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.

Aristaeus2 - A Good Beginning for Spring Bees

This hive started from a swarm I collected several years ago. It has always been a strong hive and has a fierce independence about it. I wasn't sure how well they were doing when I opened the hive today for the first time and saw all these dead SHBs on the tops of the bars. We have had a cold, cold end of February and I imagine they couldn't live through the weather.

This is the first year of my five beekeeping years that I am still seeing live SHBs in the hives. Usually they all die off during the winter and then reappear at the end of June. But they are alive in both of my hives - not a lot - the bees are managing them - but they are there.



When I lifted the top box off of the stack, I found opened brood in burr comb between the boxes. I don't get why they did this. I felt bad killing all the pupae.



The brood pattern which was on about five frames looked about like the photo below. I could worry about the empty cells but I believe the queen started laying and was fooled by the weather. We generally are full into the warmth of spring by now and we had below freezing temperatures and snow just last Tuesday. So I think the brood didn't make it in the cold and was cleaned out by the workers.

Generally the hive seemed about three weeks behind this time last year (as did Mellona) and the brood area was just getting started.



Then in the second box (there was nothing in the bottom box) I found Her Majesty! I've circled her in yellow below. I know the picture isn't well focused but I thought you'd like to see her. Next time I'll keep the camera on a tripod and maybe the focus will improve.

Most of the bees looked healthy, but the bee in the lower left is definitely a victim of Deformed Wing Virus. I've circled her as well so that you can see the wings (even out of focus, the evidence is obvious).

Poor Frame Management - Oops!

I had to take Bermuda all the way down to the ground today (see previous post) and in doing so, I removed one box to find this under it. This is burr comb and the bees build it when there is space above the frames.

This occurrence means that in the box above this one on frame three I have put a shallow frame, rather than a medium one. Usually the bees build drone comb when they put brood in burr comb. You can see the drone cappings on the right side of the picture and an opened cell that was ripped when I removed the box above.

I was deeply disturbing the hive today because I had to repair the screened bottom board. I didn't remove this comb or try to fix the situation. I decided to note the frame and fix the situation on a calmer day.

On the top (newest) box in Bermuda, I noticed the last frame in the box was sitting up above the box top edge. (See it at the far right?) All week I had observed that the top cover was sitting askew, but didn't think anything of it. Well, this frame is why the top wouldn't go down. I had not pushed it into the box fully!

This error I did fix before putting the hive back together!

Comb Configurations

When I inspected a hive last week (the smallest swarm hive), I found that I had put shallows in a medium super and the bees had built burr comb below the shallow frames in the space above their bottom box. I scraped off most of it and put the comb filled with nectar on top of the inner cover for the bees to save the nectar.


In place of the shallow frames I put in medium frames. Some of the medium frames had popsicle sticks for starter strips and some had wax starter strips. I put a frame with a full sheet of foundation in the center. This week there was more burr comb and instead of building comb from the top of the frames, the largest comb they had drawn out was the one below which they built on the bottom of the frame.

Again there was burr comb on the edges of most of the bottoms of the frames on one side of the box. I don't usually smoke the bees after an initial puff at the door. To get them out of the area with the burr comb, I did smoke them and they disappeared down into the hive.

This time I carefully scraped all of the burr comb off of the tops of the frames and off of the frames below. I have to train these girls to draw their comb straight and pretty. You can see below the amount of burr comb I scraped off - it will be nice for the solar wax melter, but what a waste of energy for the bees in this hive.



Thankfully, Bermuda has some beautiful capped honey in her next to the top box. I will take it off this weekend before the bees can track pollen and dirt over the gorgeous white comb. Isn't it pretty? There's a whole box of this. It does have a problem that I'll have to address. In frames 4 and 5, which were put in the hive without foundation, the bees have built one very wide comb. The comb is straight and goes the right direction, but instead of filling one frame's depth, they used two.

I both have no idea how I'll get the bees off of that particular duo comb and don't know what to do with it. If I can get it out of the hive in one piece, I'll take pictures. Then I'll probably crush and strain it.

Oops! Used the Wrong Sized Frame

Before I went out of town to a conference in the middle of the honey flow, I put a super on each hive to allow them to use the space to make honey. My smallest swarm hive was one on which I quickly put together a super and threw it on the hive before leaving.

Today I opened the hive to find that I had put shallow frames in a medium super - WHOOPS -

In an inspection I always remove frame #2 as a way to start examining the hive. This allows me to move the frames within the hive - not needing to take each one out unless it seems necessary. Removing this one frame in position #2 also means that when I put the frame back into the hive box, my bees press against each other rather than against the hard outer wall of the hive box. I think I kill less bees on inspection this way.

As you can see the bees in this hive have built combs filled with honey in the space left by having a shallow frame in a medium box. I worried about how to handle this and posted about it on Beemaster.



In the end, I opened the hive up again and took off the medium box with the shallow frames. I scraped off the burr comb and put it in a cake pan. I then added a medium 8 frame with all medium frames (DUH). I took each frame out of the original box and examined it. Most had not been built out. Three had comb attached to the bottom. It's beautiful comb (see picture below), but is not in a useful place.


I didn't want to take the honey the bees had worked so hard to produce. I took the burr comb in its cake pan and put it under the top but on top of the inner cover. This should inspire the bees to move the nectar into the hive itself. I didn't have a shim to put around the cake pan, but I did have several 2X4s cut the right lengths. So I set up a fake shim under the top and set the cake pan there. The bees can clean it up and I'll remove it tomorrow.



Here's the clean new box on this hive (which will have a name before morning - the hive, not the box).

Hive Inspection - First Real One of the Year

I did my first real hive inspection of 2008 on Sunday afternoon. Both hives looked healthy and had lots of bees. The bees in Mellona in the first picture were all through two boxes. The brood was all in the bottom box and had not moved up, to my surprise. The second box was still heavy with honey.
Last year at this inspection, Bermuda was a small handful of bees, with Varroa everywhere. But the queen was alive and with many powdered sugar shakes, the hive rebuilt itself. This is the hive where the original queen was cast out on January 6 this year. They obviously have a queen and are really building up. I scraped off the burr comb that you can see on top of a couple of frames.
I did a powdered sugar shake on both hives today and with the DWV (Deformed Wing Virus) that I saw earlier in the month on the dead bees on the deck, I will be shaking sugar every inspection this spring. Look out, Costco, here I come!
The sad news was that I had left a Ziploc bag feeder inside the Bermuda hive. There were so many bees in that hive a few weeks ago that I was afraid they would go through their stores. I knew when I put it in the hive that it had sort of folded over on itself, but I didn't do anything about it. The many dead bees I found inside it today let me (and preventively all of you) know that a ziploc feeder must be sitting flat on the frames in order to keep bees from drowning as they get the sugar syrup.