Albert Alligator and the Blue Heron hives

When I was a little girl, my father always loved the cartoon Pogo, drawn and written by Walt Kelly. It was a little confusing for me because there was a famous clown in the circus at the time named Emmett Kelly and I got the two mixed up and thought the clown wrote the cartoon in his off hours. Of course now I'm a beekeeper and there's a great beekeeping company called Walter T. Kelley. (Good I'm not still a child - think how confused I'd be).

Nonetheless in the cartoon, Pogo (a possum) and Albert (an alligator) frequently played checkers. When they did, Pogo often won and Albert had many responses to being beaten, most of which involved creating some kind of chaos. In one of my favorite Albert Alligator checker games, Pogo is winning and Albert suddenly throws the checkerboard into the air yelling, "Earthquake! Earthquake!"

If the bees at Blue Heron had read Pogo, they would have been buzzing "Earthquake! Earthquake!"  today when Julia, Noah, and I returned to the scene of the morning's inspection.

This is what it looked like in the middle of the chaos:



Noah took this picture below by accident, but I'm sure it's how the bee's world felt to them!

In the earlier inspection we found that despite queen cells in both halves of the split, neither hive had a queen.  I don't know if it was because of really bad weather over the last weeks; if I killed the queen when I dropped my hive tool through the one hive two weeks ago; if the emerged queens were killed going to or from their mating flights; or what.

The sad story is that the splits both failed.

I went home and stole a frame of brood and eggs from both Colony Square and Lenox Pointe.  They were none too happy since I had inspected both hives the day before and being opened two days in a row is more than disruptive.

I put the two stolen frames into a five frame nuc with some empty frames to make transporting it easy.

I made sure before the move that both stolen frames had eggs and very young brood on them....as well as capped brood.  The pheromones from the capped brood help the queenless hive avoid developing laying workers.

We removed two frames from the bottom box of the strongest of the two hives.

In their place we put the two frames from home.

Both hives had a good bit of honey on them.  We put the boxes of honey back onto this hive.  Then we topped the box with a piece of newspaper.  You are supposed to trim the newspaper so that there are not edges hanging over to wick in rain water.  I forgot to do that and will return today with a pair of scissors.

When the newspaper is in place, you take your hive tool and cut three or so slits in the newspaper to facilitate the bees working their way through the newspaper.  By the time the bees chew through the newspaper in two or three days, they will be friendly to each other.

We then put a box on the top for the bees from the other hive.  One frame at a time we sprayed the bees with sugar syrup and then shook and brushed them into the new box.

The frames we were shaking were deeps and the box into which we moved them was a medium.  We even shook the slatted rack and the screened bottom board.

We then added all the honey frames from hive 2 to the box into which we had shaken the bees.

In the end when we finished the combining, there was STILL chaos all around us.

We closed up the hive, cleaned up the "Earthquake" and went home with crossed fingers. We won't open this hive again for 21 days to give the queen time to emerge, go on her mating flight, and return to lay eggs.   I hope, hope, hope that this combined hive will survive, raise a queen and keep going.  We'll see on Memorial Day!

It was a difficult operation and I so appreciate that Julia and Noah came back with me to finish this project.  Both of them helped so much and Noah took most of these pictures.  They are wonderful friends and dedicated beekeepers and I enjoy every beekeeping minute with them.

Bees Eating Sugar Syrup

These days I am feeding my bees sugar syrup in order to help them prepare for winter. I didn't do this last year, but this year my hives, despite my harvesting very little honey, are too light to go into winter.

The bees in the picture below have just discovered the sugar syrup floating by the slits in the baggie feeder.




The hive from which I took these pictures yielded me no harvest this year and they are very light on stores for the winter. This is the hive that I combined with the nuc from Blue Heron back in August.



In these two pictures (above and below) you can see the bees' tongues out to slurp up the honey.



Below is a frontal view of a syrup slurping bee.



I closed up the hive with one last glance through the hole in the inner cover to see them feeding away!

Hive Combination - Can They Be Social?

Today I took the queenless nuc and combined it with the hive right next to it. Here's what the nuc looked like. This is the sum total of the bees that were in it. The frame on the right is a solid frame of honey, more than I can say for any of my other hives.



I have been feeding Aristaeus2 because, like my other hives, there are few stores here for the winter. I decided to treat them as usual except that the top of their hive would change. So I added another baggie of sugar syrup. I have gotten to be really expert at gradually laying down the sugar syrup baggie so that there are no bee casualties squashed under the bag.

Although I forgot to take the picture, I also replaced the oil in the AJ's beetle eater that fits between the two frames in this hive box.



I decided to do a newspaper combine. I used the society page, hoping that all of those socially appropriate couples pictured on the page would inspire these girls to be friends. It's an article about the Southeastern flower show - which could also feel hopeful to the bees!

I cut a few slits in the newspaper to facilitate the bees moving into the box below.



Then I put the nuc box on top and added its top, leaving it propped so the bees inside would have an entrance until they make friends with the bees below. You'll notice that I also tore off the overhang of newspaper. That is done to keep the newspaper from wicking water into the paper between the boxes in the event of rain.


So since I am not doing well with hive disturbance, let's hope I will succeed in this combination.

The Queen is Dead! Long Live the Queen!

Beekeeping takes me into unexpected places - most of them good ones. Today I had a sad, sad experience.

My two hives at Blue Heron are doing badly - one has a queen who appears to be a drone layer (or at least that's how the hive looked at the August 8 inspection) - probably poorly mated. The other has a queen who is barely laying, has a poor brood pattern and was also probably short-bred when she mated. Both of these queens were made by the bees in the hive from their own eggs.

So conferring with other beekeepers, the decision was made to order a new queen. I would then combine the two hives, getting rid of the current queen in both hives and order a new queen to rule the combined hive.

Honestly, I have dreaded the day. I never find queens well in the hive and today I was going to have not only to find them but to do away with them.

This morning the UPS guy arrived at my office with my new queen from the Purvis Brothers Apiary. He had no idea that the package contained bees (it did have an apiary health certificate in bright yellow affixed to the package.....). I asked if I could take his picture and it's not in focus because I did it really quickly.

I opened the package in front of him and showed him the queen cage - he was amazed and wanted to know what I was going to do with it. I guess it was a little strange to deliver a queen bee to a psychologist's office!



So here's where the sad part of the story begins. I loaded up my car and drove to Blue Heron. On the way, I called Cindy Bee for help and advice. I wanted to know if it were OK to install a new queen and put a baggie feeder on the hive at the same time.

She gave me the thumbs up, so I went armed with

• a baggie feeder, full of 2:1 sugar syrup
• a nuc to put one of the queens in (I was planning to give her to Julia, my Blue Heron partner in crime, to put in an observation hive).
• A closed container of vanilla, watered down a little, and a silicone brush to brush it on the top of the frames
• Her Majesty and attendants, now with a string and a push-pin tack to attach her to the hive frame top
• All of my hive inspection paraphernalia

I opened up the third and weakest hive at Blue Heron. There were few bees in the hive, but enough. The queen had been laying - I saw eggs and tiny circles of larvae. But the hive is weak and there were few bees flying in and out.

First I told myself that I would find the queen in each hive. I thought I should have the right mindset and I should believe that I could spot her in order to find her easily . I used very little smoke - just a puff at the door and moved slowly, giving myself plenty of time (I had a 2 hour break in which to do this).

I looked through the frames on this hive and found the queen almost immediately. I took the frame she was on and put it in the nuc (a weak queen is perfect for an observation hive). BTW, the frame also had an almost ready to emerge perfect queen cell on it. The bees must not like this queen either.

Then I added a second frame of brood, a frame of honey, another frame of honey and a third frame with very little brood but some pollen. I turned the entrance away from the hives and put a basket of hive inspection stuff in front of it because it would need to sit there until I was done. In effect I created a split.

The rest of the bees on frames that had a little brood and lots of open cells stayed in the box for transfer to the combined hive. Cindy and I talked about doing a direct transfer at this time of year. The plan would be to paint the tops of the frames with vanilla to confuse the odors in the hive so the bees would be confused and blend with each other.

And then I would simply put the frames from one hive into a box directly with the frames from another hive. Cindy said it's too hot in Hotlanta to do a newspaper combine in August. Below you can see my vanilla concoction and silicone paint brush.



Then I got to hive two and opened it. I found the queen on the second frame in the bottom box (the first one I looked into). I debated. Should I do away with her right then while I could see her or look deeper into the hive to make sure she was still a drone layer.

She was a beautiful, large majestic queen, but I hesitated to go through the hive for fear I'd not find her again.............so I flicked her off of the frame with my hive tool onto the ground. Then I used my hive tool, supposedly to cut off her head, but I couldn't watch so in effect I split her. I didn't take pictures. It seemed so cruel and sad.

I'm never doing that again, I swear. I felt horrible and sick.

I'm going to set up a retirement nuc for aging queens and put them all in there. I can never, never destroy a queen like that again.

Then of course, I looked through the rest of the hive and doubted my decision. The hive looked good with lots of brood and young larvae.

I'm trying to comfort myself by saying that the Purvis Goldlines are disease resistant, the combination will create a strong hive going into winter, it will help the combination to work if they have to all adjust to a new queen, etc. etc, but I still think I'm going to feel sad for a while after this destructive beekeeping act.

So here's the queen cage. I've threaded a paper clip through the top and tied a string to the clip. I uncapped the sugar fondant for the bees to eat through it.



I lowered her Majesty into the newly combined hive, every frame anointed with vanilla (see the brown drops of it on the frame? This is an eight-frame box which has a little wiggle room so I also put a frame into the space where the cage is, put the baggie feeder in a third box with a couple of frames of honey, closed the hive and left them all to get acquainted.



I am serious about never wanting to do this again. Cindy said to put the body of the queen on the floor of the hive so the bees would know, but when I looked down to pick her up, a mortician bee had already carried her off.

A sad day in my beekeeping world.

Why Would a Hive Abscond?

This little survivor hive left its original home. Bees now are preparing for winter. Why would a hive leave everything behind and try to find a new home when there are no food sources in Atlanta right now and when their numbers are small?

Cindy Bee says that if the SHB (small hive beetle) has gotten into the hive and fermented the honey, then the bees have no supplies. Desperate, they don't know what else to do beyond abandon their home.

Jerry Wallace, a wonderful Atlanta beekeeper who is always willing to muse over things bee with me, says, "Healthy, well-fed robust hives minimize most beekeeping problems."

He also says:
1. The bees only need to have only as much room in the hive box as they can defend. This means having only the number of frames that the bees can cover. In Atlanta he leaves each hive with the brood box and one super filled with honey as winter approaches.
2. Hives are weakened when eager beekeepers rob the hive of all the honey supers and leave them with no stores for winter, planning to feed sugar syrup to make up for greed since "removing all the honey for harvest adds more stress"
3. A stressed hive offers more opportunity for the SHB to gain the upper hand

He also pointed out that a hive slimed by SHB is usually not worth saving but should be combined with another hive.

If I were to combine this rescued hive with another, I'd have to kill the queen. At the moment this queen has been quite brave, making two forays in an effort to find her bees a home. I am going to try to get this nuc up to par and overwinter the hive in the nuc.

Michael Bush does this on a regular basis and talks about it on his site.

Hive Combination continued

I can't say that there is a good ending. I'm not sure about the hive box that I put on top in the combination. Maybe the queen was in there although I didn't see evidence of her and didn't find her.

I put the two boxes together with slit newspaper in between and left them for a week. All of the Internet forums said that within that time the bees would chew through the newspaper and join each other. I should see a pile of chewed newspaper in front of the hive. Well, that never happened.

Instead I saw the bees carrying out larvae (see picture below) and saw a lot of conflict in front of the hive. I had been feeding both of these hives before the one was robbed out. I didn't feed them during the combination week and instead supplied the top box with two frames of honey on either side of the box. The lower hive had stored honey.


I opened the hives on Saturday to see what had happened. Evidence of the mayhem abounded. There were dead bees all over the newspaper and detritus from wax moths that had inhabited the top hive. I pulled off the newspaper, killed some wax moths and put the hive back together.

This coming weekend, I'll probably take off the top box and leave Hyron as a one-box hive. The combination was not a success. I'll have another opportunity to try to do it better in the future, I'm sure.

Combining the weak hives

Yesterday Hyron and Hyron2 became one.

At the end of the day when hopefully most of the foragers were home, I put the absconded swarm hive and the weak swarm hive together. I carried the absconded hive back up on the deck and put it in combination with the Hyron hive that has been weakly surviving all along.

Hyron was my first swarm hive back on April 1 and has not built out of the first box to this day. It's a sad little group. There is a queen and brood but it never has taken off. Hyron2 which was robbed out and absconded appears queenless at this point although most of the bees are in the box.

I opened up Hyron and put newspaper over the top of the box. I cut several slits with a knife through the newspaper to facilitate the bees chewing through. The idea is that by the time the bees in the upper box chew through to the lower box, everybody will be friends.

I removed the Imrie shim and the feeder bag - I actually don't know what to do about feeding and will post on Beesource and Beemaster to find out how to manage this.



When I put Hyron2 on top, I left the Imrie shim, but didn't replace the baggie feeder. I don't want to encourage any food fights as they get to know each other. Keeping the shim on does give me an easy option for feeding them in about a week when the combination will hopefully be successful.


I also removed the robber screen. I thought since there's not really anything to rob out right now, it isn't really necessary. I also thought that it would be easier for them to carry out the newspaper shreds if I didn't have the entry blocked.


It was cooler than usual this morning but already the bees at this hive were orienting. I expect that it will go well and I am keeping my fingers crossed for a successful hive combination.