Fall Preparation 2012

There's been a nip in the air here at Pondview Farm for the past few mornings, and that means winter survival is on the mind of most of God's creatures; Homo sapien and Apis mellifera included.  In the bee yard, fall is a time of preparation.  In our last Bee-log entry, our Langstroth hive had us a little nervous because it appeared to be queenless.  But on a subsequent hive check we found eggs, larvae and capped brood, and so we were relieved to find that there was indeed, a new queen in the hive.  The top bar hive has done quite well all year.  A couple of weeks ago I moved the follower board all the way to the end of the hive, opening up lots of new space for the bees to draw comb, which they can fill with honey, nectar and pollen stores to be consumed this winter.  And since the new queen has been in the Langstroth hive, she has been diligently producing new brood, so as of this entry, both hives have lots of bees are nice and strong going into the fall.

View inside the top bar hive.

 A frame from the Langstroth hive.

We're doing several things to prepare the hives for winter.  In moving the follower board in the top bar hive all the way to the end, we're hoping that the bees will draw more comb and fill it with food.  To facilitate that, we're now feeding the bees a 1.5 parts sugar / 1 part water syrup.  Supposedly this is a ratio that encourages the bees to draw comb.  But the temperatures also have to stay in the 70's and 80's during the day.  Below that, no comb will be drawn.  I'd love to see them draw out at least two more combs and fill them with winter stores!  Upon opening the hive to put the feeder in, I discovered that the bees had completely emptied the comb they had attached to the follower board.  All of the brood was hatched or removed, and all of the pollen, nectar and honey was moved to the main part of the colony.  This was a great relief, because I've been unsure all season about what to do with the comb that they had built there!

 The converted chick feeder with 1.5:1 sugar syrup

The follower board with empty comb.

Fall is also a time to check the hives for Varroa mite, a destructive pest that can severely weaken hives and is said to contribute to Sudden Colony Collapse Disorder.  We've made the decision to manage Varroa using Integrated Pest Management strategies.  We will monitor the hives, checking for the mites two or three times each year, and treat when the mite population exceeds recommended levels.  Our method of monitoring involves counting the daily mite drop.  The way we do this is by installing a grid board below the nest.  The board is coated with a thin film of petroleum jelly prior to installing it below the hive.  The mites that fall off the bees drop through the screen bottom board of the hive, and get stuck on the grid.

The grid board being coated with petroleum jelly

 The grid board placed beneath the screened bottom board.  

The grid is left in place for three days, then removed, so that the mites can be counted.  Although it would be wonderful if Varroa were not a problem at all, one good thing is that they're easily spotted with the naked eye.  So we remove the grid, and count all of the mites, then divide by the number of days the grid was in place to determine how many mites drop each day.  If there are fewer than 40 - 50 mites dropping per day, there's no need for treatment.  The mite count from this past weekend was 11!  So we're in good shape!

The grid board after removal.  

We use dry beans to keep track of mites that were found,

and make it easy to count them.

 

The dark oval to the right of the bean is a Varroa mite.

 Along with the mites, there are dropped pollen packets, bee poop, 

dead bee parts, wax flakes, and more on the grid.

Despite the fact that it has been quite dry, and there haven't been a lot of flowers around lately, the bees are still hard at work, bringing in pollen and nectar.  They've been busy driving out drones, (no drones are allowed in the hive in the winter) and making and curing honey stores.  Hopefully, the fall will provide lots more nectar and pollen with goldenrod, asters and other fall flowers!

Workers returning this weekend with full pollen baskets!

(Look for the orange stuff on their hind legs.)

Later this fall, we'll do the final winter preparations like wrapping and insulating.  That will be in the next post!

July 21, 2012, Inspection of Both Hives

There have been events in the bee yard, particularly with Sue's Langstroth hive that require some follow up.  So this past Saturday, we did a full inspection of both hives.  Sunday was Maine Open Farm Day, and I had planned to open the hives and show off our bees, so I also wanted to know ahead of time what was going on in the colonies.

First, the Top Bar Hive:

The bees in the TBH are making steady progress.  Currently, I have bars in slots 2 through 22 (out of 30 total slots).  Slot #1 is open to create a chimney effect, so that the heat can escape the hive.  Top bars #2, 3, and 4 are still empty, #'s 5 and 6 are being worked by the bees, but only to the extent that they have filled most of the cracks and small holes in the top bar with propolis.  Bars #7, 9, and 22 have new comb on them, drawn out to about 6 inches tall by 8 inches wide. #7 is filled with nectar and uncapped honey on the side that faces in towards the brood nest, and the other side is empty. And #9 & 22 are filled with uncapped honey and nectar on both sides.

Top bars 10, 12, & 13 are all fully, or nearly fully drawn out, that is, the bees have made comb as large as possible in the space they have available, and all have a mixture of eggs & larvae, capped brood, capped and uncapped honey.  Below you can see the capped honey, which the bees store along the top of the comb, and below that, in the center is all capped brood, with uncapped eggs and larvae around the edges.

In this picture, you can see the uncapped larvae.  They're the white "C" shaped worms.  To the right of the larvae are capped brood.  This is where the larvae pupate before emerging as adult bees.  This brood is all worker bees.  And if you zoom in, you can just make out the eggs in a few of the cells between the edge of the comb and the larvae.  Eggs look like grains of rice.

Top bars # 11 and 19 look like this:

This is all honey stores.  Notice how the bees make the individual cells larger than brood cells, so they can store as much honey as possible!  Honey cells (and drone brood cells) are about 3 to 3.5 cells per inch, where as worker brood cells are about 4 to 4.5 cells per inch.  THIS is the good stuff!

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Top bars 14, 17 & 18 are all fully drawn out, and they have capped brood, larvae, eggs, capped and uncapped honey, and pollen.  In this photo, the pollen is the pasty looking substance in the cells that appear to be half full.  

Top bars 15 and 18 are where the excitement was for this inspection!  #15 has lots of capped honey, capped brood, uncapped larvae and eggs, AND MY QUEEN!  See if you can spot her without my help...

Did you find her?  If not, she's in the oval in the center of the picture below.  Another interesting, albeit unfortunate finding on this top bar is circled on the right hand edge of this picture.  Look closely and you will see a brownish dot on this worker bee's abdomen.  This, sadly, is Varroa destructor, the infamous Varroa mite.  I say "unfortunate" because it has now been almost universally accepted that this mite is in every honey bee colony to some extent.  Right now, the population of Varroa mite in my hive is very low.  They typically affect drones, more so than workers, but I have an extremely low drone population in my hive.  I took dozens of pictures for this blog entry, and I've zoomed in and scanned them all very closely, and I could only find two mites on the 16 bars that have bees on them.  So for now, I'm not going to treat the bees.  I'll monitor the mite population, and treat when the numbers warrant it.

This is the second time I've observed the queen, and it's always a thrill to find her!  However, my excitement was tempered a little when I got to top bar #18.  On the bottom of the comb on this bar, I found a queen cup.  Finding a queen cup means your bees are thinking about swarming!  The workers have selected a larva, and are feeding her extra royal jelly to create a new queen.  This could be because they feel crowded, or it could be their population is so strong that they're comfortable splitting and forming another colony.  The bees, just like any creature, are all about procreation, and swarming is the way they do it.  The queen cup can be seen in the picture below.  It's a fat cell that is right in the center of the picture, on the bottom of the comb.  Right now, it is not capped over to pupate, so I'll check it next weekend and see if there's been any change.  If it looks like it's on a path to swarm, I may have to do a split, and make a new hive.

That's it for the Top Bar Hive.  Sue's Langstroth hive has been a very interesting experience!  We are now about 4 weeks post swarm, and we've been checking the hive each week.  In the past couple if inspections, we've found queen cells and queen cups (queen cell is the term for a queen cup that has elongated and been capped).  The population of bees seems to be quite good, although there are a lot of drones in this hive.  So we haven't been too worried about the colony since the swarm happened. 

 Last week, when we opened the hive, we noticed that the queen cell had hatched, the queen cups were the same as they had been the week before, i.e. not developing into queen cells, but we were a little disconcerted by the appearance of a supercedure cell.  A supercedure, a.k.a. an emergency queen cell is usually created when the queen is failing, or not laying properly for some reason.  Below you can see the queen cell before it hatched.  It's the peanut looking object on the right edge of the frame.

And here's the supercedure cell (the bright egg shape in the top left of the picture) and an immature queen cell (in the hole in the comb, more towards the center of the picture).

With all of these queen cells, queen cups, and supercedure cells you would think that everything would be hunky dory in the Langstroth hive.  But alas, that's not the case.  In fact, things are a little tenuous right now! We did a full inspection on Saturday, looking at every frame in all of the boxes, and we couldn't find a queen.  Additionally, there was no sign of eggs, larvae or brood either, which means that the colony has been queenless for a period of time.  Not a good thing!  If the hive goes queenless for too long, the workers start laying, but being sterile, all they produce is drone brood.  We did discover that the nice, big queen cell that is two photos up had hatched, so our hope is that we have a virgin queen running around inside the hive.  If that's the case, she would be very difficult to spot because she would look like and be similar in size to the worker bees.  Scenario #2 is that we have a virgin queen that has left the hive to take her mating flight (or as I call it, "popping a few drones"), and she'll return in the next few days to start laying eggs.  Scenario #3, and we hope the least likely, is that the hive is indeed queenless, in which case we need to replace the queen ASAP.  Our plan is to check the Langstroth hive again on Sunday.  The queen should have returned by then and started laying.  Keep your fingers crossed!  And we'll keep you posted!

July 4, 2012 Top Bar Hive Inspection

Happy Independence Day!  We did a full inspection of the top bar hive this morning.  Here are the videos for you!

July 4, 2012 Top Bar Hive Inspection Part 1
http://youtu.be/Pd9pGJE6N4E

July 4, 2012 Top Bar Hive Inspection Part 2
http://youtu.be/4-JFzX0mzjM

Post swarm check

Wednesday June 27. Overcast, breezy, 74 degrees. My hive swarmed on Sunday the 24th, so I needed to go in and check for a new queen in the remaining colony, since the old one would have left with the swarm. They started out at the beginning of this month as a 4 frame nuc colony, and as of today have expanded to about 8 frames. The last two on the right side are still empty, and the last one on the left is just beginning to have comb drawn. On this check, I saw a lot of new drone cells, a lot of old empty cells in one frame in the middle, and a full frame of new capped brood on another frame. I was busy looking for the queen, but did not find one. I am disappointed at having them swarm, and the loss of so many bees, but my hive still seems to be going strong with the remaining bees, so time will tell.

SWARM!!

This bee yard event was just too exciting for me to simply photograph and write about, so here's a link to three videos on our Youtube channel about yesterday's surprise.  Be sure to watch them in order.

SWARM!! Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKOYWZcfv8&feature=plcp

SWARM!! Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaUb-Io2NBA&feature=plcp

SWARM!! Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYFrCxG0deQ&feature=plcp


Sadly, the swarm didn't accept the hive boxes I set up for them, and they absconded to an unknown location.  I learned that I let too much light into the new "hive" by slightly propping up the makeshift cover.  Apparently, bees want their new home to be very dark, with just a small opening big enough to enter and leave the hive.  But the process was still exhilarating, and now I know what to do next time!

First Look

Well, my bees have been making themselves at home for 10 days, and I decided to go in and take a look at what they have been up to. I waited for a warm sunny day, and opened the hive about 11am. The bees had expanded to the new frames on either end of the old nuc frames, and were building lots of new comb, much of it already filled with nectar. I did find the queen, which was fun, she is right in the middle of this picture and her body is black, compared to the rest of the bees. After investigating the frames, seeing lots of capped brood, and a busy queen, I noticed a couple frames had queen cups. A queen cup is a cell that is larger than the others, protrudes out from the rest, and has an opening on the bottom. This is a sign that the bees are getting ready to swarm, and those need to be removed. Here is a photo of the queen cup, it's hard to see, because it is covered with bees, the group right in the corner of the frame with about 4-5 bees clustered together. After removing the queen cup ( also called swarm cells) the bees should relax and spread out more, and get down to the business of populating their new large space. We know they were swarm cells because of the position of them on the frame, being placed down at the bottom. If the bees had made a queen cell somewhere at the top of the frame, that means that the original queen bee is failing in her duties, and they are planning to supersede her, and raise a new queen. That's okay, and we would not remove that queen cell. Anyway, all is well, I refilled the feeder and left them to their jobs!

Finally.....Sue's bees arrive!

Posted By Sue: My bees and I got off to a rocky start, but that means things can only get better from here, right? I picked up my nuc from my supplier on Saturday June 2, and it was pouring rain, windy, and 53 degrees out. Not good bee weather. For non beekeepers, a nuc, (short for nucleus) is a box of 4 or 5 frames that contains a small bee colony. Nucs consist of adult bees, comb with eggs and brood, a laying queen, and various amounts of honey and pollen. My nuc was overwintered in northern Maine, so I know my bees are already natives, and accustomed to our climate. My bees are Carniolans. This race of bees were originally brought from Yugoslavia and Austria, where the winters are cold and the honey flows variable. They are popular and well suited for our northern climates. They are known for being industrious workers,in many types of weather (not just sunny warm days, like some Italian bees I know), and also for gentle dispositions. Here is a photo of the nuc box: So, since Saturday was a monsoon, I waited to install them in the hive. And waited, and waited. Sunday rain, Monday more rain. It broke somewhat for little while on Monday evening around 5 pm, so I decided to quickly put them in their new home. In Hindsight, I probably should have waited until the next day, as they were not really happy to be disturbed during a cold wet evening. In the photos, you can see me unscrewing the top lid screws, and the nuc box that contains 4 frames. I took those frames out slowly and carefully, then put them into the bigger hive box, on the right of the photo. You may also notice I'm not wearing any gloves. On a warm sunny day, when bees are happy, that's probably no problem. But... this was not one of those days, and bees were not happy, and I did get stung on the hand. It was my own fault. One landed on my hand, and I didn't look, just brushed it off and when I did, she stung. Oh well, had to happen sometime, might as well get the first one out of the way. After that I was really ready to throw the lid on the hive and say see ya later, and that is basically what happened. It was not the optimum day to work bees, but the job was done, and I'll visit them again in a week or so to see how they are settling in to their new home.

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!  

5.12.12 Hive Inspection

     It's been another dreary week.  The clouds and rain came in on Tuesday and hung around through Thursday.  Yesterday there were some breaks of sun, but overall, not a good "bee day", at least for my Italians.  As such, not much comb building went on this week.  Today has come off sunny and warm, with a constant breeze, and the bees are active.
     Last week, after my hive inspection, I moved the follower board back one slot so that I could open a second entrance for the bees.  As I watched this morning, I found that the bees are using the opening they've had all along (at the far right side of the hive) as the entrance, and the new opening (just left of center in the photo) as the exit.  There were a few who insisted on going against the grain, but the vast majority had adopted this pattern.  Reminded me of that quintessential restaurant scene where the waiter tries to go in the out door!

       There are five entrance holes in the front of the hive; one on each end, and three in the middle.  I used corks to stop them up until I have to move the follower board back and make more space in the hive.  Currently the bees are occupying the right hand end of the hive, and so the entrance holes farthest to the right are open.  

     Once again, the bees have started a comb in an awkward place.  I think the wax coated sisal isn't enough of a road map for them, and they built this comb in between top bars #11 and #12.  Fortunately, I discovered it before I pulled the bar out, and I was able to remove the bar without destroying the comb.  Somehow, it is attached to the comb on top bar #12, and until I get some professional advice, I'm going to leave it as is.  I think I'll remove the sisal and look for some sort of wooden strip that I can attach to the bottom of the top bars.  Maybe that will be a better guide.

  

                         

     

     But for now, I have left about 1/4 of an inch between the top bars when I closed up the hive.  I'm going to email some other top bar hive beekeepers and ask them what would be the best way to prevent this in the future.  On the left in this photo is where the bees are, and you can see the space between the bars, as compared to the ones on the right, in the unoccupied side of the hive. (Bear in mind, I'm working from the back side of the hive, so right and left references may just refer to pictures.)

     In order to acheive certain results, like more comb building, increasing brood space, or honey production, beekeepers manipulate the hive, that is, they move things around.  Being a novice, I have a lot to learn about this.  Today I decided to try my first manipulation.  The bees seem to be keeping the comb towards the back side of the hive, so I turned bar #12 shown below end for end when I put it back in the hive.  My goal is to get the bees to build the comb out further.  I put a small mark on the top bar to indicate the width of the existing comb, we'll see next week if this works!

     Production in the hive seems to be going well.  Top bars #13 & #14 have brood in all stages; eggs, capped and uncapped larva, as well as hatched brood.  And top bar #12 has capped honey.  In the photo below you can see uncapped larva.  Zoom in on the black circle, and you'll see a little white worm curled up in the cell.  It is surrounded by capped honey and other uncapped larva, to which the workers are attending.  

     The weather for this upcoming week looks to be very similar to what we had this past week.  I sure wish it would change!  There are a ton of flowers out there just waiting for my bees, and I'm anxious for them to build more comb!  I read about inserting an empty top bar between the brood nest and honey stores to get the bees to build comb.  I may try that next week.