Happier Bee News on the Old Home Front

Yesterday I taught Hive Manipulation at the Tara Beekeepers' Short Course in the morning. In the afternoon it was warm enough to open my hives at my old house and I have been so anxious to see how they are doing.

Five was ALIVE!
 (I loved this movie when my kids were young).

The first sign that Five was alive was this bee with full pollen baskets entering the hive. Bees laden with pollen don't come in to rob out a hive.

I saw another who missed the entrance and was on a stick on the ground.

Inside there were lots of bees. This is the bottom box but the one above had bees as well.

Here we can see signs of a laying queen - brood and eggs. I was so thrilled with this - so much more fun than opening up my dead-outs at home. Oh, and BTW, I saw drones (at least 10 in this small hive) and some drone brood.

Inside the swarm hive I found a different story. Three full boxes of honey, no brood and just a baseball sized group of bees….but there was no sign of a queen. I felt impressed that these girls had made it through the winter and had not been robbed out by a larger hive. I thought I would take a good frame of brood and eggs from both Lenox Pointe or Colony Square and give it to this hive to see how they would do.

Really the smarter decision would be to combine this hive with Five Alive and maybe I'll do that next weekend.

Lenox Pointe has had less bee traffic than I would like to see, but they had brood and eggs in the bottom box. I couldn't move this frame to the Swarm hive because it's a deep and the swarm hive is in all mediums. Here is a strong argument for uniform frame size, but I started Lenox Pointe from a Jennifer Berry nuc last year and it was established in a deep, as a result.

They had good honey stores, as well. This hive is going to be fine.  I did take a frame of brood and eggs from their Box #2 and put it into the swarm hive.  My plan was also to take one from Colony Square.

Then I opened Colony Square. I didn't take many pictures and the ones I took were blurry. It was filled with bees. There are as many bees in that hive now as in its strongest day last summer and it was a powerful hive then. Jeff was helping me and he called out the pollen colors he saw coming into the hive:  red, orange, yellow.

As we lifted the top solidly filled with honey box off of the hive, we uncapped drone brood that they had put between the boxes. The bees were hopping mad.

I had on a veil and jacket. I also had on gloves because my hands were stung in the swarm hive (queenless and angry with my intrusion).  Jeff just had on a jacket and veil as well. He helped me lift off the second box (also heavy but with brood as well as honey), and again we tore up drone brood between the boxes.   Jeff had company who came to see the new grand baby, and wasn't expecting to work the bees with me, so I encouraged him to go be with his guests.

Meanwhile I was using hive drapes and smoke but these bees were so unhappy. Suddenly I realized at least three were inside my veil. I walked away from the hive and killed at least one of the bees inside the veil by pinching her, but not before I had been stung three times.

Why didn't I just stop the inspection?

This was a day when I could work the bees, the temperature was finally right, and the drone brood between the frames pointed to a need for space. These bees are going to swarm unless I really work hard to keep them contained and I knew one way would be to checkerboard the brood box to expand the brood space.

So….I put on my Golden Bee suit - just happened to have it in the car. My friend Julia had been using it until she got one of her own and had conveniently just returned it to me. I think I'll keep it in the car on bee visits!

I took a new box with a few drawn frames and some strip frames and went back to Colony Square,  waiting for me, draped but angry. The bottom deep had brood in it, but I needed to do this with medium boxes. The next box (#2) had brood as well, so I checkerboarded it with the new box I brought with me.

I completely forgot about the swarm hive and did not pull a frame of brood and eggs for it.

Checkerboarding means that in Box #2, frames 1, 3, 5, 7 were left with brood in them and frames 2, 4, 6, and 8 are now empty comb or undrawn frames. In Box #3, frames 2, 4, 6, and 8 are brood frames moved up from Box #2 and frames 1, 3, 5, and 7 are now empty comb or undrawn frames. This expands the brood nest as per Michael Bush (he calls it unlimited brood nest) and gives the queen more room to lay.

You can only do this if the hive has enough nurse bees to keep the brood warm and this hive is bursting at the seams...so no problem there.  Next Sunday, if the weather is good, Jeff and I are going to make two nucs from this hive.  

This is how the hive looked almost an hour after I was done....and it's February!  This hive is bound to swarm unless we do something.

Eager Bees at Blue Heron

In the low 60s today and the bees were flying eagerly out and into the Blue Heron hive. You can see loads of both yellow and white pollen. The yellow is probably from the red maple, currently in bloom. The light beige color is probably also from another maple. I am just relieved to see all of it and all of the activity.

My daughter reports that the bees are flying at Topsy at her house as well.





The hive went into winter with a deep and two medium boxes. The top box was a surround for baggie feeding and an interior Boardman feeder and I didn't remove it as winter began. If the bees are not in the deep box, I'll remove it this year at my first inspection. I'd much prefer to be in all medium boxes.

The Bees are Out and About - Pollen in December???

Today as the "winter" temperature rose to the high 60s, the bees were out and about at all four hives. There was orientation behavior, particularly at Mellona and at Aristaeous2. I was pleased to see so much flying because I know there is life at all the hives - what a relief.



At Persephone, I saw two bees with full loads of yellow pollen in their pollen baskets - can you believe it? What in the world might be blooming in December? BTW, I "googled" pollen in Georgia in December and found that the only pollen present right now in Georgia is cedar...so it must be the source of the yellow pollen being brought into the hives.

In addition, that probably means the queen is doing OK because there must be babies to feed, although they may simply be refortifying their stores.

If you click on the picture below, you can see the bee at the entry way with one pollen-laden leg. Both pollen-carrying bees went into the hive too quickly for me to catch more than that.

Of course, another task when it's flying weather is the carrying out of the dead. Many bee bodies lie cast away on my deck. I'm sure the wren will have a feast.

Good News for the Bees Who Found Me

The bees who found me are busily working in this nuc hive. They have filled four frames out of five in the bottom box and I have another medium nuc box above them with drawn comb. I hope that isn't too much space for them to defend, but they need to build up fast. I have been replacing their sugar syrup every day.



Here you can see the colored pollen they are packing into the cells. Randy Oliver said that it is important that there be varied pollen colors and while this is not too varied, they are bringing in several shades of yellow.



I never saw the queen but the camera did!!!! There she is escaping my view on the right side of the screen. I can't tell from the pictureif she has a red dot on her thorax since her thorax is out of view, but this is only a four frame hive. Hopefully the next time I open it I will actually see her with my eyes instead of the camera lens. It did give me great hope to see that she is alive in the hive. I hope they
can build up stores to make it through the winter.

The State of Bee-ing of the Swarm Hive

The swarm hive has cleaned house and now occupies one half of the box they are in. They had a raunchy collection of frames to work with so today I substituted some drawn comb on deep frames from my absconded Proteus hive from last year. I put those frames in the unoccupied section of the hive. The swarm bees were starting to draw wax and have been quite busy.
Bees with pollen laden legs are landing at the swarm hive every few seconds. Seeing this, I felt optimistic, because although this doesn't necessarily mean there's a laying queen and brood who need pollen, it can mean that. At the very least it means the bees are anticipating young if their queen is still a virgin.
I also moved the swarm bees onto the Country Rubes screened bottom board and they seemed quite pleased. I feel much better about their having a screened bottom board.

On this inspection, I didn't look closely at the bees and didn't look for the queen or eggs - I just wanted to see if the bees needed different frames and to see if they were doing bee work in the hive (building wax, making the place their own, etc.).

I also took another unused deep and set up another swarm lure hive. The new swarm hive took over my old swarm lure set-up, so now I have a new one. I put the solid bottom board and the landing stand from the new swarm hive and set them up as the base of this lure hive.

I also did an inspection on Bermuda and Mellona. Both had eggs, young brood, and lots of bees. Bermuda , the oldest of my hives, is burgeoning with bees. But both hives looked really good. Bermuda has four medium boxes on it and brood in every box. Mellona is building up more slowly, but building up all the same. Mellona has bees and brood in three boxes.

I do what's known as unlimited brood nest because I don't use a queen excluder and let the queen lay wherever she wishes.

On an interesting side note - I did not see one single SHB. When I first opened the hives this spring, I saw lots of them. I don't have any traps in the hives at the moment, but there is not a small hive beetle to be seen. I think this is an argument for a strong hive - great bees in charge, no evident hive beetles until at least later in the season.

So much activity in my bee yard!

Lots of Bright Yellow Pollen Coming In

It was bright and sunny today. In the warmth the bees were out in force. many delivered loads of bright yellow pollen to the hives. The red maple is blooming now and the pollen probably is coming from that. According to this page, which is organized by blooming time of the species, the pollen of the red maple is grey, but the pollen of the maple tree is generally yellow. So the bees are probably delivering pollen from a maple tree - not specifically the red maple.

Good news! The Bees in Both hives are alive and flying

When the temperature hit 50 degrees (F) this morning, the bees started flying out of both hives. We are supposed to have a high in the 60s today so they should have some time to do cleansing flights and carry out the dead.

I even noticed a bee bringing in pollen. The only thing blooming around my house is a Camellia Sasanqua. The Sasanqua blooms in early winter and the one in my yard is blooming a lot right now. I guess that's where she got it - the pollen looks like what I see in the plant.

The first two pictures are from Bermuda. The second two are from Mellona. In the first Mellona picture, one bee is trying to convince another bee that she is dying and should be carried away.

There is less activity at Mellona, but it has always been a smaller and more tranquil hive than Bermuda.

Well, at least for the moment, I am relieved that all seems well in my bees' world.

Honeybee on Echinecea

This morning when I walked outside to place the solar wax melter on my garden walkway, I saw this bee working hard on the purple coneflower.

In this picture you can see pollen on her back legs.

Amazing effort! She is probably an older field bee because the hair on her thorax has been worn off.

Small Swarm Appears to be Doing Well

I didn't inspect the hives today, but wanted to glance in the small swarm nuc to see how things look. You'll see very few bees on the landing, but I don't think they have much need for foraging right now. I supplied them with a full frame of honey from Mellona as well as the honey around the edges of the brood frames I gave them.

Currently they have three frames of brood cells with honey on the edges and one completely filled frame of honey (in the #5 posiition, the one marked 2007). And they have a frame from the old hive left from the swarm's arrival in the #1 position which has some pollen on it but nothing else (the one with the staple at the end).

I opened the nuc and didn't hear the "we-are-queenless" roar. Instead they are quietly working and there are many bees - you can see them between each frame.

If the new queen (assuming she is there) has started laying, as she should have in the last day or so, then we can assume there will be a need for foraging for pollen. I may look for signs of laying tomorrow, but feel pretty assured that there is a queen alive and well in the hive since they didn't use the last egg/brood frame I gave them for making queen cells.

BTW, we had a tiny bit of rain during the night last night but it is still so dry here that when I checked my garden this morning, the soil is bone dry less than an inch from the surface, damp from the rain last night.

Getting the Lay of the Bees' Land

At all three hives today around 4 PM in a light rain, the bees at all my hives were getting oriented. At Proteus the bees were flying fast and furiously, but my camera isn't fast enough to catch the action. You can see the shadows of a few of the fast flying bees.

At Mellona the action was even more frantic around 4:30 as the rain began to increase, but the babies still hadn't learned their lessons about where the hive is - so they flew more frantically for a few moments.

Even at Bermuda, orientation was happening, but I decided to take a hopeful picture of this hard-working forager bringing home the bacon to the baby bees - see the pollen in the pollen baskets on her legs?