To Bee, Continued....

Sorry I left everyone hanging.  I'm in one of those periods of my life where I have volunteered for way too many things and all of them are growing in unexpected ways and all of their due dates seem to be coinciding.....in the last two weeks.

I watched the hive with the queen includer for several days after my last post.  Bees were going in and out as if normally they would.  Then over the weekend, about Sunday, I realized that the bees had absconded, despite my efforts to contain the queen.  Oh, well, I thought, they will die somewhere.  And what a shame since this was a powerful swarm hive at the beginning of the season.

Someone commented on my previous post that maybe it was a small hive beetle problem .  Mostly bees that are strong hives keep the small hive beetle contained in the top of the hive.  This hive had done that as well, and I had seen a normal (for Atlanta) amount of SHB in this hive, smashed them with my hive tool, etc.

However, if you have a small hive beetle problem of any level and open the hive unnecessarily, then every time you open it you break whatever propolis trapping the bees have devised to keep the SHB on the inner cover.  I opened this hive and allowed it to be filmed when the Weather Channel came two weeks before the crisis and then the following weekend, opened the same hive to be filmed for PBS for their show, Growing a Greener World with Joe Lamp'l.  So if the SHB were contained before, in the two previous weeks, they had the opportunity to run amuck.

Realizing that for whatever reason the hive had indeed absconded, and I assumed the queen had gotten thin enough to slip through the queen includer, I then noticed robbing beginning.  There was at least one super of honey on the hive and since it was five boxes tall, plenty of other storage places for honey that they might not have taken with them.

On Monday night I was meeting friends for dinner.  I stopped at home to let out the dogs and robbing was happening in a crazy way at the absconded hive.  I was so angry.  My hives haven't produced honey this year with all the rain and all I could think was YOU CAN'T HAVE MY HONEY.  I walked out to the backyard in my business clothes, threw a veil over my head, opened the hive and took off the third box down (the one heavy with honey).  I carried it into my house, bees and all.

It's still not dark until around 8 or so in Atlanta, so I put the box in my basement and at least 500 bees (looked like even more than that) began flying up to the ceiling lights.  I turned out all the lights in the basement, opened the back door, bolted the inside basement door leading into my house and left for dinner.  I crossed my fingers that the bees would indeed go outside toward the light.  (And that no human robber would find it appealing to cross the robbing bees to rob my house!)

When I returned from dinner, there were only 2 bees still in my basement and the honey super was apparently intact.

I left everything alone.  Like I said in the first paragraph, over the last month, everything I am doing has come to a pinnacle point all at once and I've felt rather overwhelmed.

Five days later, it's the weekend and I thought I should take the hive apart to save the wax from the wax moths.  I started casually throwing the boxes around.  I got to the bottom box and as I lifted it up to put it rather brusquely aside, there was the QUEEN.  She had been included and hadn't left with her children.  She had no attendants and had been alone for at least five days and probably more.

I caught her in a queen clip and took her inside and fed her honey from my fingertip.  What to do, what to do?

I went to another strong hive and made a four frame split - two frames of brood and eggs, one of honey and one of pollen.  I found some drawn comb that was white as snow and made a push-in cage of #8 hardware cloth, and pushed it into the comb, with her majesty in the push-in.  I realized later that I should have pushed her into the frame of honey or pollen, so she'd have some food at least, but I was thinking to give her an opportunity to lay.

I put these five frames into a nuc box.  I set it up with a Boardman feeder of honey and one of water, surrounded by an empty nuc box above the inner cover:

I then closed up the hive entrance with screened wire, stapled it firmly and left the nuc for three days.  This was an effort to get them used to the new queen and to let that loyalty keep them from returning to mama just in the hive next door.   Three days later I removed the screened wire.

I looked inside and she had been freed from the push-in cage.  The bees had eaten the comb beneath the push-in to release her and there were eggs everywhere.  They had taken none of the honey and only a little water, but I felt good about having supplied their need should it arise.

I put an entrance reducer in and crossed my fingers.

I'm going to give it my all to get her and her children through the winter.  Michael Bush overwinters two frame nucs.  Now they are in duplex nuc boxes.  But I am going to write him for helpful hints about how to get such a small force through the winter.

I'm so sad for the bees who left and who will inevitably die without a queen, but if this had to happen, I sure got the best of it with my queen "includer."  After all this was a swarm capture queen this year and should be strong enough in stock to make it through the winter if I'm lucky.

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.

Split #2 From Colony Square

Thursday morning last week I had some time to go to Jeff and Valerie's for the second split of Colony Square.  This time I was all by myself.  I set up the nuc box and put the bungee cords under it for transportation purposes.  I had cut the window screen to size.  I was READY.

I suited up, lit and packed the smoker well, and opened up Colony Square.  I saw lots of queen cells - these bees want to swarm and may despite these two splits.  I used two medium nucs for this split.  I put five frames in the bottom box, mostly brood, eggs, and larvae.  I shook two more frames of nurse bees in, for good measure.  I put two frames of honey and pollen in the top box.

I bungee corded the whole thing together, stuffed the screened wire in the entry (I'm terrified of the staple gun and I didn't have anyone else with me to do it.)  Then I headed for the car.

I carefully put the nuc into the car, jumped in still in my bee suit because I only had about 45 minutes before my next appointment at my office (25 minutes away) and started driving.

As I drove I began to be aware of a steady buzzing in the back of the car that was increasing in volume.  In the rear view window I could see a mass of bees gathering on my back window.

When I arrived at my house, it was evident that the bees had easily pushed openings in the non-stapled screen over the entry and were gathering on the front of the nuc.  Undaunted, I gently used my gloved hands to lift the nuc and carry it to the backyard.  I walked slowly, hoping the loose bees would take the hint and come too.

Once in back of the house, I quickly moved the frames into an 8 frame medium box, waiting for their arrival.







Within minutes the bees were moved into their new home and I was ready to strip off my suit and head back for the office.  I only had 20 minutes before my next appointment.

I ran into the house, shedding my beesuit as I went.  I straightened up my outfit a little, put on my work shoes, and drove to my office.  My car was FULL of bees from the escapees who had refused to move to the backyard.



At the office I left the windows down to encourage their escape.  The bees were still there two hours later when I returned to the car.  Once home again, I used my bee brush and a mixing bowl to move the bees in several trips from car to hive box.

Later that day I found a clump of bees gathered on my mailbox.  I employed the brush and mixing bowl and a towel to cover to move them to the new hive.

When I told my brother the story, he said, "I know what you need to do, Linda….you should go into therapy to conquer your fear of staple guns!"

I think he's right.