And for the Remaining Hive Inspections

Luckily it is Spring Break in Atlanta and lots of people are out of town.  I didn't have to be at the office today until 4 PM.  So today was a major bee day - I picked up five nucs, installed them in three places and inspected seven hives on this side of town.  Tomorrow (also a slow day) I will inspect the hives at Jeff and Valerie's (four of them), the hive at Blue Heron, and the hive at Chastain.

Next up was the other package installation at my house.  Unlike its 10 frame neighbor, this hive had not drawn out the majority of its box, so I didn't add a box.  I did see eggs and the queen - she was lovely but I didn't take her photo - in this box, so I feel fine about it.  They just aren't as energetic as the 10 frame.  It's funny - the package for the 10 frame had a ton of dead bees on the bottom, but this package had the least dead bees of all the packages I installed.  You never can tell about bees……



The little nuc split from Colony Square had failed to develop a queen, so I gave them a frame of eggs from Lenox Point last week.  I did have to drive the frame 25 minutes from my old house, so the eggs might not have been great when installed here.



They had built a beautiful queen cell, however.  I very carefully returned this frame to the nuc and hope she'll do well once she emerges.



They had also made these odd attempts at a queen cell (see below in the upper center) but those are not queen cells.



I also installed the last nuc this afternoon and saw the queen. She has a yellow dot on her back and is at 9:00 on the frame below.


You can also see her on the end of the frame, pointing downward - isn't she lovely with her black abdomen?



There were pretty cells in yellow wax in this frame.  These bees came from south Georgia.  I remember that our bees on the farm last year drew yellow wax early in the season.



I also checked on the Decatur Swarm in the top bar hive.  They were doing OK - had begun drawing out about five top bars.  They had gone a little crooked at one end of all five bars, so I cut off the wax and took it inside.

I thought this was a secondary swarm and the state of the hive bore that out.  The queen had just begun laying (as in yesterday).  I only saw eggs and some tiny c-shaped larvae, and there was no capped brood.  I think this means she spent the last 10 days getting ready to go on her mating flight, getting mated and getting ready to lay.  Now she is working hard at it and hopefully this hive will succeed.

Below is the comb I cut out - I took it inside and will melt it down or use it for bee talks.



So after a long bee day and many bee blog posts, I bee tired and am going to bed!

The Queen, the Queen, Where is the Queen?

Today Jeff and I inspected the hives at his house.  We started with the small swarm hive.  On February 19, a month ago, I inspected this hive and found about a baseball sized clump of bees there with plenty of honey but no sign of a queen.

On that February day, we took a frame of brood and eggs from Lenox Pointe and gave it to this hive.  I had intended to move another frame of brood and eggs from Colony Square but they were so angry when I opened them that day that I forgot.

Today this hive was doing well.  We saw brood and eggs, honey both capped and uncapped and generally it looked great.  I didn't get it, because if they had made a queen from the frame of brood and eggs we gave them, she should barely be laying at this point.



The cells below contain eggs - bad pictures - sorry.



And here is a frame of capped and uncapped honey.



The hive was doing so well that we gave it a third box and moved on to Five Alive.



Five Alive had several frames of brood that looked just like this - solid worker cells capped and almost ready to emerge.  They had two full boxes so we gave them a third box and put a ladder of filled comb from the box below to help them get started.



Then we went to Lenox Pointe.  On February 19, there was lots of brood in the bottom box as well as in the second box.  Since the bottom is a deep, we took a brood and egg frame from the second (medium) box to give to the swarm hive.

Today there was no brood in the bottom box and there was some honey and lots of empty cells.  In the second box there were seven frames of honey and the eighth frame was a new foundationless frame that I had inserted to replace the egg frame for the Swarm hive.  That frame was filled with honey comb now that was all drone sized comb.  There were eggs in most of the cells on this frame, but it will be all drone brood.

The third box was solid honey.  There was no space to build.

As I thought about it, here's what I think happened.  When we moved the frame from Lenox Pointe, we actually took the LP queen with that frame and she simply set up shop in the small swarm hive.  She is doing well and the hive is thriving.

Meanwhile LP made a queen with their eggs but because it was so early, the queen was poorly mated and is not doing a good job at the moment.  Since the queen seems inadequate to us (who knows what the bees think), Jeff and I decided to put a new frame of brood and eggs from Five Alive into this hive and see if they can make a queen.  This will effectively interrupt the varroa mite's brood cycle while the new queen is being made.

Meanwhile the frame of brood will provide enough pheromone to keep the bees happy and purposeful in that hive and we gave them another box so there would be somewhere for the current queen to lay or for a  new one.

We only opened Colony Square for a moment.  They too need a new box since their top box was filled with drawn comb and nectar.  I didn't bring enough equipment with me, so I will put a new box on CS tomorrow.  Here's what one of their beautiful wax frames looked like as it was getting started.

Checking on Blue Heron on the last day of June

Julia, Noah and I checked on the Blue Heron hives before the July 4 weekend.  We wanted to see if the queen were established in the queenless hive with the donated queen; we wanted to see if the nuc had managed to get started despite its poor resourced beginning; and we wanted to see if there was honey to be had at Julia's hive.

Here's a slide show.  After the inspection, we decided that if there is still no laying queen in the large Blue Heron hive, we'll combine it with the mean hive from the nuc that we know has a queen.  Hope for the future and all of that.  We have a MABA inspection on June 10 and we'll put the hives together then if we need to.

As always, click on the slide show to see the pictures with caption and full screen.

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.

Questionable Queen Situation in Rabun County

I last checked the Rabun hives two weeks ago. At that time there was an egg in every cell in the first hive, the 8 frame one. Today I saw no eggs at all, no brood, nothing. There was capped brood (probably from the brood I saw two weeks ago), but no new eggs. There wasn't a queenless roar and the bees were peaceful.



They were storing gorgeous honey: darker than the honey I'm seeing in Atlanta, but not raising bees.



So I took out a frame, covered the open hive with a drape and opened hive #2 in the hopes of getting a frame of brood and eggs to bring to Hive One. It never hurts a hive to add a frame of brood and eggs. Here are the possibilities:

1. Maybe I killed the queen in the last inspection (horrors!)
2. Maybe they didn't like the queen, raised a new one and got rid of the old one, but there hasn't been enough time for her to get mated and start laying yet.
3. Maybe for some bee reason that I can't fathom, the queen is taking a break from laying but is in the hive.

No matter which of those is true, or even if the scenario is completely different, adding a frame of brood and eggs does no harm. If there is a queen, the bees will use the frame to keep their population going. If there isn't a queen, the bees will use one of the eggs to make a new queen. If there isn't a queen and one is in process, the pheromone from the new brood added today will help stave off any laying workers.




So I went to Hive Two (they need names, don't they?) and stole a frame of brood and eggs and put it in Hive One and left with crossed fingers.

The sourwood flow should start soon, so even though neither hive needs it, I will leave an extra box on each hive on Monday when I go home to Atlanta.



Maybe since the hives are in Rabun County, I'll call them Warwoman and Tallulah for wild areas in the county.  So the 8 frame is Warwoman and the 10 frame is Tallulah.  That will help me write more distinctly about each of them!

Busy, Busy Bees

Today I stopped at Stonehurst to check on the bees. I had added a new super to the hives last week. Once again, they had filled every frame and needed new boxes. Here's an example of the gorgeous honey they are putting up. I don't know what the source of this very light nectar is - could be clover or something that is blooming at the Botanical Garden just up the road from the Inn.



We only have one more box for these hives. If they fill up another super before the end of the nectar flow, I'll either need to harvest or we'll have to order new boxes!~



At home I found the same thing. The bees in both boxes had built out the comb in all the frames in the boxes on the hives.



I added a new box to each of my home hives as well. I lit the smoker as I usually do to knock at the door and announce my presence. As soon as I put the hive back together and moved the smoker which had been sitting by the entry, the bees tumbled over each other to get into the hive with their nectar loads.



Here's Colony Square, the tallest of the two hives. The honey in these hives is light just like that at Stonehurst. I'll need to do some reading to determine what might be the source of this light, lovely honey.

Albert Alligator and the Blue Heron hives

When I was a little girl, my father always loved the cartoon Pogo, drawn and written by Walt Kelly. It was a little confusing for me because there was a famous clown in the circus at the time named Emmett Kelly and I got the two mixed up and thought the clown wrote the cartoon in his off hours. Of course now I'm a beekeeper and there's a great beekeeping company called Walter T. Kelley. (Good I'm not still a child - think how confused I'd be).

Nonetheless in the cartoon, Pogo (a possum) and Albert (an alligator) frequently played checkers. When they did, Pogo often won and Albert had many responses to being beaten, most of which involved creating some kind of chaos. In one of my favorite Albert Alligator checker games, Pogo is winning and Albert suddenly throws the checkerboard into the air yelling, "Earthquake! Earthquake!"

If the bees at Blue Heron had read Pogo, they would have been buzzing "Earthquake! Earthquake!"  today when Julia, Noah, and I returned to the scene of the morning's inspection.

This is what it looked like in the middle of the chaos:



Noah took this picture below by accident, but I'm sure it's how the bee's world felt to them!

In the earlier inspection we found that despite queen cells in both halves of the split, neither hive had a queen.  I don't know if it was because of really bad weather over the last weeks; if I killed the queen when I dropped my hive tool through the one hive two weeks ago; if the emerged queens were killed going to or from their mating flights; or what.

The sad story is that the splits both failed.

I went home and stole a frame of brood and eggs from both Colony Square and Lenox Pointe.  They were none too happy since I had inspected both hives the day before and being opened two days in a row is more than disruptive.

I put the two stolen frames into a five frame nuc with some empty frames to make transporting it easy.

I made sure before the move that both stolen frames had eggs and very young brood on them....as well as capped brood.  The pheromones from the capped brood help the queenless hive avoid developing laying workers.

We removed two frames from the bottom box of the strongest of the two hives.

In their place we put the two frames from home.

Both hives had a good bit of honey on them.  We put the boxes of honey back onto this hive.  Then we topped the box with a piece of newspaper.  You are supposed to trim the newspaper so that there are not edges hanging over to wick in rain water.  I forgot to do that and will return today with a pair of scissors.

When the newspaper is in place, you take your hive tool and cut three or so slits in the newspaper to facilitate the bees working their way through the newspaper.  By the time the bees chew through the newspaper in two or three days, they will be friendly to each other.

We then put a box on the top for the bees from the other hive.  One frame at a time we sprayed the bees with sugar syrup and then shook and brushed them into the new box.

The frames we were shaking were deeps and the box into which we moved them was a medium.  We even shook the slatted rack and the screened bottom board.

We then added all the honey frames from hive 2 to the box into which we had shaken the bees.

In the end when we finished the combining, there was STILL chaos all around us.

We closed up the hive, cleaned up the "Earthquake" and went home with crossed fingers. We won't open this hive again for 21 days to give the queen time to emerge, go on her mating flight, and return to lay eggs.   I hope, hope, hope that this combined hive will survive, raise a queen and keep going.  We'll see on Memorial Day!

It was a difficult operation and I so appreciate that Julia and Noah came back with me to finish this project.  Both of them helped so much and Noah took most of these pictures.  They are wonderful friends and dedicated beekeepers and I enjoy every beekeeping minute with them.

Bees in South Georgia are Doing Well

These hives have been installed as packages for about six weeks now. They've been through a heavy windstorm in their second week with tops blown off. Last Wednesday in Georgia we had devastating tornadoes and heavy winds. We've had to rubber band in errant comb and deal with queens who died (probably were balled by the bees) as a result of the storms when the hive tops blew off of several hives.

No end of problems, but the bees are still going.

We did lose one hive who absconded the first week, but other than that all hives have bees.



I passed tornado damage in Griffin, GA as I drove down.



Damage was on both sides of the highway.



Our hives were not affected - the tornado missed the farm. One hive appeared to have opened queen cells - or maybe queen cups but the ragged edges looked like a queen had emerged. A new queen may not be laying yet.  Even though there was no sign of a queen in this calm hive, we gave it a frame of eggs just to make sure.



Jeff got really good at spotting eggs - he also worked on how to hold the hive tool so that he didn't have to keep putting it away while he worked. These guys are getting to be good beekeepers.



Greg applied powdered sugar with my new toy to the hives that were in the best shape.



Most of the hives had lovely frames of brood that looked like this.



I'm not reporting extensively on these hives here because we take SO many pictures as a record of what we are doing down there. But I will keep all of you who are interested updated with an overview when we go down and check on the bees.



We did add a slatted rack to every hive. The Georgia days are getting warmer and we want the bees to use their energy in some other way than keeping the hive cool. The slatted rack helps with ventilation.

These have been back-ordered from Betterbee since February 23 - they finally came this past Thursday (April 29) - who knew there would be a run on slatted racks this year? I actually don't know too many beekeepers who use them and who need the 8 frame version, as we did.

(Our private theory is that Betterbee forgot my order. I wrote them an email last week to inquire about the two month old backorder and suddenly the order showed up this week.)