May 28th, 2012 Hive Inspection

After reading my May 12 post, my friend Dale told me to "let them bee, already".  So I decided to give the bees a two week hiatus from intrusion by their keeper.  Being Memorial Day Weekend, I was away Saturday and Sunday, and arrived home Monday afternoon.  My plan was to head out to the bee yard right after unpacking, and check the hive.  But as I was getting ready, I noticed that one of my cows, Effie May, who was very pregnant before I left on Friday night, was not with the rest of the fold.  So the bees would have to wait a while.  I walked around the pasture, and didn't find her, so I headed into an area we call "the clear cut", which is a 5 acre parcel that we had cut off about twelve years ago, and has since grown up with saplings, which the cattle love to eat, and there are a couple of small pine groves where they take shelter.  It didn't take long to find Effie, under some the pine trees with a new white bull calf.  Mom and baby were doing fine, so back to the bee yard!

My assistant this time was my youngest son, Jamie No Fear Faunce.  This was his attire for the hive inspection!  Short-sleeve shirt, rockin' plaid shorts, flip flops and a veil.  

In my May 12 post, I talked about the bees building comb in an awkward place between the top bars in slots #11 & 12.  I was going to post a query on the Maine State Beekeepers email list, but I decided to try and figure it out on my own.  The waxed sisal twine obviously wasn't working for a guide, so after checking out a few designs online, I crafted some new top bars.  I cut some wedges about 14 inches long and attached them to the bottom of the bars..  The point on the wedge hangs down into the hive, so the area the bees have to start drawing comb is more defined.  In the photo below you can see the new design (inverted, of course) on the left, and the old, sisal twine design on the right.  

After my last inspection, I opened up space in slots #11 & 13 and inserted this new style of top bar.  This is an example of hive manipulation that beekeepers use for various reasons.  My goal was to increase the size of the brood nest.  So I left the bar in #12, which was all brood, in place, and put new, empty bars on either side of it.  In this inspection, I found that the bees have drawn comb on both of the new bars in the brood nest, as well as on bar in #9.  So this manipulation resulted in three new combs!  Now there is comb on 7 of the 15 bars they have access to.  Four or five more combs, and it will be time to slide the follower board back and expand the size of the hive!

Up to this point, this blog has been about my top bar hive.  All of that will change, come this weekend!  As I said in the beginning, my wife, Sue is my partner in this bee endeavor.  She is going to manage a traditional Langstroth style hive, and her bees arrive on Saturday!  She's been a busy little.... well, she's been really busy, assembling her hive.  It came completely broken down, and she has built the boxes and the frames, and has put foundation in the frames, getting them ready to install in the hive.

Sue is starting her hive with two "deeps" (on the bottom in the lower photo above) and two "mediums" (the top box in the photo).  The deeps are where she will start her brood nest, and the mediums are where the bees will hopefully store honey.  She decided to use mediums as "supers" because a deep, full of honey, can weigh in excess of 60lbs!  And with Langstroth hives, you have to lift the boxes on and off at each inspection.

In the photo below, you can see the frames she has assembled, for both the deeps and the mediums.  After she assembles them, she installs wax foundation.  The foundation is embossed with a honeycomb pattern as a guide for the bees.  You can use foundation in a Langstroth hive, and most beekeepers do, or you can do like I did in my Top Bar Hive and allow the bees to draw comb on their own, without foundation.  The thing is, tests have been performed on all the wax sources used to produce foundation, and all have been found to contain some level of pesticides.  So if you're planning to do natural beekeeping, it's better to allow the bees to draw their comb in foundation-less frames.  Sue is planning to experiment with both methods.

Here are some of the other components of Sue's :Langstroth hive:  Lower left is the screened bottom board.  It has a panel under it that is marked off in a 1 inch square graph.  This is used to keep track of the mite population in the hive.  As mites die or as the bees groom them off themselves, they fall to the bottom of the hive, and they can be counted when the hive inspection is done.  More than a mite or two per square, and the hive needs to be treated.  In the upper left corner is the outer cover, and on the right is the inner cover.  This is where supplemental food for the bees can be placed in the winter.  The hole in the center allows the bees to come up from the hive and eat, then go back down.  They can also exit the hive by using the notch in the frame of the inner cover, which can be seen on the left side.  Under the inner cover is another medium super that has yet to be painted.

Sue's bees will arrive in a nuc (pronounced nuke), which is four or five frames with a queen, workers, drones, brood in different stages, wax, honey & polllen.  Essentially, a mini hive!  The nuc will be placed into one of the deeps to start the hive.  

More on that next week!