Morning Dew Apiary

Morning Dew Apiary

I started this blog in 2008 as a 1st year beekeeper chronicling my efforts to holistically raise honey bees. This now serves as a diary, allowing a look back upon the successes and failures I've had.
Now in my 4rd season, my postings will continue to explore the latest thoughts and techniques used to raise bees without chemical intervention. I do not claim my methods are best or even correct. My hope is to provide the reader an understanding as to why I try something and to actually see the results. Click on the photos/videos in this blog as I try to describe the joys, trials and tribulations of raising bees treatment-free in New Hampshire.
-John
www.morningdewapiary.com
All materials ©2008, 2009, 2010,2011 John R Snowdon

Monday, April 27, 2009

Growing the Apiary

Oh, oh...The bee yard is growing! On the 19th I decided to rake the leaves and remove the winter mess from around the hives. That led to a check up on the electric fence which finally ended up as, "Let's take the fence down and make room for more hives". Two hours later, presto! The apiary doubled in size (fig 1).

Friday, April 24th was the first 70º+ day of the year. Absolutely fantastic and a great opportunity to take an in depth look at the hives. Hive 1 has been very slow and not taking any syrup while Hive 2 has been booming and taking 1 gal/week. It was time to find out what's up...

Hive 1 is configured as a medium with 2 deeps above. When I reversed the hives a week ago, there was brood in the medium which is why I put it on the bottom. Friday, the top deep was populated on the right side only with less that a dozen bees on the left. Surprisingly, there was a lot of nectar being stored. I expected lots of pollen but the nectar was great to see. Some was even being capped!

The middle deep was even better–eggs, various stages of larve (fig 2) and a full frame of capped brood (Note: at this magnification, to have sharp focus on the eggs there isn't sufficient depth of field to keep the workers in focus, too.) After a really close look, her highness even decided to show herself (fig 3).


The lesson I learned from this is you need to really inspect your hives if you suspect something is wrong. I was convinced I may have a hive in trouble of CCD. Many of the signs were there. Lack of feeding, low numbers of bees flying, no dead bees in the vicinity of the hive and a spotty brood pattern the last time I looked. Instead, Hive 1 is Buckfast and is slow building up. Looking inside showed me the hive appears healthy. As they are not feeding on syrup but on their honey stores, I removed the feeder, added an inner cover configured as a top entrance and closed them up.

Hive 2 I expected to be booming. This small cell hive was a new medium of wooden frames with small cell wax foundation inserted last week between the 2 deeps. My plan is to get the bees to draw out comb for a future split. I put the medium between the deeps last week because the brood in the bottom deep made me think that was where the queen was. There I go thinking again...When I opened up the hive, I picked the 2 supers off of the top together to first inspect the bottom deep. What I found was a bit of a mess of drone cells and spotty brood. It looked lie they might be in the process of making a supercedure cell, as well. Not a good surprise. Luckily, further inspection showed me why. When I looked at the new medium, nothing had changed. No work had been started on the new foundation and very few bees were in the super. When I looked at what had been the top deep everything looked wonderful! Lots of eggs, capped brood, great pattern, pollen, nectar–the whole enchilada! (Fig4) That's when I realized what happened and what an idiot I had been.

When inserting the medium, I thought the bees would cross over the new foundation to get to the honey and syrup above. This would make them draw out the comb. Instead, by assuming the queen was in the bottom when she was really in the upper deep, I created a barrier and I think, in essence, inadvertently created a split. The bottom hive didn't cross the barrier and the upper hive had the queen and was thriving. So much for my ideas...Now the colony is configured with the 2 deeps on the bottom, the medium on top of them and a feeder on the very top. Lesson learned...

I made a couple of other interesting observations during the inspections but as I'm sitting in Mass General for the 3rd day with a son with a broken ankle, I'll wait until we're home to continue.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

1st Inspection

Sunny and 60º leads a beek to check out his hives. After raking the grass all Friday morning, it was time for a relaxing afternoon with the bees. My plan was to reverse the order of the hives, put on top feeders, close the top entrance and open the bottom entrance. I didn't realize I had a surprise coming...

Starting with Hive 2, everything went according to plan. The ladies were very relaxed. The main cluster was in the top left when viewed from the rear (never work your bees from the front as you are standing in the flight path and more likely to receive a dose of apitherapy). Inspecting the top deep revealed lots-o-bees, some spotty brood pattern spread over a couple of frames (something to watch..) and at least 4 frames of honey remaining from last fall. Somehow, they are starting to bring in some pollen. It has to be from trees as nothing is even close to blooming yet. The bottom deep was similar with the empty comb directly under the cluster on the top deep and honey in the frames to the right. I took both deeps off the bottom board and cleaned out several handfuls of winter kill. After reversing the order of the deeps, putting the top on the bottom and the bottom on top, I put on a top feeder and poured in 1/2 gal of syrup, forgetting it was 2:1 from last winter. This morning, it was already gone and I added a fresh gallon of 1:1 with Honey-B-Healthy (essential oils). There were lots of bees feeding so I'll check them tomorrow afternoon. I opened the vent hole in the top deep and reduced the bottom entrance by 1/2 until they really get going.

The surprise was waiting in Hive 1. This hive consists of 2 deeps with a medium on top. The bees were in the same position as in Hive 2 (fig 1) but there were fewer of them. Still 4 frames of honey in the top. The bees were relaxed and as my smoker was almost dead, I kept going without it. (fig 2) The queen is definitely doing her job as evidenced by the amount of capped brood, larvae and eggs on 2 frames.

After taking off the medium, the top deep started me wondering. There were several hundred dead bees in the middle of the deep. Again, lots of honey remained in frame 7-10. Most of the rest of the honey was gone. Closer inspection showed many of the bees starved! Another hundred bees died head first in the comb trying to get the last bit of nourishment from the cells (fig 3). Oddly, bees were dead at one end of the frame with honey remaining at the other end! There was also a lot of small wax particles spread throughout the hive, tho' I am unsure of the significance of this. If any readers happen to know about this, please comment...

After removing the bottom deep, I dumped the winter kill off the bottom board and reversed the order putting the medium on the bottom. There was only 1 bee at the feeder this morning and less than a dozen when I added the fresh syrup this afternoon. I reduced the bottom entrance by half and opened the ventilation hole in the top deep.

Hive Notes:
Many believe there is no benefit to reversing the hive order in Spring, while others like to start with the queen in the bottom box as she has a tendency to move up. It is incredibly time consuming. If I had more than 3 or 4 hives, I doubt I'd do it.

Also, with all of the honey in each hive, you may wonder why I was intent on feeding syrup. Excellent question! As I do not treat with chemicals, I'm really trying to get some of the essential oils to the bees–the thought being spearmint and lemon grass oils help improve the bees' immune system and reduce the prevalence of nosema and chalk brood while helping to stimulate the queen.