Mysterious Marauder at the Blue Heron!

I stopped by the Blue Heron this afternoon. The temperatures are in the low 50s and I thought I might see some bees. I really miss my bees at home and wish I had a hive to watch everyday here as I used to.

When I arrived, Julia's hive was opened up with the hive top feeder exposed to the sky. The inner cover, the ventilated inner cover and the hive top were neatly stacked on the ground behind the hive. The hive top covered everything and was top side up, unlike we would place it during an inspection.

Wonder what kind of creature would do this? I imagine it might have been a raccoon whose paws/hands are small enough to push from under the hive top. But if a raccoon opened the hive, why didn't he stay around to drink the syrup?

Sadly the open sugar syrup swimming pool was filled with drowned bees. Julia had called me from the Blue Heron on Friday when the temperatures were in the 60s to say her hive top had been moved slightly off. I guess the marauder returned after she left to finish the job.

Julia and I decided I should dump the feeder on the ground to stop further drownings and put the hive back together. In removing the feeder, I slid the second box (I had no hive tool with me) and found to my sadness that the hive contains no bees. I called Julia again and we thought leaving the hive empty on its site might serve to lure a swarm in the spring.



See all the sad, dead bees floating in the syrup? These aren't my usual quality of pictures because I took them with my phone.



My hive had bees flying out of it. I tried to catch a picture when there were three or four on the landing, but I only caught this one (in ten photo opps!) Oh, well. There are bees in my hive. Let's hope they continue to live through the rest of the winter.

Blue Heron Going Into Winter

Julia and I made a quick feeding/question answering trip to Blue Heron today to feed our hives and see what's going on with them. Noah came too.....he's got a creative way of thinking about things, so it helps so much to have him with us.

Julia's remaining hive at BH is weak in numbers and we are quite worried about it. She took the hive top feeder off and set it on the ground. Since there are three hives of active bees there, we covered it with a cloth to keep robbing or drowning from happening while we checked on the hive.

We wanted to pull up some frames to see if the bees are storing anything. You can see that there are few bees here in this hive. The frames in this box have some stored honey but given how much syrup has been available to them, the minimal storage in this box probably points to the low numbers of bees in the hive.

Our nights have been cool and we were loath to fool around too much with these hives, respecting the bees' winter plan for themselves, so we elected only to check the top box for stores and do nothing more. There was some storage, but not a lot and the food in the upper feeder hadn't been touched much.

I've heard from other beekeepers in the area that their bees are slowing down in taking syrup. This could be because we have a good aster flow going and it may be because the hives are getting enough stored for winter. This hive, however, is not at all ready for surviving the winter.

We filled the hive top feeder. Julia brought a solid inner cover to substitute for the ventilated cover that has been on the hive all summer. When we put it on, Julia was worried that bees might come through the hole in the inner cover and drown in the hive top feeder. Noah, in a moment of brilliance, suggested that we put the ventilated cover back on on top of the inner cover, thus closing the inner cover off to bees entering the hive that way.

When we opened my hive the bees had only taken 1/2 of the pint bottle and about half of the baggie feeder. The baggie had been on the hive for 10 days at this point and I think they should have taken it all by now. I had replaced the pint jar on Thursday because I wondered if the previous jar had clogged holes in its top.

Noah didn't know I was using bee tea (which has thyme floating in it). He looked at my baggie and said, "Something has started sprouting in there!"

I've been wondering if this hive were out of room. Unfortunately I forgot to take any more pictures. We took off the Boardman and gently lifted up the baggie so I could look at the frames in the top box. This hive has a deep and a medium. It's an 8 frame hive so really it needs to have another medium on it going into winter to have enough stores.

I had brought with me a box of drawn comb to add to this hive. I pulled up - with great difficulty both because of its weight and because of the amount of propolis these girls have generated - the second frame from the outer edge. It was full of honey. I decided to interpret this as the hive has no more room to store their syrup/nectar.

I went ahead and added the second medium since it is drawn comb and the bees can go right ahead and use it. I won't be able to check this hive again until early in the second week of November. If they haven't made use of the drawn comb at that point, then I'll take this extra box off and hope they can make it through the winter with the deep and medium 8 frame all full of honey.

Since our first hives at Blue Heron died in the flood of Sept 2009, these hives are the first possibility for having a second year hive at Blue Heron. Kevin and Peter (the owners of the third hive) have a very active, apparently thriving hive, so there's a good chance theirs will make it through. Julia's first hive died and her remaining hive is weak. I so much want this one of mine to succeed.

Maybe they'll make use of this new box to store the bee tea syrup and will have enough resources.

I know I'm keeping my fingers crossed (toes too).

Feeding Frenzy for the Blue Heron Bees

At the recent Blue Heron inspection, it was clear that both remaining hives are way too light to make it through the winter.  We have committed to feeding them heavily through the month of October and maybe into the first two weeks of November (after which we generally have our first freeze here in Georgia).

I put a baggie feeder and a pint jar in a Boardman inside a medium box for a surround on Thursday.  That's really only 1 1/2 quarts so I plan to check it on Sunday or on Monday morning and probably add some more food.

 I really want these bees to live through the winter, despite the fact that they stung gloveless me THREE times while I was simply removing the old empty baggie and adding a new one!  

Two of the stings weren't bad - my left hand little and third fingers - but the third sting was on top of a bad burn I got on my left hand knuckle while making baked oven fries (500 degree oven).  My hand swelled up around the burn and was generally uncomfortable until today.



Julia bought at the Bee Club Auction in September this hive top feeder from Mann Lake.  This is the first time she is using it.  It holds four gallons of syrup so she won't have to return to refill it as often as I will.  However, we found a post on Beemaster indicating that bees feeding with enthusiasm can drown easily in this feeder.
 


The hardware cloth is not secured at the bottom and the bees in their enthusiasm can end up in the holding tub rather than behind the hardware cloth by pushing through the bottom.  Julia had intended to bring duct tape to manage this problem as in the post mentioned above, but forgot it, so she only filled the side that seemed tight enough not to allow the bees to drown.



This is how we left it.  I guess the bees crawl up in the center, cling to the hardware cloth and stick their little bee tongues into the sugar syrup and suck it up.



We'll see how this works when we check it next weekend.