A Hodge-Podge Post

This post is full of random hodge-podge from my inspection and harvest this weekend.

Remember the hive where the comb was being built only on 2/3 of each frame in the super? I posted on the Beemaster forum, and I received replies suggesting that the bees would continue in this hive to build comb only in the front 2/3 of the box unless I took action. The recommended action was to turn the box 180 degrees so that the bees would now have the back in the front and the front in the back. I did this and now they are filling out the frames (see below).



I keep a stick in the back of my telescoping covers to add ventilation to the hives. When I do my inspections, the first thing I remove is the stick.....and then I lose it because I put it down just any old place. Today I decided to keep the stick in my hand until I take off the top cover and place the stick inside the telescoping cover before I take the hive apart. Seems simple, but it's hard to remember to hold onto the stick while I remove the cover. However, it pays off. I was much less frustrated since I could easily find the stick at the time to close up the hive, and I made myself remember to do it with each of the eight hives. Hooray!



Hyron, my first swarm, has been lagging behind the other hives. There is definitely a queen, but although she has a beautiful football shaped laying pattern, the swarm has not been building up as I would like it to. They haven't even considered the upper box. To find out how they really were, I needed to go into the brood box. I opened up the top box and set it on the inner cover.

I removed a frame from the brood box (the only box with any bees in it.) The bees were hot and not happy with me. Immediately they flew out of the hive and fastened themselves onto my jeans. It is so hot that I had opted to use my jacket with a veil that I love from BeeWorks. As a result I was wearing my blue jeans. There were at least 50 bees on my legs. I felt the stings start; put the frame against the hive; and headed for the house.

I could feel the stings through my jeans and tried to brush all of them off. When I finally counted the stings, I had 15 including one that crawled up my jeans and stung my knee and one that slipped under the elastic band on my wrist. Note to self: If I want to wear the veil for an inspection and not my full suit:
1. Don't inspect Hyron, the hot swarm hive
2. Wear loose jeans like my overalls instead of well-fitted jeans.

I don't know why this is such a hot hive, but I get stung every time I open it. Beekeepers will say that I need to replace the queen. I think I'm going to ignore this hive for a while and maybe replace the queen going into fall.

Meanwhile, like a true Southern woman, I felt inspired to feed these bees (we Southern women feed everyone). Maybe they haven't experienced me as hospitable as they expected here in Georgia. I haven't been feeding any of my hives because we've had a good nectar flow going, but these girls must be hungry. The jar which was totally full, had about an inch of feed taken from it since I installed. Maybe this will tame their spirits, but meanwhile it will be a cold day in ,.........before I open Hyron again.



While I was in the hives today, I took off about 9 frames of beautiful capped honey - some pretty enough to cut comb, all of it good for chunk honey. I took the wax cappings/crushings out of my filter from last weekend to make way for the new harvest. I washed it to get it ready for the solar wax melter. Here's the beautiful wax, ready to go outside and melt. There's a lot of it - will take about three different days in the SWM.



That's all for the hodge-podge post!

Bee-ing with the Girl Scouts

Today I helped the Girl Scout troop in their first hive inspection. Before we inspected the hive, we got a set of frames ready for the super which we planned to add.

The girls nailed a wedge into this frame to hold a sheet of foundation. On the other frames they either glued popsicle sticks for starters or starter wax strips for the bees to use to get started building comb.


Sierra glues in the popsicle sticks.


Morgan gets the starter strips ready to be waxed into the frames.

Then we opened their hive to find that the queen is laying a lovely football shaped pattern just like one would ideally wish for. They had two purposes for their inspection: To see if the queen had laid eggs and to see if the bottom box had been fully built out.

They were able to see young brood. We didn't see eggs but saw very young brood (tiny c-larvae) so we know the queen is active and doing well. The bottom box was 90% built out. They had already put a second brood box on top of the first one and after I left, I thought perhaps we should have removed it....but we'll see how they do going forward.

Since it's the height of honey flow in Atlanta, we added the honey super that they had prepared to their hive.

Nuc Hive without a Queen

Yesterday I went into my hives with the video camera, planning to make a video on how to do a hive inspection. The reason there's no video with this post is that I didn't get a good film. I opened four hives and in each instance, there was an auditory issue - in three of the four hives, an airplane flew overhead as I began the inspection! In the fourth hive, my dogs started barking loudly, making it difficult to hear.

The next problem is that I did the inspection at noon while the sun was overhead and thus the lighting was terrible. As a result you can't see anything on the frames that I pulled out. I also positioned the camera so that it focused on the hive. So when I pulled a frame and held it up to look at it, the frame was out of sight of the camera.

I may post one of these films to keep my promise to make one this weekend, but I definitely will be doing it again and differently.

The most upsetting thing I found in inspecting these hives was that one of my nuc hives appears to have no queen. These three nucs were installed last Friday, one week ago. Two of the hives have very active queens - I've seen Her Majesty in each of those hives and can see eggs and new brood in those hives.

In the nuc hive on my deck, there is absolutely no new brood after a week. I searched through the hive again today and still didn't see the queen on any frame and there were no eggs, brood or young larvae.I called the man from whom I purchased the nuc and he said he would get a queen for me and call me when she arrived so I could come and pick her up.

Meanwhile I have a queenless hive full of bees and eager to draw out comb, etc. They have polished the cells where new workers are hatching and are waiting, but there's no queen to lay eggs in them.While I am waiting for the new queen to arrive, I borrowed a frame of eggs, brood, etc. from Mellona to add to this hive.



If you double click on the frame above, you can see eggs in the 12:00 position in each cell. These are newly laid and will give the hive a chance to make its own queen. There is some capped worker brood in this frame on the side you can see as well as lots of pollen both in picture one (side A) and in the picture below (side B)



You can see how many bees are in Mellona in the picture below. You can see where I took the frame of brood and eggs. In its place I put a starter strip frame on the side of the box and pushed the frames closer together to make up for the space from my removal of the frame.

When I took the frame out, I shook it hard to send any bees remaining on it back into their home hive, Mellona. The remaining bees clinging to the frame I was moving were nurse bees. I checked each bee carefully to make sure I wasn't moving the queen out of her hive and then placed the frame into the nuc hive.

What's Involved in a Hive Inspection

This weekend if the weather cooperates I'll make a video of an inspection - I'm no master of inspections, but I'll show you what I do when I do one. Meanwhile, there is a slideshow that I made last year when I went on a hive inspection of the beehives at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Here's the link.

I spend a lot of time observing my hives from the outside. I watch them when I am at home for meal times and sometimes I just sit on my sunporch and watch their comings and goings.

However, this post is about inspecting the inside of the hive.

It's important to know why you are inspecting the hive. There could be many reasons.

• As a beginning beekeeper, inspecting the hive is the only way to know what goes on in there in the dark since the bees don't have windows!
  
• You can learn to tell the difference between the drones and the workers
• You may see the queen
• You can observe the difference in capped brood, capped drone brood, and capped honey
• You can observe what a queen cell looks like (even a hive that has a good queen and/or isn't going to swarm usually makes a queen cell or two for insurance)
• You may see where the queen is laying by looking for larvae and eggs (hard to see)
• You may see an emerging bee in the capped worker brood
  

• It's also important to look for signs of problems in the hive

• Is the queen's laying pattern a good one? That means that the capped brood is in more or less a football shape in the center of the frame. The brood is pretty solidly capped - not many skipped cells or empty cells
• Do the workers show signs of illness? Deformed wing virus is easy to see - the wings of the workers are shriveled or malformed. You might even see a varroa mite on the back of a bee - it looks like a red tick (as in on a dog)
• Do you have small hive beetles? If so, you might want to invest in a trap - vinegar or oil. And I smash as many as I can with my hive tool.
  
• Do you have a wax moth problem? This usually only occurs if the hive is very weak. The wax moth is always present, but a strong hive keeps the wax moth from growing there. A weak hive doesn't have the resources and the hive can be overrun with wax moths.
• Does the hive smell funny? Wax moths and SHB make a sicky sweet rotting kind of smell - otherwise the hive will simply smell of delicious honey
  

• Do you need to do something to help the hive prosper?
  
  
• Does the hive need a new hive box added? The general rule of thumb is if the hive has built out and used 80% of the top box, it's time to add a new box (that means 8 out of 10 frames in a 10 frame box).
• If there's lots of burr comb on the tops of the frames, you may want to scrape that off. You'll see Gerard do that in the Botanical Garden hive inspection. It's not necessary, but you may want to make the hive easier for you to manipulate
  
• Is the hive honey-bound? This means that above the brood box in the next brood box, instead of brood, you have a solid box of honey. Usually, at least here in the south, the bees have brood in two boxes. If the brood is stopped by a wall of stored honey, the queen usually won't pass by the honey to lay in the box above that, so you'll want to move the honey filled super and put a new brood box below it.
  
  
• What does the hive sound like?
  
  
• When I first open the hive and pop the top cover, I listen for the bees. If I am quiet and gentle in my movements and the hive is doing well, usually there is a humming buzz, but nothing more.
• If there is a problem before I do anything, the hive buzzes with a roar. Sometimes the roar means there is no queen, so I want to pay attention to that
• When I do something intrusive like a powdered sugar shake, the bees roar and grumble - I would too - who wants to have a powdered sugar shower on a perfectly lovely day for foraging?

Those are the purposes and thoughts I have for inspecting. Here are some other aspects of the hive inspection that I try to follow:

1. I use as little smoke as possible. I always light the smoker in case I feel a need to discourage the bees from bothering me, but mostly I light the smoker and set it aside while I work. I do puff one puff of smoke at the front door of the hive when I begin the inspection - it's like knocking on the door to announce my presence. Then mostly I forget about it.
2. Always approach the hive from the side or the back. It is disturbing to the bees to walk straight up to the front of the hive - the guard bees will greet you and you will get started on the wrong foot with the bees.
   
3. Move slowly and gently. You will kill a few bees, but remember that there are up to 60,000 bees in an active hive and it's impossible to do an inspection without killing a few.
4. Be careful in lifting the frames out of the box. I usually take out frame #2 or #3 and hang it on a frame rack while I move the other frames in the box. I don't want to risk losing the queen so for the most part I hold the frame over the box to look at it (then if she's on the frame and falls, she falls into the hive.)
5. Don't assume that you can just grab the frame and lift it up. Most of the time the frames are propolized to the side of the box and need you to break the grip with your hive tool before lifting the frame.
6. You only need to go through enough boxes on the hive to satisfy your reason for inspecting. For example, if you are looking to see if the queen has a good laying pattern, as soon as you find a frame that represents the good laying pattern, you can stop your inspection. You don't need to look at every frame or in every box on the hive.
   
7. Always put the frames back in the box in the same orientation in which they were when you lifted them out. Unless you have a reason to manipulate the frames, put the frame back exactly where you found it. It's the bees' home and they have it arranged just the way they want it.
8. When you replace the boxes back on top of one another, slide them onto the box below so that the bees can be gently pushed out of the way rather than squashed

Everyone has their own tragic stories - I've dropped frames, dropped the inner cover on top of the bees below, squashed bees, killed bees with my hive tool, killed a bee when I was trying to smash a small hive beetle, brushed bees badly, etc.

You'll have yours too - it's just part of bee-ing a beekeeper.

OK, those are all of my thoughts for the moment. I'm sure I'll think of more about inspecting, but I'll save it for the video if I do it this weekend.

Useful link: Mother Earth

Hive Inspection at the Atlanta Botanical Garden Apiary

Today I was lucky enough to get to participate in a Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Club sponsored inspection of the hives at the Apiary at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

The inspection leader was Gerard McCann, a skilled beekeeper, an expert on comb honey, a good speaker (he's given some very educational programs at the Metro Beekeepers' meetings) and the person in charge of these hive inspections. He set this one up as an extra session especially for all of us who couldn't put our names on the list for the dates available because by the time it came around to our side of the meeting room, all slots were filled.

In general, Gerard is generous of spirit and kind in his approach....in other words, a perfectly lovely afternoon was had by all with Gerard as our guide - even in the sweaty, humid Atlanta heat.

To watch the slideshow AND read the captions, click on the picture below. That will take you to the web album page where you can choose "slideshow" (upper left) and watch the whole thing. You can make the slide stay on your screen longer by clicking on the plus sign and changing the seconds upward from 4 at the bottom of the picture on your screen.

Today's Inspection

The small swarm hive was doing fine. Signs were there that the queen was laying well. There are plenty of bees. They are still ignoring the last three frames on the hive, but that's fine. They've only been in the medium 8-frame box for a week.

Proteus Bee is quite a different story. There is no sign there of a laying queen although I gave them brood and egg frames and had seen two queen cells in production on June 23. I didn't see a queen, and felt rather discouraged, but left them in their hive and gave them two more frames of brood and eggs from Bermuda in case they need to make yet another queen. I saw one open queen cell but no evidence of laying.

We've had really stormy weather over the early part of July and if she left on her mating flight she may not have returned. I want to give them a chance. Interestingly this hive was using the upper entrance when they were above Proteus A and I have noticed that the bees in this hive rarely enter through the front door - more often through the upper entrance!

In Bermuda, I found tons of bees and a super of honey with beautiful capped honey for cut comb. I learned a lesson in Bermuda. I found a frame that I had used rubber bands to hold in comb that broke. I had put that frame on the side of the hive box. The bees had fastened the comb to the side of the box. I won't put a repaired comb with rubber bands against the side of the box again. I took this out and will melt the wax - not put it back in the hive.

Today I went on the inspection with several medium frames constructed and with starter strips or full sheets of foundation waxed in. I am so glad because there were a number of frames I either moved or changed and was so glad to have the extras. I'll do that on every inspection going forward.

In Mellona I had tried to open the brood box by taking out the honey filled frames in positions 3, 5, and 7 and substituting starter strip frames. The bees had built comb in the starter strip frames and were filling it with honey.

However, in 2, 4 and 6, they had cleared out the honey in the traditional football shaped pattern and although the queen wasn't laying there, the groundwork was all done. I felt good about opening up the brood nest. Look how shiny the cells are now that they are empty of honey.

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.

Inspection Today

Bermuda has been slow to build up. Today every frame in the brood box that I pulled looked like this - covered all over with capped brood and with a section of drone comb somewhere in the center. They had drawn every frame but one in the second box.

In the first box I took the two outside undrawn frames and moved them in to the center of the box with drawn comb on either side.

The ladies in this box sit on the front porch all the time and don't seem to be foraging like the other hives. Given how much they sit, I thought there would be no work product in the hive, but they have been busy. I left them with a new medium with starter strips of SC. We'll see how they do.

I did a powdered sugar shake on this hive as well as the other two that I inspected.

Mellona, my largest, most productive hive, is buzzing with bee work every time I go near it. These girls have been working hard and have a number of supers filled with capped honey. Here's an example of their beautiful honeycomb drawn completely by them from starter strips. Looks yummy, doesn't it?


When I inspected Proteus, I was tired and didn't do a thorough job. I needed to look into the brood box at each frame to see if there had been a supercedure or if there were swarm cells. The hive has been moving very slowly - filling supers very slowly and drawing wax like molasses in January. I have wondered if they still have the original queen and if they are making wax and brood.

Proteus has quit drawing crazy comb, and did have at least one very heavy, very full of honey super. They only have brood in the bottom box, which surprised me. However, I had been stung once by then and was tired and very hot, so I'm saving a thorough inspection of Proteus for another day.

Right before I began looking at Proteus, I had scoured the deck trying to find the bee that had been in the center of the bee-ball from the gift swarm yesterday. I remembered the bee because she was all black and not striped like my other bees. I found her dead and I am pretty sure this is the queen. She is probably a virgin queen because her lower abdomen is small.

I'm hoping that she has a sister in the new hive who is queen, but I'll wait to inspect this "extra" hive until the end of next week. That this queen is dead took the wind out of my sails - which is probably why I had little energy for the inspection of Proteus' brood.

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.

Inspection Today - Mixed Results

I had three goals for my inspection today:

1. To see if Bermuda was continuing to build up and to determine what is my next step with this hive
2. To do a powdered sugar shake on all three hives and put the sticky sheets under the hives for a Varroa count
3. To see how Mellona and Proteus are doing with the starter strips in the medium box (above the deep brood box)

Bermuda looked good - the numbers of bees continue to increase. The queen is now laying in five or six of the center frames. There is an empty of brood foundation-filled frame at the #2 spot in the frames. Tomorrow I'm going to replace it with a full sheet of small cell foundation. We'll see if they can manage it. They are not using the frame for brood or honey or pollen so I won't be depriving the bees.

Mellona was next. The bees have built down from the starter strips in the brood box on the three frames on either side of the four nuc (large cell) frames. This is the outside edge frame from Mellona.


















This frame is #2 or #9 depending on how you are counting. You can see that the bees have drone comb over to the left of the picture and good brood comb in the upper center. Overall I am well-pleased with how they are working with the starter strips of small cell.

















I only removed the outside two frames of the brood box. The picture below was taken looking down into the box of the #3 frame. You can see that there is drone comb to the left of this frame as well, again with a good brood pattern in the upper center.


















Mellona bees haven't starting building in the medium box with the frames with starter strips. They are concentrating on building up the hive in the brood box below.

I gave this hive a powdered sugar shake and put the sticky board under the hive. My screened bottom boards did not come with a slot for a sticky board so for Bermuda and Mellona, I cut poster board and smear it with Vaseline and then slide it between the concrete blocks that support the hive so that it collects droppings from the screened bottom board above it. I'll check it tomorrow and see what the counts are.

When I went to Proteus, I found quite a different picture. (See next post)

Bermuda Inspection Today

Compared to my two new hives, Bermuda still seems weak and rather pitiful. I did see the queen and she has established a pretty good laying pattern but still only in the medium box. There are many more bees in the hive, but I expected to see even more than I did when I opened the hive.


















I did another powdered sugar shake on the hive again today, as I plan to every inspection to address the varroa problem. I saw no small hive beetles, but they may be out of the picture until later in the spring.


















I poured the sugar directly into the sifter and sifted sugar between the frames. I brushed sugar that landed on top of the frames into the spaces after I was finished.

















Here's how the bees looked on the inner cover after the sugar shake was finished.

Inspection today

I opened the hives today for the first time in two weeks.

On Bermuda the top three shallow supers are full. I chose with my hives (to cope with the weight of full containers) to put a deep on the bottom and a medium above it. Then I added the supposed honey supers as shallows above that.

The super closest to the two bottom hive bodies has both honey and brood in it in Bermuda. This means that the bees needed that space for growing new bees, so I won't take that super for me.

However all three Bermuda supers are full and mostly capped, so I'll need to add another super tomorrow ASAP.

Destin, which previously had one full super and two empty ones, now has two completely full and capped shallow supers (no brood in these supers). I moved the remaining empty super to the lowest honey super position, directly above the brood boxes. We'll see what happens.

Look at the huge numbers of bees on top of the super! I took this one from the middle and put it on top - wow, what a lot of bees!

Both hives seem to be thriving. I did see a lot of small hive beetles in the inner covers of both hives and smushed as many of them as I could with my hive tool.

Hive Inspection Saturday June 24

Both hives were doing well. Bermuda had two honey supers filled and capped. I put a third super on Bermuda between the brood area and the other two honey supers. Bees build down when they work in the hive and placing it there may encourage them to draw it out and fill it with honey.

Destin had gorgeous fully capped honey in the top super and the second honey super had barely been touched. The foundation pieces looked almost just like they did when I put them in the hive.

I moved the almost empty super and put it below the filled one. This may stimulate them to work on it, but with no rain in Atlanta, bee times are hard.

I also moved the filled super because they are putting brood - mostly drone comb - in the bottom of the frames on one side of the honey super. With those frames separated from the brood chamber, the brood already there should hatch and the bees should then fill that comb with honey rather than brood. We'll see.
The very outside frame in Destin was the only one where the honey was not capped, as you can see in this picture.