Another MABA Hive Inspection

I took a week off for Mother's Day and skipped last weekend, but really made up for it this week. On Monday, the 11th, I moved the little queen castle hive that was only four frames in a two-medium box hive into a nuc. We are going to let it grow in the nuc this season.

On Friday, the 15th, I inspected the two established hives at the garden and gave a quick check to the now-nuc hive. To add a little interest to it all, I did an inspection of my top bar hive which is boiling over with happy bees and honey.

The whole pieced-together inspection (it starts on Monday and ends on Friday!) is below:

Bees from Busters!

Going into winter, I was not expecting a good bee year.  I thought of my hives only the two from Bill Owens that I'd won at the bee auction  would make it through the winter.   I've heard great things about Buster's Bees, but I've never bought any from him, so in December, I ordered four nucs from him.  I ordered two cardboard nucs and two medium nucs put in my own hive boxes.

In March, as per instruction from Fran, Buster's wife, I took two medium hives to Buster to fill with a nuc's worth of bees for me.

Fran Lane outside the Buster's Bees shop

They have an adorable shop of bee supplies that I visited as well (and spent $!).

Finally on Friday night (April 11) it was time to pick up my two cardboard nucs.  The medium boxes aren't ready yet because they didn't have a good queen, so Buster requeened them.  

Buster's was teeming with folks picking up their bees.  We all sat around and, as they say in the South, chewed the fat while we waited for dark to fall.  Here's Buster and below him is a photo of his nucs sitting around his beautiful backyard pond in Jonesboro, Georgia.

When dark arrived, Buster drove the bees on a flatbed back to the place where we all waited, and one by one, we picked up our bees.  Fran had a handout to give everyone about how to install their bees and also gave clear verbal instructions.  

When my nucs were loaded into my car, I drove carefully to Jeff's house where these bees are going to live.  It was late and dark, so we threaded our way through ivy up to the location on a hilltop facing east where the bee hives waited.

We set each nuc on top of its respective hive, and removed, as per Fran's instructions, the yellow entry block.

The next day, I returned early in the morning (without my bee apparel) and Jeff installed the bees.  He did a perfect job of it.

He looked and looked for the queen but although he never saw her, he did see eggs and young larvae.  I've got to get braver.  I usually wear a jacket and veil - no gloves, no suit, but on Saturday I didn't have my jacket and only a veil with holes in the veil fabric, so I didn't get up close enough to help with the queen spotting.

We left the empty cardboard nucs in front of the hives so that lingering bees could enter.  We'll probably add a second box this weekend, but for now they have three new frames to use and had some space on the frames on which they came.

We look forward to a good experience with these hives.  Thanks, Buster and Fran.

Overview of this Year's Beekeeping Endeavors

At my house:

• The Patty Swarm Hive - tall and doing well.  I harvested one frame of honey from this hive last week and it was thin.  The top two boxes are honey - the top still has some room in it.
  
• The Drone Layer - Now has made their own good queen in their own good time.  They will have one box of honey to harvest (you can see them to the left of Patty
  
• The Unintentional Nuc hive with a queen who started out laying multiple eggs but may have the hang of it now.  Maybe it will go through winter or I'll combine it with another hive in fall.

• The Morningside supply nuc - chugging along with my taking frames out of it at every inspection.  I've seen the queen (easy in a nuc) and she is large and lovely
  
• The Don Kuchenmeister package hive - this one hasn't taken off.  I don't know if it's because there is bad energy between Don and me over the bad queen hive at Chastain, or if he just got bad bees this year, but this hive is doing OK but not making honey like the swarm hives at all.  They only have a box for themselves at this point and the nectar flow is about over.
  
  
  
• The Northlake Swarm hive - going gangbusters.  I added a new box about four days ago.  The bees are tripping all over each other at the entrance.  They are drawing new wax and so happy with whatever nectar source they are working now.  They are all over the front of the hive in the photo because I have just closed it up from working on it and adding a new box.
  
  
  
• The Atlantic Station Swarm:  This  hive is in the shade all day.  I don't know how much difference that makes but they are only three days later in installation than the Northlake swarm and are not doing as well, although the three swarm hives in my yard are doing better than all the other hives.  The photo below is in the middle of the inspection, so it's all apart and covered with hive drapes, but you can see that it is a three box hive.  On both it and the Northlake hive, I've kept the bottom closed up all season.
  
  

At other locations:

Morningside community Garden:

• My best hive at Morningside garden was the victim of a pesticide kill and has not done well since then - still a big hive with some honey to harvest but is in recovery
  
• The second hive at Morningside is a tiny little thing that hasn't gotten off the ground.  They are not using the front entrance of the hive - instead the bees enter the hive through the notch in the inner cover under the back of the telescoping cover.  They are only a two box hive.  If I ever add a box to this hive, the bees will be confused about their back entrance.  I always have to leave the box with the top slid to the back as far as possible to give them entry!

Stonehurst Inn:

• Two hives are there - one is from last year and is doing OK but will have no honey this year
• The other - free bees that just showed up and are just getting started

Ron's house near Emory:

• The Mississippi Queen.  I went to Ron's house after teaching in the Med School at Emory this morning and found that Elvis had left the building.  She was gone and the hive had absconded.  The difference in absconding and swarming is that when a hive absconds, the queen and all the bees leave, taking supplies with them and they leave nothing behind.  I was so sad - both I was excited to have a Mississippi Queen since I grew up in Mississippi and I wanted the hive to succeed.  If the Unintentional Nuc succeeds, maybe I'll take it to Ron's but our hives are just not doing well there, for some reason
• The Wilbanks Package hive is doing OK.  The queen is laying and bees are flying in and out, but they are not needing a new box - which is disheartening.  But at least they are alive and kicking, for the moment.  There's a community garden within eyesight from the hive and they should be feasting on cucumbers and blueberries but you never know.

Sebastian's

• We just moved both of those hives so we'll see how they do.  One of them does have a harvestable box of honey on it.  I haven't inspected since the move

Chastain - a hive and a nuc

• At the last hive inspection on June 15, the Don Kuchenmeister failure of a hive still didn't have a laying queen.  We gave it another frame of brood and eggs from the nuc.  This hive seems hopeless but I keep optimistically thinking it will right itself.  In the end as winter approaches, I may combine the nuc with it.
  
• Chastain nuc - feisty bees - I get stung every time I open the hive, but they are productive and busy.  We took a frame of honey from that hive on the 15th and I demonstrated crush and strain harvest for the people at the hive inspection.

Rabun County

• Last time I checked on that hive was Memorial Day weekend.  I'm going up on Wednesday for the July 4th.  Sourwood honey flow is about to start.  The hive had an extra box on it, but I'll add another box if they are still bee-ing as they should.

The Little Kitten Swarm

Cindy Bee who belonged to Metro Atlanta Beekeepers when she was in Georgia once said that when people called her about a swarm, she would  ask how big it was.  She'd say, "Big as a basketball? A football? A baseball?" but people would say, "Well, it's as big as my Mama's purse;" or "It's as big as two cats."

When I got this tiny swarm, I thought, "Only as big as a kitten."  So I housed the tiny swarm in a nuc box to help them thrive.  Since it was so small, it was probably a secondary swarm with a virgin queen and she needed time to mate and start laying.

I looked into the hive for the first time on Wednesday.  They have a laying queen!  She had an egg in almost every available cell. 

I am feeding this nuc, unlike my other hives.  I feel like mothering it - they are so small and I want to make it work for them.  Maybe they won't make it, but I loved opening the nuc and finding all these eggs.  And they were storing nectar.



Notice in the comb below that they have left themselves a passageway right in the center of the comb.  This is one of the advantages to the bees of foundationless frames.


The bees only occupy part of three frames of this nuc, but Michael Bush once wrote on Beemaster that at this time of year, if he had a group of bees about the size of a baseball (or a kitten), he would try to give them every chance.  That's what I'm doing.


And now that they are making a new home in the nuc box, I hung the swarm trap back up again.  It may have already used its 40% chance by catching the "small kitten" but I love it that it worked and want to try again!