A Tale of Two PrePackaged Swarms

Lately I've gotten two swarms without having to do the capture!

On Tuesday, I got a call from the MABA Swarm Call Lady (my co-editor for Spilling the Honey, Gina G.).  She knows we only have one hive at Chastain where we do our teaching inspections, so she had a swarm that had been donated to MABA for us to put there.

The man who caught the swarm, Chris, had already put the swarm in a medium box and was holding it for us to pick up.  I arranged to come very early the next morning to get the bees before time to go foraging.  I drove to his house and easy peasy, the swarm was ready to go.  I moved the bees on his frames into my medium hive, wrapped the hive with a strap, closed the entrance with his staple gun (yes, I did the stapling!) and went home.

I had a Skype appointment from 9 - 10, so I left the bees in the car with the moon roof open and returned to the car an hour later to drive the bees to Chastain.  The drive was uneventful, but I thought there were a rather large number of bees loose in the car.  When I arrived at Chastain and opened the trunk, the strap had slipped (where was Jeff when I needed him???) and the box had slid a little, leaving an opening large enough for a lot of bees to have left the hive to wander in the way-back of my car.

Over the winter one of the cinder blocks had been moved.  I replaced it but just couldn't get it level.  I carried the hive to the cinder blocks (a one box medium with a telescoping cover and a slatted rack).  The hive was still strapped together.  As I leaned down to put the hive on the cinder blocks, I lost my balance, fell forward, and the hive also, of course, fell.  What a calamity!

I righted the hive and put it on the blocks.  The bees on the top went straight for the hole in the inner cover and went down into the hive.  I hope that means the queen is OK.  Hope, hope, hope I didn't kill the queen.

I tried and tried but I couldn't get it level which pretty much means they WILL draw crooked comb.  But I had to go back to work.  If we have to rubber band every frame, that's what we will do on Thursday's inspection this week.


















Then while I was in the mountains yesterday, I got a call from a man in Atlanta who had found me on the Internet.  Spencer, the beekeeper, had two hives and one of them had sent out a small swarm the day before.  He had gathered the swarm into a cardboard box.  I encouraged him to cover the box with a screen wire and I would pick it up today.  He said the swarm was very small - about the size of a dinner plate and one inch thick.

Here are Spencer's hives:

I peered into the box when I got to Spencer's house.  I could see the cluster in the corner of the box.  To use our "cat" measure, this swarm was about the size of a squirrel....not close to a cat.  The good news is that they had started emitting wax from their abdomens (see the wax in the corner) so they are eager to put a hive to rights and get started building their home.

I brought them home and put them into the empty nuc hive in my backyard.  They went into the box easily (thank goodness, since it was raining) and I set the nuc on the cinder blocks (without either falling or dropping the hive).  By dinner time the Jack Daniels box was completely empty and the bees had all gone into the nuc.  I don't know how they will do.

He treats his bees and I do not.  Sometimes bees that come from a treated yard do not do well on their own.  I am crossing my fingers and very grateful for these two free hives.  It was such a gift to get them already boxed - even if one of the boxes was a cardboard one.

Survivor Miracle Maybe???

On Sunday after the robbery on Friday, I walked out of my basement door and noticed this nuc, sitting with four empty frames in it.  There were bees!  And no reason for them to be there.

I think these are the survivors from the robbed hive.  The queen is from Don Kuchenmeister and the bees are tough little small cell bees who should be able to make it.



Quick like a rabbit, I put the nuc up on bricks, gave it an inner cover and a top cover and added an empty nuc as a surround with a Boardman feeder full of honey in it.  I replaced the empty frames with drawn frames from what I think was their original hive, the robbed out one.

I also put two frames in the upper nuc with the Boardman (with a pint jar of honey) in between.  I think I should put those two frames side by side and will when I go back to it.



I didn't look for the queen, but the bees acted like a small swarm does.  I'll check for a queen in a couple of days.  Bees were orienting and flying in and out.



I reduced the entrance so that they would be safe while I'm off to the mountains to the Asheville conference.  I hope they'll make it.  I'm inclined to consider keeping them in the nuc for the winter if they can manage to get a hive going.

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!

Distressing First Inspection at Blue Heron

Today Julia ran the first inspection of the year at Blue Heron.  She made a new sign for the apiary from the side of one of the hive boxes that washed down the creek in the flood last year.  It is at once both a sign about the apiary's location and a memorial to the seven hives that died last year.

We installed the nuc we got from Jennifer yesterday into a hive at Blue Heron.  We also looked at the other two hives which were installed on March 30.  I don't really know what to think about the first installed hives.  We saw no eggs or new brood in either hive.  Both were filled with bees.  There were no queen cells in my hive.  There were five queen cups, open, in Julia's hive and one closed one that didn't look like a queen cell....it seemed too small to me.

Jennifer told us that the intense early bloom was making the hives swarm.  She warned us to watch for signs.  We have seen no queen cells in either hive and we have looked.  Usually a hive doesn't swarm until after there are drones in the hives.  Julia's hive had drone brood and we saw a couple of drones.  Mine also had drone brood that looked old.

Also we know not to cut queen cells when there are no eggs in the hive.  Why?  Well, if you cut the queen cell and the hive has already swarmed AND there are no eggs in the brood box, then you have killed the future queen and there are no resources in the hive to make another one.  It's a moot point, really, since there weren't any closed queen cells.

So this is a very odd problem.  Have both hives swarmed without leaving a queen behind?  Did we totally miss queen cells that emerged in both hives and they both have virgin unmated, as yet, queens? 

Interestingly, without discussing it,  each of us went home feeling awful and opened our hives at home.  We each have at least one hive with brood and eggs to spare so we are going to add a frame of brood and eggs to each of the first installation hives at Blue Heron.  If they have a queen who isn't laying for whatever reason, the brood and eggs will boost the numbers, but if they need a queen, the brood and eggs will give them the resources to make one.

Oh, and while this is good news, it also felt like a let down.  I had put a sticky board on my Blue Heron hive. We pulled it and after three days, only saw one mite, and it was questionably identified.  I've seen mites on boards easily before, but I think Jennifer's bees came with very few mites so our mite drop was beyond insignificant.  We thought we'd show the participants what a mite looked like and weren't able to do even that!.

So here's the slideshow of the nuc installation. When we realized we had a problem, I got so worried that I forgot to take many pictures after the installation. 

News of the Bee Tree

Back in August, I was lucky to be a part of a rescue of a bee tree by Atlanta's Odd Job Tree Removal company. Later a second bee tree was sectioned and put next to the first one. I put hive boxes on top of both tree sections. Then I fed the bees in both trees heavily during the fall and then crossed my fingers that they would make it through the winter.

I went to visit the trees at the end of February. In the first big tree section, the hive had obviously died. There were dead bees lying near the entrance as you can see in the picture below.



I stuck my camera in the hole and took a picture of the interior. Here's how it looked: Some shards of comb and dead bees lining the floor of the opening.



I'm short of 8 frame medium boxes so I decided on Thursday to go over to retrieve my equipment from the dead bee tree. Amazingly, it was teeming with bees. I watched as obvious bee residents flew in and out of the opening. I went in to speak to Annette in the tree company office. She said that on Wednesday suddenly there had been a lot of activity. Then today she noticed that the bees were living in the tree.

I guess a swarm moved into the tree on Wednesday and is happily occupying this space!



The second bee tree, which did make it through the winter, also is full of bees. Here they are hanging out of the hive opening. I didn't open the hive box on top of the second section, but tried to lift it. The bottom box is obviously filled with honey.

I'm considering what to do at this point. The bees in this tree have begun using the hive box which is a good sign. What I think I'll do is reverse the boxes and put the empty box over the hive opening at the top of the section. Then I'll put the honey-filled box over that. Perhaps the bees will then begin to use the comb in the now-empty box and we'll get them to move in to the wooden box as a choice of theirs.

I'll let you know what I discover when I go over and inspect the hive box on top of this tree section.

Swarm Event - Bad Ending

My sweet friends Gina and Phillip captured and swarm and offered it to me for my top bar hive. I was so excited, but when they called me I was at the symphony. We decided that I would get the swarm at their house at 7:00 AM the next morning to take it to my top bar hive.

Meanwhile, the top bar hive is still in my carport and not where it is supposed to be at my daughter Valerie's house. At intermission at the symphony, I called Valerie and Jeff and told them that they needed to get the hive to their house. Jeff went at 10:00 PM after his class and took the hive legs off to transport it to his house.

The next morning Gina calls me so excited about these bees. It's a huge swarm and they have captured it by hanging a nuc box in a tree. Before the crack of dawn,Gina in her p.j.s, and Phillip in his apron, climbed up and retrieved the box.



I needed to get the swarm installed before picking up my grandchildren at 8:30. I drove to Valerie's house to find the top bar hive waiting for me.



The cardboard nuc box is sitting on the ground waiting to enter the new home for the bees.

Phillip had guessed this was a 4 - 5 pound swarm. When I opened the box it was totally filled with bees.

I dumped the box in and the bees didn't go to the screened bottom.  They didn't look particularly comfortable and I was stung four times in the process - once on my finger, three times on my leg (they went up my pants leg).  I also had a bee inside my veil the whole time.

Nonetheless, I closed up the top bar and went home.  The next morning I went to Valerie's to have breakfast with them.  We walked out to the hive and found that the bees were totally gone - only a small clump of ten bees remained.  The swarm was so strong that they had pushed the top bars open about six inches to provide a hole through which to leave.

I returned Gina's nuc box to her and just wanted to cry.  It was such a great swarm and she was so sweet to give it to me.  I hope she'll get another and keep it for herself.

I don't know why they left.
Hypotheses:  

1. The hive is brand new and smells new.  Next time, maybe I'll drop some old comb in the bottom of the hive.  I smeared homemade swarm lure on the follower boards, but that didn't do the trick
2. I didn't have every top bar on the hive - maybe it didn't feel enough like a horizontal tree trunk to them
3. Maybe the screened bottom makes the hive have too much light - especially standing on legs as it does.

Plan going forward: 

1. Put all the top bars on the hive
2. Drop some old comb in the bottom of the screen
3. Take off the legs and lower the hive to sit on cinder blocks, thereby creating a darker space....or add a bottom board.

Cindy Bee Speaks on How to Collect a Swarm

Tonight at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting, Cindy Bee, Master Beekeeper who has been working with bees since she was a child, presented a program on how to catch swarms.

First she addressed the reason that bees swarm. She suggested that we think of the hive as an entity and that when a swarm happens, it is the hive reproducing itself. In other words, the swarm is the hive's "baby." Bees swarm in springtime because the arrival of pollen stimulates the queen to lay her eggs. The hive begins to build up the numbers of bees and gets overcrowded.

The workers, not the queen, make the decision to swarm. First they make a replacement queen by choosing several eggs and creating queen cells (feeding the new larvae only royal jelly). Then they make the old queen run round and round the hive to slim her down. Finally they run her out the front door. When she flies away, anywhere from 20 - 80% of the bees in the hive follow her. This event = a swarm.

Meanwhile back at the original hive, the queen cell hatches and the new queen emerges. That queen kills any queens still inside their queen cells and begins the process of getting ready for her mating flight. Swarming delays and impacts honey production because the hive is diminished in numbers and the queen has a while before she is mated and laying so there is a disruption in the hive build-up.

The swarm that left the hive hangs wherever the queen landed while the workers fly out to possible sites for new hives. It is during this hanging time that a beekeeper is likely to get a swarm call. Cindy encouraged us to go ASAP to the site where the swarm has landed because at any point they may make a decision and leave for a chosen home.

She gave us a list of what to take on a swarm call. The list includes:

Bee veil
Plant clippers
Bee box or some kind of box to put the bees in
Scoops (Cindy suggested using a half gallon plastic milk carton with a handle that has had the top cut off to make a scoop)
A white sheet
Water (for you to drink)
Smoker and something to fuel and use to light it
A piece or two of old, dark comb (smells good to the bee)
Spray bottle with 1:1 sugar water
Duct tape (there are a million uses, aren't there?)
A queen cage
Ratchet strap (Cindy straps the hive box together for transport)
Foam or Screen wire to cover the box entrance
Ladder
Camera
Lemon Scented pledge (or swarm lure)
Flashlight
Bee vac and extension cord (if you own a bee vac)

For the last couple of years about this time in the spring I keep swarm collection stuff in my car. I have a nuc box, a white sheet, a ladder, a bee brush, and most of Cindy's other suggestions.

She suggested that if you are collecting the swarm in a nuc box or a hive box that you should make a hive top out of a wooden frame and screen wire so that you can transport the bees well ventilated. I think I'll make one for my nuc box. I did just order ventilated hive tops for my eight frame equipment but I believe they have an entrance as a feature so wouldn't really work.

Last year and the year before when I went on swarm calls, I didn't take a hive box to collect the bees in, but rather took a cardboard box. She showed a picture of a cardboard box just the right size to hold frames. She had cut a tiny square entrance at the bottom of the box and had glued in a piece of wood to hang the frames from. Boy, that would be an easy way to transport and lighter than the hive box. In other years, I've just dumped the bees into a cardboard box, closed the top and taken them home to dump them in a hive box.

She also encouraged us to ask the caller who is requesting swarm help several questions. Has the swarm landed? How high up are they? How big is the swarm? (I find it helps to ask is it bigger than a basketball? the size of your fist? the size of a watermelon?) How long has it been there? Is it on your property? Has it been sprayed with anything - including just plain water? Also exchange cell phone numbers so if the swarm flies off while you are in transit, the caller can get back in touch with you or so that you can call them if you are having trouble finding their location.

It's about the be swarm season in Atlanta and I really want a swarm for my top bar hive, so I filled out the swarm list form and I hope she calls me at least once this season!

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?

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!

The Small Absconded Hive is Still OK

I've left the robber screen on the small nuc to help this tiny cluster of bees and the queen. It isn't completely closed up - on the right side you can see the opening. However, a robber aims for the front door and the bees who live in the nuc are drawn to the queen, so they will go to the side opening without any problem.



It's extra cold in Atlanta for this time of year. Tonight the lows will be in the 30s for the fourth night in a row. I didn't want to disturb the colony but wanted to look for signs of life so I lifted up the inner cover and found these happy girls looking up at me.



There are two Boardman feeders inside the empty second box of this nuc with pint jars on them to accommodate the shorter size of the medium nuc. The bees do not seem to be taking the syrup, however. This weekend I may pour the syrup into two sandwich bags instead. I didn't want to put a gallon Ziploc in the nuc because bees tend to drown if baggie feeders fold over on themselves. There isn't enough room in the 5 frame to allow the Ziploc to lie flat, but two sandwich bags would.

A poster on Beemaster says that he pokes holes in the Ziploc with a pin and bees can then get the syrup without drowning, but I tried that and the bees completely ignored the baggie. Slits seem to work better for me.

If it warms up this weekend, I'll open this box up again and see if the larvae are developing in the two frames of brood that I found the last time I looked.

How's It Going At Aristaeus2?

This hive started from the second swarm I collected. The swarm was tiny and the bees were small as well. I've left the hive pretty much alone and have occasionally inspected it - maybe three deep inspections since I got it on April 8.

Today I looked into the brood box - I've never seen the queen in this hive. She obviously is hard at work and here is her brood pattern. Looking good, she's still building up the hive numbers as we approach the fall.



Aristaeus2 had an extra empty box on top of it so that they could clean it up after harvest for me. Now they will winter in this shape:
one deep and two medium boxes. I may need to consolidate the top two boxes but for now both are heavy with honey.

Two Out of Three's Not Bad

The combine of Hyron and Hyron2 didn't appear to work. However in the rain last week, a cluster of bees (about 2 cups worth) remained clinging to the bottom of the entry way into the hive. As the rain increased, the cluster got smaller, but it was clear that a queen was inside.

The hive they were clinging to wasn't really worth it - full of wax moths, roaches, ants and a few bees. So I gathered the cluster into a Tupperware container and dumped them into a medium nuc box. I also moved the original hive directly in front of the nuc in case any of the residual bees wanted to join their sisters in the nuc.

I then went out of town for five days.

Today the nuc has absolutely no bees in it. The larger box in front of it doesn't have bees either. (I felt really foolish because I smoked the door and waited a minute before opening this totally empty hive! )



I took the hive apart and found slews of dead bees on the screened bottom board.



And all but four frames were heavily wax moth damaged. I left the damaged frames leaning against my oak tree on my deck - there's a squirrel who will be grateful and will clean it all up for me.



I picked up some of the dead bees from the SBB to examine them. Many were small and black like the one below.

OK, so here's my first theory. When I put Hyron and Hyron2 together. The bees possibly killed both queens (I now assume both hives actually had a queen). In the melee, many bees were killed. The hive could not go on and the rest of the bees drifted or died. Then along came a tiny wild swarm of small black bees. There's a lot of construction behind the woods at the back of my property. They came in the rain and clung to the hive because it smelled inviting. However, upon checking on the premises, they found dead bees and mayhem and they gave up. They died too.

And my second theory is: One queen survived the melee of the combination, but the rest of the hive did not forgive her for the combination. It's sad but the bees often blame the queen when she had nothing to do with it. So the bees under the landing board were balling the remaining queen - "Off with her head," as it were, so that they didn't honor her leadership any more.

Either way or whatever way, the hive was doomed and is a dead hive.


So Devorah has hopefully a new queen, Persephone and Melissa have successfully merged - Two down, but the third attempt to rescue my third problem-laden hive is a wash.

The Continuing Story of the Small Cluster

For four days of solid rain, this cluster has been gathered under the hive that I had named Hyron. I've watched the cluster every day but the rain has been continuous and I haven't been able to see what's going on. Today after I installed the queen in the Devorah hive, I checked out this cluster.



After days of solid rain, the bees below are all that are in the cluster - about two cups or probably one pound of bees. I couldn't let them just die there and there probably is a queen in the center. I went inside and got a Tupperware storage box (about a 2 pint size) and slipped it under this cluster. Many bees fell into the small Tupperware container. I brushed others into the box.

I took the bees and dumped them into a 5 frame medium nuc. There's probably not much point, but I had five frames of fully drawn comb and thought maybe they could use it to establish their hive again. The box they are hanging under was filled with ants, wax moths, and vagrant bees. Before winter I may combine them with another hive but for now, they'll at least have a chance.

Two hours after the transfer, I lifted up the top of the nuc to see what was what and there were lots of bees in the box. Cross your fingers!