Back to normal?

Eleven days ago I opened Hive 2 to try and see what was going on. More and more bees were bearding and the hive just appeared to be "off" when compared to the look and activity of Hive 1. Lots of activity but the bees were really hanging around the outside of the hive. What I found made me think it was a queenless hive. The drone comb that had been completely untouched about 3 weeks prior was now almost completely drawn out and lots of eggs were on it. There was still some capped brood in the rest of the hive but not what I would expect and there were not any other eggs. The supersedure cells I found last time were not there and 2 others were in their place. With the rain, I kept feeding them.

I came home Wednesday from a quick trip and what a difference in the hive! No bearding, tons of activity, lots of bees loaded with pollen coming home and a very peaceful sounding buzz coming from the hives. The apiary even smells great! Me thinks the ladies have a new leader of whom they are quite fond. I wish we did!

Pass the Royal Jelly Please!

Today was a picture perfect day for checking the hives only to find treachery is running amok in the hives. Both hives have built supercedure queen cells. I'm not surprised Hive 2 is not pleased with their royal highness (Pic 1). The hive has been behind since the beginning but recently seemed to catch up. Inspecting the hive today, we quickly found the queen. However, tho' there was capped brood, there didn't seem to be many larvae and I couldn't find any eggs, tho' it is often hard to see them against the white MannLake PF100 frames. Off with her head and let's get a queen who wants to build some brood! Unfortunately, this will mean a lull while the new queen goes on her mating flight and finally gets back to work. Not sure what happened but this queen is on her way out...Ciao, baby!

I am very surprised about Hive 1 developing a new queen. She has been a dependable layer and there are new eggs and larvae. This has always been the strong hive and I'm disappointed to see something is not pleasing the ladies. I almost crushed the cell but thought the bees know better than I and it would be best to let them decide. I hope there is enough time for the new queens to get established and build up some more numbers before it gets cold.

Hive Notes:
Now that the bees are not pleased with her, we FINALLY saw the queen in Hive 1. This is the first time I've seen her since May when I hung the cage and installed the package. There were lots of bees in the new super but hardly and comb was drawn. I inspected the upper deep and there was about a 50/50 mix of brood and honey on 7 frames. Having seen the queen, I decided to move the empty frames to the center, sugared the upper deep and put everything back as it was. I'll continue to feed them to try to stimulate building comb in the super.

Hive 2 was very similar to Hive 1–just a slight amount of comb in the super and about half of the upper deep was filled with honey (Pic 2). The problem was there is a lot of empty cells and not a lot of capped brood. The bottom deep still had 3 frames untouched with hardly any bees on them. The drone cell frame was as clean as when I 1st put it in in May. leaving the drone frame in place, I moved the other empty frames to the center and then reversed the deeps, putting the upper in the bottom position. My hope is the bees will draw out comb on the empty frames and the queen will move up and start laying in the older cells.

Lastly, I've noticed lot of bearding occurring on this hive (bees standing on the outside of the hive near the entrance).

Plan:
Keep feeding and check the hives in the next 5-7 days to see if the supercedure cells are sealed. I'll also do a better job checking for eggs.

Building an Ark...

Okay, enough already! We've had 6 straight days of hard rain, the corn is laying on it's side and I'm on vacation. The only good parts about this are I'm not at work, I've added new shelves, organized and cleaned the barn and shed and fertilized the lawn (organically, of course).

The bees cannot be pleased so this morning I fed them. They immediately started to take the syrup so it was worth getting soaked. I really need to inspect the hives but I didn't think they'd like me removing their roof in a rain storm. They have been congregating on the front of the hives the last 2 evenings during breaks in the storm and I'd like to see how they are doing with the super I added to each hive.

While I was sitting on the front porch this afternoon, we had a 20 minute lull in the rain. I noticed a couple of the ladies hanging out on one of the hostas. Watching them, I realized it wasn't just 2 bees but more like 20 coming to drink and then heading back to the hive while others came in to take their place. None of the other plants had a bee on them–just the hosta. Here are a couple of pics of the bees drinking...

Did I Say No Honey?

After a quick trip to Germany, I'm a week late posting the progress as of last weekend.

In the previous post I wondered about the lack of honey and pollen stores. There was lots of brood but nothing to keep 'em going. They must have heard me! They've gone into serious honey production and both hives have frames of just capped honey as well as frames mixed with brood. We added mediums with excluders to both hives as the top deeps had 7 frames mostly filled out. We have continued to feed and will do so until they are building comb in the new supers. We used a lot less smoke this time and I was stung 3 times on the left hand. Made for an itchy and puffy left hand for about 3 days.

The best part of the inspection was watching 2 bees hatch (pics 2 & 3). While watching the 1st one start to come out another started breaking through the cap. Based on the activity of each hive, LOTS of bees are hatching! I'd estimate 40-45,000 bees are now in residence in each hive. Busy queens!

Hive Notes:

Hive One has a lot of activity happening in the top deep. I put the 2nd deep on when the 1st had 5-6 frames filled out. I was leaving for Hong Kong for 10 days and I thought it would be smart to add it so they had room. As it worked out, it seems all they did was move upstairs. There are 4 empty frames (including the drone frame) in the bottom so I exchanged 2 frames of brood from the top with 2 empties from the bottom. We still have never seen the queen in this hive. She must be small and similarly colored as the workers but she is definitely a prolific layer. It appeared the bees were building a queen cell in this hive. I scraped it off since I moved 2 empty frames up and added the super. If they were building the cell because of space, I've hopefully solved the problem. If I see another this weekend, I'm going to leave it and assume they know something is up with the current queen and let them superceed her. Definitely makes me wonder what's up because she's laying. I sugared the bees for mites and filled the feeder. They've hardly touched it this week.

Hive 2 is definitely taking syrup. Now that the supers are on, Gayla made 1:1 syrup without Honey-Be-Healthy so not to contaminate the honey. Overall, this hive has come on strong and is now almost even with Hive One. The bees do seem more relaxed in this hive. sugared the bees in this hive, as well.

After not opening the hives for 2 weeks, it was very difficult to pull the frames out of the top deeps because the bees built burr comb between the bottom of the frames in the top deep and the top of the frames in the bottom deep. Using my hive tool, I was able to pry the frames loose. I scraped off the burr comb, leaving half of it for them and taking the other half for us to eventually use to make candles.

Lots of brood, no honey

What a beautiful day to be a beekeeper! High 70's, sunny with nice cloud breaks and no wind. Simply gorgeous!

It's been 3 weeks since we opened Hive 1 and 2 weeks since we opened Hive 2. Man, are there a lot of bees in there (pic 1)! Both hives have lots of capped brood but less than 1/2 frame of honey or pollen between them. Three weeks ago I took the top feeder off Hive 1, 2 weeks ago for Hive 2. Seems the queens have been busy laying eggs and the bees are doing a great job raising them but the field bees don't seem to be putting any stores away.

Off to Beesource.com; asking if this is
normal and should I put the feeders back on. Five minutes and I had an answer! What an incredible resource. Yes, put the feeders on as there aren't enough stores to feed the bees if there's a dearth but not to worry as at this point you want lots of brood, not honey. Soooooo, tomorrow on go the feeders.

I examined every frame today as a fellow new beek and email buddy, Keith, has a queen cell in one of his hives (pic 2 courtesy of Keith). We both bought our packages from BetterBee and installed them on the same day. Odd to already have a queen cell so I really wanted to check to see if I had the same. No problem, just LOTS of burr comb and many more bees.
In fact, almost all of our bees are now New Hampshire natives. Of course, unless your relatives came over on the Mayflower and immediately settled here, you'll never be a NH native!

Hive Notes
Hive 1: The bees did not draw out the outer 2 frames on either side of the lower deep but moved straight up to the 2nd deep I put on 3 weeks ago where they've drawn 3 1/2 frames. As mentioned, there are a LOT of bees in this hive! It was a bit unnerving when I looked in and knew I was going to pick up each frame. To help start getting the bees to draw out more frames, I moved 2 of the outer frames toward the center. Still haven't seen the queen but she's doing a great job (pic 1 and 3)!

Hive 2 now has drawn 6 frames with lots of capped brood, larvae and some eggs. Didn't see the queen today but the number of bees in this hive has increased dramatically (pic 4). As I will be unable to open them for a couple of weeks, I added a 2nd deep after spraying the frames with 1:1 syrup with Honey-B-Healthy added to the syrup. Didn't see the queen today.

For mite control, I sugared all of the bees. The ladies were very relaxed and let us work them without a problem. One of the girls stung me on the forefinger after I accidentally pinched her. Ten minutes after leaving the apiary they were out and about like we were never there.

Drifting, anyone?

I've been wondering why Hive 1 is so far ahead of Hive 2. The beeks at beesource.com (a must website for any aspiring beekeeper) have addressed this a couple of times and I believe Hive 2 may be a victim of drifting. Drifting is when you install 2 or more packages at the same time and the bees from one hive move into the other hive before everyone gets settled. This makes great sense to me as Hive 2 has been behind from the beginning.

Hive Notes:
I've left Hive 1 alone for the past 2 weeks and plan to visit it next week. I did open Hive 2 last weekend and found most of 4 frames built out (1st picture). I took the top feeder off and installed an inner cover. I opted to leave the hives alone this week, tho' I did raise the rear of the telescoping top on each hive to help with circulation.

Really looking forward to getting into the hives next weekend to see if I can add a super.

On a personal note, we lost our beautiful German Shepherd, Luke, to cancer last week. Very few things have brought us the joy this phenomenal dog did. We'll cherish our memories of him forever.

What a Mess!

Another lesson learned. I should not have placed a spacer between the hive top feeder and the hive box. I did it to make room for the pollen patty I put on top of the frames in each hive when I installed the packages. Guess what...bees don't like empty space and fill it with comb (look under feeder in 1st pic). What a waste of the bees' time and what a major mess it made when I opened the hives today. They had drawn out a large area of comb and had been storing honey in it. Gayla scraped it off as I held the feeder and our friend Stephon took the pictures. We ended up scraping it onto the top of the frames, Mistake 1 as it coated numerous bees and trapped them in the honey. Mistake 2 was not leaving it in the hive box for them to clean up. We took it thinking we'd melt the wax. We were amazed at how much honey was in it. Very light in color and taste. I thought it might be from the syrup but I haven't seen bees drinking it this week. Both hives built the comb on the bottom of the feeders. Don't know...

Hive Notes:
Both hives are building comb corner to corner on the plastic frames.

Hive One has built out 4+ frames on the black Piercos (Pic 2). There are all stages of bee larvae (Pic 3, nice shot Stephon!) and many capped cells. There seems to be 2x the number of bees in Hive One when compared to Hive 2. No comb was drawn on the drone frame or any of the 4 outer most frames. I rotated one of the outer frames into the center. I left the last 1/3 of the pollen patty in the hive, did a sugar treatment, removed the hive top feeder and placed a 2nd hive body on top with an inner cover and the telescoping top. I want to leave them alone for 2 weeks and thought it best to add the 2nd hive body. We still haven't seen the queen, though it is obvious she's quite busy.

Hive Two still has a hive top feeder on it though I did remove the pollen patty and spacer. They didn't seem too interested in the patty. There are 3 frames well drawn out on the white small cell Mann Lake 100s, lots of various stages of larvae, the queen was easy to identify. Overall, there is less action in this hive. The comb attached to the feeder was much larger in this hive compared to Hive One. Nothing was on any of the outer 6 frames. Tho' there is not a spacer, I may open this one next week to see if they are still trying to build on the feeder.