Bees at Tom's - Bustling, Bursting at the Seams

Jeff and I checked on the two hives we installed in OCTOBER - remember when I bought the two hives at an auction for our bee club?  Well, I had no idea how they would do during the winter when they were installed in the hive so late in the year.

We fed these bees going into winter - we gave them five feedings of bee tea.  I think that is about 2 quarts per feeding per hive.  I didn't think we had a choice with the hives newly established at a time when NOTHING is blooming.

These hives were doing great.  The front hive was bustling and busy.  The frames were built out - all ten of them.  These bees are in a deep box with a solid bottom board.  (So far my bees that did the best over the winter are on solid bottom boards).  They overwintered in just that one box with an inner cover and a feeder over the hole in the inner cover with a surround box.  Because both hives had run out of space, they were storing both honey and drone brood in the space between the box and the inner cover on top of the frames.

The second (back) hive had not fully built out - they had a couple of plastic foundation frames on one side that they had not touched.  We still put a new box on that hive as well because about eight of the frames were built out and spring is coming fast.

We saw eggs and young larvae in both boxes but did not see the queen.  I was a little disappointed about that.  In addition to Gail and Ella (Tom's wife and daughter who both took the MABA short course in January), the neighbors and their children were all watching the process.  We didn't see any drones yet, but we saw drone brood.

We put a new box on each of these hives.  The new boxes each had foundationless frames with one solid built-out comb in the center of each new box.  These bees are bringing in nectar and raising brood, so we won't need to feed them.

We do need to add a slatted rack to each of these hives and will on our next visit.

A slideshow of what we saw and recorded is below.  I didn't take as many photos as usual because I was sort of teaching as I went. The first eight photos I took; Tom Phillips in whose yard these hives live, took the rest.

Survivor Bees - Hallelujah

Yesterday all of my bee friends were posting on FB and other places that, as the snow/ice was melting, their bees were flying.  My strong little hive in the backyard - my only remaining home hive - was silent all day long.   This hive was a swarm that I retrieved near Northlake Mall in Atlanta.

The people told me that the bees had lived in a column of this condo/office complex for years.  This was the first year they had observed a swarm or called a beekeeper.  I figured this would be a survivor queen.  Nobody had treated these girls in any way for years and that's how I like it.  I didn't take any honey from them and have watched them with growing confidence in their survival over the year.

I hived this swarm in a box with a closed off screened bottom board and I have never pulled out the insert to open the screened bottom.  I don't know if that is helping them make it through the winter or not, but I have hitherto breathed a sigh of relief after every time the temperature returns to the 50s F, and I see that they are flying.

We have had a very cold winter for Atlanta - a week or two of temperatures in the teens and twenties; the Snowjam at the end of January, and now an ice storm of rather scary proportions.  But every time these bees have stayed the course.

Before the sun went down yesterday (it actually came out for a change), when the snow blocking the hive entrance finally melted off around 4:30 in the afternoon, I braved the ice-slick that is my concreted backyard area (a basketball court) to walk up to the entrance .  I saw a couple of bees, but only a couple, and thought that these were the only remaining live bodies.  So I went to bed last night with a heavy heart because my bees were silent.

Today I had a distracting day with my grandchildren.  We made Valentine's cookies (two different kinds) before we went to lunch.

Dylan and Lark and their beautiful cookie creations

My third grandchild, Max, who is 2 was also there, but he was more interested in playing with toys than making the cookies so he isn't in the photo.

After all the baking we went to lunch and at lunch I was telling them that I felt so sad that my bees had died.   I told them that it was warm enough according to the car thermometer that the bees, if they were alive, should be flying, but I had not seen them and I was sad to see that survivor hive go.  

When we returned from lunch, my granddaughter RAN to the back window and looked into the backyard.  "Grandma," she yelled, "the bees ARE flying."  I couldn't believe it and was moved to tears to find that this hive is still going strong.  

My backyard is down in a deep area and it probably was colder than 50 back there for all of yesterday and today.  When the car said 54, they probably finally had a temp by the hive just at 50 and decided to come out to go to the little bee's room (as Dean Stiglitz would say).  

I AM HAPPY.  What a Valentine!

So celebration isn't the meaning of this song, but it is about the difficulties of how we love - and loving the bees isn't much different in the challenges of it.  I love this rendition as do so many others, so I'm embedding this video because my bees are alive today:

What Kind of a Place is This?

When I got the swarm yesterday, I didn't have much preparation time for housing them. I already had a swarm lure hive set up on my deck and given the press of time, I decided as I drove home with the bees in the car that the swarm lure hive would be their new home.

I confess, I didn't give them the best room in the house. I had not much hope for the swarm lure, so the hive was set up with a solid bottom board and old frames from the last two years. A few of the frames had comb with wax moth damage. A few of the frames had remnant of comb left from my cutting out wax moth damage. A few frames were completely empty. The last time I opened the swarm lure hive, three huge palmetto roaches ran out - you know the kind - about 2 inches long and fierce looking remnants of the stone age. (They've been around for 300 million years - who is going to argue with them?)

So today the swarm has been cleaning house. They were up and out before either of my established hives to get a jump on the day. You can see the busy housekeeper bees, carrying out all kinds of refuse.


The two bees below are probably saying, "What kind of a place is this?" I'm sure if they could complain, they would report me to the bee landlord association or the board of health.



Tonight I got home after dark and went outside to take a picture of the hive. Look at the housekeeping progress that has been made! They have swept the landing deck almost completely clean and made neat piles of trash on the deck below the hive.



They are probably making wax - the Boardman feeder was completely full yesterday so they are sucking down the sugar water - a good sign of wax production.



I have a good screened bottom board for this hive - I'll put it on when I open up the hive on Sunday or so. It's a Country Rubes Board and may make up for my giving them a less than decent place to live at the beginning!

Advantages of having my hives on my deck

There are many advantages of having my hives on my deck. Some of them are:

1. In my neighborhood, my house is at the highest point on my street. To see into my deck my neighbors have to look up. The bars on the rail keep them from seeing my hives.

2. I can watch the bees at all times of the day from the comfort of my sunporch. This allows me to learn more than if they were located on the fence line of my yard.

3. I can observe what comes out of the hive quite easily because the deck offers more for me to see than if the hives were in grass - so I can get a pretty good idea of how many dead bees are being brought out.....hey, we don't have snow much in Atlanta and this gives me the advantage those of you with hives in the snow have of being able to see what comes out of the hive in the winter

4. One could argue that the small hive beetle might be thwarted by not being able to breed in the dirt below the hive since there's only wood there, but I can attest to the thriving presence of the SHB, despite being 14 or 15 feet above the ground.

Here's what I see from my table on the sunporch.


















5. If I am feeding the bees, it's quite easy to refill the feeder at night (or at least it was easy on Mellona and Bermuda). When I got to Proteus, home of the aggressive bees, I lifted out the feed bottle to find a bee attached to it. I left the bottle on the deck and went inside to make more syrup. When I came out 30 minutes later the bee had returned to her hive, but when I placed the bottle in the Boardman (it's 11:30 PM) the bees inside the hive roared a loud buzz and several came out to see what I was doing.


















I visited P.N. Williams today (source of my two nucs) and I asked him about the different nature of the bees in Proteus compared to the bees in Mellona. Did he think they might be Russian? He laughed and said that these bees were "what we call mutt bees" because the queen is naturally mated and who knows who she was with in the process!

Below is a picture of Proteus before I removed the bottle and bee that came with it. Notice that the bottom board (formerly the roof) now has no bees on it.


















6. People can stand inside my sunporch and watch me work the bees without worry of being stung. My daughter Becky took this picture through the door last summer while I was inspecting the hives.

New Telescoping Top for Proteus

Proteus has had a leftover bottom board substituting for an inner cover and telescoping top for the last week. It arrived on Monday and I put the parts together and painted it last night. Today at a break I ran home to replace the top.

















I opened this vigorous hive wearing a veil and my gloves over my work clothes - no smoke. This is what the bees looked like under the lid.

















I put on the inner cover and the telescoping lid and left the bottom board on its side so that the bees there could go back into the hive. I also put the flower pot back on the top in case the bees have been using it to identify their hive. Maybe I'll plant mint in it when it's a little warmer!

















Mellona has used half a quart of sugar syrup again today. I can't open the hives until Monday, the 26th - can't wait to see how drawn out the small cell comb will be by then.