The Rain and the Spring Flow

As I woke up this morning, the signs are all there that we will have another day of rain. We've had a honey flow season replete with rain.

Our neighboring state of North Carolina is experiencing similar conditions. In the June E-Flier from North Carolina bee supply company, Brushy Mountain, Shane Gebauer writes:

"The spring flow has been terrible this year. Any reserves are quickly consumed when the bees are house bound by all the rain and cool weather. Once this weather pattern breaks watch for swarms. They are crowded in a hive by the weather with nothing to do, so "hey lets make swarm cells". O.K., this is an over-simplification and imposes human traits/characters on the bees, but you get the point. This time of year there a spike in swarming activity after several days of rain."

In my past three years, during this period of time, I am both harvesting already and am putting on extra boxes by the day. This year my bees are not needing extra boxes as quickly and so far are barely producing honey for hive to use for the winter. I have hives that I will be able to take honey from in a few weeks, but not as much as in previous years.

And so today again it will rain. The drought was terrible for Georgia, and I'm grateful for the rain, but it isn't having a great effect on the bees.

P.S. Sure enough, it rained all day. I came home to find the bees in one hive all clustered on the porch (see above picture). It wasn't hot, the hive has a propped top and a slatted rack so should be well ventilated. Do you think they are plotting a swarm when the rain stops on Friday afternoon? Or are they all so bored indoors with nothing to do that they came out to enjoy the rainy afternoon and evening?

More of the Robbing Story

Toward the end of the day, the robber screen became crowded at one corner with dead bees. I'm sure the house bees who still were alive were working to clean up the mess left after the robbing.

I had shut the propped top cover and had put a top bar blocking most of the access to the hive at the top of the robber screen. Bees continued to gather on the side of the hive - you can see the beginning of the gathering here. By the end of the day, the cluster was about 3 times as big as in this picture.

I determined that the clustering bees were hive foragers who returned to find the hive closed up and hung there because it was as close to home as they could get. So right at dark, I opened the top cover and propped it with a stick. By the time night had fallen, all the bees were gone back inside. I went out and removed the propping stick so tomorrow they will not have a back door, at least for a while.

After dark I opened the top of the robber screen to give about a 3 inch access space. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Bee Report - After First Freezing Night

Last night we had freezing temps - not for too long, but long enough for my fig tree's leaves to curl up. This morning I worried about the bees. I was out of town last weekend so I haven't checked them in two weeks, and I didn't know if more food were needed.

I opened the top of Mellona and didn't see a bee. There were a few stragglers on the outside, but I only saw a silverfish on the top cover and no bees. My heart sank....not another absconded hive. It was warmer - about 50 - so I lifted up the second box and under it the bees were clustering! I was thrilled and hoped I didn't chill them too much. I immediately put the hive back together.

I left them with a bag of new 2:1 sugar syrup on top of the frames and took the propping stick out of the tops of both hives.

Bermuda was active and clearly doing fine. I'll give them sugar syrup tomorrow because I needed to make more and it will be too hot to put on the hives until tomorrow. It actually will cool pretty quickly but I can only work on the bees today while my grandson is asleep and he'll wake up before the new syrup cools.

I did other things to help with the cold. I removed the shim that I had put on both hives to help with ventilation and with the small hive beetle trap. I removed both small hive beetle traps to clean and get ready for next year. I refilled their water source which in our drought-suffering Georgia had completely dried up.

FWIW, the weather reports show no rain at any time in the near future.

Will Proteus become Proteus A and Proteus Bee?

I posted on Beemaster because Proteus is a hive that is arranged in an unusual way. I also wrote about it earlier on this blog. Today I went into the hive to see if I could be a good beekeeper to these bees.

It's possible, as mentioned earlier, that Proteus is a two-queen hive. Sometimes, as Michael Bush writes about it, it is efficacious to have a two-queen hive. But the way I see it, my bottom box is honey-bound and the queen has no room to grow, so it's up to me to find her some space.

As I see it, with Hive Box 2 being filled with capped honey, it is highly likely that there is a queen, laying and growing brood in the bottom box (Box 1). I saw the queen in Box 3 above the honey, laying eggs. She is a young queen, unmarked - not the original queen in this hive as the season began. I had added Box 4 about 3 weeks ago when Box 3 was fully drawn comb.

At the advice of people on Beemaster, this is what I did today. I prepared a new super to put on Proteus (see first picture). BTW, I bought the medium frames for this box from Walter T. Kelley. This is the first time I have ordered frames from Kelley. They are built differently from other frames that I have. I found them easier to put together than my other frames from Dadant, but rougher in their construction.

I used no smoke today to keep the queen from moving somewhere strange. As a result I got stung on my left thumb - this after being stung on my right thumb on Monday!

I went to Proteus and removed Box 4 (four frames of comb/honey and six frames partially drawn or unaddressed). I also removed Box 3 (where I saw the young queen laying). I then took Box 2 (full of capped honey) and removed the center six frames. I replaced those frames with five of SC starter strips and one full frame of SC foundation. You can see its picture in the middle.

To complete this part of the operation, I had to get the bees off of the six honey filled frames. I shook the frames hard above Box 2 and most of the bees went back into the box. Then I used my bee brush to removed the remaining bees and put the honey frame into the new super and covered it with a top.

Here's the theory: Proteus may have a queen in both Box 1 and Box 3. To determine this, I put a queen excluder (I've never ever used one!) between Box 2 and Box 3.

This now means that Box 1 which was full of brood and possibly houses a Queen A has Box 1 as well as the empty frames in Box 2 to build up the bee numbers. I kept two frames of honey on either side of the center and put the empty frames in the center, with the full frame of foundation at position #5.

The queen excluder will keep Queen A (if she exists) from moving above Box 2. See the bees below the excluder, clustering on the four frames of honey.

Box 3 which may contain Queen Bee, I simply put back on the hive above the queen excluder. Then I put back on the hive Box 4 which contains four frames of capped honey and six frames that are relatively untouched. This means that Queen Bee has room to continue her laying on the right four frames of Box 3 and that she can move up to room to grow in Box 4.

One thing I didn't think about until I read a post about something else on Beemaster: The drones in the upper hive group (boxes 3 and 4) will not be able to go through the queen excluder because they are too large. In order for this to work, the hive has to have an upper entrance. Thankfully, since I prop the top of all of my hives with a fat stick, this hive does have an upper entrance through which the drones can come and go (as well as the other bees if they choose).

At the end of a week or so, I'll check to see if there is new brood in both Box 1 and Box 3. If so, I have a two queen hive and will split the hive into Proteus A and Proteus Bee. If not, I'll simply remove the queen excluder and let Proteus continue in its unique approach to life as a hive.

Hotlanta Nights and the Bees are starting to Beard!

With slatted racks, screened bottom boards, and propping the hive tops, my hives are about as ventilated as I can accomplish. But as the Atlanta nights get hotter, so does the interior of the beehive. You can see the beard on Bermuda (left in first picture), Mellona (the tall hive). Even Proteus with its mixed up configuration has a beard beginning.

It entertains me to see that the small swarm nuc has its own version of a beard! Of course, that nuc doesn't have a screened bottom board, a slatted rack, nor is the top propped, so even though it is the smallest of my bee colonies, it is probably the hottest temperature-wise.

YOU can spend the night outside!

It's starting to be warm at night in Hotlanta and the bees are beginning to feel it. It's the job of the house bees to keep the hive around 93 degrees Farenheit. If there are too many bees inside, the heat will rise above that so some are relegated to spending the hot nights on the front porch.

Walt Wright wrote an article last year on the need for hive ventilation. I do have the top propped which provides some air circulation but I do use a purchased inner cover, so the center opening isn't very large. This may slow down the air circulation through the hive. We'll keep watch as the summer goes into hotter times.

Below you can see the Proteus bees on their porch.

The bees from Mellona are also on the porch tonight.

Even little Bermuda has too many bees inside and has made this tiny effort at bearding. Bearding is what it is called when bees gather like a bee beard on the front of the hive. These beards are quite minimal - I'll keep showing the development of the beard as we get into REALLY hot nights....so watch for hotter night pictures.

Back Doors for the Bees

Since the weather is getting hotter, it's time to consider the hive's ventilation. For air circulation through the hive, it helps to give the bees a propped top. I usually find a stick to put in between the telescoping cover and the inner cover. Today I propped the tops on all three of my hives.

In addition to providing ventilation, the propped top gives the bees a back door. I do see them using it as such - perhaps it shortens the distance to the delivery of nectar when the top box (just under the inner cover under the propped lid) is where the bees are storing honey.

I also added a new box to both Proteus and Mellona. Proteus has brood in the bottom box and the medium above that was filled with almost completely capped honey in every frame. This is the box where they made confused comb. Mostly the comb is fine now and the box is almost completely capped. I want to encourage the queen to lay in the medium, so I put a new medium between the bottom deep and the honey-filled medium.

In the interest of giving these confused bees the best possible chance of building straight comb, I used Housel positioning in my starter strips and included two full frames of small cell foundation. I also wrote the name of the hive and the number of the box on the outside of each box. Proteus now has from the bottom up: Brood Box, Box 3 - new mostly SC starter strip frames with Housel positioning, Box 1 filled with capped honey; Box 2 - foundationless frames with starter strips.

In the version of Housel positioning that I used, I did not incorporate a center frame. For understanding what I mean by Housel positioning, see this earlier post.























Meanwhile, Mellona is going gangbusters with honey making. Mellona, the Roman goddess of the bees, is obviously working on this hive. When I checked the status, Mellona has beautiful comb throughout the hive. They have fully built out all of the boxes, so I added a fourth. When I checked yesterday, Mellona had a filled brood box on the bottom; a medium that they drew out from starter strip frames that is completely filled, a shallow (actually painted for another hive) that is already filled on 8 frames with almost capped honey. I wanted to add another honey super - a shallow using Housel positioning, so I did that today. I also labeled and numbered the boxes on Mellona in the order in which they were added. Unlike Proteus, the boxes on Mellona are stacked in the order in which they were added.
























I thought someone might like to see how close Proteus is to my sunporch. This picture was taken with me standing beside the other two hives looking at the back of Proteus.

And here is a picture of my grandson who spends every Friday with me, looking out of the sunporch door from the inside. This is the Dylan's-eye view of my beeyard on my deck.