Blue Heron Inspection May 7 2011

In this inspection at Blue Heron, we wanted to check on the progress of Julia's hive (started from a package in mid March) and to see if the even split of my hive had worked and resulted in two laying queens.

We found Julia's hive to be a little slow, but still up and running. We wondered about the bad weather (tornadoes and storms over the last few weeks) or if the location in the woodsy shade (better than the flood plain, but not ideal for bees) contributed to the slow start.

Linda's even split was a complete failure. Neither hive had a laying queen. We determined that we needed to combine the two hives later that afternoon after I had gone home and stolen frames of brood and eggs from Colony Square and Lenox Pointe.

To follow up, see tomorrow's post.....

Honey, Brood and A New Aid for Ventilation

In checking on my hives at home today, I was quite pleased with my bees.

I hate it when in the process of lifting a comb, despite my best efforts, some comb is broken open. Of course when that happens, it is always fascinating to see the bees surround the honey drips and put their proboscis to work sucking the honey back up as you can see in the picture below of the Colony Square bees working hard to retrieve spilled honey.




This curious frame in Colony Square was filled with nectar and right in the center there was capped brood???


The queen in this hive has been laying like crazy. Generally in the life of the hive, the queen builds up the population until the summer solstice at which point she gradually begins to slow down and continues the slow down until winter.



At Penny (my Virginia mentor's) suggestion, I am trying to increase ventilation in the hive by putting bottle caps at the corners of the inner covers. I wondered before I did this how the tops would stay in place, but I think I was imagining placing them on the corners of the hive box. Once I realized they would go on the tops of the inner cover corners (duh!), it's clear that they would easily stay put.



Lenox Pointe was doing well too. I didn't take pictures while in that hive, except for the one below, showing a beautiful frame of brood.
The bees in both of these hives are bringing in nectar as fast as they can. We are at the height of the nectar flow in Atlanta so it's prime time for the hives to be building up their honey supplies.



I put bottle caps on Lenox Pointe's corners as well. My son-in-law, Kevin, has been collecting bottle caps for me so I am now carrying a baggie of bottle caps in my hive inspection kit.

A Beekeeper's Lunch

I didn't go to work this morning because I needed to meet a roof repair person (who later rescheduled.....) but nonetheless, it is lunch time and I am at home.

I made myself a half of an egg salad sandwich (leftover Easter eggs) and took a handful of unshelled English peas and sat on the steps in my backyard.

This is what I saw.



A few minutes later, this is what I saw:



A few English peas and another bite of sandwich and this is what I saw:



And a little later, this is what I saw:



And it MADE MY DAY!

Stonehurst Place Bees Participate in UGA Research

Today our bustling hives at Stonehurst Place began participation in a research project at UGA run by Victor O. Victor came by to collect a sample of about 300 bees from the hives.  His research is about IPM hive management.  I'll know more about it as the project goes forward.  Right now, we provide a bee sample.  Later I have to answer about a 45 minute questionnaire about IPM (Integrated Pest management).

Before he came, I opened the top (in my business clothes with no bee stuff - I borrowed Caroline, the innkeeper's, veil and a hive tool). I could see that they were full and built out in the second box so I added a third box to each hive.

The first hive was fine - after all, I only took off the inner cover and added the box - no other interference. However hive two took revenge and I got stings between my thumb and fingers on my right hand and in the palm of my left hand.



Victor planned to take bees from a honey frame so he lifted the first frame out of the second box.



He used an alcohol-filled cup as a sample collector. There are so many bees in this hive that he was able to collect all 300 bees from this frame alone.

These sample bees will be tested for nosema and a few other diseases.  He is interested in beekeepers like me who use no poison in their hives.



Isn't their comb pretty? This frame even looks like I failed to wax in a starter strip!



In the end around 300 bees gave their lives to alcohol and science and Victor went on his way. Part of the research includes my participation in taking about a 45 minute survey and then allowing a second collection later on - I think at the end of the summer.



To respond to the comment below, I don't know any more about his research than was in his letter sent to request participation.  I'm certainly willing to contribute to any effort to learn more about honey bee health and since I practice a no-chemical IPM approach, I'd love to know about the health of my bees (or lack thereof) as a result.  Here's what he wrote:

"As part of our involvement in the Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/, the UGA bee lab is looking to collect data on the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Georgia and its effects on honey bee health. Based on the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association’s (MABA) reputation as a key proponent of bees, we would like to offer MABA members the opportunity to participate in this research. We are looking for 15 highly committed volunteers. Participants will be asked to participate in an annual on-line survey reporting their management practices and measures of hive productivity and submit biennial bee samples for pathogen analysis. In addition to the benefit of having healthier bees, involvement in this project could be used to satisfy subspecialty requirements in the UGA/Young Harris College (YHC) Master Beekeeper Program. We will begin the first phase of this project in April.  Please respond to this e-mail and let us know if you will be able to assist us by participating in this research. Thank you in advance for your invaluable help in this initiative."

Bees on the Home Front are Bursting at the Seams

Colony Square is growing and growing as is Lenox Pointe. I checked on Saturday and knew I needed to add a new box to both hives really soon, but was going to be gone all day. When I got home from South Georgia, I headed out to add a box.

My friend Julia who is my beekeeping buddy at Blue Heron showed me to take the hive tool and drag a line across all the frames toward the ends so that you'll not have to remember the orientation when you put the frame back in the box. If you click on the picture below, you can see the hive tool mark I've made.

The boxes I added were a combo of old crush and strain frames and some new frames.



The bees have made fat honey comb in this box and it is bulging at the sides - yum, yum.



Lenox Points has many bees as well. These Jennifer Berry bees are darker and larger than my other hives, but maybe they'll changes as the generations emerge.

I checkerboarded these boxes so that there is a combo of the new and old box on Lenox. Every other frame in the honey section is an empty one in the top two boxes. I didn't checkerboard in Colony Square because I didn't have my smoker lit and the bees were none too happy with my 5:30 PM intrusion.



Here are the newly taller boxes. The stick on markings on the front are designed hopefully to cut down on drift. The bees will have a way to distinguish their hive from the one beside it.

Bees in South Georgia are Doing Well

These hives have been installed as packages for about six weeks now. They've been through a heavy windstorm in their second week with tops blown off. Last Wednesday in Georgia we had devastating tornadoes and heavy winds. We've had to rubber band in errant comb and deal with queens who died (probably were balled by the bees) as a result of the storms when the hive tops blew off of several hives.

No end of problems, but the bees are still going.

We did lose one hive who absconded the first week, but other than that all hives have bees.



I passed tornado damage in Griffin, GA as I drove down.



Damage was on both sides of the highway.



Our hives were not affected - the tornado missed the farm. One hive appeared to have opened queen cells - or maybe queen cups but the ragged edges looked like a queen had emerged. A new queen may not be laying yet.  Even though there was no sign of a queen in this calm hive, we gave it a frame of eggs just to make sure.



Jeff got really good at spotting eggs - he also worked on how to hold the hive tool so that he didn't have to keep putting it away while he worked. These guys are getting to be good beekeepers.



Greg applied powdered sugar with my new toy to the hives that were in the best shape.



Most of the hives had lovely frames of brood that looked like this.



I'm not reporting extensively on these hives here because we take SO many pictures as a record of what we are doing down there. But I will keep all of you who are interested updated with an overview when we go down and check on the bees.



We did add a slatted rack to every hive. The Georgia days are getting warmer and we want the bees to use their energy in some other way than keeping the hive cool. The slatted rack helps with ventilation.

These have been back-ordered from Betterbee since February 23 - they finally came this past Thursday (April 29) - who knew there would be a run on slatted racks this year? I actually don't know too many beekeepers who use them and who need the 8 frame version, as we did.

(Our private theory is that Betterbee forgot my order. I wrote them an email last week to inquire about the two month old backorder and suddenly the order showed up this week.)

Beyond Frustrated with my Top Bar Hive

I enjoy and admire Sam Comfort and am so pleased to have met and heard Wyatt Mangum speak, but neither of them addressed the problems I am having at Topsy. I don't know if it's how I constructed the hive, its location in Atlanta or what, but I hate inspecting it.

It's always one problem after another. After nearly destroying the hive to correct the cross comb problem, I visited it today to see if the queen were still alive and laying.

I opened Bar 11 and immediately found cross comb. GRRRRRR. I cut it out, it fell to the bottom of the hive and frustrated by the inability to come up with any way to repair what I would have rubber banded into a Langstroth hive's frame, I pushed it down to the unused part of the hive next to the follower board.



 Innocent bees peering up at me, the helpless beekeeper.


I then moved to bar 10 which looked OK, but when I tried to lift Bar 9 there was resistance and it broke off of the top bar, leaving a gaping opening and honey dripping.

Is the queen there and laying? I certainly don't have any idea because I wasn't willing to destroy any more comb to find out.

What is a top bar beekeeper to do in these instances?

My understanding of the top bar is that there is great advantage in only removing one bar at a time rather than lifting out a whole box. But the HUGE disadvantage of this system is that the beekeeper has no idea what is going on until damage has already happened.

I just closed the hive up, took off my veil and walked away.

I may leave it for the rest of the summer.

I hope they enjoy the honey they make. I certainly will not.

There is no way to harvest honey out of a top bar without killing a bunch of the bees and I'm not willing to do that. There's no way to monitor the hive because the top bars keep pulling off of the comb.

I wish there were some way to move this hive into a Langstroth box because this is beyond me.

The Vanishing of the Bees

Valerie, my daughter, and I went to see The Vanishing of the Bees tonight in its Atlanta area showing in Alpharetta.  I saw a number of beekeepers I knew there.  Notice of the movie was sent out on the MABA email list, so that's probably how most of us knew to come.

It was a good film, focused on the overall problems that the bee may herald as the canaries in the coal mine.  Michael Pollan spoke about voting with your fork, ie, buying local, organic produce.  Dave Hackenberg was as you might imagine, in the film as was Dennis vanEnglesdorp and Dee Lusby.  I even caught a glance of Keith Delaplane at a Congressional hearing on CCD.

People who are known and respected nationwide were featured like Marla Spivak and Maryann Frazier.

I didn't really learn anything new (except Michael Pollan's line about voting with your fork - great line!), but I was glad to vote for bees by showing up to see the film.

If it's in your area, it's worth going to see it.