Went in to both hives today to take out the Amitraz strips. Didn't spend any time going through the hives because I wanted to leave them undisturbed. This is not the time of year to have a queen get damaged during inspectionm The north hive is doing well and you can see they are bringing in pollen. I should do a mite check, but probably will wait till the Spring.
It has been about 2 weeks since we put in the Amitraz strips. Every morning I've been driving by to see how the hives look. The north hive, my hive, has had a lot of flight activity. The south hive, Tracy's old hive, has had a little bit of activity.
I put entrance reducers on the front of both hives about 10 days ago when we had our first dip into the high 30s at night. They're not completely closed down just partially.
Both boxes were quiet, seemed Queen right although I did not see a queen in either one.
Did see good pollen stores and even some capped honey that is from the sugar water I've been feeding them. I think they've got enough stores.
I believe Amitraz causes the queen to slow down laying although I did see some milky brood so I know she's been active recently.
Both boxes have shallow supers on top but none of the frames in them are built out so there's no real concern for wax moths.
The population in the north Hive is much higher than the population in the South Hive. That's probably because it was on its way out before we treated for beetles and mites.
Hopefully, we were able to save it and it will make it through the winter.
I've been feeding both an organic 2:1 sugar mixture, which has a lot of cane syrup residue in it so any honey they're storing is brown. They'll eat it out after the end of December.
Since I took both hives down and looked at most every frame I feel that we're in good shape to go into winter.
Daylight Savings Time begins tomorrow and life is good.
I've checked on the bees regularly in the past 2 months. Basically that meant morning drive-bys to see what type of activity and in my box to check the limetray weekly to see if there was any evidence of a problem. My goal was to, "leave them bees alone," until they had some time to build back up.
We push the abandoned hive down into two honey supers, which had been serving as the broodbox so that there would be less for the bees to have to patrol with a small population.
We had two hurricane brushes, one with Irma in mid-september, and the second at the beginning of October with hurricane Maria that did no damage to us.
I've been feeding both of hives to relieve any stress during the late summer and rainy days, before the Spanish needle started blooming.
The middle of September came and went and all looked well. My schedule did not allow me to go into the hives until about the 20th of September. My friend and I inspected my hive and a hive that had been abandoned in the same meadow.
We found laying queens and both and while the population in my hive was low it was definitely on the increase. It was thanks to the three frames of eggs and stores that my friend had given me two months ago.
We put beetle traps in both hives. Each had three small drops of a roach insecticide that is recommended to keep Hive beetles down.
Now the goal was to get it strong enough to treat it for mites.
Today, October 14th, I went into both hives to treat with apivar. This is amitraz strips, two per brood box with the goal of knocking down the varroa mites before winter. If I had been a better beekeeper, I would have done I might count before I treat it to compare with the mic count afterwards, but that's not the case.
Both hives had good nectar stores. I am feeding but the fall bloom has started.
Amitraz strips will stay in for 42 days or until November 24,Thanksgiving weekend.
Both boxes are bringing in pollen from a variety of sources including Spanish needles and goldenrod.
I kept the inspection short and sweet as I want to call the the inspector out for his annual inspection, which I've not been able to have done in the past two years.
In my hive, I moved one of the experimental frames that has no Foundation but two cross dowels in it so that the bees can build any wax they might need on this new foundationless frame.
The other hive uses honey supers as their brood box, and so I put a third one with some blanks and some drawn foundation on top. I don't expect the queen to really move up in there as some of them are blanks and some of them are old run-out foundation but they might want to move some of the honey up there if she runs out of laying space.
Both hives are queen right and quiet. What a great way to go into the fall!
Eggs were put into this hive on July 30th. If the hive attends to those eggs, drawing out queen cells, capping them and the hive is successful in maintaining them, a new queen should emerge on Day 16 which us August 14th.
It will take her a couple of days to get oriented then a few more days to take her mating flight.
If the weather cooperates, then it's 24 days or nearly a whole month from the time she emerges until the first bees that she lays emerge.
By the middle of September the newbies should be here. I'm calculating about 45 days from egg (potrntial queen) to new eggs.
I've been feeding them a little bit stronger than a 1:1 solution.
To be honest, I don't want to go into the hive until after the 14th of August. That will be next weekend. It's just as well as this is been a relatively rainy weekend.
I waited until July 22th to check and see the progress of this Hive. It was clear that nothing good was going on. I was happy to see that there were no laying workers but there was also no brood and there was the very beginning of a larvae out burst of small hive beetles. The bee population was enough to keep things under control but I needed to do something, and I needed to do it right away.
I beekeeping friends if they might have two frames of brood and eggs to give me, sell me or trade me. My good friend Michelle came through on Monday July 30th with 3 frames.
They contained quite a few eggs as well as brood in all stages and lots of nurse bees. We did a full inspection and removed the bad frames leaving them in the field so that they could be robbed out. I took one frame for freezing to feed back to the bees later and put on sugar water for food to encourage the bees.
Although the bees look small, and the population was reduced it was sufficient to take care of this brood box until they create a queen.
I will check this again on the weekend to make sure they've started drawing out the egg comb in into queen cells.
If they haven't, and I can't find a mated queen, this hive may be lost. If they have, there may be sufficient time left in the season for the queen they create to be mated and to keep the hive going through fall and winter.
If that's the case, and the queen lays a good pattern, I will keep her, otherwise I'll requeen in the spring.
We also put in beetle blasters with three drops each of the recommended poison so that the small hive beetles don't get out of control. I checked the other day and had already started seeing it work.
Now again it's just a matter of time.
July 7th I took some friends out to show them the hive and to share with them the little I know about beekeeping.
My goal was to remove the queen excluder between the two brood boxes. If they were in fact generating a new queen, she would need to get out to be able to mate.
What did I find? In the middle brood box there was already a spotty pattern of capped brood and larvae.
Two options, either the queen had been released from the cage and was beginning to lay . Or, one of the queen cells hatched, and mated with a drone trapped between the queen excluders. The second option doesn't seem to be likely in terms of the timing .
The capped brood could have been left from the recent queen, but the larvae were definitely new.
I'm hoping this means that there is a mated queen who is just starting to lay. IL
Either way, I will leave this box alone and not go into it until July 21st. At that point either there will be a good brood pattern, or there will be no queen.
On a completely different note. When I opened the lower brood box I found this supersedure cell which as you can see is clearly damaged by separating the frames so I could have completely screwed everything up.
And, since I had walk these frames over to the sunlight to get a good photograph, who knows if the queen could have fallen off. Feeling pretty stupid.
The current configuration is two deep brood boxes and one medium honey super.
When I installed the new queen in the push-in cage, I made sure that there was a queen excluder between each level. I reduce the number of frames to 9.
I came out today Friday, June 30th to see if she was in the cage or had been released. The other bees had chewed the wax under the cage and released her. At this point there should have been no sign of drone brood or of laying workers in any of the three boxes, and there wasn't.
I took the honey super off, which felt a little bit lighter, that's probably because of the hellacious amount of rain that we've had. I made sure there was no one laying in the honey super.
I took the middle box, the top deep brood box and went through it starting in the middle. On the second frame I found some queen cells. One was capped. So that means the queen that was in there had to have laid these. I closed that part up and went to the bottom box below the second Queen excluder to make sure there were no laying workers. I did not find any sign.
Overall, the temperament of the hive is quiet, not aggressive which leads me to believe that they feel queen right. I did not see evidence of small hive beetles, even in the screen tray below the screen bottom board which I have filled with agricultural lime.
My decision, since one of the queen cells was already capped, is to leave this Hive alone for another week. I will check this the weekend of July 8th and see what the status is.
Since it takes 11 days at least for a queen to emerge, one of the cells should be open. I'll look and see if there are others. If the rain slacks off, one of them should get made it , even if she is a weak queen, that may save this Hive which still has a good number of workers.
I'm thinking that the cell won't open for another 4-6 days. After that time it is anywhere from 8 days to 14 days until she is able to begin laying. Once she begins laying, it will be another 24 days until the first bees emerge so let's do the calculation.
If the queen cell was laid on June 27th, five days after the new Queen was installed, she should have emerged on day 16 about the 13th of July. Add two weeks for her to become mature and mated, that puts it August 1st. And then somewhere around August 24th or the end of August, the newbies will emerge.
Either this Hive will make it or not. I may ask a friend for queen cells and split these hives up -- it's a long time to go queenless. And now it will be nearly two months until the population is on the rise again. Hard year this year.
After 2 week break, I return to the hive and found that there was no brood, no eggs no nothing. I contacted The Beekeeper who gave me the first queen and on Thursday June 22nd I installed a summer Queen trapped in a push in cage on a frame of capped and open brood and eggs. That should help with the transition and in five to seven days I will take that cage off. I want to be sure that there is no Virgin Queen running around in the hive, or that there are no laying workers. When I check. I will double check to be sure that they're not still biting at the queen in the cage.
Just got back from taking the entire east hive apart. There is no queen. There was some drone larvae and so I broke the whole thing apart walked it across the field and only let bees that could fly go back into the hive.
Hopefully, whatever laying worker(s) had deposited those drones are gone. There were no queen cells. Nothing. Nada.
If I put in a new queen, and the laying workers are still there, they will kill her.
I'm thinking I'll merge this hive with my strong hive thru newspaper. Then, if the hive continues strong I'll split after the flow is over and I've extracted on the 4th of July.
I was able to secure a queen on Monday morning. I took her out to the farm, took the honey super off, hung her cage with two attendants between one of the 10 frames, after I took one out to provide room. To help with acceptance I smeared a little bit of honey on the outside.
On the whole the hive was not particularly feisty yet I could not find any larva in it. Did that mean that there had been a young mated queen that just did not have a chance to start laying? Not sure.
I set the honey super in the shade and proceeded to check each frame to see if it would be worthy to be extracted.
I had had a queen excluder between the brood box and the honey super to ensure that no eggs were laid in the honey super. Some of the honey frames were capped some or not. I was able to take four frames pretty much totally capped back to the house. The remaining six had some nectar in them and a surprise.
Along the bottom of one of the frames in a very small area, a dozen cells with uncapped larvae curled in the bottom.
The hypothesis: not a laying worker, but a skinny mated Queen had managed to get through the excluder or at least get her rump to the excluder and was laying eggs in that bottom row.
Of course, none of this came to me until after I had left the farm. I had put that frame back into the super. The next day I returned for empty frames with plasti cell foundation for the super so they wouldn't start making burr comb.
I will go out on Friday to make sure the queen has been released.
Update: which idiot failed to remove cap on candy so workers could eat it open? Found her still trapped, released her, dropping cage once, should be OK. Will wait will one week go by to check -- May 18.
So it's the first time I've been able to get in to the hives since the last post.
I've been concerned that the East hive, the one with the full honey super, has been queenless. And sure enough, it is although the ladies were quite calm.
When I was out earlier today, everything looked quiet and I was afraid that both of them could be queenless. But, as we know, you cannot judge a hive from the outside. I
I opened the east and found they were indeed queenless. The west hive, in the intervening hour from when I was first out here, had had a brood burst or a recent brood burst because you can see from the picture, there were an enormous number of bees taking orientation flights.
I took two frames, both relatively covered with capped brood, and a few open cells which I believe had eggs in them. I shook them off and transferred them to the east hive.
I hope that that will keep them strong enough until I can do two things.
1. I have to take the honey super off and extract it.
2. I have to find Queen.
I noticed that the frame of brood that I took had a lot of cap drone cells on it. Many of these were ripped open as I moved the frames from one hive to another.
So it goes. Both of the hives had relatively quiet temperaments so I believe that once I requeen the east hive, we will be cooking with gas.
I finally had time to open up both hives today. They've clearly been bringing in lots of nectar from the red clover. That's good. The West Hive had lots of capped brood. That Queen is very productive although the Beast seemed a little pissy.
The East type on the other hand which seem quieter in temperament, had no Queen. I've got to get one in there soon or the population will begin to dwindle. The frame of brood and eggs I had put in there a couple of weeks ago did not develop any Queen.
Saw no signs of mites in either box and populations were pretty decent. Both have honey supers to make sure any Queen has enough room to lay.
Need to test for mites soon.
Today is April's Fool's Day, and I hope it's not really. I checked in on the two hives.
The west hive with one brood box was quiet, had capped brood, uncapped larvae, good stocks, no real pests. Felt pretty good about it and about its queen.
The east box, with a full honey super on, has a good number of bees (see photo), but I saw no new white wax indicating young bees. I saw no capped brood, and I couldn't identify eggs. There was one small hive beetle that I saw when I open the box up. Their attitude was quiet but active.
To balance the two boxes, I took one frame from the West box, of partially capped brood that had eggs and larvae on the other side and put it into this brood box.
I did not see any queen cells in the west box. I saw only open queen cells, which I had expected in the east box.
I'm thinking that even if the queen has emerged and has been successfully mated, she not started laying yet -- lots of bees, but no brood or eggs. None of the additional frames had been built out. Remember, I had been testing the mid-bar style frame with dowels through the center,
I do like the nature of these two boxes -- very quiet not aggressive.
We'll see what happens. I'll leave it alone for another two weeks. They've got plenty of supplies and should be stable.
Both boxes are flying, both are bringing in pollen, the one on the right looks a lot stronger. There are plenty of drones around. The new box on the left is heavier. Don't have time to go in them today, need some time to spend an hour to with them. Still feeding a light syrup.
However, who says bees don't work red crimson clover?
Hope to spend a couple of hours with them next Saturday afternoon.
May even do an additional split.
It was a bit too cloudy to go into the hives today. I was short of time. However, I wanted to balance the populations.
I moved both the white hive and the light blue hive about two feet to the right so that the returning foragers would go back to the white box.
The light blue box seemed to have the larger population. It also has the honey super on top so that even if it lost population, the bees still had food.
To add to the bee confusion I put the empty nuc box (it has drawn foundation in it) all the way down to almost exactly the place that the white box occupied.
Now, the returning bees have a choice, not that they need a choice. Rather, it might help stabilize the population of the newer white hive box.
I will be gone for 10 days at the end of the week. Right before I leave I will swap the boxes, putting then back to their original positions.
Swapping shifts the populations, but it does lead to confusion. Here's what the confusion looks like.
So today I took my double deep and split it into two 10 frame boxes. I took the upper brood box with the honey super on it and set it to the side on a new stand. I took the lower brood box and very carefully went through every single frame to try and find either queen cells or the queen. There was some capped brood. There was some larvae, food and pollen. Seven, almost eight frames, some new foundation had been pulled out or was previously pulled out. I closed that box up.
I then went over to the upper brood box which only had a few frames of drawn out foundation and a couple of empty frames. This is also the brood box in which I have the two mid bar test frames.
I set that up as a new hive on a different base and again went through all of the frames.
I took one frame of food from the lower box and then I took the frame with brood and the start of a queen cell from the upper box and swapped them.
What am I thinking?
Since I didn't see the queen, but I know that she's active because there's larvae and brood in the upper chamber. I'm going to make the guess that that's where she is.
So, I took the queen cell frame which was only partially drawn-out out of that box, the light-blue box, and put it into the lower, whit brood box.
Now, they're both on individual stands. There is a completely capped honey super on the light blue brood box with low population.
Both hives are being fed 1:1 sugar water solution to encourage foundation being drawn out. I put the low population, light blue brood box, in the location of the old hive. I moved the white hive, the queenless one, with the queen cell, two feet to the right of it.
All the foragers are coming back to the new, light blue box. Look at the picture and you'll see that they are piling up out front, I think they're trying to decide if this is their home. The old hive has bees, many milling around on the landing board or creeping out through an air hole in the back, exploring. A few bees are coming back to it. Some of the bees on the landing board are taking orientation flights.
Check out the photos and you'll see what I mean.
The nuc you see in the foreground on the right has drawn comb but nothing else in it. I left it there in case some curious bees decide that that's where they will go if they swarm.
There is still a danger of a swarm because I could not locate the old queen to put her in the new box. I can only hope for the best.
There were quite a few drones around today so I am not concerned about a virgin queen getting mated. The season seems to be right.
Next steps:
Check next week, March 4 or 5, check to see if light blue box is queen right. Are there any queen cells anywhere?
Has white box pulled out the queen cell? Is it queen right?
Have either boxes swarmed?
Does either box have larvae?
Should I extract the super since the hives are being fed?
Check tomorrow and consider swapping location of boxes to ensure balance in number of bees. Today the high temperature was 79 and partly cloudy. The fog lingered to mid-morning. By night fall high pressure had settled in.Tonight will go down to 39. Tomorrow's high is expected to be 75 and sunny.
Took the hive--one medium honey super, and two brood boxes , the top brood box only partially built out --all the way down today.
The honey super was full of bees and had about a dozen hive beetles hiding under the traps. I added more traps (4) and refilled them with a mixture of vegetable oil and apple cider vinegar when I closed up the hive at the end of the check.
It was a mild day, mostly sunny about 75 degrees, there was a light breeze, occasionally. The bees were very calm.
The center brood box had brood on two frames. They were working on building out more foundation. I have three new midbar frames in as a test. The bees have not yet started building wax out on them. That might be because they are in outer positions.
Before I opened the hive, I had considered reversing the positions of the brood boxes, if the top box was full and the bottom box had no larvae or capped brood in it.
The frames in top brood box had both, and food stores.There were also three very tiny, early queen cells.Two on the bottom of one frame, and one on another frame.
If each one of them has an egg in it, then they will each be capped by February 27th. Seven days later, on or about the 5th or 6th of March, a new queen will emerge.
Next weekend, 2/26 or 27, I will need to check on those queen cells and make sure they are still good and safe as I do the split. I will also need to be sure the old queen is moved into the new split box.
If I wait longer than next week the hive could swarm. On the other hand, the drones should begin in merging by next weekend. Below is the life cycle poster I'm working from to calculate this. Drones are sexually mature when they emerge, but need 7 to 10 days for orientation flight.
I checked the drone cells which begin appearing in the last two weeks. I did not see any purple-eyes, yet, it's too early. It takes 24 days from egg to emergence for a drone.
Next weekend will be the time to split. The upper box since it does not have all 10 frames built out, could very well be put in a separate nuc box. There us good amounts of food and brood in both boxes. And a lot of bees.
The bottom box had brood, larvae and food stores in it. I did not check each frame for queen cells as I had seen the three small ones in the upper chamber.
If the weather remains warm, next weekend I will do this first split and see if I can't get them to build up.
They're bringing in a lot of pollen.
It's late January, and I'm down to one hive. I put a second brood box on so that the queen will have more room to lay. There are only two frames of comb drawn out. I'm feeding a light syrup to encourage wax production. There have been some signs of wax moth or hive beetle larvae .
The days are still cold, only getting up to sixties. As soon as the next warm days come in, I will have to get into the hive. I need to do a mite check as well, but this year I will try the dribble method to control the varroa mites. This will use oxalic acid in solution.
It has not been a very cold winter so I would expect an early bloom and rapid buildup. I hope to make a couple of splits.
