Podcast from New Zealand

I feel honored and complimented that I was the subject of the blog podcast from Kiwimana in New Zealand.  Gary Fawcett, owner of the company, had asked me some time back to participate and I just hadn't found the time.  He and I had a fun and lovely conversation in March and he published the post today.

If you'd like to listen, here's the link.

Trying Out a New Small Hive Beetle Trap

Jeff and I decided to try out a "new" small hive beetle trap.  I put the "new" in quotes because I think I have owned the kit for this trap for three years, but never have used it.  It is from David Miller in Jackson, Tennessee and I bought it at the Young Harris bee institute about three years ago (maybe four???) 

Jeff put it together and we decided to test it on one of Sebastian's hives, so we installed it on Sunday.  We'll follow up and let you know if/how it is effective. 

Below Jeff is deciding which extension to use - it came with an extension to make it useful on an eight frame hive which is what we are running at Sebastian's house (and everywhere).

Here Jeff is adding the section which is screwed onto the trap.  The trap goes on the front entry of the hive.  It provides an entrance for the bees with a screened floor so that the small hive beetles fall through the screen as they enter the hive.

Below you can see the trap attached to the hive, waiting for the bees to notice their new entrance.

Jeff slid in the oil trap.  It comes in on the side, is comprised of three chambers, each filled with oil to drown the icky creatures.  

The bees were a bit confused about their entrance, but they were beginning to figure it out when we left the apiary.

The trap kit included some soft screen to put over the inner cover opening to keep SHBs from entering through the top.  We didn't have a staple gun with us so we didn't put that on the hive, but may at our next visit (I have to get over my fear of the staple gun which is IMMENSE).  However, advice in the kit says that the bees may propolize the soft screen.......hmmm, now there's a rationalization for not getting out the staple gun!

First Hive Openings of 2013

Today I came home from a mountain site visit for a professional conference, immediately donned my bee gear and headed for the bee hives.  We've had such rain in Atlanta and finally today was sunny and a temperature when I could open the hives.  It was a mixed experience.

In my own backyard, I opened the first hive which was small going into winter.  It was housed in two boxes but really only needed one.  There was still a little honey on the hive.

This is a small group of bees but the queen is laying.  At first I only found spotty brood so she may have some problems.  I did find further frames with more solid brood on them, though.

I decided to treat this hive more like a nuc and left it in a single box.  I'll check next week and maybe either combine it with another or give it more resources from another hive.

Originally my plan was to give this hive some frames of brood and eggs from the very strong hive next to it (the only other hive in my own yard).

I opened the hive next to it and found it boiling over with bees:

When I looked through the hive, I found it to be full of honey and I found frames where they are obviously bringing in new nectar (I saw this in several hives today).  I don't know where they are getting it at this February date, but they are finding nectar somewhere.

But then my heart sank when I pulled the first frame with brood on it.  Only drone brood and tons of it - three frames that looked like this:

I looked through the entire hive and did not find ANY worker brood.  This probably means the queen who was new last year was probably "short-bred" to use a Keith Fielder term.  That means that she didn't get enough mating before she was placed in the nuc and thus couldn't make more worker brood.

Queens need to fly out several times sometimes to get fully mated or when they are in the air, they need to mate with up to 17 or so drones.  This one may not have gotten that opportunity.

The bees are everywhere in this hive.  I don't know how to make sense of this unless 21 days ago, her sperm ran out.  It's also possible that I couldn't see eggs in other frames since it was about 4:00 and the sun was not in a position to allow me to get a good view, but this was my strongest looking hive at this point, so I was really upset by what I found.

Originally I had planned to take a frame of what I thought would be plentiful brood and eggs from this hive to put in the small hive next door, but that was not to be.

Then I went to Sebastian's house where I found a lovely surprise.  This hive was doing well.  I didn't spend a lot of time in the hive because as soon as I knew it was OK, my instinct was to close it up.  I saw the queen and was happy.  She still had her yellow paint dot, though quite worn, on her thorax.

As you can see, this frame is full of nectar.  I was so pleased to see this.

I left Sebastian's and rushed down Piedmont to the Stonehurst Place Inn to check on those hives.

There are three hives there, although one box is empty and has been since right before harvest when the largest hive was robbed out and died.  I left one box there as a swarm lure.  The two that are left include one strong hive and one that doesn't look too great.

I opened up the weak one first.  I found only two deep frames of bees (these hives were purchased nucs last year).  The hive appeared queenless.  Oddly there was a full super of honey on the top and more honey in the second box although it wasn't full.  The bottom box was full of equal amounts of hive beetles and bees.  (Odd that the beetles weren't in the honey).  The bees looked pitiful.  The brood I didn't get pictures of, but it was scattered and looked old.  I think the hive is queenless.  I took a frame of brood and eggs from the stronger hive and put it into this hive to give them a chance to make a queen, but I really have my doubts.

The strong hive looked great.  Good brood, lots of it and frames of pollen and nectar.  This hive is a keeper.  I took a frame of honey out of the weak hive to put in a frame of brood and eggs from the strong hive. Since I don't know if those bees are just weak from queenlessness or because they are ill, I brought the honey home rather than giving it to another hive.  I replaced the empty space with a drawn comb.

Last but definitely not least I went to the Morningside Garden hives.  There is one hive that is dead there.  I did an autopsy on it and found absolutely no bees in the hive.  There were dead bees on the screened bottom board - I believe they went queenless into winter and died in the first cold snap.  Clearly they didn't starve.  I took the hive apart and left one box on the hive stand as a swarm lure.

Then I opened the live hive and found the best hive of the day.  This hive was thriving.  Under the cover, I found lots of ants and of all things, ladybugs.  Julia told me she found ladybugs in one of her hives.  This is a first for me in eight years.

But inside the hive were frames and frames of beautiful brood patterns.  I didn't see any swarm cells but I didn't look into the bottom box.  By the time I got here the sun was setting and I had my answer - the hive was doing well.

BTW, I worked on six hives today, lit my smoker and left it at the hive entry, wore no gloves, moved very slowly and did not get stung once even though these bees have not been disturbed all winter.  One of the best parts of wearing no gloves is I could really feel the heat of the hives.  In summer, Atlanta deserves its moniker: Hotlanta and there is no difference between the outside air temp and the temp inside the hive.  But today it was 60 outside but 90 in the hive around the bees and I could really feel it by going gloveless.

I also didn't brush off any bees.  If a bee landed on my hands, as many did, I continued to move slowly and trusted that they weren't after me but rather were landing on my hand because it was there.  I loved the way it all felt.

So I still need to visit the hives at Timber Trail.  I hope the two there are doing better than some of the ones I observed today.  I have time tomorrow, but I think the weather is going to be cold and not good for opening the hives.

Gosh, I'm Feeling Like a Bad Beekeeper

I went up to the mountains for the Fourth of July to see the fireworks and to check on the bees.  I love the Rabun County fireworks - we go and sit on a blanket in a field near the Rabun Gap Nacoochee School.  We wait eagerly for dark (which doesn't come until 9:30) and by then the grandkids are sleepy.  But the fireworks are grand and glorious - (and don't include Atlanta traffic jams) - so we have a great time and are back at the house by 10:05.

Since the Fourth was on a Wednesday, all of us needed to go back to Atlanta the next day.  Before I left I went to check on the bees.  Sad news:  The over-wintered hive was almost completely dead - all of the honey was covered in small hive beetles and the whole hive smelled of orange crush (a sure sign of being slimed by the small hive beetle).

I was so upset that I didn't want to look at the evidence and determine the reason the hive failed, allowing the rise of the SHB.

When I was last up there about three weeks ago, there was no nectar and although I saw brood and eggs, the hive had no evident stores (although the slime would indicate otherwise).  I imagine that I may have killed the queen in that inspection.  When I put on one of the boxes, a roar went up from the hive, but I discounted the possibility.  If the queen died in that inspection and stores were so low, the hive may have not been able to make a new queen.

The frame of bees below is all that were left.  Since I didn't know what caused the end of the hive, I didn't shake them into the other hive for fear of contaminating them, if the hive were diseased.

I regreted not having enough supplies - I couldn't move the bees into a nuc because I didn't have one.  I had brought boxes to add but not solutions to problems.



On the good side of things, the other hive, which was a swarm that took up residence there this year, was busting out all over with bees.  In spite of encroaching kudzu, hundreds of bees were coming and going.  Afraid and feeling like a bad beekeeper, I didn't inspect this hive - didn't want to kill another queen.

I looked in the top box which was completely empty on my last visit.  They had filled five frames, drawn new wax and were filling it.  Sourwood is blooming up there now and this looks like nectar that ends up as sourwood honey.  We'll see.

I won't go back until the 22nd and by then the surviving hive may be covered up with kudzu.

Signs of the diminshing Nectar Flow

In Atlanta our nectar flow is tied to the bloom of the tulip poplar.  When the tulip poplar is done, the nectar flow is pretty much over.  We will continue to have nectar sources and we always have a little bump in the availability of nectar when the sumac and catalpa bloom in late June/early July, but for now, it's over.

This has been a funny spring.  Everything is two weeks earlier than last year.  The privet hedge bloomed in coincidence with everything else, and it will be interesting to see how that flavors the honey.

If I couldn't look up in the tulip poplars above my backyard and see that the bloom is done, I could tell that the nectar flow is over by the behavior of the bees.  They are still primed to collect nectar and disappointed that it has almost suddenly stopped.

They indicate that it is over by collecting honey wherever they can.

I had the two frames below sitting under my deck since January when I discovered that my hives in my backyard had died.  These frames had been somewhat slimed by the small hive beetle and the bees ignored them…….that is, until today.  Today there are bees robbing out these two frames like crazy.




Also I have lots of wax under my house cut out of frames and waiting for Jeff to build us a bigger solar wax melter.    Some of that had remnants of honey in it and you can see bees all over the comb in the foreground.



Another way to tell that the nectar flow has ended is that the bees have slowed down in building comb.  Whether you use foundation or not, when the nectar stops, the bees stop drawing wax.  They have to have resources to build wax and without nectar, they have no fuel.

When you have foundationless frames, it's quite obvious as you can see in the empty hive box below from Morningside.  If you use foundation, there's an illusion that something is going on because each frame is full (of plastic foundation, that is) but in those boxes as well as my foundationless boxes, NOTHING is happening in Atlanta today.

Checking on the Linda T's Bees hives

I started to call this "Checking on the Farm Hives" but they aren't on the farm any longer, so I decided just to call this group of hives Linda T's Bees since that's the name of our business.  Three of the hives are in my backyard, so this week Jeff and I did an inspection.  We haven't opened these hives in several weeks.

The first thing that caught our eye were small hive beetles.  The disadvantage of opening a hive at this time of year is that the bees in a strong hive keep the small hive beetles corralled at the top of the hive, but breaking the  propolis seal and lifting off the top cover makes the hive vulnerable to beetle invasion.

Jeff and I smashed and smashed with both ends of our hive tools, leaving beetles dead on the top cover.  The bees went after them too so we were challenged not to smash bees in our enthusiasm for killing beetles!

I drew in red on the photo so you couldn't miss them.....they're everywhere, they're everywhere.  We actually saw a sizable number of beetles in all three hives, sending me off to buy sandwich boxes to make Sonny-Mel traps to put on after the rain stops on Wednesday.



We saw evidence of the queen in every hive.  Larvae in all stages were evident and in the spotty brood patterns, the holes were filled with young larvae.




However all three hives were very light on stores and we determined that bee tea will be necessary in the next week or so to get them going OK into winter.  We do not want to lose these hives over the winter.



The hives at my house are in the shade which probably increases the likelihood of SHB, but it is shady in my backyard - so shady that I can only use the solar wax melter in the front of the house.


We used hive drapes throughout this inspection and neither of us got stung.  The bees seemed quite calm.  Well, now we'll get to work making SHB traps and bee tea for the next installment of this tale.

Nematodes Arrive - Five Million of Them!

Today the nematodes that I ordered from the Southeastern Insectaries arrived.  They came in a "coldpack" by US Postal Service.  The package had 5 million nematodes in a plastic bag with gel.  They are too small to see.
I put them in my office refrigerator.  When next I went to our kitchen, I found a note on our bulletin board:
"Who put worms in our refrigerator?"

Julia, Noah and I got together at the end of the day to apply the nematodes.  Step one was to dissolve the nematodes/gel in a cup of water.  We did that, laughing the while, because we couldn't see the 5 million.  A friend suggested that we call Mr. Tedders at SI and tell him, "Thank you for the nematodes but our order was short by 50!"

It was like the Emperor's New Clothes.  We are stirring these invisible critters into five gallons of what looks like clear water.  The instructions said to stir them up a lot because they would clump at the bottom.  We, of course, couldn't see the clumps, but stirred like mad!

Here are our pictures.  We stirred the invisible nematodes into the water and took it to Blue Heron.  There we poured them on the ground around our three hives.  Noah went to the very nearby creek (remember the flood?) and filled the watering can with water to wet the ground down even more.

We then went to Julia's house and repeated the process.  I took the last third of the invisible nematodes to my house and poured them around the Don nuc and in the soil under my deck.

I hope they will have a beneficial effect and get rid of our small hive beetle.

And in the Home Beeyard, my Troubles Continue

My strongest hive, Bermuda, I opened to inspect on Saturday, the 5th. There were a ton of hive beetles under the top cover. I wanted to go into this hive to see what is what as I get them ready for winter. This hive is full of bees, but as I inspected, it is also full of troubles.

There are little to no stores in this hive. I only took one super of honey from this hive and they had heavy boxes and still have five boxes on the hive. The bottom box held almost nothing but pollen filled frames.



The second and third boxes each had three frames of a beautiful brood pattern - especially this late in the year. The two sets of three frames of brood were not on top of each other. Three were on the right side of the second box and three were on the left side of the third box.

There was almost no honey in this hive. I haven't been feeding it because it had two full boxes on the top, but those are almost empty now.



So my plan for the bees in Bermuda is to rearrange the hive. I plan to take the six brood frames and put them all in the same box. I am going to move the empty-of-brood-but-full-of-pollen bottom box up and put the created brood box on the bottom with some of the pollen frames in it and any frames of honey I can find. While I'm at it, I'm going to put the Freeman beetle trap that was on the now defunct Blue Heron hive on the bottom of this hive.

I'm going to reduce the hive to three medium boxes and feed it like crazy between now and the first frost which in Atlanta is around mid November. The three boxes will be a brood box on the bottom, a box of pollen and any honey frames I can find, a box of empty drawn frames in which to store sugar syrup. I'll put a fourth box on the hive to surround a baggie feeder and will feed this hive like mad.

Then I opened the nuc that I brought back from Blue Heron with the other (inadequate) queen and a queen cell on one frame. Cockroaches ran out of the top of the hive. The feed bag which had not been emptied the week before was still full with sugar syrup hardened over one of the slits and a dead bee on it (I didn't take pictures....when I find depressing bee news, I often am so shocked that I forget about the camera).

There was no sign on any frame that these bees had a queen. And the queen cell that was on one frame on August 20th was nowhere to be seen. They had a full deep frame of honey (I operate no deep boxes at home).

I'm going to open that hive up today and if there is still no sign of a queen, I'm doing a newspaper combine to put these bees in the hive next to the nuc - Aristaeus2 - which has been thriving all year.

I hope it all works. At this point, I'll be lucky to make it through the winter with maybe 2 hives surviving.

I'll be on a Podcast About SHB on Thursday

I'm thrilled that I've been invited by "Robo" on Beemaster to be a part of a podcast he will be presenting on Thursday, September 10 at 8 PM Eastern time.

The focus of the podcast is on the small hive beetle and how the various traps work. Jerry Freeman, developer of the Freeman Beetle Trap, will be a guest to talk about his trap and I'm supposed to talk about all the many different traps I've used and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

• What: WpN Beekeeping Podcast - Small Hive Beetle Control
• When: Thursday, September 10, 8PM EST
• Where: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/16456
  

If you'd like to join the conversation or just listen, click HERE to find out how to call in while we are talking.

This should be fun.

Bugs in the Beehive

I found a new way to fill the AJ's beetle eater trap. I have this gravy measuring cup that is designed to separate gravy and fat. Since it has a tiny pouring lip, I decided to try to fill the trap with it and it worked beautifully.



But before I put anything back into the hive, I noticed this cockroach in Mellona on the inside of the telescoping cover - gross.


Under Mellona's top cover there were tons of SHBs - see how many there are. I squashed a lot of them with my fingers (gloved!) and with my hive tool.



I dumped dead beetles out of the AJs beetle eaters all over my deck railing. Maybe the wren will eat them. There were so many that it looks like piles of seeds gathered on the deck rail.

Death to the Hive Beetle!

I opened my hives to find small hive beetles in every hive this weekend. I don't have any traps in place on the hives at home, but clearly now is the time. I smashed beetles with my hive tool and generally created beetle mayhem all over the inner cover.

Here are some dead hive beetles, smashed with the mighty hive tool!



In this second picture, you can see a bee in the lower right hand corner curling herself around the hive beetle in an effort to deter him.

I must have smashed about 30 of the horrible creatures and then left them for dead on the inner cover.

I have some AJ's beetle eaters and installed them on the three deck hives. The AJ's beetle eater is a black container of oil closed with a plastic screen to let the hive beetles in but keep the bees out. I will look later in the week and see if they are working. It hangs between the frames and looks like a large black zipper.


I was opening the hives to get honey to harvest. The pickings were slim - I took five frames of honey off of Bermuda because in the 10 frame super, that's all there were. It's a bad year for honey. There were tons of SHB that came into the house with the honey frames. I must have smashed at least 10 -12 on each frame of honey.

Horrors!

The Demise of the April Swarm

When I went through my hives yesterday, I was concerned about the hive in the medium nuc box. I hadn't seen much activity and had given them a frame of brood and eggs to help them make a new queen.

Originally I thought this was larvae of the wax moth, but I looked with a magnifying glass after an email from "Doc" and found that the larvae has 6 anterior legs - which distinguishes the small hive beetle larvae from the wax moth larvae. The weak hive wasn't able to withstand the invasion of the small hive beetle. I have never before seen a frame in the middle of its destruction by SHB larvae.

It was the grossest, stickiest, nastiest frame. It was dripping with honey. All sides of the frame were glistening and sticky. And the frame was filled with 1/4" larvae, wriggling and squirming in the honeyed mess. Be sure to click to enlarge the picture so you too can have an up close and personal view of the squalor.



After leaving the frame with one side down on the deck railing, I turned it over to the other side. Larvae can't tolerate sunlight, so I thought I'd rid myself of them that way. This morning when I went out to examine the larvae with a magnifying lens, earwigs were feasting on the remains! Here are the dead larvae floating in the remains of the honey.



While this is the first time I've seen small hive beetle damage in process, I'm sure it won't be the last. I don't look forward to my next sticky encounter!

Freeman Beetle Trap

Today I opened up my hive named Bermuda. This is the hive with the Freeman beetle trap on it. I fully expected to find SHBs under the inner cover as I usually do. I did not see a single beetle in this hive today. Instead I found many dead beetles in the oil tray, along with a lot of other hive debris. Hooray!



A closer view of the oil and debris in the tray:

Trying Out the New SHB Trap

Today I had time to go to Costco to get oil for my Freeman SHB trap. I put the oil in the trap. The tray slides out easily from the back of the bottom board. It was covered in hive debris since it has been on the hive for a week. I dumped the debris and tapped the edge of the tray against the deck rail, but as you can see, some debris is still in the tray.

I filled the tray - the instructions say to fill it half full. Since it slants down due to gravity, I actually had to fill it almost to the top on the edge fartherest from the hive in order to have enough oil in the tray. Sliding it filled with oil back into the hive was difficult. I wished that I had something the level of the opening to rest it on while I filled it. The backward slant made pushing the filled tray into the hive sort of awkward.



Once it was pushed in, I also followed the instruction and pulled it back toward me about 1/8 of an inch to keep it from taking on water on rainy days.


To fill the tray took this much of a five quart bottle of oil, the cheapest they had at Costco. The oil cost $6.99 so I'm guessing it will cost about $3.50 to fill a tray each time you do it. Jerry suggested getting throw-away oil from fast food places, and I am sure there are cheaper ways than Costco, but that is easiest for me, so I wanted to try it following what I would ordinarily do.



Note: I just got this email from Jerry Freeman of the Freeman SHB trap:

Linda,

From your picture, the tray is pulled too far out the back. In the proper position, it will be 1/4" inside the back and 1/8" from the landing board at the front. This sounds confusing so I'll try to get a picture of this on my web site.

Thanks,

Jerry

It's raining in Atlanta now, but I'll go push the trap further in as soon as I can!

I won't check this hive again until next weekend - I'll post pictures to see if there are dead Small Hive Beetles. Jerry is sure there will be.