Bees Blooming in Bermuda

Today I got an email that a friend in my bee club has ordered two queens who will be arriving this weekend - she probably doesn't need them and wanted to know if anyone wanted them. I called her right away thinking that requeening Bermuda may help its recovery. She wondered why the hive was weak and I proferred my theory that the varroa mite had taken its toll over the winter. She wondered about unhealthy brood or what else might be wrong. She's coming to look at my hives on Saturday so she can help me think about the problem.

Meanwhile I had a 2 1/2 hour break in the middle of the day and came home to look at Bermuda. The number of bees in the hive has definitely increased since my last inspection of the brood area about 10 days ago. I took some pictures. In the first picture you can see well-capped brood and larvae uncapped in various stages of development. In the upper right quadrant you can see a bee with bright yellow pollen on her legs. She's at about 3:00 on the brood edge.

















I saw this larvae below with a definite Varroa mite on the larvae. See the little orange thing on the left of the C-shape of the larvae? That's a Varroa mite, happily developing with the bee.















I saw the queen (below with the white dot in the center of the picture). She is in the act of laying in this picture.

















If you click on the picture below, you can see in the lower part of the frame, brood in many stages of development. I do think this means that Bermuda is well on the way back. Granted, the queen is not covering the frames with brood - maybe an argument for requeening - but she is laying a good pattern and the bees are coming back. Currently the bees are all in one medium frame box.

Sugar Syrup needs replacing

The action at my new hive, Proteus, is fast and furious. The bees seem to fall all over themselves as they zoom in and out of the hive. Many of them are carrying pollen. They've been drinking some of the sugar syrup, but appear also to be doing a lot of foraging.

















Mellona, the replacement for Destin, is going through the sugar syrup. Yesterday this jar was full. This hive also had done less comb building than Proteus on my inspection yesterday, so today they must be going gangbusters in the wax production.

















I replaced their pint bottle with a quart bottle of syrup I made this morning while I was cooking breakfast.
























Meanwhile at Bermuda (below), the bees today appear to be holding their own, flying in and out, carrying pollen and having conferences on the front porch.

Activity at Bermuda and the Cycle of Life

There are bees flying in and out of Bermuda - they often are carrying heavy loads of pollen on their legs. I didn't get a good picture, but the activity is the most I've seen this year. In the heat of summer and the height of the nectar flow, the arrival and departure of bees is like Hartsfield/Jackson Airport in Atlanta, but today it's sufficient to make me happy and optimistic!

Also I left the two frames of head-down starved bee bodies out on my deck. As you can see from the one below, some part of the cycle of life has contributed to cleaning up the frame. I imagine the wren or one of the woodpeckers I've seen eating bee bodies on the deck has feasted on my dead bees. Less work now for the new girls when they arrive in a couple of weeks!

Obvious pollen on bees

April 25, 2006: The syrup jar is empty on Destin. When I added to it, I had a bee adventure.

An angry bee came into my hair buzzing like crazy. I shook my head to get her off, but that made her angrier, evidenced by her buzzing. After a while, and not wanting to be stung, I went inside with her in my hair and got the bee brush. I then proceeded to try to brush her out of my hair. Eventually it worked, but I spent about 10 minutes at this endeavor!

One reason the syrup jar on Destin empties so fast is that it appears to be leaking – there is a dark area on the cinder block below the jar, below the hive that appears to be soaked with sugar syrup. I’ll take it off and tighten the lid, but I will be relieved when I don’t need to keep feeding. I’ve ordered an interior feeder.

Bermuda doesn’t seem to be as active this morning as Destin – hope the queen is still there.

While I watched I saw several bees flying into Destin with obvious pollen collected on their legs!!!! See the bee with orange pollen on her legs at the right of the picture.