S&C's Bees are Thriving

Sebastian and Christina have this gorgeous side yard full of cutting flowers - yum to a bee!



I checked both hives today and they are THRIVING.  I started with the 8 frame yellow hive.   These bees were really gentle, despite my earlier experiences.  I only wore a jacket and veil, no gloves and barely used the smoker.



In the second box they were almost fully built out.   I am going to be gone this weekend so I decided to go ahead and add a box.



I wanted to put a couple of frames of brood from the box on top to make a frame for the new box.

I pulled the frame below and there was her Majesty - at about 6:00 with a yellow dot to make it easier to find her!



There was some nice brood on this frame as well.



I moved two frames into the new box and placed it in the middle position, like the meat on a sandwich.  I hope they'll make good use of the box until I see them again.  You can see the two used frames in the box below with empty frames for the other six.



So Yellow 7 grew a box.



The story was quite similar on Blue Hive.  It is a ten frame box set up, so they had only built out six of the ten frames.  Although not quite seven, I decided, given my trip status for the weekend, to go ahead and add a box to this hive as well.



Again, I saw a lot of good young larvae and brood in this hive (but didn't glimpse the queen).  I also took two good frames and put them in the new box, placing the new box in the sandwich position.  These bees were drawing some not so straight, so I reversed a few frames to make curving the comb impossible.  It may confuse the bees but will keep the box from getting out of control.
    


So both hives are doing well and both have three boxes on them - great for this time of year!

Queen Release at the Blue Heron

As I returned home today, I stopped at the Blue Heron to see if the new queen had been released. Remember, she had not quite been released on Tuesday. The hive seemed calm and happy. I left my smoker in the car, so it was nice to discover that the bees were calm.



In the second box, the queen had been released and the queen cage was empty. I guess it just took them longer because there was more fondant to eat through.



I didn't check to see if she were laying. I would have been so disappointed if she were not, so it was simply enough that she had been released.



The hive started with the nuc was very quiet - no bees on the landing. I decided even though they were feisty bees and I was without my smoker, I'd still give them a look. As you can see in the photo above, it's a hive in only one deep box.

I am not a foundation user, and this is the first time I've ever looked at black plastic foundation. Wow, can you see eggs and brood well. You can have the same experience looking at the photo below. There is lots of brood and c-shaped larvae on this, the only frame I looked at.

Don't worry, I'm still a foundation-less beekeeper, but I'm glad I've had the experience now of looking at eggs and larve on black plastic - no wonder people like it.  I still think the bees like having the opportunity to make their own foundation and I'm sticking to that!

I am relieved - this hive may turn out to be a good one after all.

Mixed Bee News from the Farm

We went down to the farm about three weeks ago to find all the bees starving. The area hasn't had rain in two months - actually since the tornado in late April. Nothing is growing in the woods, in the fields, nothing. So the bees were in terrible shape.

We put food on all the hives except one - the only one with substantial honey in several supers. None of us live down there and I came back worrying about the bees. After they ran through the feed, they would be in the same shape as before - no resources, no stores. Greg has no irrigation system on his farm so he can't plant without rain. The only dependable bee crop in the county appears to be cotton and it doesn't bloom until August.

When we came back to Atlanta I talked to the guys and we decided to bring most of the hives back to Atlanta. At least here we can keep an eye on them and keep them thriving instead of living on a desert as they were in Taylor county.

Jeff and I drove down and back last Saturday. We loaded up hives and equipment into two cars and drove back to Atlanta. It would have been fine, but Interstate 75 is under construction and a trip back that should have happened in two hours took four and a half! We were ready to scream.

We installed three of the hives in the backyard of my new house where I will move on July 15. I'm there almost every day and can keep an eye on the bees.

The rest of the farm hives are in the backyard of my soon-to-be old house where Jeff and Valerie will be living. So there are five farm hives in Atlanta - two at my old house and three at my new house. We had done some combining of weak hives with strong ones, so we left two hives at the farm....the one that had been doing well and another that seemed in OK shape. Greg goes down every other weekend and he can mind them.

So today I opened all five hives to see how they were doing. All of them have been flying well and seem happy.

The first hive in my old-house yard had a huge tree branch fall on it in a storm on Friday night. I was worried that all would be a mess in the hive. However, they were doing fine.



The queen had been laying and the bees were calm. I only looked at a couple of frames, reasoning that these hives have been through a lot.  I just wanted evidence in each hive that the queen was alive and laying.



The other hive at my old-house yard is the swarm hive we captured in Dallas, GA. The brood pattern in it was great and I saw eggs on both frames I looked at.




At my new house, the bees were quite happy. I saw eggs in every hive, which relieved my worries that the queens may not have traveled safely....or been happy with the journey (I certainly wasn't). You know how when there are bees in the car, they usually go to the back window? Well, sitting so still on I-75 that the speedometer didn't register movement for several hours resulted in loose bees right by my driver's side window. Not the most pleasant trip for me.

You can see tiny c-shaped larvae in these cells.



You can see eggs in these.



I had to increase the contrast (our bees don't begin to be this dark) so you could see the eggs in this hive.



And in the last hive, there were brood, larvae and eggs all on this one frame.



I also met my next door neighbor who looked over the wall at me and my veil and smoker. He seemed nonplused by the fact that a beekeeper had moved in next door and asked if he would get to taste the honey!

Powdered Sugar Shake at Blue Heron Hives

Yesterday (before the current monsoon rains hit Atlanta) we went to the Blue Heron preserve and did a powdered sugar shake on the hives there.

The idea of using powdered sugar is to cover the bees with sugar and encourage their grooming. In the grooming process, they knock off the varroa mites on their bodies. The mites fall through the screened bottom board and can't get back to the hive.

While there is research to suggest that this isn't really an effective mite control, I still do it because by using it in my oldest hive that almost died from Varroa vectored disease, I could really see a difference. The hive is quite healthy today.

Randy Oliver is trying to research this in three articles. Here's the first one and you can find the others on his site.

We used powdered sugar on all three Blue Heron hives. Sam, Julia's youngest son who is in the FOURTH grade, took amazing pictures of the process. I have labeled his pictures with his name on the slide show.

We found two things during the inspection - one great and one not so good.

Great: Julia's hive that appeared to have no queen at our Sunday inspection actually has a laying queen. We didn't see her but saw a good frame of brood and eggs - Woohoo!

Not so good: Our first nuc at Blue Heron came from a supplier who gave us the nuc without a queen . To make good on this he gave us a second nuc - this one had a big beautiful queen. We installed her in another hive, since the first queenless hive had successfully made their own queen.

In the second hive the bees were doing a lousy job of comb building in the second box. We cut out the bad comb, put a drawn frame in the center of the hive (instead of the frame of foundation that was originally there) and moved the frames around so that the badly drawn frames (without the badly drawn comb) were on the edges.

Here's the slide show. Click to see it larger and to be able to read the captions.

Is there a Queen and Is she Laying?

The swarm I collected a couple of weeks ago looked like a secondary swarm and probably had a virgin queen. So the big questions are is there a queen and is she laying?

We've had terrible weather in Atlanta since I got this swarm and you never know how well it will do. The virgin queen had to brave wind, storm, hail, etc. to make the mating flight and get back in one piece. I had no idea if this had happened.

I was thrilled to open the hive today to find capped brood, lots of eggs and tiny larvae on two of the five frames in the bottom medium nuc box! If you can click on the pictures below, there are some good pictures of egg and tiny brood larvae. I was so thrilled!

In such a small hive, I should have been able to see the queen. I looked hard for her on the two frames of brood and larvae but didn't try too hard on the other frames. I was so relieved to see evidence of her.



My goal for this hive is for it to build up enough numbers and supplies to make it through the 2009 winter. We've gotten off to a good start. They are not in the upper box yet. The comb pictured below was all that had been made and the bees hadn't moved into this upper box.



Most of the time, the queen will only lay the amount of eggs that her workers can manage, so I suspect she is going slowly. She'll lay more and more as there are more workers to be nurse bees, and it will be a while before she gets into the second box. I'll bet that I move this hive into a full-sized box at the beginning of June - we'll see.

We have a Blue Heron inspection on Sunday that Julia is leading but we will inspect my hives in the process. We'll get to see if the "made" queen is laying and if the nuc hive is doing well. Decisions will be made about whether the hives need to be combined or if they can stay as two hives.

Drones and Drips

I checked on all of my own hives today to see if I needed to add a box to any of them. All of the hives were working in the box below the most recent addition, so I'm leaving them alone for another week.

In Bermuda, there was an opportunity to photograph a great drone. They look sort of like cigars - blunt on the end. Their eyes are huge compared to the workers in the picture. I saw drones walking around in every hive.


In Bermuda, the box below the top box is a shallow that I stuck on for honey production while I was not bee-ing and was away at my daughter's wedding. The queen is laying in two frames of the shallow. Here is a good shot that shows eggs in the early stages as well as very young larvae. There is also another good big-eyed drone photo op at the upper left corner.



In Mellona, one frame of honey was attached to the frame next to it. When I removed it, comb broke off creating a huges honey drip. The bees immediately marshall forces to repair the problem. I hate creating the drip, but watching the bees circle the edge of the honey puddle and work their way to the middle is fascinating. The ones in the circle around the comb are collecting the spilled honey.



In Aristaeus2, the queen has also been very active. She has also been laying in the third box. It is only an 8 frame box so brood in the third box is to be expected.

Good Hive Inspection News

Today was warm and lovely. I took the opportunity to inspect well two of my hives. First I opened Aristaeous2. This hive was a swarm gathered on April 1 last year.

The bottom box held no bees, no brood, no stores. I took it off of the hive. I now have a box of beautiful drawn comb in medium frames to use somewhere else.

The second box looked like this when I opened it. The bees looked good in this hive. It is a very active hive, often flying in temperatures that surprise me. I expect it to have a really good year.



I pulled a frame from the second box and found good examples of what you can see during good brood production. In case you haven't seen them before, the yellow arrow from the yellow number 1 below points to eggs. Seeing these lets me know that the queen is alive and well.

The yellow arrow by the number 2 points to tiny c-shaped larvae. If you click on this photo so you can see it larger, you'll see examples of brood in all stages of development. The arrow from the number 3 points to capped brood. The queen is laying all around the capped brood, filling in the frame.

I didn't see her but I didn't need to because the evidence is so present.

I left the hive smaller but stronger and look forward to adding another box on the top of this hive very soon.

Pictures of Bees from Eggs to Emergence

I just found a wonderful post on a bee blog that I often visit (I can't read it, it's in Turkish). He has posted pictures of bees in each stage of development from egg to emerging bee.

Here's the blog

The sweet owner of the blog gave me this rudimentary vocabulary to help look at his posts:

Beekeeping = Arıcılık
Beekeeper = Arıcı
Hive = Kovan
Wax= Balmumu
Honey = Bal
Pollen = Polen (:
Larvae = larva (:
Thanks = Teşekkürler
Queen = Kraliçe "or" Ana
Egg = Yumurta
Drone = Erkek arı
Worker = İşçi
Frame = Çerçeve
Queen Cell = Ana Memesi
Swarm = Oğul

Scroll down to 05 Temmuz 2007 which must translate to July 5, 2007 and look at the third post titled: "Belki Referans Olur!!!"

You'll love the pictures. Click on them each to see the brood in various stages of development, marked by number to indicate day of development.

Occasionally he puts an English title on his pictures so the blog is well worth visiting both for the marvelous pictures and the occasional label that I can in fact read.

Inside the hive brood cells

Here you can see what it looks like on a brood frame. If you double click on a picture you can see it much larger.

You can see the white larvae glistening in their cells.

The capped cells are developing into mature bees.

In the center of the lower picture you can see a bee emerging to take her place in the hive.

If you look closely you'll see some workers with their heads down in the cells