Honey super for Proteus hive

Last year when I harvested honey, I used the crush and strain method. This means that you cut the comb out of the frame and crush it to get the honey. There's a good description also that I posted on the Beemaster forum.

The frames are left with remnants of comb. I put the frames back in the hive in a super for the bees to clean up. Little remnants of comb were left on the edges of the frame. I then removed the frames and put them in the freezer overnight to kill any wax moth eggs that might be present.

Now I have the frames with the remnants left for the bees to use as guides to draw comb. Below you can see what one looks like.

















Below here is a frame sitting on the other frames so you can also see down into the box to see the frame already installed with a comb remnant on it.

















In the center of the box I put an almost fully formed comb to keep the bees in line.

















Here is Proteus at its taller height with a new box to use for honey.

Freezing Weather in April

Tonight the temperature in Atlanta will be in the 20s as will the temperature be tomorrow night. There are a number of bad things that can come of this:

1. My 2 year old blueberries will freeze (so I covered them, hence the ghostly looking sheets on my lawn). Walter Reeves says that is what to do - and he knows Georgia gardening best.


















2. The tulip poplar just started blooming today. It's a great source of delicious dark molasses-like honey. In Atlanta, it's our best honey flow. What will happen to the nectar with two nights in a row of freezing weather? On this web page the author indicates that late spring frost can have a very deleterious affect on the leaves but doesn't mention the blossoms.

3. Because of the tulip poplar flow, ordinarily I would put on supers tomorrow to allow the bees to store this incredible honey. However, adding an empty super when it's this cold for the next two nights adds to the challenge for the bees of keeping warm, so I'll probably super on Sunday or Monday rather than tomorrow.

The hives are full of capped brood and brood in all stages of early development. It will be a challenge for the bees to keep a large area warm, unlike in winter when the numbers have dwindled. Adding a super adds empty space to add to the area that will be cold in the hive. The bees don't keep the hive warm, rather they keep their cluster warm, but the current tight space they have keeps the warmth in better.

My bees are SO SMART!

So you'll remember that I panicked on Monday when I opened the hives to find that Proteus had built crazy comb. Mostly the bees had built up from the bottom rather than down from the top starter strips.....and they had built comb bridging from one frame to the other so that I couldn't remove any frame without making a messy, honey-gooey, drippy - well, you get the idea - in the hive.

After getting advice from my fellow beeks on Beemaster, I opened the hives again on Monday afternoon and cut all the bridging comb and moved it to the base of the frame.

Today, armed with rubber bands (the very large kind), I opened Proteus again with the plan of using the rubber bands to "tie" in the comb that I knew I was going to have to essentially cut and paste to remind my bees that comb should stay IN the frame - I think it's the equivalent of telling the bees that they have to color inside the lines.

Well, I opened the hive and those girls learn FAST. None of the combs had bridging comb between the frames. Some of the frames in the center where the mess was the worst were kind of fat, but still within the frame. There were only three with problems and I solved those by cutting and not with rubber bands. HOORAY


















I've always worked the bees with gloves on and today I only wore a glove on my left hand. It was freeing to have my fingers not have those leather extensions that the too-big gloves cause. I didn't get stung. BTW, it's cold in Atlanta today so the green thing on top of the hive is a pillow case that I used to cover the open hive while I worked on the messy frames.

















Not too bad, huh?

















In Mellona, the other hive with starter strips, the bees had chewed away the wax that I had put in the bottom groove of three frames, so I took it out altogether. I replaced frame #5 with a drawn out frame from last year to help them get the message about coloring within the lines. But the bees in Mellona don't seem to have the same mind of their own that the bees in Proteus have, so they probably would have done fine with just the starter strips.

Results of the Powdered Sugar Shake

GREAT NEWS! I did a Varroa count on the sticky board I put under Bermuda and only found 2 mites. This is the best news because now I can leave the bees alone for a while and let them build up. The sticky board under Mellona also had 2 Varroa mites on it. Forgot to say that this is a 24 hour count - actually a little longer because of work hours - so it was about a 30 hour count.

How to Use the Wax Tube Fastener

You will remember how upset and confused I have been with the wax tube fastener. Michael Bush says to melt the wax in a tin can so that the wax tube fastener has the advantage of having wax higher into the tube. I don't use much canned food, but made a three bean salad from Gourmet magazine the other day and saved the black bean can just for this purpose. Here you see the tin can which is full of melted beeswax, the wax tube fastener in the can, and a Coca Cola can (after all I DO live in Atlanta) being used to keep the tin can upright. You can see the blue of the gas flame below the pot as the wax is melting.


















After my problem with Proteus, I am left with the dilemma of not wanting this to happen in Mellona. Michael Bush who will know how I should handle this rarely posts on Beemaster on Tuesday nights, so I am left to my own resources to try to address this issue. I decided to remove three frames from Mellona and give them more help about how to build comb, so I cut a piece of small cell foundation into thirds and inserted it in the bottom groove of these three frames.

Why didn't I use a whole sheet, you are wondering? Well, I had already waxed in a 3/4 inch starter strip in the top groove and was in a huge hurry because I had to go back to work and it was supposed to rain tonight so I had to get this done quickly. I set the frames at a slant in a roasting pan lined with waxed paper.

The slant is for two reasons:
1. The frame is larger than the pan!
and
2. Gravity will cause my bead of wax from the wax tube fastener to roll downhill and thus operate more efficiently.


















Here I have removed the wax tube fastener from the tin can, keeping my index finger over the hole in the black handle.

















I release my finger and the wax glues the strip into place.

















I did find this rather inefficient using only one WTF. It takes a while for the WTF to reheat in the tin can and fill back up again. Maybe repairing my second one so that one can be filling in the tin can all the time is the answer. And there's no obvious way to clean the WTF, although since all it is used is for this purpose, then letting wax harden in it after use may be just fine.

I'm going to give the wax tube fastener another chance, but I think I just threw away $6.50 because I'm not finding it easy or efficient to use. People on Beemaster suggest opening the hole at the tip of the fastener a little wider, making a slightly larger hole in the wood handle and securing the wood handle with a screw to the metal tube....so clearly others have tried to improve on this product -

Or maybe I'll go back to my bread pan method, which I really liked!

Problems with Proteus

I opened Proteus as part of my inspection today to see how they were doing with the starter strips in the medium box. What a mess! These bees are building comb like gangbusters but are ignoring any guidance from me via the starter strips. Consequently, the first frame I examined (#2) looked like this.


















I didn't remove any further frames from the box because there was comb going every which way and sticking the frames together. Here's the view looking down into the box at frames #3 and #4.

See the mess and the broken comb from when I tried to pull out the frame.


When I put the box back together a huge clump of comb was in the box and I needed to get it out of the way, so I put it on the deck rail with all of the bees on it. They moved off of it but stayed in a clump and I realized that these were house bees, unused to flying. So I went inside and got a Sierra cup and brushed the bees into the cup and shook them onto the hive. The comb had unripe honey all in it so I took it indoors to discourage robbing.


















Later today I went back into the hive to work a little on the mess. Below you can see a comb out into the space between frames. I took a Swiss army knife and cut the comb loose and straightened it onto the bottom of the frame. I still need to cut some comb out that is layering behind it, but I had to go back to work and will have to deal with that on another day.


















Here you can see it cut and moved but there is still a problem with this frame that I need to address soon on another visit, but I had to go back to work and we have had storms all evening so no chance of reopening the hive until another day.


















Needless to say, this was a difficult turn of events and I did not do a powdered sugar shake on Proteus....both because I was a little panicked about what was going wrong in the comb building and because with all the dripping honey, I figured the powdered sugar would make a real mess.

Inspection Today - Mixed Results

I had three goals for my inspection today:

1. To see if Bermuda was continuing to build up and to determine what is my next step with this hive
2. To do a powdered sugar shake on all three hives and put the sticky sheets under the hives for a Varroa count
3. To see how Mellona and Proteus are doing with the starter strips in the medium box (above the deep brood box)

Bermuda looked good - the numbers of bees continue to increase. The queen is now laying in five or six of the center frames. There is an empty of brood foundation-filled frame at the #2 spot in the frames. Tomorrow I'm going to replace it with a full sheet of small cell foundation. We'll see if they can manage it. They are not using the frame for brood or honey or pollen so I won't be depriving the bees.

Mellona was next. The bees have built down from the starter strips in the brood box on the three frames on either side of the four nuc (large cell) frames. This is the outside edge frame from Mellona.


















This frame is #2 or #9 depending on how you are counting. You can see that the bees have drone comb over to the left of the picture and good brood comb in the upper center. Overall I am well-pleased with how they are working with the starter strips of small cell.

















I only removed the outside two frames of the brood box. The picture below was taken looking down into the box of the #3 frame. You can see that there is drone comb to the left of this frame as well, again with a good brood pattern in the upper center.


















Mellona bees haven't starting building in the medium box with the frames with starter strips. They are concentrating on building up the hive in the brood box below.

I gave this hive a powdered sugar shake and put the sticky board under the hive. My screened bottom boards did not come with a slot for a sticky board so for Bermuda and Mellona, I cut poster board and smear it with Vaseline and then slide it between the concrete blocks that support the hive so that it collects droppings from the screened bottom board above it. I'll check it tomorrow and see what the counts are.

When I went to Proteus, I found quite a different picture. (See next post)

Getting the Lay of the Bees' Land

At all three hives today around 4 PM in a light rain, the bees at all my hives were getting oriented. At Proteus the bees were flying fast and furiously, but my camera isn't fast enough to catch the action. You can see the shadows of a few of the fast flying bees.

At Mellona the action was even more frantic around 4:30 as the rain began to increase, but the babies still hadn't learned their lessons about where the hive is - so they flew more frantically for a few moments.

Even at Bermuda, orientation was happening, but I decided to take a hopeful picture of this hard-working forager bringing home the bacon to the baby bees - see the pollen in the pollen baskets on her legs?