Rabun Bees Make Honey While the Sun Shines

An interesting discussion was held on Beemaster lately with the thread titled: "Why Don't My Bees Like the Right Side of the Hive?" Michael Bush and others replied that bees are very efficient in their use of heat. They build the brood nest with that in mind so that the brood can be heated by the sun's heat, eliminating some of the work of the bees to keep the brood warm.

My Rabun hive faces east, but apparently not east enough for the bees. Actually in the summer sun, the hive faces slightly southeast. Consequently the bees in the installed package started building comb and have stayed mostly on the eastern most side of the box. You can see in the picture below how the bees are congregated on one side of the box.



I was there a week ago and they had barely begun building comb in the second box. I had thought the comb was for sourwood honey and was disappointed, in a way, to find eggs in what I thought would be comb for honey storage. In the last week, with the sourwood flow in full swing, the bees have been building out this box like mad.

Below you see them festooning on on of the last two empty frames in that hive. The rest have honey stored and are being filled up with nectar.



Here's some newly built wax since my last visit.



The comb below was slightly cross-combed at the end. I gently loosened it from the next door frame - you can see the loosened comb on the left side of the photo - and rubber banded it into the frame in the right place.

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You can see the rubber band in the picture below.  In pulling the comb back into place with the rubber band, you can see that some of the comb split.  The bees will easily make that repair and the frame will be much easier for me to work with the next time I visit.

I am so happy about how things are going with the Rabun Community Garden hive.  The bees are making honey.  The garden is lush, I'm sure in part due to the bees working on the pollination (great cucumbers, squash!).

One of the community gardeners was there and took a picture of me with my helpers for the day: my daughter Valerie, her husband Jeff, and his father Harrison.

Thanks to Valerie for these pictures of the hive, now doing great at the Rabun County Community Garden.

Rabun Gap Community Garden Bees are Settling in Well

I visited the Rabun Gap Community Garden bees for the first time today since I set up the hive a week ago. I had left a full baggie of sugar syrup on the hive and only about 1/4 of it was still untouched by the bees. Giving them this sugar syrup gives them a head start on wax building as they learn the area for foraging. It is the Georgia nectar flow right now, though, so I didn't replenish the bag. I did leave it on the hive, however.

The bees in the picture below are gathered around a slit in the baggie to slurp up the syrup.



I moved the baggie so I could look at the frames. I saw the queen cage and pulled it up to make sure Her Majesty had been released. The bees had eaten through the candy plug and had freed the queen!



Not a great picture, but here is the empty queen cage.



Then I looked at the frames to see how they were building wax. This was one of the early frames I pulled up. Isn't the new wax beautiful? There are eggs visible in this picture. Double click on it to enlarge it and you will be able to see them.



In case you can't find them on your own, I've circled three obvious eggs in the photo below.  Again, double click to enlarge it so you can see the eggs.  Isn't it fascinating that the queen has already started laying even though the frame is not fully filled out.  She's anxious, since the nectar flow has started, to build up her colony.

In the picture below you can see the bees hanging onto each other (festooning) as they create new wax in this frame:

I had one frame of old, dark comb in this box and they are storing honey/nectar in it:

These bees had built all on one side of the hive, so I moved the six frames they were using into the center of the box and put two empty frames on the outside edges of the box.  Also, I won't be able to check on the hive before Sunday the 16th, so I went ahead and added a box to the hive.

I left the shim around the baggie feeder (I'll remove that the next time I am there) and replaced the brick on the top.  These bees seem to have started well, so I am very pleased.

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Circle Dancing and Festooning at the Bee Tree

In the hot summer in a hive box, the bees gather outside on the landing and do the washboard dance.


AI Root in the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture says that while the dance looks like the bees are scrubbing and scraping the landing of the hive, there's no evidence that they are doing anything other than exercising.

The bees at the bee tree are washboarding all around the knothole opening. Inside the opening as you can see in the picture above and below, they also appear to be hanging onto each other in a sort of acrobatic festooning in the center of the hole.

In an August day in Atlanta (this was 8 AM) it must be awfully hot inside the tree cavity.



When I climbed the ladder and opened the hive box, there were more bees than usual in the box and on top of the frames. I think they are getting invested in hive box ownership! Or at least I am hoping that they are.

Making Wax in the Bee Hive

The bees make wax by secreting wax from glands in their abdomen. They join together in festoons as they join the secretions. The bees in the picture below are stretched across the two frames I have separated with my hive tool as they are interrupted by me in the middle of their wax creation.



Look at the beauty of brand new wax. It is so white and clean. They typically do this - make three sections of comb in the frame - and then seamlessly join the three sections to fill the frame.

In the picture below, if you click to enlarge it, you can see that the edges of the wax cells remain somewhat rough. The cell isn't completed, whether it is used for brood or honey storage, until it is capped. Probably it doesn't matter to the bees if the edges are straight or not, since the capping will smooth over the edges.


At Blue Heron today, I found the bees in the third hive still making crooked comb. I cut out one piece that also included some honey. I set it on the hive beside the one I was inspecting. I saw this bee sticking her long tongue in the honey so as not to lose it! If you click to enlarge the picture you can see her long tongue down in the cell.

Inspecting and Festooning

Since we are in the middle of the 2009 honey flow, I keep a close watch on my hives over the next two months to make sure they have boxes when they need them. Today I did a 30 minute inspection of the four hives on my deck and found good work going on there.

In the tiny swarm nuc, they still weren't building up in the second five frame medium box, but they had begun to store honey in the bottom box. Here's an example. At the lower right of the picture, I've drawn a square around a small hive beetle, calmly living in the hive.



In Aristaeus2, I found the bees working in the top box, festooning as they build wax. A post on Beemaster right now deals with the feeling some beekeepers have of intruding on something private when you find the bees festooning.

I feel like the beekeepers who posted there - when I find festooning, the bees immediately take action to stop what they were doing. It feels like I have invaded their privacy and I want to leave them in peace. But before I left, I shot this picture. It's not the best festooning picture but you can see how the bees hang in a thread as they create wax.


The picture below shows you how the bees first draw comb in a foundationless frame. They usually make these three startup combs and over time they fill out the frame entirely. You can't delineate these three starter parts when the frame is fully drawn. It's amazing to me that they can do this.



In this frame you can see how they took the frame and built it entirely out before storing nectar in it. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see that the next frame in the box is built out the same way. They have just started work on this box in this hive. Only a few days ago there was NO wax in this box - just empty frames.

Inspection today

My goal today was to take the huge honeycomb off of Bermuda, but while I was all suited up, I checked in on each of the hives to see which one might need a new box. The Aristaeus2 hive just doesn't like popsicle sticks. If you look under my blue gloved finger, you can see that this frame had popsicle sticks as starters and instead of using them, the bees are building messy comb from the bottom.

I'm going to set some frames up with starter strips and give those to them instead.



The best growing hive was Melissa (located in my yard in bright sunshine). Fartherest from the camera is frame 4 and we are looking straight at frame 3. They drew these from starter strips.



Here you can see frames 4, 3, and 2 with 2 closest to the camera. True to typical bee form, they have most built out the frame closest to the center of the box and are working on the ones closer to the edge. I know you may be wondering if this is actually a top bar hive, but this is how bees build comb when allowed to do it in their own way. Eventually they will fill out the frame and often do not attach it to the bottom bar.



My favorite picture of the day is the one below. In Melissa, the bees were festooning in the top box as they draw out the wax. I pushed frame 7 over, creating a space between it and frame 8 and stretching this line of bees who were attached to each other "festooning" as they build wax in the frames.


I'll paint a new box for this hive and put it on tomorrow when I put the foundation-filled frames onto Bermuda to straighten out their wax making. I'll also give Aristaeus2 some foundation-filled frames to help get them on the right track as well.

Other items from Today's Inspection

I have crossed my fingers throughout the honey season that Bermuda, my weak hive that barely made it through the winter, would survive until next winter. I have not had any expectations of getting honey from that hive. The hive is thriving now and bustling with bees. It is the hive from which I got the frames of brood and eggs for my nuc and Proteus Bee.

Today I was pleased to find honey being capped in the hive. The third box on Bermuda is a box of 7/11 comb. As you can see from the picture the bees are making gorgeous white wax cappings and are in fact making honey. The honey in these frames looked darker than what I have harvested so far.

I love how the bees circle damage in a comb and quickly go to work to save their hard work from spilling out on the ground. Look at the circle of bees surrounding the lower right of the comb where a bridge was broken between this frame and the next.

I also did powdered sugar shakes over the brood boxes in Proteus A, Bermuda, and Mellona.

Last week when I opened Mellona, I noticed that it was honey bound in the same way that Proteus A had been. I removed frames 3, 5, and 7 from the second box and replaced them with starter strip frames. I moved those honey frames to the box above (Box 4) in positions 3, 5, and 7. I didn't know what I would find when I opened the box today.

You can see the bees festooning as they draw wax in the starter strip frame. Frame 3 was being drawn with large cells as if for more honey storage. However, the cells in frame 5 measured 5.2 so I think the queen may lay there and expand the brood nest into the next box, where I've tried to make her welcome.

Inspecting Mellona Today

In Mellona today, the combs in the medium were being drawn well and straight. You can see the bees festooning in the picture below. I didn't disturb the hive much because I only had a short time before I had to go to work. Also it was cold and I didn't want to freeze the bees - just wanted to make sure they were building straight comb.

This hive is in an old repainted deep box and the medium box where this picture was taken is also an old box. The frames they are using are old frames - you can see the comb remnants from last year in the bottom of the frame. I wonder if the smell of the old comb, etc is helping these bees draw straight comb.....

















Here is an example of an almost-filled comb from that hive:

















I took off the honey super shallow box that I added last week and looked in it to see if the bees were building comb yet. They had barely started. In addition, I had put a full sheet of SC foundation in a frame in the center of this shallow.

The bees had completely chewed out the foundation. I actually heard them doing it. While it was really cold I went out and listened to the sides of the hive - it's something that I like to do because the smells and sounds of the hive at work are just wonderful. I heard the sound of them crunching and wondered what it was. Now I know.

I didn't run that foundation top to bottom (cutting error), but it extended to about 1/8 inch from the bottom. For some reason they didn't want it there and chewed it off......SC foundation is really expensive and the cheap part of me felt resentful that they wasted it like that!

On Beemaster I asked about the chewed foundation and the reply was that they probably needed the wax in the box below and chewed it off to use it there. If I had waited a little longer before putting that box on, then they might have left it alone. I usually add a super or box when the box below has 7 - 8 frames drawn with only a couple to go. This time I added the super when they had only drawn 6 frames. I did this since the tulip poplar flow is on and it was going to be too cold to go into the hives over the past week. Of course if it's too cold to go in the hives, it's also too cold for the bees to fly so having the extra super was too early and not necessary.

I think the old saying is "Hoist by my own petard." No, I just looked it up on Wikipedia and actually that's not the correct expression because it means to be harmed by something you intended to harm someone else (as in being blown up by your own bomb).

Since I only LOVE the bees, no harm was intended. In my family when you push to get something done in a more than timely way, we say that we are "pushing the train out of the station," a phrase used in my grandmother's house when my mother was growing up. So I guess in putting the super on too early, I was pushing the train out of the station.

I took a brief look into Bermuda - boy, those are angry bees in that hive. They growled discontentedly when I opened the inner cover, and buzzed at my veil. They have not begun work in the medium that I added last week. It's possible that the hive is queenless (by virtue of the anger and the buzz when I opened the box) so I'll give it a proper inspection later in the week. Although it is also possible that the hive is still gathering strength since it was so weak a month ago.

Problems with Proteus

I opened Proteus as part of my inspection today to see how they were doing with the starter strips in the medium box. What a mess! These bees are building comb like gangbusters but are ignoring any guidance from me via the starter strips. Consequently, the first frame I examined (#2) looked like this.


















I didn't remove any further frames from the box because there was comb going every which way and sticking the frames together. Here's the view looking down into the box at frames #3 and #4.

See the mess and the broken comb from when I tried to pull out the frame.


When I put the box back together a huge clump of comb was in the box and I needed to get it out of the way, so I put it on the deck rail with all of the bees on it. They moved off of it but stayed in a clump and I realized that these were house bees, unused to flying. So I went inside and got a Sierra cup and brushed the bees into the cup and shook them onto the hive. The comb had unripe honey all in it so I took it indoors to discourage robbing.


















Later today I went back into the hive to work a little on the mess. Below you can see a comb out into the space between frames. I took a Swiss army knife and cut the comb loose and straightened it onto the bottom of the frame. I still need to cut some comb out that is layering behind it, but I had to go back to work and will have to deal with that on another day.


















Here you can see it cut and moved but there is still a problem with this frame that I need to address soon on another visit, but I had to go back to work and we have had storms all evening so no chance of reopening the hive until another day.


















Needless to say, this was a difficult turn of events and I did not do a powdered sugar shake on Proteus....both because I was a little panicked about what was going wrong in the comb building and because with all the dripping honey, I figured the powdered sugar would make a real mess.