What is a Follower Board?

My top bar hive includes two follower boards. My understanding of the follower board is that it is used to demarcate the beginning and end of the hive. (Note that my top bar hive doesn't have a bottom yet.)

Here is the first follower board that will be located at the end of the hive.



In the picture below you can see a number of top bars with the follower board showing at the end of the hive.


When I first install a swarm in this hive, the bees won't need to occupy more than about eight to ten bars. If I left the entire 48 inches open, they would have too much space to defend and would have lots of room to make a mess with burr comb. Instead I'll use the other follower board to end the hive, as you can see in the picture below.



Over time, I'll continue to move this outer follower board as I add top bars to the hive. Conceivably the hive could fully occupy the length of the hive I am providing for them.

I lack three things to make this hive operational now. I need to put on the hive bottom (Monday morning's task since I don't go to work until noon tomorrow); I need to cut the plastic you can see curving behind the hive to make the top of the hive; I need to catch a swarm.

Working on the Top Bar Hive

In the last week, I've done a lot of work on the top bar hive. I shortened the follower boards (they were about an inch too long). I set the hive up on newspapers in my carport and painted it green. I was going to use yellow, but my son-in-law who is a Georgia fan did not want a hive that looked like Ga Tech in his backyard!



I used paint that was a reject for my dining room and I think the hive looks perfectly lovely! I still need to staple the screened bottom on and will do that next week.




Inside at odd moments while on the phone I have managed to glue the "woodies" into the slots on the top bars. These will serve as starter strips for the bees when they begin to draw wax. I found these "woodies" at Michaels. They are smaller than popsicle sticks and fit into the slot from the circular saw better than the popsicle sticks.



So now all I need is a swarm and the top bar hive will be in business! 

I just found out about a resource:  www.findabeekeeper.com where people can search for someone to collect swarms from their property.  I listed myself there.  Maybe between being on Cindy Bee's swarm list for Metro and being listed on Bud's site, I might get a call and fill this hive!

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!

Rescuing Abandoned Hives: Another Beekeeping Adventure with Julia

Julia has a friend who started keeping bees four or five years ago. The friend had four hives. Almost as soon as she started on this hobby, a crisis occurred - her house burned in a really bad fire. So the bees have lived in her backyard for four years with nobody taking care of them.

The friend invited Julia (my partner at Blue Heron) to come and salvage these hives. Julia in turn invited me, dangling the possibility that if there were live bees we might each get a hive out of it. We decided that if we did get hives, we would probably put them at Blue Heron or at the new Little Nancy Creek Park where I have asked that we be the beekeepers.

The first hive was dead and empty of everything. All of the wax had been eaten out by wax moths. New wax had been built in the hives but it was abandoned. There were wax moth cocoons under the inner cover and the hive was dead. Probably the original bees had died and a swarm moved in (making the new wax) and then either absconded or died as well.

The second hive was limping along. We couldn't decide if the bees in the hive were remnants or robbers, but there was honey in the hive with cappings intact, so we decided not robbers. Perhaps the queen had died or was not doing well, although we saw one shallow frame with a small area (about 8" wide) of capped brood.

The third hive had a ventilated hive cover that was totally glued down with propolis and pollen. That hive had a deep and a shallow with a queen excluder between the two boxes. Can you imagine how crowded that hive has been? We saw brood and bees and it looked good.

The fourth hive, while the woodenware was in the worst shape, had the best bees. We even saw the queen, who was lovely and long. A huge tree or tree limb lay right beside the hive. Maybe the tree fell on the hive and that explains the broken bottom board.

We tried to call Cindy Bee to find out how to handle all of this but she was not available. We found out from her later that we probably should have really been careful to look for foulbrood and to change gloves between the hives as well as hive tools. We didn't - so if we go back and find AFB signs in the second hive, we mostly likely spread the spores to the healthier hives.

I did come home and put all the hive tools we used in the dishwasher and also washed the frame grip and frame rack....and threw away the nitrile gloves I wore.

On a positive note, it didn't smell foul and although we didn't do the rope test, I didn't see sunken cappings (AFB), nor did I see scale in the cells (sign of EFB). When we go back, we'll do the rope test on the capped brood to see, but I think these hives are crowded but healthy.

Aristaeus2 - A Good Beginning for Spring Bees

This hive started from a swarm I collected several years ago. It has always been a strong hive and has a fierce independence about it. I wasn't sure how well they were doing when I opened the hive today for the first time and saw all these dead SHBs on the tops of the bars. We have had a cold, cold end of February and I imagine they couldn't live through the weather.

This is the first year of my five beekeeping years that I am still seeing live SHBs in the hives. Usually they all die off during the winter and then reappear at the end of June. But they are alive in both of my hives - not a lot - the bees are managing them - but they are there.



When I lifted the top box off of the stack, I found opened brood in burr comb between the boxes. I don't get why they did this. I felt bad killing all the pupae.



The brood pattern which was on about five frames looked about like the photo below. I could worry about the empty cells but I believe the queen started laying and was fooled by the weather. We generally are full into the warmth of spring by now and we had below freezing temperatures and snow just last Tuesday. So I think the brood didn't make it in the cold and was cleaned out by the workers.

Generally the hive seemed about three weeks behind this time last year (as did Mellona) and the brood area was just getting started.



Then in the second box (there was nothing in the bottom box) I found Her Majesty! I've circled her in yellow below. I know the picture isn't well focused but I thought you'd like to see her. Next time I'll keep the camera on a tripod and maybe the focus will improve.

Most of the bees looked healthy, but the bee in the lower left is definitely a victim of Deformed Wing Virus. I've circled her as well so that you can see the wings (even out of focus, the evidence is obvious).

Mellona as 2010 Bee Season Begins

I've seen a chipmunk under Mellona over the last several days. Today when I went out to open the hive for the first time in 2010, the entrance reducer had been pushed away. Maybe the bees did it in a Paul Bunyan effort, but I'll bet it was the chipmunk!

When I opened the hive, the baggie feeder of sugar syrup was still almost full. I put it on the hive 11 days ago. This says to me that they are not desperate for food, although I have not examined the boxes for provisions yet this year.



The hive looked small from opening the inner cover. The bees were concentrated on one side of the box. I assumed that probably meant the queen was in that area of the hive, so I expected to find brood either in the top or middle box on these side frames (2, 3, 4, 5).

In the past two winters, this hive has never moved out of the bottom box so I also was prepared to find activity and brood down there. However the bottom deep box that I have wanted to replace with a medium for two years was in fact full of empty-celled frames....not even any pollen stored there. I removed the box and will add a medium to this hive probably next week.



The top box had good honey stores still left after this hard, long winter, but I barely harvested anything from my hives last year.


On the outer frames I found never-used comb - I don't think it's this year's comb but the end of their comb-building from last year. If it were this year's comb, it probably wouldn't already be dirty, but with all the pollen they have been carrying in, perhaps it is from this year.



So Mellona is now an all-medium box hive! There were about 3 frames with capped brood on both sides. The brood area was small - about the size of a flattened grapefruit....but at least it was there. I saw some uncapped brood. The sun wasn't out, so I didn't see eggs although I tried and I didn't find Her Majesty - just evidence that she had been there.

Interesting Bee Biology Facts

As I study for the Young Harris course, I'm learning some interesting bee biology facts:

1. The bee is a highly efficient insect - each leg has a specific job - the hind leg has the corbicula (the pollen basket) on the tibia. While not a "basket," it is a concave region with hairs around the edges and a central bristle that anchors the pollen loads. The middle leg cleans the thoracic hairs and moves pollen from the front to the hind legs. (There's a blind spot on the middle leg that the bee cannot clean which often has pollen dusted on it as the bee returns to the hive). The front leg has hair on the basitarsus that cleans the dust, pollen, etc from the head. The foreleg has an antenna cleaner on it (a hook of sorts) that cleans the antenna
   
   
2. When the adult bee emerges from the cell in which she has pupated, she attaches the capping to the side of the cell. Workers come along and recycle the capping on another cell!
   
   
3. Bee brood has a good chance of survival. Drone cells on the outside edges of the frame
   have a lower survival rate - since we know temperature is a factor, the edges probably are less warm. Also the workers remove brood that is the result of the queen mating with one of her brothers. This accounts for some of the empty cells you might see in an otherwise good brood pattern.
   
   
4. Bees are "eusocial." To qualify for this term, bees must have cooperative brood care (bees take care of young that isn't their own), reproductive division of labor (sterile females take care of the young that the fertile queen produces), and overlapping generations (in the bee hive, this means that the older sisters care for their younger sisters).
   
   
5. The queen larva is fed ten times as often as worker larvae. Winston says that "queens literally swim in a sea of brood food."
   
   
6. How do bees signal that they want food from another bee? "The begging bee thrusts the tip of her tongue toward the mouth of another bee."
   The feeding bee then opens her jaws (her mandibles) and pushes her own tongue toward the begging bee. Then the feeding bee brings a drop of liquid up from her honey stomach for the begging bee. This is called trophallaxis.

Just thought I'd share a few fun facts with all of you.....studying like this is overwhelming in the immensity of what I don't know. But it's also fun to take in all this bee knowledge.

My Brother Barry is Becoming a Beekeeper

I was so thrilled because my brother Barry decided that he wants to keep bees. He came to Atlanta for the Short Course in January and went home and ordered equipment. He knows a commercial beekeeper in Natchez, MS where he lives and is getting bees from that man.

I went to Natchez this past weekend to help Barry put his equipment together. I had a great time and didn't take nearly enough pictures, but here's an overview.



We built and painted ten medium hive boxes. I took him two deeps because I believe the man from whom he is getting the bees will be expecting him to have deeps and not medium boxes. So we painted those as well. We also painted screened bottom boards, slatted racks, telescoping covers.

Barry single-handedly built 79 frames (one of the 80 broke!) The Walter Kelley jig for frame assembly is a convenience that I never want to be without. It was so much more efficient to build frames with this jig. Took a little getting used to - we goofed twice and had to take the frames apart to get them out of the jig. Barry became a master of the jig, though, in the end.

We then put wax foundation in all his frames and I set up the two basic hive boxes to show him how to do it. I also showed him how to hang the frame rack on the side, how to remove the second or seventh frame when you first open the box.

He had fun the whole time, but he really smiled when I showed him how to light the smoker.

I hope he will love the bees the way I do and will get into the zen of beekeeping!