Moving Bees from Sebastian's House

Sebastian has a new (5 wk. old) baby boy and he and his wife have decided that they would like to send the bees back to us.  So on Monday night after dark, Jeff and I moved the bees to my backyard.

The hive seemed small, light and the bees seemed particularly uninterested in our efforts to move the boxes.  We strapped up the hive with no incident.  We stapled (Jeff did) a screen wire cover for the entry.

We had fed these bees bee tea (one feeder full - about 2 quarts) going into winter and had thought they might not make it because they had almost no stores before we fed them.  So when the hive seemed light, it was what we expected.  We were thrilled that they had survived despite the winter and low stores.

There were bees still in the empty rapid feeder cone when we removed it, so we covered it with a pillow case hive drape and set it in the smoker bucket for the trip to my house.







We set these bees up on Monday night.  Then on both Tuesday and Wednesday it was unseasonably cold in Atlanta.  I did see a moment of activity on a warmish part of one of those days, but not much.  I was thinking it was a small hive, so I wasn't surprised.

Today it was in the low 60s and I had a 2 hour break in the middle of the day, so I came home to look at the bees.  OMG, there were thousands of bees orienting to this hive.  I've never seen so many - thousands more than are in my strong hive.

There was brood in this hive from the bottom to the top.  The hive was only three boxes and a feeder above the inner cover surrounded with an empty box.  Bees, bees, bees.

I looked in the bottom box and saw brood, capped and uncapped and eggs in almost every empty cell.

I always use hive drapes and I have never seen so many bees landing on the drapes on top of the boxes.

The photo above is what I saw when I opened the middle box.  What a hive!

I covered it with a hive drape and again found brood, capped and uncapped, nectar being collected and lots of eggs.  I also saw many drones - not too many but compared to what I have been seeing (one or two in each box on a hive), there were twenty in each box that I saw.

I didn't see any swarm cells (yet) but I didn't go through every frame.  These bees were just orienting and I didn't want to disturb their home completely.  But that will be my next goal with both of the hives in my yard - to make a split or two from each of these strong hives.

When I got in the third box, again it was built out from one side to the other and included brood as well as honey.  I decided to turn the feeder surround box into a hive box and checkerboarded the frames from box 3 to box 4.

What this means is that I took frames 2, 4, and 6 from box 3 and replaced them with empty foundationless frames.  I put frames 2, 4 and 6 in those same positions in box 4 and put empty foundationless frames in box 4 in positions 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8.  I didn't do 7 and 8 because there was a slight cross comb in box 3 on 7 and 8 and I didn't want to risk breaking the honey comb and tempting a robbing situation.

I turned my attention to the other hive in the yard, my Northlake swarm from last year.  They were putting up nectar but had not used up the space in the box I added recently, so I left their hive as is.

I believe I can make a split from each of these hives next weekend or the next and will not change the honey production of the hive.  I won't do an even split, but will take five frames and make a split or if I find swarm cells, I may put my new queen castle from Brushy Mountain to use.

Also a neighbor across the street came over to ask if I could help her with a bee problem.  Bees (mine and I'm sure others from the six beekeepers who live within blocks of me) were going in and out of a large potted plant by her mailbox.  I stuck my hand in and obviously it was a water source for the bees.  I turned it over and water absolutely poured out of it.  She was amazed that I didn't get stung nor did she and that there was so much water in the pot.

To encourage my bees to get water in my yard, I put a round bread pan on top of my empty nuc box and floated wine corks in it.  I had fantasies about little bees being like loggers and trying not to roll the cork as they went for water, but it was the best I could do on short notice!

Follow Up on the Bee Move

Finally today I went over to move the homeless hive to the place where their sisters have relocated.  There were about 500 bees in the box - some may have been left behind and even though we put greenery on the entry way to get the bees to re-orient, some may have left the new location to go foraging and returned to the old home place about a miles away.

The bees seemed happy and active in their new location:

I gathered up what we left the other night (screened wire, inner cover, bungee cords) before situating the hive box.

Then I place the hive box entrance facing the two hives.  There is no queen in this box, just errant bees.  Some are probably from one hive and some from the other.  The way I placed the box made it easy for the bees to go to their chosen home box.

First I set it there with the top off and the screened wire still attached.  Then I looked up at the storm clouds and thought I didn't want to ruin my equipment.

So then I took the screened wire off the entry and put the telescoping cover sort of catty corner, exposing the two frames with the most bees on them.

And this was how I left it.  I hope the bees leave this box and go home to whichever Mama is theirs.

And on the Longest Day of the Year, What did We Do?..........

We moved bees and laughed at ourselves the whole time.  Sebastian is moving and the two hives of bees at his house had to move as well.  Jeff and I were up for the job and the logical (it seemed) time in our busy lives to do it was Friday night.

Neither of us thought about the fact that Friday was the Summer Solstice and thus the longest day of the year.  The sun didn't set until 8:51!!!!!  I'm very busy these days and Jeff and Valerie have a baby who wakes them up every morning at 5 AM so neither of us were really full of energy at 8:51.

Nonetheless, we drove to Sebastian's house and outfitted Sebastian in my bee jacket, gloves and veil.  He and Jeff were to be the brawn of this move and I was the person manipulating the hives (and therefore getting stung).  Here are our steps:

1.  We lit the smoker - oops, well, I left the lighter at home, but Jeff had a lighter in his fantastic car storage compartment (more about that later!).  We smoked the bees to get the front porch stragglers to go inside the hive.

2.  We closed both hives up with screened wire with Jeff shooting the staple gun.

3.  We took the top two boxes off of the tall hive, set them on a bottom board and gave them a top for the trip.

4.  We strapped both hives tight together and bungee cord strapped the top box combo.

5.  Jeff and Sebastian loaded the three hive box combos into Jeff's car.   It was getting dark, but Jeff in his amazing car storage bin had two flashlights - a mag light and a small silver flashlight that I had put in his Christmas stocking a couple of years ago.

6.  Meanwhile an unhappy bee flew under my long-sleeved shirt, under my untucked t-shirt and stung me right in the tummy - ouch!  I'm so used to wearing a jacket that it never dawned on me to tuck in my shirt.

Note:  We left a hive box - a single box - on a bottom board with a top cover to allow any wayward bees to have a place to hangout.  I'll go back and move whatever bees are still there tomorrow.

7.  With three boxes in the car, we drove slowly to Sebastian's new house. 

8.  Jeff backed carefully into Sebastian's new driveway and we began the unloading process - we had to unload the cinder blocks and place them as well as the hives.

9.  When the hives were placed, we undid the straps.  Then I took off the top of the big hive to add the removed honey supers back.  OMG, those bees were all gathered at the top of the box, loaded for bear and wondering what the %$#@*** had just happened to their happy abode.  

I got stung on three fingers of my right hand - each finger getting several stings.

10.  For the do what I say, not what I did crowd, we would have been better served, I think, to remove the screen wire from the front of the hive before taking the top off, but I didn't think of that.

11.  We put grass on the fronts of both hives to help them reorient, leaned the inner cover from the fake hive against the fence to allow those bees to find their way home and headed for Jeff's car.

12.  In the car, I had Benadryl - the dissolve on your tongue kind - but no way to open the package.  In his magical car storage bin, Jeff had a sharp knife and opened the package for me.  

I'll go anywhere with Jeff in his car any time - that man is prepared for anything.....well, he didn't have a glass of wine and I sure could have used that, but he commented that it would be illegal to have that in his car.  

Good point.

Bees are Now in Rabun County

Yesterday was a tough decision bee day.  I was going up to the mountains for the weekend so the queen I was supposed to get from the supplier couldn't be brought back to the Chastain hive.  I couldn't move the Chastain hive to Rabun county because it is a failing hive now with few bees since the drone layer queen is not replacing the bees.  I'm only up there about once every 3 - 4 weeks so I wouldn't be able to intervene if it didn't go well.

So what I decided was to take a split from my backyard to Rabun.  They haven't made their own queen yet, so I could put the replacement queen in it.  Then I could keep giving the Chastain package brood and eggs until they finally make a workable local queen.  Michael Bush says that when you have a drone layer, just give the hive a frame of brood and eggs every week until they successfully make a queen.

I went over to Chastain to retrieve the drone layer queen, but in the process and in talking to Julia, I changed my mind.  I've had two angry/mean phone calls from the supplier and two angry/mean emails from him and the idea of driving to Lula, an hour away, to allow him to say critical comments to my face just wasn't appealing just to get a queen.  And since he and I will no longer be doing any further business, what investment would he have in giving me a good queen?  For all I know, he would give me another unmated queen.

So Julia was very generous and gave me a frame of brood and eggs to put in the split I was taking to Rabun.  I had given it a frame of brood and eggs about five days ago, but didn't see a queen cell, so wasn't too hopeful about them.  I put the frame in the split hive and drove to N Georgia, feeling great relief as I passed the turn off to the supplier's house without even considering turning off.

Also the place where I collected the huge swarm on Tuesday was unhappy that there were still a baseball sized bunch of bees still clustered where the swarm had hung, so I stopped there and sprayed those bees with vanilla flavored sugar syrup, shook them into a Tupperware container and when I got to Rabun, added them to the hive split that I had brought.  The vanilla allows the bees to mask the pheromone and generally they will combine without killing each other.  Cindy Bee taught me that years ago.

So Rabun County now has bees at the community garden with plenty of bees, honey and the resources to make a queen.  I left the dead out hive in place there so that perhaps a swarm from the old school nearby where there are bees in the wall might move in as they did last year.

Weather with tornado watches was predicted for Rabun and as I drove into the county at 6:45 PM, the rain started.  I installed these bees in the rain, carrying the hive by myself about 50 yards to the bee site.  As soon as I had shaken in the bees from the swarm, then the rain started to pour down in full force.

What I have learned from this experience:
 
Always ask your supplier what their policy is should the queen fail in the establishment of the hive.  I did not do that and when I said the queen had failed, his response was that his queens were proven layers.  That was a terrible position for me to be in, since I had a failed queen purchased from him.  It set the situation up for his stance that the problem was with the purchaser rather than the seller.  And this queen was a drone layer from the beginning on March 18.  When selling bees, for good will and for continued support from the purchaser, the supplier should assume the customer is always right.

We will leave the drone layer hive at Chastain so that when we are doing teaching inspections, as we do there for new beekeepers frequently over the spring and summer, we can talk about drone layers, demonstrate how to handle a drone laying hive (hopefully), and talk a lot about how to choose a better bee supplier than we did.

Meanwhile so that we will have three good hives over there, I'll move a split I have made with a queen from Julia's yard to Chastain to be up and running since the queen is already "proven" and laying.