We have brood, dude!

Yeah, baby! All is right in the world of our bees! We've seen the queen in Hive 2 and Hive 1 has eggs and brood on 3 different frames. Ahhhh, life is good...

My mom and dad came from San Jose to visit us for a few days. They've enjoyed the blog so I knew they would both enjoy helping me work the bees. After getting Dad decked out in the bee suit we fired up the smoker and dove into Hive 2. Second frame in, there she was! A beautiful laying queen with half a frame of capped brood, young larvae and eggs (pic 2 Can you find the queen?). She has to have been raised by the hive. The queen cell on the frame we put in last week has not had time to hatch, breed and lay this much brood in a week. Now we have to feed, feed, feed to get more honey put away. I added another patty and put a gallon of 2:1 in the feeder.

Then it was on to Hive 1. Hive 1 has 2 deeps and a medium and is the hive in which we installed the nuc last week. We first looked at the medium and found zero brood and little honey. i added it to make sure they didn't swarm last weekend. On initial inspection of the 1st deep we found the first 3 frames loaded with honey. The 4th frame is from the nuc. There we found the first bit of brood. We struck pay dirt on the center side of the frame and continued for the next 2 frames. We never saw the queen but there was a lot of capped brood, larvae, and eggs. I'm amazed this queen made it withth e battles that were going on outside the hive. Compared to the light golden yellow capped brood the Italian queens have produced, this brood is much darker brown–telling me the Buckfast queen made it and is doing her thing. (pic 4) Again, a patty and 2:1 for all.

What a wonderful relief having both hives queen right heading into winter. Now they both have a chance to make it. I am not hedging my bets though as I have decided not to chemically treat for nosema or varroa. I sugared the bees, ran drone frames and closely visually inspected them all summer long. I've seen 1 mite and have had success with the drone frames. My initial plan was to raise the bees as holistically as possible and until I see signs of disease, I'm not going to treat. My only hesitance is not treating for nosema, however I've spoken with several local beeks who say they do not treat and have no problem. I've learned a lot of lessons this year the hard way. Time will tell if my bees will pay the price or reap the gains of this last, very major decision.

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.

"John, I think we have a swarm!"

Now these are not the words I thought I would
hear today. I'm minding my own business staining the barn when I hear Gayla's alert. My first thought was it must be from someone else's hive but Hive 2 was a bit frentic early this morning. It's just that I requeened Hive 1 earlier this week and Hive 2 is making new queens. Both hives have plenty of space, are getting pollen patties and 2:1 syrup. What's up?

Sure enough, there is a swarm 25 - 30' up in a hemlock on the edge of the woods (pic 1). Not having been a very good Boy Scout, I do not own a nuc box. With the condition of both hives being marginal for honey stores, there is no way I can capture this hive and make a nuc using existing stores anyway. These bees never should have swarmed and are doomed...













After unsuccessfully emailing one beek and calling another, I decide this is a job for Super Dolt (pic 2).


Using a pole saw and a big cardboard box, I plan to cut off the limb, let it fall and then put the swarm in the box (pic 3). This all went according to plan, tho' as one is climbing a ladder to saw off a branch full of bees while dressed like a technician on an Apollo moon launch, one does
pause to wonder just when was the moment that you passed over to certifiably insane.













Once the bees were on the ground (pic 4) I found the queen and put her in a cage (pic 5). I sprayed her with syrup and added a couple of attendants while Gayla ran into the house to make a sugar plug. Once plugged, I put the cage and about 5 more attendants into a paper bag and put the bag in a warm spot inside. I then shook the bees into the box and placed the box back in front of Hive 2. The march of the bees began and in about a hour the box was empty and the bees were back in the hive. Several hundred bees remained on the ground where the branch fell. I think these may be nurse bees who have never been out of the hive and can't find their way
home. I put the now empty box upside down over the mass of bees. I think they will move into the top of the box and I will be able to shake them in front of the hive tomorrow.

Now what to do with the queen...

Приветствуйте российскую Королеву

or
Welcome the Russian Queen!

Keeping the string alive of never meeting a beekeeper I didn't like, on Wednesday I visited Warm Colors Apiary (see website list) and met a wonderful beekeeper, Dan Conlon. Dan has been keeping bees for 40 years and, with his wife, Bonita, has a very nice apiary and store at their home in South Deerfield, MA. I emailed Dan about purchasing a queen to replace the one I just lost in Hive 1. Even tho' he did not have any raised queens for sale, he offered to sell me a queen out of one of his nucs since I was in a jam. Getting a new queen was worth the ride but the best part was the education I received while speaking with Dan. Our conversation covered everything from Russian vs Italian bees, treating the 2 strains of nosema, the efficacy of sugaring bees to prevent mites (do it only on days over 90º), the importance of knowing the environment in which you are raising your bees, how to place the new queen in the hive and, well, you get my drift. I was very grateful for the queen but the conversation will be what I remember–which is one of the things I like best about beekeeping. The experienced beeks never hesitate to help the newbies. It's a great community...

The new queen is a locally raised Russian. The Russian strain tends to winter better, build up faster in the spring, be more tolerant of verroa but will be less docile than the Italians and will tend to swarm. Nowhere in nature does a community (like a beehive) that is so related have such a dramatic change in genetics as when a new queen is introduced to an existing hive. Often, the bees that are getting the queen will reject her and attack her in her cage, especially if there are attendant bees in the cage with her. To help prevent this, Dan caught the queen, marked her and put her in a single hole cage with a sugar plug (pic 1). To keep her happy, he put her in a paper bag and added a few bees to attend to her until I put her in her new home.

Prior to introducing her, I did a final check for eggs. Though I didn't see any, I did see they had started several supersedure cells and had actually capped one already. This really makes me wonder if the queen had become trapped in the queen excluder prior to Sunday and maybe I didn't accidentally kill her but simply found her. Who knows...In order to help her be accepted by my bees, I placed her cage in the top deep between 2 frames of capped brood. The nurse bees are young and tend to be more willing to accept the queen more than the older field bees. It was amazing to watch! As soon as I put her in position bees immediately came to her–not aggressively–but in a care taking fashion (pic 2-3).
After placing a pollen patty, I closed up the hive. I'll open it on Saturday to see if the bees have released her. If they have, I'll leave everything alone for a couple of weeks and then check for eggs and capped brood. If that's what I see, the hive is happy. If not, I'll have to combine the hives...

Queens...kill all you want, we'll make more

What a weekend! I inspected Hive 1 on Friday. It looked pretty good with 2 almost complete frames of capped honey, some stored pollen, various stages of capped brood, larvae and eggs in the upper deep, no eggs but more pollen and honey in the lower (pics 1-3). Seemed like the queen wasn't laying enough for the time of year, tho'. Every frame in the medium super was half built out and filled with uncapped honey. Ive been feeding 1:1 syrup trying to get them to build more comb and I'm sure most of the honey was from the syrup. I ended up reversing the order of the deeps to try to get some more brood started. I put the hive back together, forgot to sugar the deeps, did sugar the super and called it a day.

Saturday was just as beautiful as Friday so I decided to check on the supersedure cells in Hive 2 and, since the hive had become so mellow, fully expected to find a new queen happily filling cells. Wrong! There were 15 supersedure cells, 6 of which were already capped and 2 possible swarm cells (I'll post again soon on the difference)! Yikes! Absolutely no eggs, some mid-stage larvae and a fair amount of honey in the super but hardly any in the deeps. After closing everything back up, I decided I needed to take off the medium super, start feeding 2:1 syrup (helps make the bees want to build comb and store honey) and feed them a pollen patty to build up stores. When a hive goes queenless it tends to keep the brood nest open so the new queen will have a lot of available room to lay her eggs. In this case, that means no bees and no food in the deeps. With winter coming soon this hive is in serious trouble.

To confirm I had a solid plan, I emailed the good folks at Beesource.com and my fellow beek, Keith, and asked them what they thought of my plan. They approved it with one gent suggesting I put the super on the bottom of the stack and let the bees bring the honey up into the deeps. My plan included moving the frames of honey to the other side of the yard and let the bees go there to get it. This would also keep other bees and insects away from the hive rather than just leaving the frames adjacent to to it as an attractant. This became my mission for Sunday...

Continuing the phenomenal late August weather, Sunday dawned with gorgeous blue skies and a high of 81. The ladies in both hives were back to normal after my excursions through their homes the previous 2 days. The first setback was finding my pollen patties infested with moths. An entire case of Global patties looked like the hallowed breeding grounds of several hundred pantry moths. Back to Beesource to see if I could still use them if I trimmed off the damaged area and froze the patties before using them. As I figured, no...(tho' Global later told me yes) so I made 3 gallons of 2:1 syrup (20 pounds granulated sugar in 10 pints of boiling water) added 1 tsp Honey-B-Healthy per quart of syrup to the mix (lemon grass oil and spearmint oil to help calm the bees and induce them to build comb) and out to the hives I went.

Hive 2 went very well. I smoked the entrance and under the inner cover, popped off the super, moved the 2 deeps off of the screened bottom board, put the super in place , pu the deeps n top of the super, removed the queen excluder, added a feeder and closed them up. Totally time was 10-15 minutes. The bees were not too pleased to be bothered 2 days in a row but no apitherapy injections so I was pleased. The joy was with Hive 1...

After waiting about 10 minutes for Hive 2 to settle down, I repeated the process. Let me state that picking up 2 hive bodies open at the bottom and top with 30,000-40,000 bees in them did make me wonder just what the heck I was doing. Bees were everywhere!

Everything started smoothly. I put the deeps on top of the super and smoked the top of the queen excluder to drive the bees down into the hive. Needing to be careful that I didn't drop the queen during all of the moving, I was extremely cognizant of my movements and making sure she didn't get left behind. After smoking the excluder I used a bee brush to gently remove a couple of bees still on the top of the excluder and removed it. Naturally there were 100 or so bees on the brood side so I brushed them off into the hive, laid it on the stand and replaced the inner cover and hive top. That's when I noticed a rather large bee stuck in the excluder. Sure enough, closer inspection showed me I had just wiped out the queen! Just lovely...

Not having 28 days for them to raise a queen, have her harden, mate and return to the hive, I ordered a locally raised queen from Warm Color Apiaries in South Deerfield, MA. Dan was very kind to promise me one of his Italian hybrid queens that I'll pick up on Wednesday and install in the hive. I still can't believe it. The queen should have run from the light and the smoke. I certainly didn't see her when I brushed off the other bees. Maybe she was already stuck in the excluder but I think I'm the assassin.

Hive notes:
Hive 1 will have just a slight setback until the new queen is released. I didn't think the hive had enough stores for winter which is why I reversed the super on this hive, too. In hind site, I'd still reverse the super. The number of bees seems good in this hive, no signs of verroa, good activity and it seems like they are putting away a good amount of pollen. I do not plan on any chemical intervention with either hive and think this hive has a good chance this winter. I will start feeding 2:1 this week and will add HBH to the mix.

Hive 2 should have a mated queen in residence within the next 14-18 days. I'm going to keep my grocer happy and keep feeding 2:1, as well as put a patty between the 2 deeps. Each hive needs about 80 pounds of honey to make it through the winter. This hive has to hurry. It may be I have to combine the 2 but I'm going to give this a shot. And try not to kill any more queens...