boxes.

So I have 11 hives in other places.

In my own backyard, I have one hive that overwintered, the hive from Sebastian's yard that we moved at the end of March, the two swarm hives from Tom's house, a swarm I caught in my neighborhood just down the street from my house, a split in a three box nuc that I made from one of Tom's hives as a swarm prevention measure (didn't work, obviously), and a small hive of failure-to-thrive bees that I got from a beekeeper who thought they had swarmed.  

It was a tiny swarm and is not doing well.  I got them on April 1 and they are still on just three frames in a nuc.  I don't want to combine them with another hive because they are from a beekeeper who treats his bees and I don't know what their problem is but they don't seem to be doing anything.  I think they were actually absconding to get away from the treatment.  I'm just going to leave them alone and they may die, but I'm not going to take any action.

So not counting the two nucs (Failure to Thrive and the Tom Split), I have five decent hives in my backyard.  If I eventually move the Tom Split into a full box, I'll count it but not for now.  So sixteen altogether.  Some will have honey for me this year.  Others will just build up hopefully to go through the winter.

New Bees at the Stonehurst Place Inn

So a couple of weeks ago, I picked up bees from Ray Civitts.  One hive was to be delivered to Stonehurst Inn where they are now happily installed.  The other was going to Robin's.  So now at Robin and Mary's farm I have two hives of bees.  One is from Slade Jarrett and the other from Ray Civitts of Mountain Sweet Honey.

When I arrived, his garage was crammed with nucs; bee equipment, neatly stacked; hive parts he sells.  He had been working hard all morning already (and I arrived early!)  He said someone had come at 4:30 AM that morning to pick up bees - can you imagine?



















I drove this nuc back to Atlanta and installed it at Stonehurst where they are doing well.

I love the cardboard nucs - easy to manage, to carry and best of all, you don't have to return them to the seller!

   

When I finished installing it, I left the cardboard box facing the entry so errant bees could get home.  

I stopped by on Thursday to see how they were doing (ten days past installation).  The bees looked great.  

There were lots of bees in the one deep box - many on the top of the inner cover. 

They were drawing and filling comb like crazy:

So I gave them a new box with one drawn comb frame in it to provide them with a ladder.  While I was at Ray's I noticed he had entrance reducers so I asked if I could buy one.  He insisted on giving it to me, so I insisted that he autograph it for me!

Stonehurst Swarm Bees Made it Through the Winter

At Stonehurst we went into winter with two hives.  One died over the winter.  They had stores but the bees were on the frames just below all the stored honey in a smallish cluster where I'm sure they had not been able to stay warm enough.  The other hive (which is a swarm that voluntarily moved into an empty hive which had died early in the summer) is doing quite well.

I had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to take away the dead hive.  I'm going to harvest the honey from the hive that died.  Then when we get a new nuc for Stonehurst in April, I'll feed that honey to the new bees to help them get started.

Today I went through the swarm hive to see if I could make sure they had a queen and add a box.  They went into winter in one deep and one medium.  I fed these bees bee tea (about a total of one gallon) as winter approached (at the very end of October).

These bees were not bustling like my hive at home nor like the bees at Tom's but were doing well.  There was brood on almost every frame.  I know bees are supposed to move up over the winter, but the queen had laid solidly in the bottom box and had brood, eggs, and larvae in the second box.

I had planned to add a third box and checkerboard frames up (every other frame empty in box 2 and box 3 in alternate patterns, but when I found so much brood in every frame, I decided just to add the new box with the center frame drawn comb to give them a ladder.

The queen was laying drones in these large cells in the upper box.  Swarm season is coming.

The bees had lots of nectar and pollen as well as eggs and brood.  I'm feeling good about how this hive survived the winter, especially since they are located behind a house and next to a fence so they have limited daylight.

Mothering the Bees

This has been a bad bee year for me.  In my eight years of beekeeping, I've had two awful years - that's 25% - not too great.  In one of the years - I think it was 2010 - I got honey but all my hives died (five of them) going into or during the winter.  This is the worst year yet.  This year in 2013, I have lost count (or refused to count) the number of hives that have absconded.

When I tell other beekeepers my hives have absconded, they all say, it must have been the small hive beetle.  But I didn't have a big SHB population this year.  The hive with the worst hive beetles is still alive in Sebastian's yard.

Most of the discovery of empty hives came in late July.  I think it was about no stores.  The bees couldn't collect enough honey during the honey flow because it literally rained every day.  Then in July they were still hopeful that there was honey somewhere - just not in their area, so they left.  Every hive I opened had NO DEAD BEES - just emptiness.  There was absolutely no honey and very little brood and the bees were totally gone.

• The hive at the Morningside garden had a pesticide kill and never recovered.  It was a tragedy because that was an amazing hive.  The split beside it never took off and simply dwindled away.
• Both hives at Chastain absconded.  No dead bee bodies were in either hive and no stores.  
• The hives at Stonehurst Inn are both there and doing fine.  One is a hive that moved into a dead hive in early August.
• At Sebastian's one hive left - no bodies, no stores left behind - and the other hive is there - it's going OK, but there are SHB in that hive.  I have two different traps on that hive - at the entrance and in between the frames, but the beetles are still there.
• At Ron's the splits never became thriving hives.  One colony hived there absconded.  I replaced it with a Wilbanks hive and they left too.  Ron's theory was that the pesticides Emory uses on its campus and in the neighborhood where Ron's house is made the location one that was bad for bees.  Whatever it was, they left lock, stock, and barrel with no bodies left behind.
• At my own house, my best swarm hive absconded when the electricians used jack hammers about five feet away from them.  I had a queen excluder on that hive below the bottom box, and found the queen still in the box.  I made a split and put them in a nuc, but the queen is not in the nuc and the bees are almost dwindled away.  A swarm hive in my yard also absconded as well as the only hive other than Morningside that I had left as the year started.
• I do have one solitary hive in my backyard.  It's the swarm I collected near Northlake and is going gangbusters.  I put a feeder on this hive although it was heavy with honey and the bees only just began to take the bee tea.  They totally ignored it for about two weeks.

I've had a terrible bee year.  And I got no honey.  I harvested one box from the Morningside hive but the honey is too thin - 19.2% water.  And if I had left that box on the hive maybe those bees would still be alive.

So I'm going into winter with six hives and I've been feeding them bee tea like there's no tomorrow.

Here are the two hives at Stonehurst.  I have put almost three gallons of bee tea on these hives.  I feel disheartened, though, because there are roaches under the cover of the hive on the left and every hive I've had with roaches eventually dies during the winter.

Here's the bee tea.  The leaves floating in it are thyme.  You can see the bees crawling up the inner tube to get the welcomed food.

This is the hive at Sebastian's that I fed the same day.  You'd love to see me visit that hive.  Sebastian's new house has a tall gate with the latch on the inside.  To get to the bees, I have to take a Rubbermaid stool and stand on it, reach over the gate and feel for the lock, slide it open and open the gate.  I repeat the action on the stool when I leave!

In this hive there were these little black things that I thought were mouse droppings, but at close look on my computer screen, they are dead small hive beetles.

This hive appears to be doing well going in to winter, but I have two different versions of SHB trap on the hive and still there are these random dead beetles littering the inner cover.

It's going down to the 20s tonight.  I hope the feeding I've been doing of all of these hives will keep the hives alive as winter descends.

The Bees Are Flying!

Today despite low 30s night time temps, it's up to 65 now at 2:30  And Hallelujah the bees are flying.  So around this area, I have two lively hives in my backyard.  One hive at Morningside garden is full of bees:

I had a break and ran over to the Stonehurst Place Inn to see how our bees were doing there.  Both of the hives that went into winter were flying.  There are less bees in the far hive than in the close hive but both were flying!

The small one box hive closest to the photographer is what remains of the huge hive that was robbed out and died.  I left the one box as a swarm lure for swarms in the spring.  Maybe it will happen.

I am so relieved to see all these bees.  I know there are two living hives and perhaps three at my old house.  I haven't checked in with Sebastian to see if the bees are flying at his house and I won't know about my Rabun County bees for a while.  Right now I have at least 8 hives as spring is slowly getting here.

Whew.......

Inspecting Hives - This and That

At Sebastian's and Christina's house, the bees were doing well.  Interestingly the blue hive which is a 10 frame set up is growing faster than the yellow hive which is an 8 frame set up.

In the blue hive there were only six undrawn frames total in all the boxes.  I might not be back for about 10 days, so I put a new box on that hive.  However, now I am out of 10 frame medium boxes, so I put an 8 frame on the hive and covered the extra two frames below with a 2X4 (see the hive tool sitting on it?).



This year in every location I am finding earwigs on the hives.  Generally they are located like these are around the top edge of the hive often outside or on top of the inner cover.  Wonder what the appeal of the bee hive is for the ear wig?  They eat arthropods, plants and ripe fruit and they do like small tight spaces which does describe the bee hive.  Whatever the appeal, they are in all of my hives this year.



Then I went to Stonehurst Place.  It's an interesting group of hives.  We've had rain and cooler weather for the last week, so the bees have not been able to forage and the tulip poplar is almost done so there isn't much nectar to be had.  The two new nucs at Stonehurst this year are moving slower than my other nucs.

In the first hive I took this picture of new comb filled with nectar.  I love it that the bees immediately use wax as they draw it.  They will continue to fill this frame but are storing the nectar as the storage are is created.  Even more fun is to find comb that is a niblet hanging off of the top bar of the frame, but is already filled with eggs from the eager queen!



The second nuc at Stonehurst swarmed almost immediately after installation.  However, their new queen is laying and doing well.  If you click on the photo below, you can see an egg in almost every cell.  She is trying to catch up.  However, swarming is almost a guarantee in a new nuc that we will not get any honey from this hive this year.  They will need whatever they store to make it through the winter.



Talk about a bee yard that needs equalizing!  The overwintered hive is full of honey - the bees were unhappy with me because they are in such need of space.  I had no help with me today and no ladder so I simply added a box to the top of this hive.



In the hives at Morningside, I'm finding the same phenomenon that is occurring at Sebastian and Christina's.  These hives at the community garden were started from packages on the same day.  The hive on the left is smaller and has fewer bees than the hive on the right.

Both have active laying queens and appear to be storing nectar, laying eggs, and generally going about their bee business.  Differences in hive size may be the result of the queen, but it also may be the result of drift (bees coming back to the wrong hive).  These hives are different colors and have different markings on the front, but to further address this potential problem, I added stick-on flower designs to both hives to increase their distinctiveness for the returning forager bees.

Stonehurst Hives are All over the Place

In preparation for visiting the Stonehurst Place hives today I waxed foundation into sixteen frames.  I assumed I would need to add a box to at least two of the hives over there.  The last time I was there on April 11, I didn't check the largest hive because a UGS doctoral student was collecting samples of the bees in that hive for his research.

In the service of his research, he probably killed about 300 - 400 of my bees.  But it's for a good cause.  I also had to spend about 40 minutes filling out a survey about how I manage my bees.

So I spent the first part of today waxing frames.  My wax tube fastener kind of bit the dust in the middle - I think it need a long bath fully submerged in boiling water - it seems clogged.



I tried a paintbrush which my friend Jerry says he uses, but just look at the picture.  It did not fare well.


I placed the frames according to Housel positioning in empty boxes to transport them to the inn.



At the inn, I found that Hive One was bursting at the seams, storing honey in comb between the boxes.  I moved the top box off, transferred two honey-filled frames to the new box and inserted the new empty box with the filled frames as ladders between the now sixth and fourth boxes.




I left Hive One with six boxes on it - the top four solid with honey.



Hive Two had a laying queen but the hive was slow to grow.  They had not really used the second box at all.  I didn't do much at all to that box.



Here's their second box - almost unused.



When I was last there about two weeks ago, Hive Three was queenless with about three almost ripe queen cells.  I was sad about this, but this week, I saw eggs - and ripped up queen cells.  The queen has obviously both emerged and started laying.

In contrast to Hive Two, Hive Three had completely filled their second box with nectar.  In the bottom box, they had lots of center-of-the-frame space available for laying and the queen had begun to do so.
I moved two frames of brood, eggs, and honey into what would become the new second box and sandwiched it between the bottom deep and the second box, full of honey.

And on to Stonehurst Place

Well, after a kind of rough start at Sebastian and Christina's house, I went on to the Stonehurst Place Inn where I installed two more nucs.  This went smoothly.

First I put the nucs on top of the hive bodies where they would live and opened the screened wire.

The bees seemed delighted to be freed from captivity.



These bees looked good although there weren't as many bees in the nucs as in the first two I installed.



I did not see either queen but the brood looked good and I saw new eggs in both installed hives.



Above and below you can see brood frames.



They are happily ensconced in their new homes.



I did see one bee in one of the hives that I installed here with definite deformed wing virus.  We'll keep watching for other varroa vectored problems.

While there I inspected the one hive that made it through the winter.  It was full of bees and full of drawn wax filled with honey.  I added a box recently to that hive on March 20, but it was full, so I added a new box.

Stonehurst Place Saga

Today I did a deep inspection of the hives at Stonehurst Place Inn.  I knew one hive was dead and wanted to find out why they had died.  I suspected they starved/froze in the cold few days we had when it was 19 degrees here after a warm spell.

I also wanted to check the first hive to see if they appeared to have swarm plans.  I had given them a new box when I was here a couple of weeks ago and discovered that the second hive was dead.

I always get stung a couple of times working these bees.  Today was no exception - three stings - left hand little finger, upper left arm, lower right leg.  These aren't really mean bees compared to Colony Square but aren't bees I want to work on gloveless.



The top box which I had given them at the end of February had three frames of drawn comb, two frames of barely drawn comb and one frame with comb being built from the bottom.  This is because I just threw this box on top of the hive and didn't give them a full frame from the box beneath to act as a ladder.  I moved this bottom drawn comb to the edge of the box.  If they don't fill it out, I'll take it out on my next visit.

The second box was heavy with capped honey and uncapped nectar.



When I lifted off the box to look at the one underneath, I broke open honeycomb they had built between the boxes - they were distressed and immediately began re-gathering the honey because the bees will store this again.  They do not waste something they worked so hard to create.



The capped honey was what is called "wet cappings" because the bees lay the wax cap right on the honey creating a wet look.  I wonder what influences their choice to make wet or dry cappings?  Anyway, this hive is on track to make a lot of honey.  We'll probably need to harvest early and maybe more than once.



So the top box was empty but newly drawn comb.  The second box was all honey and nectar.  The third box was full of brood - and it was pretty as well.  Here you see what brood looks like on newly drawn comb.


There are both drone cells (the highly rounded tops) and worker cells on this frame.  Some of the drone cells are not fully capped and you can still see the larva through the opening in the top of the cell.



I thought it was interesting that they put drone cells occupying one whole side of this frame.



In this comb you can see worker brood capped to the left, and uncapped larvae just to the right of that.  Then in the open cells there are eggs.  You may have a hard time seeing the eggs in the cells with the light behind them, but in the cells with the darker background, you should be able to see a lot of eggs (at about 1:00 in the photo).



I was planning to remove the bottom deep but the bees had drone brood between box 1 and box 2 as well as between box 2 and box 3.  When I pulled up frames from the bottom, it's true that they weren't fully using the frames, but there was brood as well as nectar stored there.  The good news is that I didn't see a single queen cell or even an opened one, so these bees must not be planning to swarm - at least not right now.



When I opened hive #2 it was clear that they had starved.  The bees were flying around in January when I did the powdered sugar shake and the hive looked healthy.  Right after that, though, we had a string of four or five days with weather too cold for the bees to move or fly.  These bees died then.  There was a baseball sized cluster of bees - you can see the top of the cluster in this picture.



The frames were sickening.  They were clustered through three frames.  A sure sign of starvation is to see their little rear ends up in the air, heads down in the cell, getting the final sip of honey before all dying together.



We've ordered two nucs for Stonehurst - a nuc to replace this one and a new nuc to make a third hive.  It's going to be really crowded back there, working the bees, but the Inn will be glad for the opportunity to make more honey this year.