A Chastain Quick-Stop

This morning I had to drive to the north part of Atlanta to pick up my tax data from my accountant.  Easy to go by the Chastain hive as I drove back to my office, so I did.  I was in business clothes, no camera, but helpfully, all of my beekeeping equipment was in my car from the mountains this past weekend.

I had an apron to put under my jacket to protect my nice pants.  I lit the smoker, put on my jacket and veil and went up to the hive.

When last I was at Chastain (about a week ago), the hive looked anticipatory.  They were not making a queenless roar, but they definitely did not have a laying queen.  The hive was full of queen cells that had been opened.  The brood cells were not back-filled with nectar but instead were polished and waiting at the ready for the advent of a new queen.

I thought I had read somewhere that it is not unusual for a swarm to requeen once it is settled into its new hive, but I now can't find a reference for that, so I'm not stating that as a fact.  This swarm hive has definitely made that decision.  Clearly the hive had requeened itself and was in no distress except for the fact that I was disturbing their peaceful anticipation.

The top two boxes were all honey - not completely filled.  As a matter of fact, no more honey had been put up than before I left for Memorial Day.

When I got to Box 2 (second from the bottom), there were open brood cells, polished.  So I held the frame with the sun over my shoulder and there they were:  EGGS - tiny new beautiful evidence that these bees have successfully requeened.

I closed the hive back up, took off my bee gear, tried to wipe the campfire smell off of my hands with wipes, and headed back for work.

It was a good day in my bee world.

Death by Drowning, But Revival by a New Queen

My flower pot swarm trap caught a swarm that I called Little Kitten because it was so small.  I think it was a secondary swarm and was relieved to find that finally a mated queen was laying in the wax comb.

I had a Boardman feeder at the entrance of the nuc - and those of you who have used Boardmans know that they are not designed for a nuc.  To combat the instability I put a package container under the feeder with a small block to support it.  However, one night our evening raccoon or maybe my dog, Hannah, had bumped into the Boardman, turning over the feeder bottle.

By the time I discovered the mishap, there was a pool of sugar syrup all over the bottom board of the nuc and bees were having a terrible time negotiating entry to the hive.  It could have been like that for several days - I don't always look at the hives every single day.  I put the hive on a new bottom board and cleaned up the old one.  Then I returned it to the hive and put it all back together.

Sadly, either the queen drowned that night - death by raccoon/Hannah/sugar syrup??? - or the bees, upset with the state of things, balled her.  The hive was queenless.

I put frames of brood and eggs into the nuc.  They didn't really succeed at making a queen.  There was one small queen cell - obviously an inadequate job (1/2 inch long at best) - and the handful of bees now left could not have managed to take care of it.

My friend Jerry ordered 20 virgin queens from Zia and offered me the opportunity to buy one.  Zia Queen Bees is a family operation breeding survivor queens.  I believe this is the answer to the mite problem - not poison.  I snapped him up on it, got the queen on Wednesday night.  She was alone in the queen cage.  Jerry suggested that I feed her a drop of honey and a drop of water when I got home and that I install her the next day.

An amazing experience but with no pictures:  I put a drop of honey on the end of my finger and held it next to the openings in the plastic queen cage.  She stuck out her proboscis and sucked the honey off of my finger.  I will never forget the experience.  I knew the water wouldn't stick to my finger, so I put it in a spoon and watched her drink, but I wished I could repeat the honey drop!

The next day, Thursday, I was scheduled to give a bee talk at 7 PM and from there to drive to Young Harris, so I had a packed day.  I luckily had a two hour break in my professional day (but only 2 hours) so I drove to Valerie and Jeff's to get frames of bees to create population for the small Kitten.

Jeff has been busy adding boxes to these hives and this is how they looked:



All of these boxes are full of honey and I can't lift the top box on these hives without a ladder and help, so I opened the hive I call Lenox Pointe (second from the left in the collage above).  I took two honey frames with bees from the top box, checking very carefully for the queen.  I did this because I could take honey frames out of the top box without having to lift it off of the hive.  I put these in a nuc I had waiting.  I took three frames - two of brood and bees and one of mostly pollen and honey from the Swarmy hive - the mostly yellow hive on the right in the collage.

I shook a few extra bees, but didn't worry about that as much as I would normally since I am adding this "split" to Little Kitten where there are already some under employed bees.

I had to be back at my office at 1:00.  When I finished at Jeff's, it was 12:25 and I had a 20 - 25 minute drive back to my house.  I drove in my bee jacket as quickly as I could within the limits of the law.  When I got home it was 12:50 and I needed to be at work in 10 minutes.  

I walked the nuc through my house to save time because the nuc is on my deck.  I opened it, took out the frames and put them in a second nuc box on Little Kitten without disturbing the bottom box.  Then I took the queen out of my top pocket and put her cage between two frames, put the inner cover back on, and ran into the house, stripping jacket, etc. as I went.

Oh, and I put an end bar on the entry to give them an entrance reducer of sorts.

I threw on my business clothes, jumped in the car (my office is 5 minutes from home) and got to my appointment there at 1:05.

Returning from Young Harris, I found the bees happily flying in and out of the hive and seemingly satisfied with their new housing. I'll check tomorrow to see if the queen has been released and then leave them completely alone for three weeks.

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.

Two Hours from Email to Requeening

At 6:15 this evening I got an email forwarded from the president of our bee club to let me know that one of our members had a queen he did not need. I immediately called Scott, the generous beekeeper, got directions to his lovely home in Marietta, and drove up there in the less-than-lovely Atlanta traffic (a drive of 50 minutes) to get this queen.

Our Blue Heron hive has been queenless for weeks now and we needed to do something rather desperately. So far they have not developed laying workers, but I think it's just a matter of time. So Scott's gift is a real potential hive-rescue for Julia and me.

Scott's apiary is high up on a deck originally built for sunbathing at his house in a beautiful woodsy area. Here he is with his three thriving hives. He had gotten this queen to requeen a failing hive, but the hive was too weak and discouraged and didn't manage to accept this queen but instead just died and gave itself over to wax moths.



He had the queen in a quiet spot in his house ready for me to take her to the Blue Heron.



The queen cage was interestingly small and there were no attendants with her. It's an 8 frame medium hive so I slid the frames apart enough to wedge the box in.



At 8:30 (it only took me 25 minutes to drive home), a little over 2 hours since I found out about this queen, she is installed in the hive.



I'll check on Sunday to see if she has been released. I do hope this works and the bees accept her! We are in bad shape at the Blue Heron with this particular hive.

Queenless No More

Today five days have passed since I installed the two queens from Don in Lula, GA.  I checked on one hive tonight to see if the queen had been released.

I opened Aristaeus2 and the hive was quiet.   I didn't plan to spend long in the hive so I didn't light my smoker or wear my beesuit.  I keep getting stung on my hands when I don't wear gloves, so I did wear nitrile gloves.

I picked up the queen cage and found that the bees had not released the queen.  I went inside and called Don.  He told me to make sure the bees were feeding the queen and not being aggressive.  If that were the case then he told me to release her into the hive.

I went back out to the hive and gently picked up the queen cage.  Bees were on the screen feeding the queen.  So I removed the cage and closed the hive up, after replacing the frame I removed to install her.



Don said that after the hive was put back together, I should carefully either remove the cork on the non-sugar end or push it into the cage, gently.  I tried to pry it out but instead ended up pushing it into the cage.

Following Don's instruction, I placed the now opened queen cage in the entry of the hive and Her Majesty walked right into the hive!  All of the workers in the cage with her were dead, but she climbed over their bodies and entered her new hive.


Tomorrow morning I'll take the queen cage out of the nuc.  I opened the top tonight and could see that they had eaten a pathway through to the queen, but there were still bees in the queen cage.  If one of those is the queen, I'll release her in the morning.  It was too dark and starting to rain, so I decided to wait until tomorrow so I could do this without pressure.

Still Queenless After All These Days

I installed two new queens, one into Aristaeus2 and one into the L hive, before I went to Young Harris.  The queens were installed on Saturday afternoon.  I had to leave on Wednesday from work so the last possibility to look into the hives was before 8 AM on Wednesday.  At that time at my house, the bees are not flying and it isn't really warm yet.

On Wednesday before I left for the office (from which I was driving to Young Harris), I opened the top on Aristaeus2 and looked into the hive enough to see that the sugar had been all eaten out, so I didn't pull up the cage and left thinking all was well.  I didn't have time to check the L Hive.

I got home on Sunday and opened both hives.  Aristaeus2 had indeed eaten out all the sugar, all the attendants were gone, including the two dead ones who were in the cage when I got the queen, and the now dead queen was left in the queen cage.  Of course, there was no brood nor eggs in the hive.

The L Hive is doing very badly.  There were dead bees on top of the ventilated hive cover, bodies bitten in half:

The hive wasn't robbed.  There was nectar in the hive and no torn wax cappings.  I wondered if this were the work of bald-faced hornets because I do see them around my hives.  I haven't seen any this year but last year they were always lurking in the bee yard.  They are carnivores and cutting the bees in half seems fitting for how they might carry bee bodies to their young.

The top box had slime on it from hive beetle so I took the box off and plan to render that wax.  I pulled out the queen cage.  She had not been released and the queen and her attendants were all dead.  The sugar had not been eaten at all.  I expect these bees have given up - they are from the abandoned hives that we rescued earlier this spring.

I am very distressed.  I feel like the L hive queen death was beekeeper error because I didn't check the cage at all before I left.  I don't know why the bees killed the queen in Aristaeus2.  The man I got the queens from guarantees his queens, but both queens were in cages with at least two dead workers in the cage when I picked them up.  I don't know how long they had been caged before I received them.  I don't feel good about these queens and don't want to get more from him.

I called Don (www.fatbeeman.com) in Lula from whom I got the great packages for Rabun County and the top bar hive at Valerie's house.  I am driving up to Lula to get two queens from him on Saturday afternoon. 

I plan to introduce one to the Aristaeus2 hive.  In the meantime, I put a frame of brood and eggs in that hive from the swarm hive.  A hive doesn't lose hope (and develop laying workers) if they think there's a chance of a queen.  I'll check to see if they have made a queen cell after work tomorrow.  I also put a frame of eggs into the L Hive.

The L hive I'm going to move into a nuc.  I am going to take the queen from Don and put her in a nuc with medium frames.  I'm going to shake the bees left in the L Hive into the nuc and see if they can make do with a new start.  Bees are supposed to expand in the spring.  This hive has contracted and now it is going to be a nuc.....

Isn't beekeeping amazing - new challenges at every turn!

Requeening the Queenless Hives

I provided both of my queenless hives (Aristaeus2 and the L hive) with frames of brood and eggs over a month ago. There is no sign of a queen in either hive. They have no brood or eggs and are dwindling.

Every Saturday I go to the Peachtree Road Farmers Market where Ray Lopes (see picture below) has a honey booth. I knew he and Donna raise queens, so I called him earlier last week when I discovered that the hives still appeared queenless. He agreed to bring me two queens on Saturday. I picked the queens up at the Farmer's Market (along with some fresh eggs, some cucumber and pepper plants, and some delicious applewood bacon).



I put the queen cages into the two queenless hives, first inspecting every frame to reassure me that they were indeed queenless. We had cold and terribly rainy weather when the emergency queens would have been mating so perhaps it didn't work for them. I installed the queens and hoped for the best.



Aristaeus2, originally from a swarm I collected a couple of years ago, is dwindling. The bees don't look too healthy - if you double click on the picture you can see varroa mites on at least three of these bees. I'll proceed with powdered sugar shakes for this hive (and all my hives) when I return from Young Harris on Sunday.

Meanwhile I'll check to make sure the queens have been released before I leave on Wednesday.



On a good note, Mellona which is slow to build up every year, has had me worried. I opened and really inspected it because I was afraid it was another queenless hive, but I saw lots of brood and eggs. Just off to a slow start, I guess.



Thursday will be three weeks since we put frames of brood and eggs into the Blue Heron hives. I'll also check on them when I get back on Sunday. And I'll check on Valerie's hive - it needs a name!

While I'm in the mountains at Young Harris I'm going to check on the Rabun County hive (also needs a name). Clayton is just about 30 minutes from Hiawassee where I'll be staying. My friend Julia and her son Noah are meeting me at the hive there to check on its progress on Thursday at the end of the day. I hope that hive continues to do well.

Meanwhile my Easter swarm hive is going gangbusters! I added yet another box yesterday. It's now a five (medium) box hive. Those enthusiastic bees fill boxes up almost as fast as I give them boxes.

Montessori Beekeepers

This month's program at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting was given by Jacqui Miller, a Metro member, who is also a teacher at a Montessori school. She has set up an apiary for the school and her students take beekeeping as a class. In the class they are all learning about how to manage the hives and take care of the bees.


Jacqui described her well-oiled program in which there are student managers of the hives. The school bought bee suits for the program and the students are selling hive products to earn money to pay the school back for the suits! This year they sold honey and wax candles.

The students have had a number of calamities in their hives and have named the calamities accordingly. There was the "Big Bee Scare" when a large number of bees died, along with some yellow jackets. They also experienced the "Great Queen Disappearance." In the last adventure, one of the hives requeened itself. In the second hive they ordered a new queen and learned a lot about requeening in that process.

In addition these students acquired an observation hive (actually I think they traded up or down until they finally ended up with the third of three observation hives.) They use this hive to inform the younger students at the school.

These four students each took a turn describing parts of their experience in the beekeeping program. They were lively and entertaining. They were also brave - these four students stood in front of a room of 40 or so beekeepers and told us all about what they had learned in a confident and Power-point supported way.

Devorah--the Re-Queened Hive and Her Progress

Right before Labor Day I installed a new queen in this queenless hive. There was absolutely no brood in the hive and the cells in the brood box were polished clean. The bees were angry and the hive was not doing well, as would be true of any queenless hive.

I installed the new queen and went out of town. When I returned the queen had been released and the hive seemed to be buzzing along.

Today I inspected to see if she had actually begun laying. My first sight was this wax moth worm being dragged out by a house bee. I took the shot after the house bee had returned to the hive. My heart sank at the idea that wax moths had overtaken the hive.



I also saw small hive beetles, as I did on this inspection in all of my hives. Here's one just hanging out with the bees.


But when I opened the previously empty brood box, I found to my huge relief, there were brood cells, capped and ready to emerge. I saw some larvae but didn't look at more than three frames in the brood box. I just wanted to make sure there was capped brood and I didn't want to take the risk of smushing Her Majesty. So relieved to see capped brood, I closed up the hive and left.

In a couple of weeks, I'll check again. I didn't do a powdered sugar shake on this hive because the varroa cycle was interrupted by the queenless problem. However, I may do a shake on my next inspection of this hive.

Another Adventure at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve

Two of the hives at Blue Heron appear to be queenless. I helped the guys look at their hives two weeks ago and there is still no brood, no eggs, no sign of a laying queen. They decided to bite the bullet and buy new queens, rather than using a frame of brood and eggs since the time involved would make them miss this ongoing honey flow.

The frame below is what all the frames in the hive looked like - lots of room for brood but no eggs and lots of nectar stored but little else. Wade installed his queen by laying her box on top of the frames in his 10 frame box.


He took the cork out of the candy end of the queen box and laid her on top of a central frame. I brought him a 10 frame shim to borrow to allow her release without removing a frame.



We closed the hive up and he'll check on her release state in about 4 days.

Kent is using 8 frame boxes (in the picture below). They are built with more space in them. He was able easily to space his frames in the box and allow room for the queen without removing a frame. He tied the box and then attached it to a thumb tack on a centrally located frame.

He too will wait four days and then check to see if she is released.


I'm really enjoying helping these guys with their hives at the Nature Preserve. They are all enthusiastic and eager beekeepers. Their excitement about their new adventure makes it all the more fun to help them out.

These guys caught a swarm while I was at Young Harris. It literally landed on a tree in the garden area near their hives.

We checked the box they put the swarm in and saw eggs and young brood. Clearly the queen in the swarm hive is thriving. We all cheered.

Great to have one hive doing well with a laying queen while the other two are getting a slower start.