SPARK bees Make it Through the Winter Despite a Major Beekeeper Error

So all of you know that I don't use queen excluders. I like to give the queen free rein and allow her to lay wherever she'd like. In my own hives, the bees thrive with what is called an unlimited broodnest. Winter preparation for my hives at home and in the community garden this year involved taking little or no honey in order to leave enough for the bees not to starve during the winter. Also, I eliminate empty boxes to help the bees have less room to deal with in the cold.

I inherited the hives at SPARK from another beekeeper whom I had never met before the day he handed them over. He had never treated these bees (Hooray!) and they were thriving and had been for several years. I definitely wanted them to live. Gosh, what if I took over and the first thing that happened was that they died?

So I felt really scared about interfering. You'll remember the hives both had queen excluders on them when I first visited and opened the hives:


This one had a comb of honey that the bees had placed where the previous beekeeper had taken a frame of honey and had not replaced it.

Well, winter began and the hives were already compact at SPARK and I didn't need to feed the bees because both boxes had at least one full super of honey on them. So I left them for the winter........and NEVER TOOK OFF THE QUEEN EXCLUDER. (please don't tell anyone - I'm a Master Beekeeper and really should know better)

For new beekeepers: During the winter, the bees cluster around the honey. This allows them to stay warm and to have a food source that doesn't require their moving to a different box. The bees have a hard time moving if the temperature is below 50. So a well-managed hive over the winter would include removing the queen excluder to allow the cluster to gather around the honey in the super.

Truthfully, bees move honey all the time. And bees are highly motivated to survive the winter. So smart bees, and these SPARK bees must be, move honey all the time. So to keep fed and warm and to keep the queen with the cluster, the bees would have brought the honey to her. On warmer days in the fall and winter, they moved the honey to be near the cluster.

Because, lo and behold, I arrived at the rooftop garden at SPARK on a warmish day on the last week of January to find bees flying in and out of both hives....despite my bad beekeeping.

Look at all the pollen coming in! Good sign that the queen is laying and building up for spring.

You can see the queen excluder on each hive between the second and third box. WHEW. I really dodged a bullet.

Heat from Inside Can/not Predict Live Bees in Winter

At GBA this past weekend, Jim Tew suggested that if you wanted to have a good time in the winter, go buy yourself a cheap stethoscope and have yourself a party listening to the sides of your beehives. It probably isn't much of a party if you don't hear anything, but if you do, that could be fun.

We had snow on January 23. Not much of a snow, but it did actually fall white out of the sky and accumulated barely on our yards before it melted by midday or early afternoon. In the morning I looked out of my window and noticed that snow was melting on top of my hives.

OK, I thought, if a hive has melted snow on the top, the bees are generating enough heat to melt it...that would be an indication that the hive is alive. If the snow is totally unmelted, the hive must be dead. Sounds reasonable, right?

So here's the tour:

Nuc number one: made from the tall hive to the left in late July:

Nice hot little melted circle and I have the warm confident feeling that this hive is alive.

Nuc Number two: also made from the tall hive to the left in late July:

This nuc is in a deep with one medium super above it. The snow is unmoved by bee heat, so I assume this nuc is dead. After all, it seemed light and had not taken the honey I had fed them.

Hive Three: Survivor swarm from my neighborhood. This is its second winter. These bees refused to use the entrance once I put a Billy Davis robber screen on and found their way out through a crack in a board on the side.

Again the snow and ice have melted - in a funny slanted pattern, but melted, nonetheless. So I assumed these bees were alive.

Next hive: A Jarrett Apiaries package that I did not harvest from because I wanted them to have enough food to go through winter

Snow covered with no signs of melting. These bees must be dead.

This is a hive that was in a nuc through last winter that I kept in a nuc most of bee season. In July I moved it into a normal hive to overwinter. See the round pattern of melted ice and snow? These bees are going to make it through their second winter.

And finally my "mother" hive who has birthed most of these babies. She began as a split from a survivor hive that I got from Bill Owens. This hive is a swarm from the Bill Owens hive in Tom Phillips' yard. And look at the powerful circle of heat it has generated. This is this hive's third winter.

So, as Paul Harvey used to say, here is the "Rest of the Story." That was the title of his radio show.

So all the hives that I thought were alive are indeed alive. Following Walt Wright's checkerboarding plan, I have been into the top of all of the hives in the last two weeks and attempted checkerboarding. I say attempted because I don't have lots of drawn comb and because some of the honey domes in my hives included honey joined to honey in the next frame so lifting one of those frames would cause a mess of dripping honey in the hive and I didn't want that. So in the eight frames, I moved at least three in each hive to an upper box and moved in drawn comb.

However, all the hives I thought were dead were not. The nuc in the deep is so concentrated in the deep and have not used the box above it at all. I had an inner cover on it with a surround nuc box and an interior Boardman feeder of honey in the top box with the top cover on that. I assume that the heat generated by the hive was dissipated by the time it made its way through the empty second box and the inner cover.

The hive totally covered with snow was indeed dead. I opened it and it was full of honey that had not been slimed by the SHB. This means they went into winter with honey, but had died for another reason. The bottom of the hive was full of dead bees. I did not see deformed wing, but I'm sure the hive died by something vectored by the varroa mite. I did not use the honey left in the hive to feed any other hives because I did not want to transmit disease and all of the other hives had plenty of honey.

The one hive short on supplies (or at least I thought so because they had no honey in the second box) was the deep nuc covered with snow. I filled a feeder jar with honey and put it in the surround nuc box and by the next day the bees had moved all of the honey into the nuc box below.

So while looking at melted snow does tell part of the story, it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.

The Wonder of a First Spring Opening: Bustling Bees

Last weekend (the 23rd) I opened my backyard hive for the first time.  This hive has regularly with the warmer days between our frigid January weeks brought out seemingly tons of dead.  The pile beside the hive grew mountainous on each warm day.....and I worried.

Were these bees diseased?  Why were so many being carried out dead.

Well, I got my answer when I opened the hive that went into winter in four medium eight frame boxes - there are thousands and thousands of bees in the very busy hive.

The queen had been working hard - this was one of a number of frames that were end bar to end bar filled with capped brood.  Billy Davis would say that this is medium biscuit - dark biscuit brood which means the bees will emerge really soon.  I believe she laid most of these in the week between our snows when it was still icy cold in Atlanta.

I took this photo from one end to the other to show you how close to the end bar she lays the brood.  In many hives with a slatted rack, this is often the case.  I think the slatted rack puts an obstacle between the entry and the brood, allowing the queen to use the space fully, without the brood getting chilled.

This hive had plenty of honey in reserve.  This was one of many frames.

In the top box, they were bringing in and storing new nectar.  I am not feeding these bees, nor any of my bees, but this must be from the red maple or another early blooming plant in the area.

These overwintered bees look pretty fat and pretty healthy.

If you click on this picture to view it larger, you'll notice that these are large cells.  In these cells are eggs which means that drones will be raised here.  Also you'll see a number of small hive beetles who overwintered with the bees.  Next weekend I'll put on a beetle jail or two or three.

I saw brood in all stages in all three of the lower boxes.  Interestingly, the newest eggs and larvae were in the bottom box.  In the top box where the newer wax was (the last few photos), there were some drone eggs and some newly stored nectar.  I have high hopes for this hive.

Next weekend I'll check again and will either checkerboard boxes 3 and 4 or add a new box and checkerboard boxes 3 and 4.  I don't want this strong hive to swarm and their natural inclination will be to do so, but with the eggs I saw, I expect we won't have drones flying until the third week of March, at best.  Since swarms can't happen without drones, I should have another week to spread out the space in the hive.

Winter Bee Deaths - and Still a Strong Hive

The bees that go into winter are not the same as the bees who live in the summer.  The summer bee has her work cut out for her.  She progresses through jobs in the hive, beginning with housecleaner and nursemaid and ending with forager.  Each job prepares her for her next assignment and each wears her out a little more.  Old summer bees have ragged wings and if you see one who looks like that, she is close to death.

Winter bees are different.  First there are no drones in the wintering hives (sometimes one or two) because they are a drain on the hive resources; contribute nothing during the winter; and  the queen can create them from unfertilized eggs as spring approaches.

Winter bees live longer.  Summer bees live about six extremely active weeks.  Winter bees in cold temperate climates may live for 150 days (Winston, p. 215).  In an area like Atlanta where we typically are not a cold temperate climate, the winter bees may live a slightly shorter amount of time.  In the hive during the winter, bees do die and their bodies are cleaned out when the temperatures are warm enough to fly.

Here's what it looks like around my surviving colony in my backyard:

 As you can see around the base of the hive, it looks like an enormous bee graveyard.  The ground has been littered with bodies like this every time we have a cold snap.  In the interim, the yard guys show up and blow them off so this pile is purely from the ice storm last week.

Yet there are still thousands of bees in this hive.  I have a "Billy Davis" robber screen on the hive and there are bees massed under the screened wire, just enjoying the sunshine.  

Here's a closer view or two of the dead, lying en masse outside the hive.

The bees who are flying into the hive have packed pollen baskets.  You might notice that some of the dead bees also have packed pollen baskets.  

I am amazed at the strength of this hive and the numbers of bees who have lived here through our extremely cold winter.  In Atlanta we often have a week of snow in March, so it's not over yet.

Sunny, Warm, Bees Flying and Hauling out the Dead

Today the bees are bringing in large loads of pollen.

This is a good sign.  When the winter solstice arrives on December 21st and the days change and start becoming longer rather than shorter, the queen senses this deep in the hive.  She begins gradually to lay brood in preparation for spring.  Usually she just lays a little at first and the build up is slow but sure.  The pollen lets us know that there is brood in the hive that needs feeding.

At the same time a lot of bees have died in our recent cold and the bees spent yesterday and today hauling out the dead.  Yesterday the side of this hive looked like this:

This afternoon here's what it looks like in the same location:

These are bees who have died over the recent weeks when it was too cold for the bees to carry out the dead bodies.

Tomorrow we are back to wet and coldish weather so they will be confined again.  Tom reports that the bees at his house are flying (the two Bill Owens' cut out hives); the Stonehurst innkeeper reports that bees are flying from both of their hives; I haven't heard from Sebastian.

Relief - Both for Bees and for ME

After days of below freezing Georgia temperatures and a raging thunderstorm that woke me up at 4 AM and brought flood warnings all over Atlanta, suddenly the sun is breaking through and the temperature is 58.9 degree F.

The bees are ecstatic because they can fly out into the world and relieve themselves, carry out the dead and probably (just to anthropomorphize them) enjoy their aliveness in the world.  I am ecstatic because my bees (at least the ones at home are ALIVE).

You can see the bees both outside of and under the Billy Davis robber screen.  There are hundreds of them.

They also use times like this to take out the dead.  You can't tell in the photo below that there are both dead and alive bees in it but there are at least five live bees managing the body count on the concrete around my hive.

I wrote my friend Tom who has the Bill Owens' cut out hives in his yard.  Hopefully he'll write back that those bees are flying as well.

HOORAY - but not to rain on my own parade, Atlanta's winter has really just begun and we often have much cold weather in March, so my hives are not out of the woods/through the winter yet.

Freezing the Bees

We are having the coldest Atlanta January.  It was 6 degrees F on Tuesday morning - so cold that they closed the public schools for fear that children waiting for early morning school buses might freeze to death!

The average low this week in Atlanta is typically around 32.  But yesterday the high was 28.  Tonight the low will be 28 after an afternoon in the 40s.

Why does this matter?  All of us beekeepers are worried about our bees.  At the bee club meeting tonight an old experienced beekeeper said he actually opened the tops of his hives yesterday (remember the 28 degree high???) to see if his bees were alive.

I'm settling for crossing my fingers and hoping that they live.  I keep think of beekeepers like Michael Bush in Nebraska or Kirk Webster in Vermont.  Temperatures there are so cold AND the beehives are covered with snow.

And yet if they have strong hives, they make it through the winter.

I don't want to open my hives to see if the bees are alive or dead.

What will I do in either case?  I cannot make a difference at this point.

But if I do open the hives, what have I done to serve my useless curiosity?

I've broken the propolis seal they have made to protect themselves - chinks and daubing were the processes used in the log cabins of old to keep out the weather.  The bees use that all important propolis.

If my hives die in this bitter cold, I'll replace them in the spring either with nucs that I have ordered or with swarms, but I don't want to increase their risk by opening them in this bitter cold.

Hive Tally as of February 19

Today I went over to my old house to see what bees are flying.  Out of the four hives there, one died going into winter; Five Alive appears to be dead and smells dead (like small hive beetles were opportunists); the other two are alive and apparently well.

There were bees flying in and out of both of these hives.  The hive in the back felt really heavy.  The hive in the front was relatively light.

I then went over to the Chastain Conservancy to see how our bees were doing there.  My hive has died, but one of Julia's is still alive and well.  I had left honey on my hive, but it was still untouched (duh, the hive died).  I expect it went queenless into winter, but I'll open it up to see when I have more time.

I ordered only one package this year and that was from Fatbeeman, so that I would have bees to put in this teaching hive.  Julia has also ordered a package from Don for the dead hive she has at Chastain.  We are driving up to get the bees together, which should be fun.

I thought you'd like to meet Chuck, the goat who lives behind my beehive at Chastain.  He is quite the climber and is standing on the roof of his goat house in the photo below:

We'll install new packages here in the middle of March and have our first hive inspection for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers club here on March 23.

So here's the final tally:
2 hives alive at Stonehurst
2 hives alive at my house
2 hives alive at my old house
1 hive alive at Morningside community garden

I've ordered bees to replace the Chastain hive so I'll only have 8 hives as spring starts.

We will split and move the two hives at my old house in March.  I have yet to check in with Sebastian to see if there are bees flying at his house and I haven't been to Rabun County to check on those bees since it started getting a little warmer.

Note:  I heard from Sebastian today and the hive is ALIVE!  Can't wait to visit and see what's what over there.  I plan to split a nuc off of one of my home hives and split a nuc off of the hive at his house. Then I'll bring the nuc from his house to the Morningside Garden to replace the dead hive there and put the nuc from my house in his dead hive location.  Whoo Hoo.

Bees in Red Maples in Atlanta

My friend Steve Esau who has bees in Atlanta has a video of the bees in the now-blooming red maples.  He showed it to me.  People are always saying the red maple blooms in early January here (even when we have cold winters which we didn't so far this year) but I've not seen the bees in the trees.

Steve is very kind to share his video with me and now with you, so with gratitude to Steve, here is a video of bees flying in the red maple bloom!

I can see that one of my three backyard hives that went into winter is dead.  The two that are left is a large strong hive and a tiny hive made as a split.  The split hive is in two medium boxes.  It's the one that I had to give resources to twice to make a queen.  Their final queen came from eggs from the strong hive right beside it.  I did not expect them to make it through the winter.

The strong hive that is still going well originally came from Jerry Wallace (I think he gets his bees from Bob Binnie), but by accident I think they requeened with eggs from a Jennifer Berry queen when I moved a frame of eggs from the MABA club observation hive to give the observation hive some growing space.  So that probably means that the small survivor hive also has Jennifer Berry stock - boy, she makes great queens.

I said that because of the four of my hives at my old house, three are Jennifer Berry queens or their daughters.  The fourth came from Don Kuchenmeister (Fat Beeman).

We are having a warm weekend so I'll see if I can determine what went wrong with the hive that died (a Fat Beeman hive) and share it with you.  Also I think one of my two hives at the Morningside community garden is also dead, so I'll check both of them today, if I can.

I've tried going into this winter only to feed honey to hives (I used no sugar syrup and no bee tea this year) and I'm thinking I'll follow the principles of the WNC honeybee research center headed by Carl Chesick.  They determine that hives which live through the winter untreated and on their own are survivor hives with resistance to whatever the varroa mite may have given to their bees and they split those hives to perpetuate the strong bees.

That's my plan.  Any hive that makes it through to March, I will split at the end of March and then be supporting strong hives.

Progress Notes on New Year's Resolutions:  I've moved the Links above the Certifications on the side bar and have been through everything on the "links" list.  I've eliminated several links that were not existing sites any more; added George Imrie's Pink Pages (thanks to Penny for the suggestion); and made more specific some of the links.  If anyone else has suggestions, send them to me.

Next I plan to go through the list of blogs and favorite web sites to see how active they are and if they need to stay or go.

Asters in December

It's December - usually in years before Global Warming, we would actually have cold weather.  The supposed first freeze date in Georgia is generally November 15.  So far this year, as last year and the more recent warm years, we haven't had a freeze yet.

The temperature dipped into the 30s at least two nights, but still was two degrees above freezing.  The problem for bees is that if they fly out of the hive, it is usually to relieve themselves.  There isn't food to be had.

However, walking today I came upon an aster blooming happily and covered with bees!

There are beekeepers all over Virginia Highlands in Atlanta where I live.  I just hope these joyful bees are mine!

For more on Global Warming, here's a TED talk:

Groundhog's Day and Bees

Bee-ing a beekeeper makes one ultra-conscious about the weather.  So like many people in the country, I had my eye out for the news about the groundhog yesterday.  Apparently Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.  

However, my bees are in Georgia, so I was more interested in what General Beauregard Lee, our local groundhog prognosticator, had to share on this subject.  


I had a video here but removed it because it started automatically and was loud and irritating.
So here's a link that says the General is generally right (not a video).

Our local ground hog apparently did not see his shadow on our cloudy February 2nd morning, so he predicted an early spring.  I found another link saying that he is right 94% of the time...pretty good record for a varmit like he is.

I could have told him that.  We've had the warmest winter I can remember, maybe in all the time I've lived in Atlanta.  I only put on my long winter coat one day in the last three months.  It is not unusual for us to have a snow storm in March, but I don't expect it this year.  

The dandelions are blooming as is the red maple, our first pollen contributor of the spring.  Everyone's bulbs are about to burst open and I've seen quite a few blooming crocus plants already.


My bees are flying in and out of the hives that made it through the winter.  It's warm in Atlanta.

No Use Crying Over Spilt…..Powdered Sugar!

I'm good at spilling things. I like wine glasses without stems for that reason. If something can be spilled, I'm your woman…..I can do it in a heartbeat.

Today I went over to Stonehurst Place to check on the bees. According to the research at UGA, if you want to treat the bees for varroa mites with powdered sugar shakes, then you start in January, treat four times, three days apart and then repeat the process every other month.

 So it's January and time to get started.

Today I treated my hives at home and then got in the car to take the Dustructor to the Stonehurst Place Inn to treat the hives there. When I opened the back door of the car to get the Dustructor, the cap came off of the canister and powdered sugar went everywhere.

There was powdered sugar in every crevice near the door of the car. What a mess!

I gathered up what I could and returned it to the canister.

The good news is that on this day with 69 degree temps around noon, the bees were flying with enthusiasm out of both hives. I am relieved that they are alive and have high hopes for their making it through to March.

On each hive, as I had done at home, I slid the end of the Dustructor into the entry to about the middle of the hive. Then I gave five large puffs of powdered sugar into the hive with as much vigor as I could muster.

Down with the Varroa Destructor! Long live my bees!

On a Warmish December Day....

the bees are all over this plant in my neighbor's yard. It's a shrub with palmate leaves about 1 foot in diameter each and with nine "fingers" on each leaf.

The bees are busy collecting something from this plant when it's warm enough to fly as it was this afternoon.  From looking around the Internet, it may be a Japanese shrub named Fatsia japonica.....or maybe not.

Anyone have an idea of what this is? Put your answer in a comment below.

General Bee Report as Winter Approaches

First, I'm sorry I've been rather lax in my postings.  I hope some of you have taken the opportunity to review some of the old posts while you wondered where in the world I was.

Last week was my birthday, my middle daughter was visiting from Maryland, my youngest daughter here in Atlanta is pregnant, due any day, and I hosted Thanksgiving for my family at my house.

Needless to say, the bees have taken a back seat.

However, over this weekend I checked on most of my Atlanta hives.  Most appear to be going into winter with good supplies.  I fed the bees bee tea going into the fall and most of the hives were slow to take any food, which is a good sign.  Generally they would prefer nectar and around my house we had a pretty good fall aster bloom (and therefore a decent fall flow).  So they haven't taken the bee tea because they didn't really need it.

For example, I put these two feeder jars on the Blue Heron nuc on 11/14.  Here it is almost two weeks later and they've barely touched it.  So I can feel pretty sure that they don't need it.  

One of the advantages of the rapid feeder is that it can stay on the hive during the winter.  A second advantage is that thick sugar syrup rarely freezes so if it is warm enough for the bees to move around, the syrup is there for their taking.  So my 8 frame hives will keep the rapid feeder through the winter.

Plans for winter:
1.  Make creamed honey from the early honey this season that has crystallized
2.  Build my unbuilt nuc boxes
3.  Paint equipment and assess my equipment needs
4.  Try to look for a possible local place to put the beehives from south Georgia
5.  Make plans about our bee business Linda Ts Bees with Jeff to determine where we need to focus come spring
6.  Work on my short course talk with Cindy Hodges on the year in the bee yard in a beginning beekeeper's year.
7.  Work out a sugar shake schedule to begin in January for all the hives.
8.  Decide about splits - surely I can split Colony Square and probably Lenox Pointe as well.

Using the Rapid Feeder

The cone in the rapid feeder sits over the center of the angel food cake pan type container. The bees come up from the hole in the inner cover and can walk down the ridged surface of the cone to the height of the sugar syrup.

When Jeff and I fed the bees last week, the feeders on the hives were empty. In the photo below, Jeff begins to pour the bee tea into the rapid feeder.



In this picture you can see the bees through the cone cover going down to the height of the bee tea. We had to pour slowly to avoid drowning bees and to allow the bees time to crawl up to dry ground.

The leaves floating in the bee tea are thyme, by the way.



The level rises and the bees crowd the top area of the cone.



As the bee tea gets higher, the bees are forced to move up even higher.



When the container is full, the bees can't go down the sides to get syrup, although as the amount of syrup is brought into the hive, the levels will diminish and the bees will be seen more on the outside of the cone.

Just thought you might enjoy these up close and personal pictures of the bees endeavoring to take in the bee tea.