Feeding Topsy on Tuesday

I fed Topsy on Tuesday. They are really going through the food. I found both interior Boardman feeders empty. I'll need to think about this hive as winter approaches. They are only occupying 10 bars of the 40 in the hive.

I'll need to move the follower board close to bar 10 to make the space smaller for winter. I'll also have to rethink feeding. Currently the feeders are far down the hive from the combs in unused space. I don't know how to locate feed close to the used bars for winter feeding.




You can see in the comb below that the bees are back-filling comb that has been used for brood raising with honey as the cells become available.



They are doing the same in this comb.



I have a ways to go to learn how better to handle the top bar hive. I still squash bees even using the scissor method of lowering the top bar. However, I find this a very calm hive and often wear open-toed sandals and just a jacket and veil when I am working with them.

Ross Conrad's Bee Tea

 August's Bee Culture has an article by Ross Conrad (he writes an article every month) on beekeeping in the northeast.  As it is autumn, he talks about preparing the hive for the winter.  Included as a sidebar for the article is his recipe for Bee Tea.  I decided to try it for feeding the bees at Blue Heron.

Here's the recipe:
16 cups white cane sugar
6 cups hot tap water
2 cups Chamomile or Thyme tea (already brewed)
1/2 tsp natural sea salt with minerals

You add the hot tap water to the sugar and salt and stir thoroughly (?).  You do boil the water for the tea and steep it for 10-15 minutes.  Then you mix it all together and store unused amounts in the refrigerator.

I have a hard time making 2:1 syrup without using really hot water.  Maybe the water out of the tap in Vermont where Ross lives is hotter than here in Atlanta! (note:  comment below indicates it's probably the chemistry of the water in Vermont compared to my Metro Atl water).

So  I heated my water and then stirred in the sugar and salt.  Even at that, I couldn't add the last four cups because the first 12 had not thoroughly dissolved.

My answer was to stir the last four cups into the hot tea after it had steeped.

The next time I make it, I will steep the tea and then stir the steeped tea into the water heating on the stove.  Then before the water boils, I'll turn it off and then stir in the sugar and salt.

Making the tea:

 Stirring all of it together:

Adding the syrup to my Blue Heron hive (notice it is more yellow than the usual clear syrup, courtesy of the Chamomile) :

You may wonder why I have both a baggie and a Boardman inside this hive.  It's an 8 frame hive and can't take two baggies, so I put a Boardman in so that I could put more feed on the hive at the same time, since there's room for the Boardman inside the medium box that is surrounding the feeding mechanisms.

Another post about Ross Conrad

So How's Topsy, the Top Bar, Doing?

I've been feeding Topsy a quart - two quarts a week for the last two weeks. On Tuesday I took two quarts of syrup over there and was pleased to find bees tumbling over each other at the entrance, loaded down with pollen.



I had only taken one quart over on Thursday the week before and it was totally used up. I did see about 10 small hive beetles on the Boardman - which upset me, but I'll take a small hive beetle trap over there - the Sonny-Mel will sit fine on the screened bottom - the next time I go.



The hive is only occupying bars 1 - 10 but there are plenty of bees. This is bar 10. I pulled it out and I think it's just bees clinging to each other like they would do on a slatted rack. I was in a hurry and didn't stick my finger in to find out if there were comb under the masses, but if you'll look close up, there doesn't appear to be.



Bar 9 is a brood comb and had capped brood on it, also covered with bees.



I'm going to continue to feed this hive through October and I'll put an SHB trap in it. I will probably move the follower board close to bar 10 as the cold weather approaches to close their space and make it easier for the cluster.

A Visit to My Top Bar Hive

Valerie is in Italy on her honeymoon (she and Jeff got married in April 2009 but didn't take a honeymoon at that time) so I stopped by her house to bring in mail and check on the bees. I haven't looked at the hive in a couple of weeks and given my current bee experience, I'm scared to visit any hive for fear of what I'll find.

Topsy was busy as bees can bee. Bees were bumping into each other at the entrance. The kudzu above and behind the hive is past its bloom but it's aster season and there are asters everywhere in bloom.



I had two Boardman feeders inside the hive and both were empty. Unfortunately I only brought one quart of sugar syrup with me, but will bring two the next time I come. This is a view of the inside of the feeding area and a giant beetle caught by accident on the screen in the hive. I also saw a few small hive beetles on the Boardman feeders and will bring my Sonny-Mel trap the next time - it can easily sit on the screen at the bottom of this hive.



Some of the old comb I had tied in as a lure has melted through the string and fallen to the bottom of the hive. I'm not going to move it just now because it serves an insulation purpose for the moment. Maybe in the spring cleaning I'm clear it out of the hive.



Bees came out to see what was I doing when I removed the roof. I was very cautious to explore this hive much and didn't remove a single comb. I've got to get over the overly cautious part - I'm so afraid that I'll do something to cause the demise of the hive after my current losses. I must inspect this hive for real when I come back on Thursday afternoon.

New box on the nuc

My little "tree" hive is growing. I added another medium nuc box to this hive. I replenished their food and hope the queen is doing well. I haven't really looked into the box - just saw eggs on one frame and closed it up. But I have my fingeres crossed.

At this time of year, this is the only way to use a Boardman feeder. Inside the hive like this, it doesn't encourage robbing. Attached to the front of the hive, it does.





Hannah doesn't seem intimidated by these bees!

And on the deck, another inspection

This not-exactly-queenless hive is not doing well, but I don't understand what is going on. They have a queen who isn't laying. They've had a small hive beetle problem but that appears much more under control. They aren't consuming the sugar syrup I've had on there for two weeks.

What's going on?

The Sonny-Mel trap is accumulating dead beetles by the day. I saw no beetles under the cover and only two on the under side of the inner cover. There are lots of dead ones in the trap below. I also had an AJ's on this hive and it was full. I refreshed the lure in the Sonny-Mel trap and put more oil in the AJs. I also added a second AJ's beetle trap.



I didn't go deep into this box. I pulled up two frames of honey from the bottom box, so they do have some honey. Maybe that's why they aren't laying or consuming.



The nuc hive is going great guns. They had emptied the two Boardman's feeders. I replenished their supplies.



In the hive there is laying going on and you can see at least five eggs in this picture and two tiny c-shaped larvae. The eggs are at 2 and 3 o'clock. The queen is eager.


I keep thinking about Don K in Lula who points proudly to his nuc hive with five boxes on it and says, "How much closer to a tree can you get?" His nuc hive is very productive. I am going to add another box to this nuc hive and have a tree hive on my deck myself!

Big Bee Day Part Three: Topsy Top Bar at Valerie's House

And what's not to love about bee inspections in the Atlanta heat? Wanting even more fun, I went to Valerie's and opened the hive at the end of the day on Sunday. The top bar hive is still confined to the 10 bars they have used from the beginning.

In the middle of the hive, I had tied in some wax to inspire the bees. They aren't using it and it is no longer tied up well - this was the beginning of my inspection. I really went in because I have been feeding them the too-moist honey I harvested a while back. This bar was over the Boardman feed I have resting on two pieces of wood on the hive bottom.



The queen is still laying and the girls are making beautiful comb. There are bees festooning at the bottom of this comb.


Some of their comb is really perfect.



Isn't this pretty - Valerie kept taking pictures!



They have taken all the honey I have given them.  There are no combs of just stored honey in this hive which occupies about 10 bars of the top bar hive.

I left them with two Boardman feeders - one with the last of the moisture rich honey and the other with sugar syrup.  I didn't want to put sugar syrup in until I was sure there would be no honey to harvest from this hive this year.

But aren't their combs lovely?  And I worked them in just a jacket, open toed sandals and no gloves.  These are the calmest bees....from Don at Dixie Bee Supply.  I'm thinking since the hive is so small that I'll move the follower board to the end of the ten bars they are using as winter approaches to give them less space.  There are always bees all over the interior of the top bar box, but the life of the hive is in the bars that they have drawn out and used.

Top Bar Hive is HUNGRY!

Before I left Atlanta to come to Boone for EAS, I went over to Valerie's to check on the top bar hive.  Today at EAS I am going to a workshop about how to build a top bar from scraps and weeds.  Hmmmm.

Here's the entry corner of the hive.  They are enthusiastically coming in and out.  Kudzu drapes over the fence above the hive and it is about to come into bloom.  That will give the bees some nectar.  In the meantime, they are hungry bees.



I brought another jar of the too-thin honey to feed to them.  They had completely drained the quart jar I left for them last week.  I transferred the Boardman top to the new jar.


I have the Boardman sitting on two shims inside the hive on the screened bottom.  I set it in there again, much to the bees' delight.



I stuck my camera inside the hive and took a picture.  Here is the parade of top bar comb.  You can see that they don't like the cotton string that I used to tie in some fallen comb.  There is also comb on the screened bottom - people tell me that comb sometimes falls off of the top bars onto the floor of the hive.  I hate that the bees put that much effort into wax building only to lose the comb like that.



Here the honey sits with the bees coming to feed.

I have just about enough of that thin honey to provide them with one more quart jar.  I hope that the Kudzu will  be in bloom when I get home so that I won't have to worry about them so much.

Current Blue Heron Report on Homeless Bees

On Wednesday, Julia and I set up these hives on our remaining cinder blocks - we put a nuc with drawn frames on top of one set of cinder blocks and we uprighted the yellow hive and returned it to its cinder blocks. The frames in it were wet and muddy but we put them in the hive all the same.

I returned on Thursday to find that the bees had emptied the jar of honey completely. However, they were not flying in and out of the nuc. Instead they were flying in and out of the yellow hive.



So I moved the nuc and set it on top of the yellow hive. At least the frames in it are habitable. I set the Boardman up at the entry to the hive as one would normally place a Boardman.

If any of you are wondering why there is a frame stuck in the side of this hive, there is a reasonable explanation. The yellow hive is an 8 frame hive. Its bottom board, slatted rack, inner cover and top cover were washed down the creek in the flood. I had an 8 frame top cover at home, but not another 8 frame bottom board or slatted rack.

I brought from home a 10 frame bottom board and we set the hive on that. This leaves that front corner unsupported. To keep the hive level we had to slide something into the space and in the middle of the Blue Heron field, all we had was an extra frame - so I poked it in the space to level the hive.



Julia and I decided to determine if the bees were considering occupying this hive (they are flying in and out of it). We didn't know for sure so I resolved to return to the Blue Heron at dusk to see what the situation was. I returned at dusk to find a confusing picture. Bees were flying frantically all around the hive, as it looks like when a hive is being robbed.

The only way to see if bees are staying in the hive at night would be to go look after dark. I couldn't go back there after dark - it's just not safe - to go alone to the back of this field where a flood has just happened. I didn't particularly want to meet either a snake or a wandering human back there in the dark, so I didn't go.



If the bees are occupying the hive, we have two options:

1. Purchase a queen from someone close to Atlanta like Purvis or Fatbeeman and install her into the hive. Then we'd foster the hive through the winter at Blue Heron.
   
2. Move the hive with the homeless bees to my house and combine it with another hive.
   

I asked Cindy Bee about doing that and she said that it probably wouldn't work because Blue Heron is only 2.4 miles, driving from my house and as the crow (bee) flies, it is only 2 miles from my house. She said the bees would return to Blue Heron and not stay with the hive combination.

So I think I may have only prolonged their lives a short bit by this effort.

What to do? What to do?

Feeding Blue Heron in the Cold Weather

Yesterday we had significant snow in Atlanta, but since it's March by this afternoon, all of it had melted away. Around 2 PM I went to Blue Heron to add food to the hives. There was still a tiny bit of snow as you can see in the first picture.



When I arrived at Blue Heron, my car said the temperature was 42 degrees. The jars of sugar syrup had been in my car for the last couple of days and in the cold, unscrewing the top was quite a challenge.

If I had been at home, I would have held the lid under a hot stream of water until I could easily unscrew it. However, no such condition was possible here so I used my Swiss Army knife to loosen the lid. I then substituted a solid lid with tiny punched holes in it.


There were a few bees actually flying around the hives, but unprotected by veil and gloves, I put these two Boardman feeders on our hives. We have added food to these hives now about every two days.

Don't you love Julia's Apis Mellifera?


In case you didn't believe the bees were out and about, I took a picture of one who landed on the grass right in front of the hive!