Tom Seeley Speaking at MABA on Wednesday Night

Tom Seeley is coming to town.  (Author, scientist, and probably the world authority on how/why honey bees swarm)  Really he's coming to Georgia to teach at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute on Friday and Saturday.   He agreed to stop and speak to our bee club on Wednesday night before driving up to Young Harris.

Unfortunately our bee club has this awful policy of just one person hosting the guest speaker for dinner.  I wish we shared the policy of some other clubs such as the Macon County Beekeepers in Franklin, NC.  When I went to speak to that club, they invited any club member who wished to join us to come to the restaurant with the speaker so I got to eat with ten wonderful beekeepers before going to give my talk.

The person who invited Tom Seeley to speak to our club literally said she was going to be selfish and not allow anyone else to join her in having dinner with him.  I have to work right up until fifteen minutes before the meeting, so I wouldn't have been able to eat with him, even if anyone else were invited to go along.  But think how inspiring it would be to new beekeepers to get a chance to sit and have a casual dinner conversation with him!  Oh, well.

We have great speakers at Metro - Juliana Rangel who was Seeley's assistant in the Honey Bee Democracy study, Billy Davis, Keith Delaplane (comes every year) have all spoken to our club, for example.  They each get taken out to dinner by a host before the meeting.  I wish the policy would be changed to include anyone who would like to go and is willing to pay for their own dinner.

I am so excited because I will get to hear him speak on Wednesday night and then he is giving three talks at Young Harris.  Luckily I'm not scheduled to teach in conflict with him so I'll be able to hear him give all three talks.  I'll take notes and share them with all of you.  Young Harris is usually sold out by now but they've increased registration to 150 this year, so there still may be some openings.

But, if you are in Atlanta and would like to hear Tom Seeley talk about bees, the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association meets at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in midtown at 7 PM on Wednesday night.  He will be speaking in Day Hall - it's the first large building you come to after leaving the entry building.  You don't have to be a member to come to the meeting and there's not a charge to attend.  You can either park in the parking garage (there's a fee) or in the neighborhoods across Piedmont Road and walk over.

It's a great beekeeper opportunity!  Join us.

There's a fabulous exhibit at the Garden right now of large creatures made of plants.  Day Hall where Seeley will be speaking is just past the two cobra plant sculptures.

Here, for example, are the fish sculptures that both spew water and spin around, much to my granddaughter's delight:

And here is the monster - we call him the Gruffalo because he looks like the Gruffalo in a book Lark (my three year old granddaughter) likes:

Drone Layer Hive

Yesterday we had about a 2 hour break of sunshine and blue sky - followed, of course, by grey sky, clouds and, you guessed it, more rain.  It's raining now.

It was like the eye of the storm that I remember from hurricanes, growing up on the Mississippi river.  We would take a breath during the eye as it passed over, but the hurricane would start again.  I know it dates me, but the one I really remember was Hurricane Audrey in 1957.  I remember the eye because of the startling contrast to what was going on just minutes before - I was little and this fierce weather really scared me.  Hurricanes would devastate south Louisiana and then would come up the river to Natchez, MS where I lived.  By then they would be weakened and still wreaked havoc.

In our small calm of sunny weather, I opened the split to see if the new queen were laying and I opened the drone layer hive to see if their new queen had succeeded.  The split was doing great and had wall to wall cells of eggs and tiny c-shaped larvae.

The split was made on April 13, so the queen should have emerged around the 29th.  So checking on the 5th might have been pushing it.  We've had bad weather and I was concerned she might not have been able to go on a mating flight but she had and was working hard.

In the drone layer colony, I didn't find a laying queen.  I did find a queen cell on the frame I had given them that had been ripped open from the side, indicating that a queen had emerged, and I found a queen cell opened appropriately at the tip.  The last frame of brood and eggs I gave them was on April 15.  Doing the math, at the longest, the queen should have emerged on May 1 and this was just May 5.  We've had terrible weather for most of those days.  So either she hasn't mated; she was lost in a storm; she has mated but hadn't started laying.

So as a panacea, as per Michael Bush, I took a frame of brood and eggs out of the Patty swarm hive and gave it to the drone layers.

I'm leaving for Young Harris on Thursday and this way they'll have a chance if they need it.

I'm stopping by Chastain tomorrow and taking a frame of brood and eggs out of our nuc there to put in the Don Kuchenmeister drone laying hive tomorrow if I have enough time.

It's a Rainout in Georgia

It's not just a rainy night in Georgia - we have flood warnings for the next several days and the promise of three to four inches of rain as a possibility.

And we haven't even completed the fifth inning....so the game doesn't really count,

There's no re-play in the nectar flow like there might be in baseball.

It's also COLD to add insult to bee and beekeeper injury.

Jerry Wallace posted on the MABA Facebook page a couple of days ago a photo of blown down tulip poplar blossoms.  Here's one blown down (among many, many, many) in my backyard right in front of my hives.

The blown down blossoms are multitudinous and are no longer blossoms from which the bees can draw nectar.  The tulip poplar is only one of the spring flowers currently in bloom now.

All of our bees are being affected by the weather.  Both they can't fly and when it's raining, blossoms are destroyed and the nectar available that particular rainy day is not reachable for the bees.

Also virgin queens can't mate in these conditions, so people who made splits in the last three weeks are not going to get well-mated queens, if the queen can mate at all - can you imagine being a drone trying to aim for the queen in rainy, windy conditions?

So time will tell sooner than later what the impact of our very wet and cold spring will have on the honey production for my area.

PS.  I just heard on the news that the Atlanta Braves are rained out tonight for only the 17th rainout in the 16 year history of the Braves at Turner Stadium in Atlanta.  So the bees and the Braves are suffering.

A Strange Find in SHB Trap

Today I went to check on Sebastian's hives.  We had put a new SHB trap on one of those hives on April 21.  I wanted to see if the trap were working and I wanted to see if either hive needed a new box.

 We are in the middle of the Atlanta nectar flow but the weather has beaten the tulip poplar blossoms off of the trees and hasn't really been conducive to nectar collection - cold nights, drippy days.


















I pulled out the oil trap in the new SHB trap first and this is what I saw:

In case you are confused, those are NOT small hive beetles - those are earwigs drowned in oil.  I didn't see a single small hive beetle either in the hive or in the trap!

The hive was doing fine but did not need a new box.

The second hive - the survivor there from last year - was doing great.  There was lots of brood.  As is true in hives with slatted racks, the queen had laid the frames from end to end.   What I mean by that is that she had brood from the end bar on one end to the end bar on the other end!

Not only that, the frame below with solid brood on both sides was the last frame in the box, right by the side of the box.  

The frame on the far side of the box was solid honey.  I moved it out and replaced it with a foundationless frame. I then moved that honey filled frame into the middle of a new box fitted with foundationless frames.  We'll see if they fill it up.

I then went to Stonehurst to see how the hive there was doing.  Here's what the top box looked like:

I moved one of these up into an empty box and added a box to this hive.  I also met the very nice new innkeepers, Paul and Lorrie.  Caroline and Gary have retired so I'll get to know this new couple as I work the bees over there.  

I also made a quick stop at Morningside to add a box to that fantastic hive.  Here's how it looks now:

Hope and the Honey Bee

This bee season I have learned something about hope and the honey bee through having two drone laying queens.  The first drone layer was in a hive I purchased as a nuc last year whose queen was obviously not mated well enough to last beyond one year.  The second drone layer was the package I bought from Don Kuchenmeister this year whose queen wasn't mated or was barely mated.  She was never released (she wasn't sending out queen pheromone so the bees weren't interested) and when she was directly released, only laid drones.

In each hive I followed the standard recommendation that I put a frame of brood and eggs into the hive weekly until they successfully requeened themselves.

It may be unfair to attribute hope to the honey bee.  After all, they are incredibly efficient creatures.  Every bee has a job to do every day.  When a different need arises, she moves to the next job.  Each job she takes prepares her for the next until she becomes a forager and wears herself out (and dies) in the service of perpetuating the life of the hive as an organism.

For the honey bee, it is inefficient to use the resources of the hive taking care of drone brood once enough drones have been raised by the hive to contribute to the general environmental needs for mating with a queen in the general drone congregation area.

In The Wisdom of the Hive by Tom Seeley, he says that "the pheromones that provide the proximate stimulus for workers to refrain from laying eggs come mainly from the brood, not from the queen."(reviewed in Seeley 1985; see also Willis, Winston, and Slessor 1990).

So giving the hive a frame of brood and eggs brings a pheromone into the hive emitted from the brood that helps the hive know that there is the possibility of a queen or at least the perpetuation of the hive through new workers - even if there is not a current queen or if there is a queen that they don't like.  In both of my drone laying hives, shortly after the first frame of brood and eggs was added to the hive, they began casting out the drone brood, ripping them out of their cells and throwing them in front of the hive for the birds to eat.

Here's what it looked like in my backyard.  And here's what Noah and Julia photographed on a visit about a week after April 16 when I gave the Chastain drone-layer hive a frame of brood and eggs.

Look at all the dead drones in the grass at the front of the hive at Chastain!

At the point of these photos both in my home apiary and at Chastain, each hive had either killed the drone-layer or appeared to be planning to cast her out.  The drone laying hive at my house had chewed off the wings of the drone laying queen in preparation for pushing her out of the hive.  With the frame of brood and eggs, they know a good queen is now possible even though neither hive made a queen cell from the first frame of brood and eggs given to them.

Today at Chastain, there was some capped worker brood from the frame of brood and eggs that I gave them on the 16th.  That brood will probably emerge in three or four days to help the hive, but they did not make a queen cell from those eggs.  I had to transport the frame for 30 minutes.  I put it in a nuc box but didn't really have an appropriate way to keep it warm and probably none of the eggs were good enough when they were finally in the hive about 45 minutes after they were removed from their home hive.

In my hive at home with the third added frame of brood and eggs, they now have four or five queen cells on the frame I most recently added and are probably now home free (assuming the emerging queen survives her mating flight).  The hive at Chastain today got a good frame and I'll give them another next week and the next, if that is what it takes.

Michael Bush says it takes several weeks of weekly addition to make it work.  He is a great fan of adding brood and eggs.  Here's what he says:

"There are few solutions as universal in their application and their success than adding a frame of open brood every week for three weeks. It is a virtual panacea for any queen issues. It gives the bees the pheromones to suppress laying workers. It gives them more workers coming in during a period where there is no laying queen. It does not interfere if there is a virgin queen. It gives them the resources to rear a queen. It is virtually foolproof and does not require finding a queen or seeing eggs. If you have any issue with queenrightness, no brood, worried that there is no queen, this is the simple solution that requires no worrying, no waiting, no hoping. You just give them what they need to resolve the situation. If you have any doubts about the queenrightness of a hive, give them some open brood and sleep well. Repeat once a week for two more weeks if you still aren't sure. By then things will be fine.

If you are afraid of transferring the queen from the queenright hive, because you are not good at finding queens, then shake or brush all the bees off before you give it to them.

If you are concerned about taking eggs from another new package or small colony, keep in mind that bees have little invested in eggs and the queen can lay far more eggs than a small colony can warm, feed and raise. Taking a frame of eggs from a small struggling new hive and swapping it for an empty comb or any drawn comb will have little impact on the donor colony and may save the recipient if they are indeed queenless. If the recipient didn't need a queen it will fill in the gap while the new queen gets mated and not interfere with things."

I've now added brood and eggs several times to these hives - twice to the Chastain hive and three times to my hive at home.

I love thinking that they are hopeful for their future and trust that they will be able to make a functioning queen.

Despite that romantic thought, in fact what probably is happening is that they recognize that there is healthy brood now and they need enough energy to manage the healthy brood well, so to that end they get rid of the energy sucking drone brood that is way more than they need.

But I like the sentimental thinking better.

Bee Culture Article That I Wrote

I was so pleasantly surprised to find an article that I wrote had been accepted by Bee Culture and is in this month's issue:

I wrote about how to establish a hive inspection program for your bee club.  We have a great hive inspection program at Metro Atlanta that is now in its fourth year and doing well with good participation.  I had sent the article in at the beginning of the year and didn't have any idea that it had been chosen for publication!

This is my second article in Bee Culture.  I had an article in the February issue earlier this year on "Treating Your Speaker Well" - about how a bee club should manage guest speakers.

Here's what the article looks like in the magazine:

It's two pages - I felt quite honored that mine was chosen.

Trying Out a New Small Hive Beetle Trap

Jeff and I decided to try out a "new" small hive beetle trap.  I put the "new" in quotes because I think I have owned the kit for this trap for three years, but never have used it.  It is from David Miller in Jackson, Tennessee and I bought it at the Young Harris bee institute about three years ago (maybe four???) 

Jeff put it together and we decided to test it on one of Sebastian's hives, so we installed it on Sunday.  We'll follow up and let you know if/how it is effective. 

Below Jeff is deciding which extension to use - it came with an extension to make it useful on an eight frame hive which is what we are running at Sebastian's house (and everywhere).

Here Jeff is adding the section which is screwed onto the trap.  The trap goes on the front entry of the hive.  It provides an entrance for the bees with a screened floor so that the small hive beetles fall through the screen as they enter the hive.

Below you can see the trap attached to the hive, waiting for the bees to notice their new entrance.

Jeff slid in the oil trap.  It comes in on the side, is comprised of three chambers, each filled with oil to drown the icky creatures.  

The bees were a bit confused about their entrance, but they were beginning to figure it out when we left the apiary.

The trap kit included some soft screen to put over the inner cover opening to keep SHBs from entering through the top.  We didn't have a staple gun with us so we didn't put that on the hive, but may at our next visit (I have to get over my fear of the staple gun which is IMMENSE).  However, advice in the kit says that the bees may propolize the soft screen.......hmmm, now there's a rationalization for not getting out the staple gun!

News from Drone Layer Queen

The bees are rid of the queen.  I've added weekly a frame of brood and eggs for the past three weeks.

Today I saw queen cells - at least FOUR of them - on a frame of brood and eggs I left them last week.  The best looking one is below.  The second photo is blurry but there is another queen cell.  I saw two others - all on this same frame from the nuc Julia gave me the queen cell to use to start it.

Michael Bush says that with a drone layer, you need to give them brood and eggs three times and then they will probably make a successful queen.  I hope this time, they get a good one.

I'm so glad I got to see this process so close up - watched them remove the drone brood in a good housecleaning; saw the old queen with her wings chewed almost off; now see they are making a queen cell.  From just watching the front of the hive, you'd have no idea this was going on!

The brood you see is capped brood from the frame of eggs I gave them last week.  It was a good testament to why a beekeeper should have a nuc or two going all the time.  I took a frame out of a nuc.  It was two large tear drops of newly drawn wax, covering about 2/3 of the frame.  Almost every cell had an egg in it.  There was no honey or capped brood.

These bees managed to make four queen cells from the eggs.  So by the middle of May the hive should be queenright again.

They are not missing the nectar flow which is currently going.  They have really been storing up honey.

Note:  Each time I have opened this hive, I've had to squash at least 30 small hive beetles.  Today I only saw five small hive beetles the whole time I was fooling around with the hive.  I need to order nematodes which I have not done yet.