Late Spring 2013

It's been a very busy spring here at Pondview Farm!  Calving and lambing are finally finished (our largest crop of lambs ever), and the greenhouses are nearly empty, now that the shipping season is coming to a close.  It's been a busy year so far in the bee yard as well.  We started the spring with a burgeoning Langstroth hive, and a new package in the top bar hive.  Within four weeks, the new queen in the top bar hive had produced an abundant crop of new brood, and the first orientation flights took place on May 24th.

Orientation flights occur when bees graduate from being house bees to foragers.  They emerge from the hive in a huge cloud and fly in ever expanding figure eight patterns in front of the hive until they have their bearings, then they take off and start foraging.

At the end of May I did a full inspection of the top bar hive, and was somewhat alarmed at the number of drones that were in the hive.  Almost every frame seemed to be dominated by drones, and there were two fully drawn out combs packed from top to bottom with capped drone brood.  (Drone brood is larger and has a more pronounced dome cap on it than does worker brood.)  I didn't see the queen, and although there was some larvae and worker brood, I was concerned that I had laying workers in the hive.  Laying workers are a sign of a queenless colony.  When a colony loses it's queen, worker bees sometimes will develop reproductive parts and start laying.  But since workers are sterile, their larvae are always drones.  I was also concerned because there didn't appear to be very much in the way of food stores in the hive, and I figured the drones were eating them out of house and home!   However, upon checking the hive again briefly, last week, I found that much of the drone brood had hatched, and most of them were gone from the hive.  And I also spotted the queen, so I assumed that they knew what they were doing!  After thinking about the situation, and doing some more reading, I realized that the queen had laid the drone brood in the comb that the previous colony had drawn out for honey storage.  Honey comb has larger cells, and larger cells induce the queen to lay drone eggs.  

As I said earlier, the Langstroth hive was doing very well.  It came through the winter easily, and has been busting at the seams with bees.  

So we decided to do a "split" or an "artificial swarm" to try to prevent it from swarming on it's own.  By doing a split, we are able to create a new colony, relieve the overpopulation of the hive, and we also hopefully eliminate the possibility of losing a swarm.  When a hive is preparing to swarm, the workers select a handful of larvae to become potential new queens.  They build out the cells that those larvae are in, and start feeding them royal jelly to create the new queen.  To do a split, we checked the hive a couple of times, and when we saw the queen cups that had eggs or larvae in them, we knew it was time.  

Then, we set up a "nuc box", which is just a small hive box with five frames in it.

Then we find the queen in the original colony, and take the frame that she is on, along with two other frames that contain brood and honey, and place them all in the nuc box.

The queen is on this frame, you'll have to take my word for it!

Queen frame in the nuc box.

Completed nuc box.

With the split done, we now had two and a half hives!  That is, until last week, when the original Langstroth hive swarmed, despite having done the split!  Thankfully, we were home and were able to capture the swarm.  And, thankfully, we had another nuc box that we could put the swarm into.

Here's a picture of the swarm, about eight feet up in a pine tree right next to the bee yard.

We donned our gear, gathered our tools, and collected the swarm.  First, I shook as many bees off the branch as I could into a five gallon bucket, and dumped them into the second nuc box.

This swarm wasn't as docile as the one I captured last year, and they didn't appreciate being shaken out of their cluster!  I didn't use any smoke or sugar water to calm them, and all of that shaking made for some angry bees!  As such, I received my first sting as a beekeeper!  It was bound to happen sometime, but I had been pretty proud of the fact that I had not been stung, with a year of beekeeping under my belt!  

It's hard to see, but that red dot right between my fingers is my first battle scar.

In the end, I had to cut the branch out of the pine tree and shake the remaining bees into the box.  Once I felt confident I had the new queen in the box, I was able to put the cover on and let the swarm settle into it's new home.

Now we've got two hives and two half hives!  That sounds pretty good, right?  Well.....

Last week, Sue was checking all the Langstroth boxes, just to make sure they were all queen right, which they were, and she found that the split we did was going gang busters, building comb all over the place, and once again, chock full of bees!  

So, we decided to move the split to a full sized Langstroth hive.  Sue went and purchased new woodenware and this morning we moved the bees into their new home.  

New hive box set up and ready to receive the frames from the "split".

Scraping off excess wax after the frames are placed in the new hive.

The newly completed Langstroth hive and the now empty nuc box.

We had to shake the bees from the twisted honeycomb they had built on the inside of the nuc box cover several times to get them all off, and into the new hive.  

It's fascinating to me how, when left to their own devices in an open space, the bees will build comb in all sorts of shapes and in many different directions.  But when we give them frames and foundation, or top bars, they build comb that is straight and plumb, and to our minds, perfect.  Makes me wonder if the methods we have "introduced" to the bees contribute to or hinder their survival.

So, now the hive count in the bee yard is three and a half!  Hopefully, we'll have a good nectar flow this year and we'll be able to pull a good amount of honey off all these hives this year!  100 pounds sure would be nice!

Until next time...

First Spring Hive Check

Well, it's a beautiful spring day, and time to open up the hive after the winter and see how everything looks.
I know my bees have been doing well, as I have checked the hive a few time through the winter, but it's only been an open the top cover and peer in, kind of thing. Today I did a thorough inspection of both deep boxes, and could not be happier with my girls. 
In the top box, I found the queen, looking great and very healthy.  I also found lots of capped brood, which means everyone has been busy! The bottom box was also jammed full of bees, with 6 frames of capped honey on the outsides, and 4 frames of capped brood in the middle. I saw only a very small amount of drone cells and possibly the beginning of a swarm cell in the top box.
So, in order to give them some more room, I reversed the deep boxes, so the honey frames were on the top of the hive. I also added a medium super to the top with foundation in 10 frames, and 4 of those frames contained some honey I had taken off last fall, and I froze the frames over the winter.
Mark and I have just taken a class about swarm management and how to control it by making splits. The bees natural instinct is to swarm in the spring, and the only way to head them off is to recognize the signs that they are preparing for a swarm, and split the hive, creating an "artificial" swarm for them. They are not upset with that because they were planning to do it anyway, and we just save them the trouble of glomming onto a tree somewhere and scouting a new place to live. It's a win win for all, because  I get a whole new colony of bees and more bees equals more honey!  We have a swarm trap which we will mount in a nearby tree, just in case we miss the warning signs and they swarm before we have a chance to make the split. This way, we catch them either way. 
Spring is an exciting time to be a beekeeper! Stay tuned!

Installing a New Package of Bees in the Top Bar Hive

Sorry for the noise from the wind, traffic, and the ducks and geese!

Early Spring 2013

Mid April is an in between season here in Maine.  Winter's pretty much over, but it's not quite spring-like.  However, with daytime temps approaching 50 degrees, the bees have started to venture out.  Silver and Red Maple buds are swollen, and the bees are able to collect some sap from them, and there must be some willows blooming because the few bees that have gone foraging are coming back with little tiny pollen packets.

Back in January, we had a couple of days where the temperatures got up into the 50's, and that gave us a chance to check the hives for strength and for food stores.  The bees in the Langstroth hive were out in force, but the Top Bar Hive was silent.  So I decided to see what was going on inside.  To my dismay, I found that most of the bees in the TBH had left, when I'm not sure.  But when I put the hive to bed in early November, there were plenty of bees, and I even saw them flying on a warm day in December.  But this is what it looked like when I opened it up:

There were just a couple of hundred dead bees at the bottom of the hive.  My first thought was that they didn't have enough food, but there were full combs of honey, as well as lots of bee bread (processed pollen).

 Full combs of honey (above), and Bee Bread (below)

In speaking with other beekeepers over the past couple of months, I've heard of at least two other hives that absconded in the late fall for no apparent reason.  Some have suggested varroa mites, but I monitored the mite population closely last year, and it was what would be considered "very low".  I wouldn't consider this "Colony Collapse Disorder", since the overwhelming majority of the bees simply flew away.  There's no sign of Nosema or European Foul Brood.  So, I think this is just going into the books as one of those unexplained bee phenomena.

Today, I cleaned out the dead bees and got the hive ready to receive a new package next week.  The new bees will have a head start with all of the drawn comb and honey that is left in the hive, so I expect to be able to harvest at least a little bit of honey this summer!

Cleaned up and ready to receive a new package of bees.

The Langstroth hive continues to thrive, a fact which Sue takes great pleasure in needling me about!  We're expecting to be able to harvest about 60lb of honey from it this year.  And, assuming we're able to capture a swarm, or maybe do a split utilizing our recently acquired nuc boxes, we plan to start another Langstroth hive.

Two new nuc boxes

So stay tuned... as the bee season commences, we'll be posting more entrys to the Bee log!  

Winter hive check

 Today was bright and sunny and we are expecting a January thaw in the next few days. It is a perfect time to do a quick check on the bee colony and see where they are in the hive. Taking off the outer cover, and then the homosote board reveals the inner cover and the cluster of happy bees at the top of the hive! I was so glad to see them! I had worried and wondered since I tucked them in, in late November, and now I can see they are fine! They went into winter with a full, 10 frame deep box of honey for food, and since they are sitting at the top of it, I know it's time to give them some extra food to go into the next few months.  

I took some plain white, dry sugar and sprinkled it around the inner cover hole, where the bees have easy access to it if they need it. This should be a sufficient source of food if they run out of the honey in the hive. I will check again in another month to see if it has been used,or if more is needed. In the next few days we should see them out taking a cleansing flight in the warm temperatures, and cleaning out the hive!  So far, so good for my bee colony's first winter!