He's Ripping Our Roof Off, Again!

Let's see... I slept in until 6:45 this morning and while brushing my teeth I took at glance out at the hives. The entire bottom deep of hive 1 was covered with bees. So I think to myself, hmm....it's been raining all night, it's really warm and muggy out, the bees are never awake right now and I just added 5 frames of bees to a full hive and took a medium off as I was instructed. Me thinks these ladies are either cooling their keesters outside or they really don't like the neighborhood we live in and are about to head back to Winchester. Soooo, I don a full bee suit, grab a bottle of HBH spray, a hive top feeder and off I go a calling.

Sure enough, all the bees on the outside are Buckfast–not an Italian to be seen. Naturally, I left my smoker open next to the hives and it is soaked. I really sucked as a Boy Scout and used to leave my dad's rusty ol' tools wherever I last used them (I wonder if that's why they looked rusty and old) but now pride myself on usually not doing such a stupid thing. Without the benefit f smoke, I take off the telescoping cover and inner cover. The bees are fairly cool about it, tho' I've never seen more bees between the 2 covers before. I replace the medium I was told to take off when I installed the nuc and throw a feeder on top. I balance the inner cover against the front landing of the hive and an empty deep I keep nearby to put boxes on when working the hives and remove the mouse guard to open up the entrance so the "March of the Bees" can proceed unhindered (pic 1 shows final result). Just for good measure, I sprayed the Buckfast with HBH to make them happier.

As hoped, the 1500+ bees on the inner cover start marching right back into the hive. Even the Buckfast join the parade tho' there are a few skirmishes.

I'll go out and pick up the mess later. Trouble is, I KNEW I should have left that medium on the hive. Time to start believing in myself more. The life of an inexperienced beekeeper...

Now where's my morning coffee?

Queenless in Westmoreland

A very busy month at work has meant not enough time in the apiary.
Unfortunately at just the wrong time.

After adding our Russian queen in late August, all seemed to be going well. The 1st time I opened Hive 1, there were eggs and new brood. I thought had balanced the hive, again. Wrong-o, Johnny! A week later, I opened the hive just before heading to Germany. No eggs, 4-5 day old larvae and absolutely no sign of the Russian matriarch. Possibly my bees thought their ancestors were from the other Georgia and off-ed her. None-the-less, she was gone and I headed to a plane.

Ten days later I return home hoping to open the hives and see that they're making cells to replace the queens. I looked at every frame in Hive 1 and found no queen cells but instead 20 frames almost completely filled with mostly capped honey. Remember the medium I had on the bottom that had been partially filled with honey. It had been suggested by a beek on Beesource to put it on the bottom and let the bees bring the honey up into the deeps. Sure enough, absolutely cleaned out and empty. Nice call... As all the frames in the deeps are packed with honey, I moved the medium to the top and hoped that would stimulate them to make queen cells. Mouse guards were added to both hives to help keep critters from finding a winter home.

Hive 2 as you may recall swarmed 2x in 3 days in early September (see pic 1 for 2nd swarm). Many of the bees left and the numbers in this hive make me think that it's toast unless I combine it with Hive 1. Upon opening it, I found a couple of poorly formed queen cells but they didn't look like the bees were serious about raising a queen. I started feeding them 2:1 syrup and a patty.

After seeing the lack luster efforts by the bees, I decided to try and find a queen. I finally purchased a nuc (pic 2) from Black Cat Honey in Winchester, NH and was assured by Rich that the queen was prolific and laying like crazy. I was concerned that putting 5 frames of Buckfast bees (pic 3) and a queen in the middle of the Italians would start a war. Rich assured me it wouldn't as long as the 5 frames were together. So off I went to install the nuc.

I removed the 5 best frames of honey from the upper deep of Hive 1 to make room for the new bees and queen(pic 4). Upon looking at the nuc, I found very little brood, some larvae and a few eggs. The rest of the frames were sporadically empty or had some honey. Two of the frames had supercedure cells ready to hatch. Gayla thought we should put one of the frames with a queen cell into Hive 2 and see if we could save the hive. After brushing the bees off of the frame, I did replace a frame of honey with the new frame, added a patty and closed it up, hoping the cell would hatch and just maybe we could get a queen fertilized prior to winter. Let's just say the odds are rather long...

After spraying a sugar and Honey Bee Healthy (HBH) mix all over the remaining frames in Hive 1, I placed the remaining 4 frames into the deep. I never saw a queen, though I did look hard. The bees seemed OK with each other so I fed them a pollen patty, sprayed some more HBH on the bees and dumped the rest of the bees from the nuc into the hive. it was after closing the hive that I noticed the fun going on at the main entrance of the hive. Numerous battles were ongoing between the old and new bees trying to get in the entrance. So much for détente! I sprayed them down with HBH, which helped, but battles went on for a while. As it was getting dark I'm hoping they all finally gathered around the queen singing "Give Peace a Chance" and that the queen was not a casualty...

Varroa

There are a lot of theories as to the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Is it pesticides, over medication, increased stress from transporting bees, mites, all of the above or something else? There isn't a definitive answer but we do know each spell trouble for Apis mellifera or the honey bee. This is why I choose to raise my bees as holistically as possible and why I chose to end the use of chemicals on my yard 5 years ago. My lawn is still nice and green, it just has more clover and crabgrass mixed in.

Of all of the possibilities for CCD, the one topic that seems to get the most airplay is the Varroa destructor mite (pic 1, red dot on back of bee). Introduced in 1987, this mite has essentially wiped out 98% of the feral or wild honey bee population across the US and has the largest econimic impact on the beekeeping industry of any parasite. Known as an external parasite, V. destructor can only breed in a honey bee colony. The female mite lays eggs in drone or worker brood which attach to the larva and emerge with the bee when it hatches. The mite sucks the hemolymph of the bee resulting in Deformed Wing Disease, weakens the bee and can finally kill it.

There are chemical, mechanical and biological treatments to keep the mite population in check. I'd like to discuss what I am doing to try to minimize Varroa in my hives.

I've mentioned numerous times in the blog that I "sugar" the bees (pic 2). This is the practice of dusting the bees with confectionary sugar. The theory is it causes the mite to loose its grip on the bee and fall off. Since I use a screened bottom board (the board the hive rests on has a large screen mesh for its center), the mite falls out of the hive onto the ground. Unless the mite can attach itself to another bee, it will remain there and die.

Hive 2 uses a "small cell" plastic frame made by Mann Lake. The diameter of the cell imprinted on the frame is 4.9mm as compared to most frames which are 5.4mm. When bees are allowed to make whatever size comb they want they usually make a smaller size 4.6 - 5.2mm cell. Michael Bush calls this "Natural Cell Size". Years ago, foundation manufacturers thought it would be a good idea to make larger honey bees so they would make more honey. By increasing the cell size the egg is laid in, they reasoned a larger bee would result–which it did. Now introduce Varroa which only replicates in honey bee cells. Larger cells means more room for more mites. More mites, more problems. Regress the bees to their natural cell size and you limit the amount of mites that can grow in the cell. The truth be told, this hive has had problems all season and I wonder if it is the cell size. Package bees and queens are not raised on small cell and it takes them quite a while to regress to that size.

Which brings us to drone frames (pic 3). Drone cells are naturally larger, up to 6.4mm, as the drone bees are larger than workers. V.destructor prefers to lay her eggs in drone cells because there is so much room. Today you can buy drone frames which are green plastic for easy identification. The are imprinted with a 6.4mm cell size and after the bees draw out the comb, the queen lays mainly drones in the cells. Now you have a frame of bees that you really don't need that the mites will love. Once you find capped drone cells on the frame you have 21 days (incubation time of a drone bee) to remove the frame and freeze it, thereby killing the drones and the mites before they hatch. You need 2 drone frames per hive to rotate frames between freezer and hive. Picture 4 shows three V.destructor mites that were on larvae when I froze this frame. I opened about 40-50 cells this evening and found 5 mites. I'm going to do a roll test soon to determne the mite population in the hives–but more on that later. Suffice it to say there are holistic ways to control this predator and I plan to try all of them before I use chemical intervention in my hives.