What Do Beekeepers Do After Dark?

Well, we read books about bees, we chat on the Beemaster forum, we gaze at our hives and wonder what it will be like inside when we look in on the bees the next time. We look at the bearding bees on the fronts of our hives and wonder what is going on there.

Tonight in addition to the beards on the front porch, there was a clump of bees on the ground in front of Mellona. I tried to take a picture but it was dark and the bees were not happy with my bursts of flash so I kept my distance.

When I came in and loaded the pictures onto the computer, I found out what was going on in Mellona. The yellow circle is around one of those 2 1/2 inch Palmetto cockroaches. I imagine he came to visit inside Mellona and the pile of bees rushed him right back out.




This evening this beekeeper came home to Beekeeper's Treasure. The beekeeping supplies that I ordered from Betterbee and Brushy Mountain all arrived in a stack of large boxes in my carport. Given the sparse nature of my equipment - so much is in use at the moment - I hurriedly unpacked the boxes to find out what surprises were inside.



From Betterbee there were slatted racks, an inner cover, and a telescoping cover. From Brushy Mountain there were screened bottom boards, cut comb honey boxes, and two medium frames nucs (two medium boxes per nuc). The little end pieces for the boxes are so cute - like a doll house for bees.



So naturally what this beekeeper did on this night was paint equipment in my carport. Now I can help Persephone who has a solid bottom board both for the top and bottom of the hive, graduate to greater heights and state of coolness with a screened bottom board, a slatted rack, an inner cover, and a telescoping cover (all painted in my 2008 yellow and blue). I can also put a slatted rack on Melissa (another hive short of equipment.)








Now I am waiting on medium end bars to turn the shallow frame kits I currently have into medium ones. This will of course be what this beekeeper does after dark on another beekeeper night.

What a Swarm is Supposed to Do When it is Hived

You'll remember that I put the swarm that I collected on Friday into a cobbled together hive situation. The outside three shallow frames are over completely empty space - no bottom. I had to go get equipment - new frames - and had to paint the hive box, build and paint the screened bottom board and telescoping cover.

The picture below shows my preparation for the transfer to the new box with a decent bottom board. The telescoping cover and inner cover are lying to one side so that I can lift the bottom hive box over and set it on the inner cover. That way if the queen, for example, falls off of the frame she is on, at least she will fall on the inner cover and be returned to the hive.


I pulled the frames out of the medium 8 frame box exactly as they were in the original box and put them into the new box just in that way.

I didn't have time or the right sunlight (it was 7:30 AM before I left for work) to see if the queen were laying in the drawn shallow frames but the bees were all over the three shallow frames, so I left them in the new box for now. I left them on the outside 1,2 and 3 positions in hopes that eventually I'll exchange them for medium frames.

When a hive sends out a primary swarm, the old queen goes and the bees who go with her are primed to start up a hive. They are all filled with honey and the younger bees are ready to build wax. this hive has only been in this box since Friday morning and on Monday morning they have drawn some wax in every one of the five starter strip medium frames I gave them.



The confusion for these bees came in their working on entering the new hive. Where there had been a bottom entrance with no bottom board, now there is a screened bottom board. Confused bees headed for what they had been using as a rear bottom entrance to find it unavailable. The screen would allow them to smell the queen pheromone, but not allow them entry.



I put a branch in front of the entrance so that the bees inside would re-orient to the new hive box. I do hope the confused ones in the back figure out that now they have to come in the front door. Maybe when I get home from work, I'll prop the back of the top cover to allow them a rear entry, just not at the bottom.

As Paul Harvey Would Say, "And now, The Rest of the Story...."

Last night I left the broken branch swarm with access to the cardboard box in which I planned to collect it. I spread a swipe of my swarm lure in the cardboard box and I sprayed the bees who were still on the ground with 1:1 sugar syrup. I hoped for the best and determined to see what happened the next morning.

Well, today is the next morning and lo and behold, the bees were all in the cardboard box!

So I suited up and put Dylan (who spent the night at my house) in his bee veil. His job was to watch from the sunporch door.



Here's how the bees looked on the underside of the cardboard "ramp" I had in frustration simply put inside the cardboard box last night.

I picked up the bee-covered cardboard and shook them into the patched together hive box I have for them. The rest of the day, Dylan talked about "Gwamma dumped the bees!" It was pretty impressive to see the whole lot of them fall as one into the hive box. You can see how they filled the space.


I don't have any more medium frames and these two medium 8-frame boxes were painted and ready to add to other hives. I only had five medium frames left so I added two drawn comb shallow frames and a shallow frame of honey. I had to do something with these bees today, though, so this is the best I could devise.

I used the bottom board from a 5 frame nuc that I have - so in this 8 frame box, the last three frames (the shallow ones) are bottom-less. The box needed something to support the bottomless side, so I used a 2 X 4 on the bricks below it to balance out the nuc bottom board. I used two deep frame end bars to make a shim on the outside edge to keep the hive from shifting. I had no wood at all so I used a plastic mite count tray to serve as a temporary top and put a flower pot on it for good measure.



I have more boxes and frames on order but the earliest any of that will be here is at the end of this coming week.

When I came back in the house, I called PN Williams, a local supplier, and arranged to buy from him some medium frames, a screened bottom board, an inner cover and a telescoping cover. He doesn't carry any 8 frame equipment, so I will have to make yet another arrangement tomorrow. I'll put my last 10 frame medium box on the bottom and move the medium frames from the current bottom box into it. Then I'll use a 2X4 as I did with Melissa to allow the 8 frame boxes to sit on top of the 10 frame. I'll still have an inner cover and top for the 10 frame but I'll manage.

Unsuccessful Swarm Capture (So Far)

As my grandson (age 2) and I were shoveling chips from a tree removal and taking them in the wheelbarrow to put in my flower beds, I looked up and saw the swarm below hanging in a very young Japanese maple in my neighbor's yard.


Dylan and I both ran inside and put on our bee veils. He stood right beside the wheelbarrow about 15 feet away while I approached the swarm with a cardboard box. Literally when I was one step from the swarm, the branch broke with the weight of the hive and the bees fell to the ground.

I picked up the branch (and bees) and put them in the cardboard box, but about three hours later, all of the bees had left the box and were hanging on both sides of the cardboard I had set up as a ramp to the box as well as in a clump on the ground. The queen obviously was still not in the box when the branch was put there.

After Dylan went to bed, at twilight, I tried to slide the bees on the ground onto a sheet or onto another piece of cardboard but was unsuccessful and got stung several times. I've left outside the box, the sheet and the cardboard ramp. I don't know how to manage this swarm.

Maybe they'll leave in the morning and maybe they will all be in the box (RIGHT....) I've posted on Beemaster to see what other beekeepers think I should do about this swarm. I only have a nuc to put them in and maybe they'll go there - it's in my carport within fifteen feet of the swarm and there have been scout bees sniffing around it for the last few days.

Hyron Doesn't Like Me to Be A Homewrecker

Hyron, the hive made from the swarm I caught in the office parking lot, is not particularly pleased with me. As swarms go, Hyron was a small swarm. I brought it straight home and put the swarm colony in my lure hive on the deck. The lure hive was composed of old yucky frames in an old box, but it was the only place I had to house the bees on short notice.

Immediately you may remember, the bees began housecleaning. I wondered how they would think of the beekeeper since I had supplied them with a rather lousy place to live. At the end of the day, they had swept the hive clean of clutter and set about bee-ing bees.

My own theory about this swarm is that they had a virgin queen. Often a hive will "throw" a swarm in which the old queen leaves with half the hive population. After the original swarm several after swarms may occur with a daughter of the now-absent queen. These queens are usually virgin queens.

This means that the queen has to fly off to be mated and successfully return to the new hive before any real action starts.

Hyron besides demonstrating excellent housekeeping, showed little growth at the beginning. I never fully checked for eggs because in the disreputable hive I gave them, there was a broken frame and this was the frame on which the population seemed to be concentrated. I just assumed that the queen was laying on that frame and went on with life.

Before I went out of town at the beginning of May, I put an extra box on Hyron but still didn't check for eggs. The hive was installed on April 1.

If the queen were a virgin, then she would have had to orient to the hive, fly away and return safely. She would then start laying, but her first eggs would not be bees for 21 days. At best, we might have had new bees emerging at the beginning of May.

When I looked truly into the hive this past weekend, I did see eggs and a beginning of brood build-up. This was the first really "deep" inspection I had ever done of this hive in the two months it has been in my beeyard.

Hyron's bees were not happy. One sneaked onto my sock and zapped me on my ankle. Another stung me on my knee through my beesuit. They head-butted me throughout the time I had the hive open. They are used to being left alone, so they must have experienced me as quite the homewrecker. I never smoke the bees, but I smoked these just so I could see what I was doing.
I am delighted that they do have eggs and brood. So best wishes, Your Majesty, live long and lay lots of babies.

I also noticed that in the hurry of a previous inspection I had failed to slide the next to the bottom box on Mellona all the way back flush with the bottom box. You can see the slight jut-out on the hive in the right side of the picture between boxes 1 and 2.



The bees have been using this as a mid-entrance! The next two pictures were taken close-up from the top
of the hive looking into the opened crack.

You can see the glee of the bees, having a new entrance to their hive.

Harvest of the Huge Honeycomb

Below you can see a slice of the huge honeycomb from the double-wide comb. It was too fat to go into a cut comb box and frankly, wasn't pretty enough with its over-fat side of honey.


I saved one segment and put it in a wide-mouthed jar to make chunk honey with it.

Looking at the entire length of this comb, you can see that the bees coped in part with the width by making a second midrib. If you look at the lower part of the comb, you can see at the left edge and second midrib that goes approximately to the center of the comb length.
I guess this was to give the overfull area more strength.

Here's a closer view of the beginning of the second midrib. I crushed and strained this honey - first of the season. I haven't bottled it yet. It's still in the straining bucket waiting for me to have time this weekend.

Another Adventure at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve

Two of the hives at Blue Heron appear to be queenless. I helped the guys look at their hives two weeks ago and there is still no brood, no eggs, no sign of a laying queen. They decided to bite the bullet and buy new queens, rather than using a frame of brood and eggs since the time involved would make them miss this ongoing honey flow.

The frame below is what all the frames in the hive looked like - lots of room for brood but no eggs and lots of nectar stored but little else. Wade installed his queen by laying her box on top of the frames in his 10 frame box.


He took the cork out of the candy end of the queen box and laid her on top of a central frame. I brought him a 10 frame shim to borrow to allow her release without removing a frame.



We closed the hive up and he'll check on her release state in about 4 days.

Kent is using 8 frame boxes (in the picture below). They are built with more space in them. He was able easily to space his frames in the box and allow room for the queen without removing a frame. He tied the box and then attached it to a thumb tack on a centrally located frame.

He too will wait four days and then check to see if she is released.


I'm really enjoying helping these guys with their hives at the Nature Preserve. They are all enthusiastic and eager beekeepers. Their excitement about their new adventure makes it all the more fun to help them out.

These guys caught a swarm while I was at Young Harris. It literally landed on a tree in the garden area near their hives.

We checked the box they put the swarm in and saw eggs and young brood. Clearly the queen in the swarm hive is thriving. We all cheered.

Great to have one hive doing well with a laying queen while the other two are getting a slower start.

Inspection today

My goal today was to take the huge honeycomb off of Bermuda, but while I was all suited up, I checked in on each of the hives to see which one might need a new box. The Aristaeus2 hive just doesn't like popsicle sticks. If you look under my blue gloved finger, you can see that this frame had popsicle sticks as starters and instead of using them, the bees are building messy comb from the bottom.

I'm going to set some frames up with starter strips and give those to them instead.



The best growing hive was Melissa (located in my yard in bright sunshine). Fartherest from the camera is frame 4 and we are looking straight at frame 3. They drew these from starter strips.



Here you can see frames 4, 3, and 2 with 2 closest to the camera. True to typical bee form, they have most built out the frame closest to the center of the box and are working on the ones closer to the edge. I know you may be wondering if this is actually a top bar hive, but this is how bees build comb when allowed to do it in their own way. Eventually they will fill out the frame and often do not attach it to the bottom bar.



My favorite picture of the day is the one below. In Melissa, the bees were festooning in the top box as they draw out the wax. I pushed frame 7 over, creating a space between it and frame 8 and stretching this line of bees who were attached to each other "festooning" as they build wax in the frames.


I'll paint a new box for this hive and put it on tomorrow when I put the foundation-filled frames onto Bermuda to straighten out their wax making. I'll also give Aristaeus2 some foundation-filled frames to help get them on the right track as well.