A Strange Find in SHB Trap

Today I went to check on Sebastian's hives.  We had put a new SHB trap on one of those hives on April 21.  I wanted to see if the trap were working and I wanted to see if either hive needed a new box.

 We are in the middle of the Atlanta nectar flow but the weather has beaten the tulip poplar blossoms off of the trees and hasn't really been conducive to nectar collection - cold nights, drippy days.


















I pulled out the oil trap in the new SHB trap first and this is what I saw:

In case you are confused, those are NOT small hive beetles - those are earwigs drowned in oil.  I didn't see a single small hive beetle either in the hive or in the trap!

The hive was doing fine but did not need a new box.

The second hive - the survivor there from last year - was doing great.  There was lots of brood.  As is true in hives with slatted racks, the queen had laid the frames from end to end.   What I mean by that is that she had brood from the end bar on one end to the end bar on the other end!

Not only that, the frame below with solid brood on both sides was the last frame in the box, right by the side of the box.  

The frame on the far side of the box was solid honey.  I moved it out and replaced it with a foundationless frame. I then moved that honey filled frame into the middle of a new box fitted with foundationless frames.  We'll see if they fill it up.

I then went to Stonehurst to see how the hive there was doing.  Here's what the top box looked like:

I moved one of these up into an empty box and added a box to this hive.  I also met the very nice new innkeepers, Paul and Lorrie.  Caroline and Gary have retired so I'll get to know this new couple as I work the bees over there.  

I also made a quick stop at Morningside to add a box to that fantastic hive.  Here's how it looks now:

Inviting Bees into a New Super of Foundationless Frames

This morning I visited the Morningside Community Garden hives to see how they are doing and to determine if either hive needed a new box.  I only had about 20 minutes so it helps to know the purpose of the inspection.  Once I've gotten my question answered, I can shut the hive up and go on to work.

Hive One did not need a new box.  They have three boxes and they had only built in four of the frames in the new box.  Since two of those were ladder frames, in essence they had only drawn out two of the new box's frames.

However Hive 2 was a different story.  They had built out seven of the eight frames in their second box so it was time to add a third box.  The photo below is of frame seven.  It isn't completely built out but I still want to add the box.


In a tree the bees build down.  I want to put the new box beneath the current ongoing second box.  To invite the bees into the super, I need to create a ladder of drawn honeycomb for them to traverse between the two boxes.  This will encourage them to build in the new box two which will contain six empty frames and two filled frames serving as the ladder.

I removed two empty frames from the new box to make space for the ladder frames.

In box two, I removed two frames of brood and eggs - in the same position as the two empty frames from the new box.


I put the two brood frames in positions 2 and 3 in the new second box.  It helps that they are brood frames because the bees will come into the box to keep the brood warm and fed.  You can use honey combs for the ladder, but brood combs are more inviting for the bees.

Below you can see the brood frames moved into position 2 and 3 in the new box.


In box two I pushed the frame in the number 1 position against frame 4 (making it now in position 3) and put the two empty frames in positions 1 and 2.

Now the box is all put back together.  The box with the "6" stenciled on it is the new empty box with the ladder in positions 2 and 3.  The box above it is the old second box (now box three), full except for the frames in positions 1 and 2 which are foundationless frames, waiting to be filled by the bees.

Another Bee Day - at Jeff and Valerie's House

Today I went to Jeff and Valerie's house to check the hives there.  I started with Five Alive.  Look at the beautiful wax they are drawing.  This is the last frame in the box so it is drawn out the least.



The hive was full in every frame except the outside frame, so I decided it needed a new box.  I put the new box under the top box and took two frames of brood out of that box to make a ladder in the new box.  (A ladder allows the bees passage to start drawing wax from the top bar.) When I took out a full frame, I replaced it with a foundationless frame with a wax strip as in the photo below.



This is what Five Alive looked like when I closed it up - and it's only April 3!



I then went to what we've called the swarm hive but is now Lenox Pointe 2 because we moved the queen by accident into that hive.

They aren't going crazy and aren't building up as fast as other hives, but they are storing lovely honey.



And they are equipped with a laying queen.



If you enlarge the photo below you can also see eggs.






Then I went to the original Lenox Pointe - remember the queen was only laying drones.  Well, that was just how she started - now she is laying beautiful brood - you can also see larvae in the photo below.



Her frames are arranged just so - with honey in the corners, pollen next, and capped brood.



Last but not at all least, I opened Colony Square.  The top box is a full box of honey and I know they need a new box.  Instead of going into the hive (because I knew I couldn't lift the fifty pound full box to position six (over my head), I opened it and added a new box above the top box.  I didn't make a ladder with their own frames, but did have two fully drawn frames that I put in the center of the new box to provide ladder facility.

And this is what Colony Square looked like when I left.

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 Miracle of Growth (Bee Growth, that is)

A week ago, I installed a package into this hive.  I put a Rapid Feeder inside an empty hive box on this hive.  So the hive began in a 10 frame (my only 10 frame hive in Atlanta).



I love looking at gorgeous newly drawn wax.  This is what the bees had drawn in the last frame next to the wall of the hive box.  The rest of the frames in the box were fully drawn and filled with either brood, pollen or nectar.



 I pulled the queen cage and obviously (since I had already seen frames with tiny eggs and c-shaped larvae) the queen had been released.


Inside the queen cage were dead worker bees.  I wondered if they simply died, since sometimes the accompanying workers do, or if the bees in the package killed the accompanying workers.



Since they had used so many frames in the bottom box, they needed another box and have grown another level!  I left the Rapid Feeder on since about 1/3 of the syrup was still there, but I'll probably think better of that since the nectar flow is on, and remove it tomorrow.  Bees much prefer nectar to woman-made sugar syrup, so they often do use the sugar syrup when nectar is available.

It's March and Colony Square is Bursting at the Seams

Today I gave a talk at the Riverside West Garden Club in Sandy Springs (part of Atlanta).  I reviewed the talk last night and packed the car this morning.  Yesterday I volunteered at the Publix Marathon in Atlanta (5:30 AM - 1 PM); worked the bees with Jeff in the afternoon; and went to a bee course planning meeting over dinner.

I wasn't functioning on all cylinders this morning.

I put my computer in the car, the LCD projector, some honey and crackers for them to taste, a box to take to Colony Square after the talk, and my bee gear.  I drove 25 minutes to the meeting site, set up all my equipment (computer and slide projector) and then discovered that I had left my flash drive back at home with the whole talk on it in Power Point.

Luckily I had another talk actually saved on the computer that covered the topics, but didn't have the lovely bees on flowers pictures that I always take to garden clubs.   Despite all of that,  I think the talk went OK.  Then I drove to Jeff's to add a box to Colony Square.

We've made two splits from Colony Square and it is still bursting at the seams.  I got fully suited and lit my smoker and opened the hive.  This hive is so angry all the time.  Bees head butted me throughout the small intrusion.  I decided I should name the two splits from this hive (also angry bees even in their new location at my house) Spawn of Satan One and Spawn of Satan Two (SOS1 and SOS2).

All I did to them today was remove the top box (about 50 pounds full of honey) and add another box under it.  I took two frames of comb from Box #3 and put them in Box #4 in the center.  I put foundationless frames in their place in Box # 3 (see below).

With the addition of the box below the top box and with the two ladder frames in the center of the hive, the bees are supposed to build comb more easily.  In a hollow tree, for example, the bees start at the top and build down.  So putting the box below is a more natural way for the bees to build their comb.



Bees were so in my face that all the photos I took were like the one below with a bee obscuring your view as she flew toward my veil in front of the camera!



In the end I left Colony Square with FIVE boxes - it's only March - and met Julia at the Blue Heron (see next post).  If things continue to go well, this hive will produce a record amount of honey.  It was so difficult to lift that fifty pound box by myself into the top position.  The second they have capped that honey, we are harvesting it.



Jeff showed me a unique way to stop the air flow to the smoker and I employed it today.  We'll call it Jeff's acorn method:

Great Progress at Stonehurst Place

I'm heading for Young Harris tomorrow so I stopped by Stonehurst Place today to check on the bees. I thought there was a slight chance they might need another box. I added a super to each hive on Monday, the 1st, and even though that was just about a week ago, we are in the middle of a nectar flow.

Both hives had good activity going in and out of the hives when I got there.

Hive one had nice white new honey comb in the second box but had not started making comb in the third box. I checkerboarded some of the comb from box 2 to box 3 to encourage them. I didn't move a lot of the comb because the queen is laying in the second box and there was some brood on the frames as well.

In the second hive at Stonehurst, the bees peeked up at me from box three between well-filled combs.  They had already filled every frame but one with comb and honey.

Here is some of their beautiful honey.  I expect the guests at Stonehurst will get to eat some of this as cut comb honey if the owner is open to that idea.

The cappings are just gorgeous!!

In the second super in this hive there was also brood.  This is a busy queen and a good, growing hive.

More brood.  I checkerboarded the frames in boxes three and four to increase the bees interest in box four.  In the process I had to cut off some honey-dripping comb so Jim, the inn-sitter while Caroline and Gary are away, and I tasted the first taste of their honey - really light and DELICIOUS.

I added a fourth box to this hive and put bottle tops on the inner cover corners of both hives to add to ventilation.  I thought we ordered slatted racks for these hives, but we don't have them.

Funny that two hives started at the same time could be in two different places.  The bees in hive two (from which Victor sampled 300 bees) are more productive than the bees so far in hive one.