Consolidating a Hive as Winter Preparation

We haven't checked on Blue Heron in about a month so we decided to go over there today. Julia's hives at home were markedly low on stores and not at all ready for winter so we assumed Blue Heron was probably in the same state. We didn't want to feed these hives but are afraid that we will need to.

Noah looks into his hive there - at least we see bees. We noted that the screened ventilated top cover needed to be replaced with a solid cover for winter.



Unlike Julia's hives at home, there was some honey in this hive. This frame is typical of what we saw....not full frames of honey but some honey on enough frames to fill a box.




When a frame was mostly empty as the one hanging on the rack is, we decided to leave it out of the hive to consolidate and give the bees less space as winter approaches.



Frames with brood or with nectar stored Julia put into one box. The box originally had about five frames in use and the other five were empty comb. So she substituted frames from the second box that were in use for the unused one (thus removing one box from the hive).




In the end she had a box full of frames that were in use - either for nectar storage or some brood.



When we opened the bottom box, we found the queen on the second frame we pulled. That felt good to all of us so we closed up the hive.



There was brood in the bottom box as well as you can see on the frame below.



Julia had brought honey to feed this hive so she put a baggie of honey on the hive and cut slits.



Now that we are committed to feeding these bees, they will need feed again probably in less than a week, although the field around the Blue Heron garden is full of blooming goldenrod and aster.

First Inspection in Rabun County

The hives were installed on Monday. I inspected them for the first time early Saturday morning. It was a partly cloudy day and the temperature was 62.

The bees housed in the original hive box had not taken much of the sugar syrup, nor had they appeared to empty any more of the syrup can that I had left for them. I did give each of these hives a frame of capped honey so I hoped they were making use of it.

I installed the hives on Monday and overnight we had violent winds, hail and rain in this area of Georgia as well as Atlanta. I didn't know how bad it was in Rabun County so I didn't know how much this may or may not have affected these bees.

They had released the queen. See the frayed ends of the kitchen twine attached to the queen cage? Bees dislike foreign material in their hives and do their best to figure out a way to carry it out.

In the box the bees were festooning between the frames where the queen had been. She was between frames 3 and 4 so the hive had built more on that side of the box. I added a frame between these two to make up for the missing frame space that the queen cage had occupied.

The honey frame I had left them was being well used. You can see the scraps of wax on the lower right where they have chewed away the cappings to get to the honey.

This was a large two pound package and you can see the bees peeking through the frames.

I didn't see the queen or any eggs, but there were so many bees on the occupied frames that I didn't worry. I'm going back next weekend and if I don't see evidence of the queen then, I'll be concerned.

I left the feeding situation a little different than at installation since I was worried that they couldn't get to the ziploc baggie easily enough. I left the inner cover hole partially open to the upstairs section above the inner cover and balanced the syrup can on two rocks.

Next I went to hive #2.  I brought an 8 frame inner cover and top with me to replace the jerry-rigged way I had left it on Monday.  I forgot to take a picture of the closed up hives so you can't see that I left it in better shape, but I did!

Here's a picture of the frame blocking access from the outside to the inner cover feeding arrangement.

Inside the bees were drawing wax.  Here's one of the beginnings of comb building.

There is wax under the collection of bees you see in the photo below.  They are definitely busy bees, working hard to build wax for their own use.

I saw the queen in this hive and I saw eggs.  I'm sorry I didn't get her picture - she was a vision of loveliness to me!

Here is the capped frame of honey I had left them.  They obviously used it as well.

Again I left the inner cover feeding area more accessible and left the syrup can raised up enough for the bees to access the syrup, should they need it.

I'm back in N Georgia for a conference this coming weekend and will check on these hives again.  At that time, whether they need it or not, I'll leave each box with a new box of frames because it might be a couple of weeks before I'm back in the area and they will need it since the flow has begun in Atlanta and will in a few days in N Georgia.

Many apologies to any of you who visited the day I posted this.  Something is wrong with Picasa's relationship with Blogger and for my last several posts, the pictures don't upload but remain on localhost.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

What a Mess!

Yesterday I arrived in South Georgia to inspect the 10 hives we installed a week ago.  I was excited to see what the bees had done.

But we found a real mess.....Phrases ran through my head like "shock and awe;" "it's always darkest before the dawn;" "pride goeth before a fall."   And "What WAS I thinking?"

The guys had reported that there was a swarm of bees living in an abandoned stove on the property before I left Atlanta.  I had driven down with a hive to put this swarm into - old frames, 10 frame medium hive since I don't use those if I can help it any more.  I thought we'd capture the swarm and have a bonus 11th hive.

We started by looking at the stove at 11 AM.  No bees.  The scouts had found a good enough home and the hive and gone to better places.  We then went to Hive #10 to begin our inspections.  

Hive #10 had absconded.  Probably they were the bees in the stove.  I was heartsick.  If I had only arrived the day before, etc. etc.  

With a sinking feeling I opened Hive #9 and the bees were still there, but these bees had not built comb in the frames provided in the hive box but had built beautiful comb attached to the inner cover of the medium super we had used as a surround for the Ziploc baggie feeder.  We opened Hive # 8 and found the same occurrence; same with Hive # 7; same with Hive #6.  Every single hive had built comb attached to the inner cover and had not moved into the hive box!

Horrors!

OK, so we had to figure out what to do.  I had not come prepared for this, but we decided to cut the comb from the inner cover and tie it into our foundationless frames to get the bees going the way they should.  We ran out of rubber bands after the first hive and started using the ball of kitchen twine that I had brought.  We did this on every single hive - we worked from 11 - 3:30 nonstop and moved all the work the bees had done.

I've never had my hands in so many bees.  I got stung about eight times, but never badly until the last sting in the pad of my third finger.  The whole time I tried to move slowly and gently and we did the best we could.

However, I am so worried now - often after a hive is messed with like that, the bees abscond, or ball the queen and kill her.  Or we could have injured the queen in the transition.  

I don't know if this happened because the baggie feeder occupied 2/3 of the top bar access and they experienced it as a barrier.  I don't know if this happened because we used a medium super as a surround, thus providing them with a hollow cavity like a tree.  I just know that I am so sad about this mess.

Here are the tragic pictures. We didn't leave them with any food. The guys were going to set up a set of feeding jars in the center of the fields near each hive and everything is blooming in S Georgia now.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.  All the hives had orientation flying going on as we left them.

Checking on Blue Heron

We're in early winter phase in Atlanta. The nights are in the high 30s and low 40s but the days soar up to 69 or so. The temperature doesn't rise to flying temperature until the middle of the day. There is, of course, nothing to forage but the bees do fly to relieve themselves. I also wonder if they are generally exploring to see the state of the world at large.

My nephew Ben and his fiance, Stacey, were here this weekend, so they wanted to see the Blue Heron hive. We walked the trail over there - two Eagle scouts have made improvements to the trail that are so wonderful - and then visited the bees.

Here are Ben and Stacey, appropriately attired for the visit.



My hive had bees flying in and out - I saw at least 20 when we first walked up. It was about 59 degrees when we arrived at the hive.
They had emptied the baggie and almost consumed all of the bottled syrup in the interior Boardman. However, clearly it's easier for them to access and use the baggie feed.

I replaced both the baggie and the jar below and cut three slits in the baggie.






Julia is on vacation and asked me to check on her bees. I did not see a single bee coming out of the hive and her feeder was completely full. She asked me to take the feeder off, but I didn't have a reasonable way to dispose of the sugar water, so I left it there. I'm really worried that the hive has died.

It is SO hard to make 2:1 Syrup

About half the time I succeed; about half the time, it crystallizes. It is such a frustrating process. And the hard part is you don't know it's going to crystallize until after it has cooled off.

I made 2:1 syrup (actually bee tea - chamomile and thyme added to the 2:1 syrup) early this morning to take to Valerie's house today. I poured it into jars while warm, put it in the car and delivered it to Topsy around noon today. The third jar that I filled is crystallizing tonight. That means that the syrup I put on Topsy will also be crystallizing.....GRRRR.



According to this site, saturating the solution with sugar to the point at which the water can take no more is an invitation for crystals to form.  This is why so many commercial beekeepers use high fructose corn syrup.  Fructose does not crystallize.  But sucrose (sugar) does.  You add lemon juice or cream of tartar to candy to keep it from crystallizing.  I will look into whether anyone ever adds lemon juice to 2:1 sugar syrup.

You can see the crystals forming at the bottom of this jar.  Once it gets started the crystals beget more crystals and on and on like Genesis until the entire bottle is solid sugar again.



Another view of my frustration.



The two bottles of 2:1 that I took off of Topsy also had been busy crystallizing, as you can see in the picture below with crystals forming around the top of the jar (the bottom as it is set into the Boardman inside the top bar hive - I don't feed with Boardman feeders on the outside of any hive).  The bees had pretty much emptied the jars despite the crystals, thank goodness.



I have all kinds of objections to high fructose corn syrup, but adding a tablespoon is recommended to keep crystal formation from starting.  I think also adding a small bit of lemon juice might accomplish the same thing.  I may try this in my next batch.

After one of the comments below, I looked up Honey B Healthy and it does have lemongrass in the mix - maybe the acid of the lemongrass in it is what keeps the syrup from forming crystals because the sugar in it is sucrose.

Tomorrow when I make more bee tea I'm going to try to add a teaspoon of lemon juice and see what the effect is on the crystal issue.  BTW, I found a post on Beemaster where someone recommends adding a little lemon juice to the mix.

Blue Heron Visit on November 9, 2010

Julia and I stopped at the Blue Heron to feed our hives and get a feel for how they are doing.  Her hive is still questionable, but we added food to the hive top feeder that still had a good bit of food left from our previous visit.  We worried that the food was below the duct tape line but it was not.  We did see (and I took pictures of) bees inside the mesh to drink the syrup.

My hive was full of bees and they had emptied the baggie, but not the Boardman jar.  I replaced both the baggie with a new full one and the jar with a full one.  The hive was quite heavy and I am hopeful that they are using the most recent box I added for syrup storage.  I did not pull up a frame to see, but will the next time I am there because there's no point in leaving an empty box on through the winter.

Here's the slide show of what we saw at Blue Heron. Remember you can click on the slide show to see the captions, to change the speed of the picture changes, and to see it full sized:

Quick Rabun Report

It snowed in Rabun County this weekend and was cold, cold, cold the whole time we were there. I didn't want to disturb the bees but am worried about this hive since I don't think they are ready for winter.

The prediction for this coming week is that the highs will be in the 60s and 70s after noon each day of this coming week.

I do want to give these bees more food, so I stopped by on my drive back to Atlanta and switched out the empty baggies for two full ones. I don't know if it will help them, but I'd like to think so.

Given the temperature (around 42 when we stopped) I only pulled off the top, yanked out the baggies and installed two more rather quickly. There were a few dead bodies on the landing as one would expect in weather too cold to fly.

Blue Heron Going Into Winter

Julia and I made a quick feeding/question answering trip to Blue Heron today to feed our hives and see what's going on with them. Noah came too.....he's got a creative way of thinking about things, so it helps so much to have him with us.

Julia's remaining hive at BH is weak in numbers and we are quite worried about it. She took the hive top feeder off and set it on the ground. Since there are three hives of active bees there, we covered it with a cloth to keep robbing or drowning from happening while we checked on the hive.

We wanted to pull up some frames to see if the bees are storing anything. You can see that there are few bees here in this hive. The frames in this box have some stored honey but given how much syrup has been available to them, the minimal storage in this box probably points to the low numbers of bees in the hive.

Our nights have been cool and we were loath to fool around too much with these hives, respecting the bees' winter plan for themselves, so we elected only to check the top box for stores and do nothing more. There was some storage, but not a lot and the food in the upper feeder hadn't been touched much.

I've heard from other beekeepers in the area that their bees are slowing down in taking syrup. This could be because we have a good aster flow going and it may be because the hives are getting enough stored for winter. This hive, however, is not at all ready for surviving the winter.

We filled the hive top feeder. Julia brought a solid inner cover to substitute for the ventilated cover that has been on the hive all summer. When we put it on, Julia was worried that bees might come through the hole in the inner cover and drown in the hive top feeder. Noah, in a moment of brilliance, suggested that we put the ventilated cover back on on top of the inner cover, thus closing the inner cover off to bees entering the hive that way.

When we opened my hive the bees had only taken 1/2 of the pint bottle and about half of the baggie feeder. The baggie had been on the hive for 10 days at this point and I think they should have taken it all by now. I had replaced the pint jar on Thursday because I wondered if the previous jar had clogged holes in its top.

Noah didn't know I was using bee tea (which has thyme floating in it). He looked at my baggie and said, "Something has started sprouting in there!"

I've been wondering if this hive were out of room. Unfortunately I forgot to take any more pictures. We took off the Boardman and gently lifted up the baggie so I could look at the frames in the top box. This hive has a deep and a medium. It's an 8 frame hive so really it needs to have another medium on it going into winter to have enough stores.

I had brought with me a box of drawn comb to add to this hive. I pulled up - with great difficulty both because of its weight and because of the amount of propolis these girls have generated - the second frame from the outer edge. It was full of honey. I decided to interpret this as the hive has no more room to store their syrup/nectar.

I went ahead and added the second medium since it is drawn comb and the bees can go right ahead and use it. I won't be able to check this hive again until early in the second week of November. If they haven't made use of the drawn comb at that point, then I'll take this extra box off and hope they can make it through the winter with the deep and medium 8 frame all full of honey.

Since our first hives at Blue Heron died in the flood of Sept 2009, these hives are the first possibility for having a second year hive at Blue Heron. Kevin and Peter (the owners of the third hive) have a very active, apparently thriving hive, so there's a good chance theirs will make it through. Julia's first hive died and her remaining hive is weak. I so much want this one of mine to succeed.

Maybe they'll make use of this new box to store the bee tea syrup and will have enough resources.

I know I'm keeping my fingers crossed (toes too).

Revisiting Bee Tea

It's been over a week since I have fed either Blue Heron or Valerie's hives - I decided to take care of that today so I went with Julia to Blue Heron before I went to work and to Topsy at a break after lunch.  Here is the process of making the bee tea and the feeding of the hives.

I put a slideshow up because I am now including both chamomile and thyme from my garden in the bee tea.  Interestingly, the hive at Blue Heron had only used half of the baggie syrup and almost none of the pint jar in the Boardman on the interior.

I wonder if they have run out of storage room?  Or if the aster blooming in the fields is meeting their current needs?  Or if I hadn't cut long enough slits in the baggie or had clogged holes in the jar lid of the Boardman?  I cut longer slits in the baggie and changed out the pint jar for a jar with a better lid.

We'll see this weekend when Julia and I revisit these hives to do a final consolidation for winter.

Bits of Bee News from Rabun County

I arrived in Rabun County on Thursday and stopped by the Community Garden to check on the bees. They had, of course, gone through the syrup I left for them when I was there the first weekend in October. I put two bags of bee tea on the hive and left, expecting these bees to go through the syrup as quickly as my bees at Blue Heron or at Valerie's house do.



I also changed out the top "migratory" cover (I put it in quotes because it really was a solid bottom board acting as a top cover) for an inner cover and a telescoping cover anchored with the usual brick.

Meanwhile Rabun County had its first frosty night that night resulting in beautiful trees....but slowing down the previously copious fall nectar flow.



I expected to replenish the food at the hive on Saturday morning and then again before I left either Sunday evening or Monday morning.

I stopped by the hive on Saturday morning to find three dead bees on the landing board.  At first I was afraid of robbing, but realized that these were three full bee bodies - usually when robbing has happened the bodies are ripped in half or you see bee body parts.  These were girls who died but it was too cold to carry out the bodies.  So they left them on the landing until the temperatures rose later in the day.



They had only begun to use the bee tea.  One baggie was more diminished than the other, but they were not ready for a new baggie.

So now my plan changed to stop by the hive as I left town to return to Atlanta and change out the baggie rather than have an opportunity to feed them three times in five days!

On the way back to my house on that cold Saturday morning, I stopped by Osage Market - a farmer's market on 441 that is overflowing with fall vegetables.  Sadly this is my last visit for the year as the market closes for the season on October 31.  Bob Binnie, a well-known Georgia beekeeper, maintains an observation hive there.  

Given the freezing weather of the night before, the bees in the observation hive were clustering and I took their picture.  Their cluster is actually a figure eight because of the flatness of the one-dimensional hive.   Seeing them really made me wish to have an observation hive - maybe next year.

The weather stayed cold while we were there - after all, it is fall.  So when I returned to the hive on Sunday afternoon as I drove back to Atlanta, the bees still had not emptied the two baggies I had left.

If these same baggies were on an Atlanta hive, the food would have been moved to comb practically overnight.  But it has been too cold in Rabun and doesn't warm up enough for bee action until the middle of the day.

This may be my last chance to feed these bees because I won't be back until the first weekend in November. So I took the most diminished baggie off of the hive and replaced it with a very full bee tea bag (about 2 1/2 quarts).  Here's the baggie I took off - the bees are still feeding at the slits even as the baggie is on the inner cover.

The full baggie and the remaining amount in the other baggie will at least help them since the afternoons are in the 70s so they can move the syrup around.

I think this hive remains too light for winter survival.  I'm going to try to address this issue when I return at the beginning of November - maybe by putting an inverted jar or jars above the cluster on end bars to allow feeding during cold but not freezing days.  Jennifer Berry talked about doing this at our most recent bee meeting.

To do this I'll need to put a medium or deep empty super to surround the feeding jars.  I wonder if for insulation purposes it would be a good idea to fill the empty space around the bottles with crumpled newspaper or if that would drive the bees crazy.  I'll put a post on Beemaster and see what response I get.