Winter, Summer, It's All the Same in Atlanta

OK, it's not unusual for me not to break out my winter coat until January and our worst winter months are February and early March. As a matter of fact, the two hardest snowstorms we have had the entire thirty-seven years I've lived in Atlanta were in March 1993 and in February 2014. In the March snowstorm the temperatures were in the teens and we had tons of snow (relatively speaking) and no power for over a week. In February 2014, I got home just fine in each of the two snowstorms two weeks apart, but many people were stranded on the Interstates since in Georgia we get layers of ice under the snow on the streets and driving is impossible.

But in all of those years, in November and December, while my winter coat remained in the closet, I would on many mornings put on my fleece jacket or vest. We did have one cold week here in 2015 during early December, but it only warranted a jacket in the early morning. By afternoon the temperature had risen up to the high 60s.

This Christmas week takes the cake. Yesterday the thermometer read 79.5 F - couldn't quite get to 80. I mean, really, it's DECEMBER.

So the bees are confused and this is bad news. Every day they are flying, using up energy and needing to consume their saved stores. There is an illusion among the hives that spring may already be springing - is the queen laying at her pre-spring rate? Or is she slowly increasing as of December 21 which is her usual procedure?

Right after the actual cold winter week, I saw evidence on one hive that they may have nosema.

But that was several weeks ago and the bees in that nuc hive continue to fly as eagerly as the others.

I worry because I didn't feed my bees this year - I rarely do. Instead I harvested relatively little, leaving lots on each hive for the bees. The nuc in the photo and a sister nuc are from splits I made in late July after the nectar flow had long ceased. I gave each of those hives two jars of honey, harvested from another hive.

So in giving them that honey did I transfer nosema from the other hive to them?

I don't know, but we can only hope for the best.  I won't feed them anymore and cross my fingers that they make it through the winter. The two nuc overwintering hives are splits from my strongest survivor hive so hopefully they will have traits to endure their way through nosema or whatever else the varroa mite dishes out over the "winter," such as it is!

Moving Day for Polar Bees

This past Sunday was moving day for the Polar Bees in the overwintered nuc.  I was hesitant to get into swarm season with this highly enthusiastic hive in a nuc.  I was cautious about moving them because last year every time I fooled with this hive, I got stung several times, but I accomplished the move with no gloves and no stings.

I used hive drapes the whole time.  First I took the hive down to the bottom box and covered each of the nuc boxes with hive drapes.

My excuse for the next part of this is that last year was the year of my injured leg so I didn't do much of a good beekeeping job.  This nuc was a split from one of my Bill Owens' hives in Tom's yard.  At the time I took the nuc box to serve as a Billy Davis quiet box during the inspection of the hive.  

So if you look at this bottom deep nuc box, the first thing I notice is that the two stapled frames are not my frames and must have come from Bill Owens when I picked up my hive from him.  The other three with the arrows on them are my frames.

I am sorry to report that I don't have a photo of this but will take one in my next inspection of this hive.  I pulled  up the second to the side frame on the left and found that in fact it was a medium frame.  The bees had added free comb to the bottom to fill up the box so that it is the depth of a deep but the wood stops at medium.  This was true of all three of my frames - all were medium frames that the bees had converted to deeps.  Here's a photo of a frame in another hive where this happened.

I think I had intended to take this "quiet box" home and put it into a full box but must have had trouble with my leg and didn't follow through.  Then time went by and I never did it.  I do remember looking at it, thinking it would be nice to have a nuc in my bee yard.  Then the bees were mean in the hive so I wasn't anxious to open it and totally forgot that there were medium frames in there.  When I did open it, I mainly did so to see if they needed another box or more room and didn't do a deep inspection.

I've read various places that if the bees extend the comb like that, they will draw drone comb in the free comb area.  Not true for me in any hive where this has happened.  They always just replicate whatever they were doing in the upper framed comb.  In this hive, it was brood comb and instead of a football pattern, the queen had a full deep circle of "dark biscuit" (another Billy Davis reference) brood comb.  

The dark biscuit comb means the brood is about 21 days old and ready to emerge so my move took place none too soon.

On one of the stapled frames I saw the lovely, majestic queen, moving slowly over her brood.  You can see her below.

At this time of year, often our Atlanta bees are on the verge of starvation because of the late winter freezes.  Not this hive.  The second box was full of frames of fully capped untouched honey like the one below.  No danger for the Polar Bees to starve.

I did see some small hive beetles who had overwintered with the bees.  I saw about five of them.  Below is an out of focus photo of an oil trap with absolutely NO SHB in the trap although there were live ones in the hive.  I guess I need to mix up the banana peel concoction to tempt the beetles into the trap instead of using oil.

So before moving day clean-up, here's how it all looked:

I put the hive in three boxes because after I filled out the bottom box with three empty deep frames, I had full frames plus drawn comb from the other two boxes enough to fill the second box.  It was almost full of honey (five full frames and two partial ones).  So I went ahead and put a third box on this hive to give them some growing room with new brood about to emerge.

I put on an entrance reducer as I do on all my hives and closed off the screened bottom since they had been living in a solid bottom nuc box.  The bees tumbled all over each other as they vied for entry.  In the next week or so, I'll put on one of Billy Davis' robber screens to leave on for the season.

The Dead....... and the Living

At this time of year, all of us beekeepers are crossing our fingers that our bees make it through the winter.  Today the icy wind is blowing and Atlanta will have temperatures in the 20s tonight.  This occurs after several balmy days.

Thus is winter in the south.  We just had the anniversary of Snowmagedden, the ice-covered snowy road storm that stopped Atlanta in its tracks last year and left the city with egg on its face.

I never open my hives even on the warm days in winter because to do so breaks the propolis seal and who knows when the next frosty wind will blow.  But I am just as interested as those who do in the survival of my hives.

One way to tell if a hive is alive is by the number of the dead in front of the entrance.  I was over at the Stonehurst Place Inn on Monday to see if my bees there were alive.  The temperature was in the 40s and no live bees were going to show themselves to me.  But I knew the hive was alive by the pile of dead bodies in front of the hive.

In order to create the pile of the dead, there have to be living mortician bees, inside the hive, carrying out the bodies.

My hives prove it to me because of the yard guys.  On a warmish day, the hives do housecleaning and the ground in front of the hives is scattered broadly with dead bees.

This is a hive in my backyard.

Look closely at the concrete in front of and at the sides of this hive entrance.  There are dead bees everywhere.  Even if we couldn't see a live bee, we can tell by the dead ones

that the hive is alive.

The yard guys come every two weeks and when they do, the area around the hive is clean as a whistle because the bee bodies are blown away with any fallen leaves.

So if I look out on the next sunny day after the yard men have been here and there are new bodies strewn around, again I'll again be reassured that my hive is alive.  The "new" dead bees will have been carried out by live ones.

Warm Temps Equal Flying Bees

The temperature is milder today and the bees are flying.

I have three live hives in my backyard which means I lost two over the winter.  One was the tiny hive we moved from Jeff's yard that never really got off the ground.  The other was the Sebastian hive which made good honey and were surprisingly strong.   I'll open that hive soon to see if I can determine what was wrong.

The three who are vigorously flying and bringing in pollen (from where?) are the nuc hive that is going great guns, the Northlake swarm hive - now entering its third season, and the Va Hi Swarm that I caught just up the street from my house during last year's swarm season.

The Va Hi swarm hive looks like they have nosema:

You can see all the bee feces around the entrance.  Still there are tons of bees coming and going.  It's my most vigorous hive.  We didn't harvest from this hive and also didn't consolidate the boxes going into winter (I know, bad beekeeper...) but they are alive and surviving so far.

In Atlanta you never can tell.  We can have snow as late as mid March.  Last year around Valentine's Day we had the worst snow jam ever, ever, ever with really cold temperatures, so who knows what will happen.

There are a lot of dead bees just outside the hive with all of my hives.  This is natural in that the dead accumulate inside when the bees can't fly because it's too cold, but as soon as it warms up, they carry out the dead.

You can see dead bodies on the ground in the above photo.

The Northlake hive is bringing in the pollen as well as the nuc hive.  I saw three bees on several occasions while I watched the nuc hive practically fall over each other trying to make the entrance.

The bees that were coming in carried heavy pollen loads.

These kinds of days make me feel hopeful for the spring!

Blanketing the Bees

"Baby, it's cold outside...."

Seems weird to see a hive in a blanket.  After all, we are in Georgia.  But tonight the temperature is going to drop so low that with the wind, it is supposed to feel like 0 degrees.  BRRRR.  

I keep thinking of the child's finger game:

Here is the beehive.

Where are the bees?

Hiding away where nobody sees....

Watch and you'll see them come out of the hive.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five.

What I want when late February or early March comes around is for the bees to come out of the hive, one, two, three, four, five. 

It might be purely psychological impact on me, the beekeeper, but it felt pretty good to tuck the bees in on this cold night.  I went out after putting these blankets on and added a sheet fully covering each hive for another layer!

Earlier this winter, I followed the video advice of Mountain Sweet Honey and taped the box joinings so as to cut down on drafts inside the hive box.  Here's their video about preparing the hives for winter.

This is a medium 8 frame hive going into winter with four boxes of honey and bees.  I'm using four boxes because that is 32 frames, comparable to three medium boxes for a 10 frame hive.  The inner cover has an empty box above it where I have a feeder into which I put honey in the late fall.

New Hive Bees Doing Well

The bees that Jeff and I installed at Tom's house are doing well.  We have been feeding them bee tea (wish I had honey but I don't) and have now given each hive 2 gallons of syrup.  Bob Binnie says if you feed bees going into winter, you should try to get them to take 5 gallons of syrup.  So we'll keep on feeding them.

In essence these are five frames of bees in a ten frame hive.  The five frames are nuc-like because they are full of bees, well-built out, stores of honey, lots of brood.  The other five frames are undrawn foundation.  I think both of these hives will be like taking a nuc through the winter.  I think even with our feeding them 5 gallons of syrup, they'll still just fill the deep box, if that, before winter comes.

In one of the hives - the back one - the five frames were put in the center of the box with the empty frames on either side.

In the front hive the five frames of bees were put in on the side of the box with the empty frames on the other side:

The bees in this box may do fine the way they are and may do better if we move them more to the center and put the empty frames on either side.

Both hives are putting up our syrup and it looks like they already were storing some honey.

Jeff is really excited about these bees for several reasons - they are about a long block from his office so they feel personal to him.  He has been their main caretaker so far, and he REALLY wants these hives to succeed after our year of ongoing bee loss....(I've been scared to list all the losses because I don't want to see them all lined up.)

Today we saw the queen in both hives.

Here's the first one:

And here's the second one:

Both were on the side edge of the frame so Jeff was very careful returning the frame to the box because we know if we kill the queen, this hive is done for.  There are no more drones and no way to make a new queen until spring.

Both rapid feeders were completely empty.  We had to pour v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y because the bees were so eager and we had to give them time to move out of the cone.

Although we brought a new box with drawn frames in it, it looks so unlikely that these bees will need another box before the cold weather sets in.  I'm going to email Bill Owens and ask him about advice for over-wintering in just one deep box.

Live Bees at Blue Heron and at Jeff's

The bees in the nuc at Blue Heron are ALIVE! I really can't believe it. These are the vandalized bees that are now housed in a nuc and locked with a bicycle lock against further intrusion. I did not believe they would still be OK and we are not out of the winter death possibilities until March. At least for now they are flying.

I couldn't believe it so I took four pictures to prove to myself that they actually are coming and going. You can watch a hive and tell if the bees entering and leaving it live there or are robbers from another hive. The residents enter confidently and in one fell swoop into the entry. Robber bees are unsure and tend to hover around the entrance before going into the hive.

These bees own this hive.

At my old house where Jeff and Valerie now live we have two hives we are concerned about - now three. Colony Square is doing great with bees all at the entrance. Lenox Pointe has bees but also evidence of nosema, possibly, in that there are streaks of bee poop on the hive box at the entry way.

The hive we call "Five" is still alive. It was tiny going into winter and we had talked about putting it into a nuc, but never did. It is housed in two medium boxes. Jeff hasn't seen any bees flying in or out, so we opened the top to take a peek. The rapid feeder was still on the hive and there were bees walking up and down the sides of the cone. We both whooped out loud to see actual bees alive in the hive.

Our fourth hive over there is the swarm we caught in June. Although small, it too is alive and had bees in the feeder cone of the rapid feeder.

Don't be disturbed by the mold in the rapid feeder or the "weeds." The weeds are actually sprigs of thyme and we'll clean out the mold on our next opportunity to open the hive.

Today it was still quite cold and we didn't want to remove the rapid feeder to clean it because it covers the hole in the inner cover and the bees are likely to have propolized any air space to maintain warmth. I'll take warmth over cleanliness if they can make it through the winter.

Jeff and I are following Jennifer Berry and Keith Delaplane's system for powdered sugar treatment for varroa mites.  We are dusting the bees with the Dustructor - which means dusting without opening the hive - four times this month (three days apart) and then will repeat this in March.

Today was my third treatment and I dusted the bees at my house and at the Stonehurst Place Inn.  Jeff will do the bees at my old house tomorrow.  It's out of schedule but I dusted the bees at Blue Heron when I stopped there - they are actually part of Jeff's schedule, due to be dusted tomorrow.

General Bee Report as Winter Approaches

First, I'm sorry I've been rather lax in my postings.  I hope some of you have taken the opportunity to review some of the old posts while you wondered where in the world I was.

Last week was my birthday, my middle daughter was visiting from Maryland, my youngest daughter here in Atlanta is pregnant, due any day, and I hosted Thanksgiving for my family at my house.

Needless to say, the bees have taken a back seat.

However, over this weekend I checked on most of my Atlanta hives.  Most appear to be going into winter with good supplies.  I fed the bees bee tea going into the fall and most of the hives were slow to take any food, which is a good sign.  Generally they would prefer nectar and around my house we had a pretty good fall aster bloom (and therefore a decent fall flow).  So they haven't taken the bee tea because they didn't really need it.

For example, I put these two feeder jars on the Blue Heron nuc on 11/14.  Here it is almost two weeks later and they've barely touched it.  So I can feel pretty sure that they don't need it.  

One of the advantages of the rapid feeder is that it can stay on the hive during the winter.  A second advantage is that thick sugar syrup rarely freezes so if it is warm enough for the bees to move around, the syrup is there for their taking.  So my 8 frame hives will keep the rapid feeder through the winter.

Plans for winter:
1.  Make creamed honey from the early honey this season that has crystallized
2.  Build my unbuilt nuc boxes
3.  Paint equipment and assess my equipment needs
4.  Try to look for a possible local place to put the beehives from south Georgia
5.  Make plans about our bee business Linda Ts Bees with Jeff to determine where we need to focus come spring
6.  Work on my short course talk with Cindy Hodges on the year in the bee yard in a beginning beekeeper's year.
7.  Work out a sugar shake schedule to begin in January for all the hives.
8.  Decide about splits - surely I can split Colony Square and probably Lenox Pointe as well.

Blue Heron Bee Report

Over last weekend, Julia called me from the Blue Heron with the sad news that she opened her hive and found it dead. The terrible vandal left it open to inclement weather, the bees had probably lost or balled their queen after that, and the hive had dwindled down to nothing. Very, very few bees were left in her hive and there was brood that needed to be capped and had died since the larvae was never capped. Very sad situation.

Julia had taken honey to feed her hive. My hive did not need food, so she left the honey on a cinder block with slits in the baggie for any takers. When I arrived to check my hive, there were bees enjoying the honey.


Here are Julia's hive boxes, now empty. We will scorch the insides for safety but the cause of death for this hive was mistreatment and exposure.


You can see bees on the landing of my nuc hive. The bees were flying in and out. I did see a few with pollen in their pollen baskets which was hopeful for the hive as a whole.



When I opened the hive, they had not emptied the jars of bee tea - when you have honey available why would you want bee tea? In addition the asters are still blooming profusely in the fields around the apiary.



I left them with the half empty jars and will check on them again this coming week.

Blue Heron Hive is Warm and Fed

Yesterday I went over to check on the Blue Heron. This incident with the vandal has left me really nervous. I pulled up to the garden parking lot and I was the only car there, so despite Roswell Road traffic in full view, I turned my car to face toward the street before getting out of it.

Then I walked up to the hives to feed them and was so nervous that I did something by accident to my phone so that all the photos were black and white - not nearly as illustrative as color, but certainly a sign that I am massively uncomfortable at the Blue Heron alone - which never used to be my truth.



The hive was still locked up and undisturbed.


The boardmans were empty and bees were flying in and out of the hive.


I reloaded the Boardmans with lovely amber colored bee tea which you cannot begin to appreciate in black and white.


The aster is still blooming, the bees are still flying in and out. I will probably move these bees home next week when the weekend cold will still the aster bloom.

Blue Heron in the Dark of Night

As you remember, on Sunday I moved the Blue Heron hive into a nuc for the winter.  On Monday night Jeff and I planned to move the nuc to my backyard - it would take two of us because it's a 2 story nuc. (Not to mention that he has the straps required to keep the thing together in the process of a move.)

On Monday in the middle of the day, I went over to see how the nuc was doing.  The bees were blissfully flying into the nuc with pollen on their legs and full honey stomachs from the field of aster in bloom just outside the apiary in the garden.

I looked at the garden, at the football field's worth of land, covered in white aster with some purple in the mix as well.  Each plant was weighed down with bees.

I couldn't justify taking this already damaged hive to a new place right now - it would be like saying they had to eat at MacDonald's when Godiva Chocolate was free for the taking.  So I decided I had to leave the nuc there until the aster bloom is finished.

The other glitch was that I was going to Santa Fe for a professional conference (where I am right this minute) and wouldn't be able to oversee the hive, so we needed to do something to protect them.

I wasn't free to do this until after dinner on Monday and Jeff agreed.  So in the dark of the night, we drove over to the Blue Heron.  It WAS dark.  We had flashlights and made lots of noise getting out of the car to scare the honey thief, or any other vagrant who might be around (there are supposedly two homeless people who live at the Blue Heron).

Jeff suggested that I leave the car unlocked so we could make a quick get away if we needed to, but I wasn't comfortable with that - his suggestion points to how unsettled we both felt.

Our plan was to lock up the hive with a bicycle lock as Julia had with hers.  We set the combination in the car - we had to hook two locks together to be able to completely surround the hive.  Then we headed for the hive.

We set everything up first - put the two boardman feeders I had brought together (set the jar of sugar syrup on each of them); prepared the nuc box that would serve as a surround for the feeders so we could place them on top of the inner cover; figured out what each of us would do to make this happen.

Jeff started to unlock the bicycle lock.  "Don't say the combination out loud," I said, still worrying that someone might be hiding in the bushes listening.

The pictures are below.  We did lock the hive up as best we could, but someone could still push the boxes out from under the lock, as they could at Julia's as well.

I suppose we needed another cable lock to make a "gift package" approach which would indeed secure the hive.  Jeff's suggestion was that we do some sort of hinge lock system on hives that aren't in our backyard.  Sounds like a plan to me.

BTW, Jeff was right about the car.  When we got back, I fumbled with the keys and took forever to get the thing unlocked - good we weren't being chased or threatened!  I don't believe we'll visit the Blue Heron at night again!

Oh, but we will have to go again at night to move the nuc when the asters are done......

As always, click on the slideshow below to see the photos full sized:

Hope for the Blue Heron

Today I moved my hive at the Blue Heron into a nuc box.  I will give the bees a day to orient to the new box and will move it to my backyard tomorrow night.

 We talked via email all day about suggestions people made on this blog and ideas Julia, the Blue Heron board, and I had about ways to better protect our BH hives. I'm going to bed feeling a little more hopeful.