January 8 2019 hive check

1. So the Northwest hive feels like it's got enough weight on it the one putting sugar water back on. There is larvae some capped brood so we're just at the beginning of build out. I took out the Mite strips and I'll check this box again in 2 weeks. Didn't see anything worrisome.

2. Middle box has more brood and more bees seems to be waking up to be spring quite nicely. There are still at least two frames that could be built out for laying. I'll feed as well both box 1 and 2 are quite calm. Didn't see anything to be concerned about

3. Good-looking box. Lots of bees. Most brood and best brood pattern of all three of these. I will use this to equalize the population between these three boxes. Lots of stores and very calm temperament. I did not see any drone cells capped in any of the boxes that means it will be at least a month before any of them might even figure it out. Use the math.

4. The southernmost South hive was full of bees see the photographs. Everything look great.There were two full frames of capped honey I'm going to take one of them out and let them rob it  so that they'll be places to lay. There were already some drone cells in this box.

5. A mess is a mess and will keep being a mess until it gets cleaned up. Last year when I was cleaning up those two hives I got from someone else I did not move out all of the short frames. Now they're starting to brood up in them and two big chunks fell off when I was moving things around. At that point I decided it was time to add new blanks. I took out a frame of honey from each of the two South hives. I set it up to be robbed out at an okay distance from the hive. There's a picture of the broken off burr comb that had already had larvae in it. What a waste, but it's time to clean up the mess. I put in blanks on frame 3 in both of the South hives and left these two here to be robbed out in the next day or so.
Today was on seasonably warm with a high of 72 and sunny. The weather supposed to get cold and nasty again. I'll be feeding the north hives but I don't see a reason to feed the South hives until I can get these robbed out combs back in there. They're brooding up a lot faster than the North hives. However, the temperament on all of the hives is quite calm.

December 15 2018 Pre Holiday check

We're between 7 and 14 days from bee spring. I'll be away for the next 10 days so I made sure everyone had sugar water and lime in their trays.  All 5 hives looked good. After two-and-a-half days of heavy rain, they were happy to be out flying.
Nothing to report since I put in the mite treatment.
An earlier spate of rainy weather had left water pooling in lime trays which I spilled out about 5 days aho.
When I return I'll take out the strips and do a more thorough check. By that time if they've stored too much honey, I will put in some blank frames and remove a honey frame so they can rob it out and hopefully they'll think that things are starting to Gear Up.

Breakfast with the Beekeeper - April 22 2018

4/28/18

Nosema treatment, fumigillian, is no longer available. Producer stopped making. No current solution. Need a mucriscope5or use extension office. This may cause the rise seen in recent absconding.

New news fungicides may bee a problem by making mitecides more toxic.

Blooming now:
Privet, some tupelo, high bush  gallbery, black berry, black gum, tulip popular, dandelion, sparkleberry tree.
Not bringing in a lot of pollen.

Never stack weak bees on weak bees. A strong on a week may work.

4/28/18

Nosema treatment, fumigillian, is no longer available. Producer stopped making. No current solution. Need a mucriscope5or use extension office. This may cause the rise seen in recent absconding.

New news fungicides may bee a problem by making mitecides more toxic.

Blooming now:
Privet, some tupelo, high bush  gallbery, black berry, black gum, tulip popular, dandelion, sparkleberry tree.
Not bringing in a lot of pollen.

Never stack weak bees on weak bees. A strong on a week may work.

If the queen doesn't get mated, she'll lay drones. Then, if you can request it, stack it. And split at a later date.

This time of year, not a lot of drones. Directly relayed to pollen availability.

Mix suger water and vanilla to spray when adding a nuc to queenless hive.

Think, if it is queenless you won't raise honey cuz you've lost population so spread resources if it's strong.

Tame a frame with nurse bees ans broid and shake out. Nurse bees are always accepted.

There's always a hive that can take a frame if bees.
Keeping them crowded keeps the happy.

Tony now uses single queen castle, not split.

Swarms like to go to the same trees/location. Strategy: place trap in that area. Swarm may be up to 10 lbs.

Swarms strategy, shake bees out of hives into a box of nurse bees, pull a frame each of nectar and eggs. Then I leave capped brood in old it keeps it strong but helps suppress swarm pressure. Put queen cell in the mix.
If they are building queen cells and not yet capped, the skinny queen will be hard to find.

If capped, they've swarmed, most likely. If you shake bees from old, into new, into a sheet or board, allowing them to walk into where the queen is helps them think they swarmed.

Requiring helps suppress swarms. New queen probably won't, 2-year old queen will most likely swarm.

The later in the year the harder it is to requeen. Now we are on the edge of the hard time-- we're at the start of the flow.

To help acceptance, use $7 push in cage over brood and honey, cover queen, after 4-5days she'll be accepted. Some times you'll have mother daughter queens in same hive as their scent is similar.
Always feed when introducing a new queen .

Don't poison your bees.
If there is spraying it needs to be done at night.

Don't drop an empty foundation in middle of brood nest, work it in slowly.

Don't stress hives by treating while queenless.

Don't give bees lots of room, keep them crowded year round

Honeycomb attracts pests so swap out broid comb over 3 year period.

Don't pull honey early. Let it get capped.

Treat hive during honey flow only with approved product to avoid contamination

A great queen this year may run out of sperm for next year. Raise queens off of her if her genetics are good, but be prepared to replace her next year.

To raise queens. You need a lot if nurse bees. Start with 5 hives or more.

Tony stopped using amitraz.

Oxalic acid works but is dangerous. Don't realty get resistant because it burns the legs off the mites.  Tony uses full face respirator chase the vapor will settle out on your eyes

Oxalic acid in strips from Argentina study works good. Tonya had goid results.  He was able to keep more count to 3%.



Formic acid is good within humidity and temp range, below 50% humidity and low temp.

April 22 2018 - Hive check

On the East hive, we we added a honey super with a queen excluder but we didn't see an impressive wall-to-wall brood pattern. The bees are calm, also all stages of brood and they're bringing in food pollen and nectar so this is a good hive.
New line
On the Nook on the Eastside it's building out nicely and doing well might add a super look on top of it next week or so depending upon how things look.

The Hive next to it which was the rehire I've Nook with the yellow Queen in it seems to want to requeen there were a couple of Queen cups but still an okay brood pattern a little spotty. And a lot of drone brood which indicates that she might be failing.
New line North hive, this was the original box the yellow Queen was in but was allowed to requeen and it's building out quite nicely. It may be ready for a queen excluder and super within a week or two.


Tracy's Nook or the South Side Nook had a lovely brood pattern we moved frames around to checkerboard them and to build out Foundation. Possibly add a super Nook on top or rehire I've if they're that strong to attempt frame. This this could use a frame of drawn comb so that the queen has room to lay. Look in the refrigerator.

The Southside Hive had the honey super put on last week and there are already beginning to put nectar up there. None of the frames have been drawn out yet. The Brood box still has two or three blanks that have a little bit of foundation growing out so we move them around. This was the high visit the Michelle help me with and we saw a beautiful queen in that Hive as well as the yellow Queen back in the hive that she has given me. All in all it was a lovely day. Followed up with Organic grape Frozen cheese and crackers got all muddy.

April 1 2018 - Hive Check

So this is small Hive small Nook, Hive small Nook, Hive small neck, hi Vis I go through. It looks like the Nook that I moved Michelle's Queen into first of all I should say all of the hives are very calm can't really explain why but the Nook that I made on March 17th and I took the old yellow Queen and put it in there on April 1st it seems to be doing well enough to move to a full Hive box. The 10 frame Hive that I had taken that Queen out of and moved in the queen cells are left the queen sells others no capped brood no brood couldn't find any eggs but everything's come in there a lot of bees with three empty frames so I'm thinking that there is a new Queen in there
From the big Hive the big Hive today is calm. There's capped brood and a lot of drone there could be a laying worker but it was calm and I'm thinking that the queen that was made from the queen cells in there or the Pippin Queen rather should be active just not laying lots of eggs unless they're drone. The note that was made with the two queen cells on April 14th rib is April 17th knows April 4th because of the Pikmin Queen had one open Queen sell no eggs no larvae lots of food and was very calm. Tracy's hive looks pretty good. The Nook that was made from it has lots of bees but not a whole lot of anything else and almost all of the capped brood is open these six boxes are sitting in field of crimson clover and there seems to be quite a bit of food available Tracy's big hive has a good laying pattern although it's quite small and the population is okay there are also some undrawn out frames. I decided because of the size of the population to put a brood box on my old big Hive. That's the report for today. I should probably go back into everyone next weekend

I need a new lid for at least two Hive boxes. I should be driving around with two boxes ready to take the nooks as necessary. And I should have to Honey supers and queen excluders to put on the hives. That's what the month of April looks like.

March 3-4th Hive Check 2018

March 3rd. Went into this hive to see how it was building out. Things look good there was capped brood. But it still has a couple of outer frames to build out and its population to build up before I put another brood box on top. I did not see any Queen cells.

March 4th. Went into all of the upper frames until I found capped brood. It looks like the queen is building out nicely, but slowly. Going to leave this one alone until I return from spring break. I'll go in there on the 17th of March. We should be through with all Frost by then.

March 3rd. The Hive was very active with many bees taking orientation flights. The nature was calm. I opened up the top box to see that they were beginning to build wax on six sides of frames and a few quite a few bees in the upper brood box. Searched and found 3 no found to Queen cells, and heard the pipping of a Virgin Queen. I could not find her I did not see signs of the old Queen. There was very little capped brood. I was concerned that the horn Hive might swarm. I came back out on Sunday, the 4th. Determined after lots of consideration to split the hive. I took some of the built out frames with new wax from the upper brood box. I took the upper brood box off totally from the big Hive moved the two queen cells, one looked good, one look gnarly, along with frames of food and pollen. Any frames that had nectar in it I put in the field to be rubbed out. Again the nature of all three hives right now is very calm. Shook a lot of bees into the Nook and placed it where the previous Hive had been. As I was moving the larger North Hive on the rack the entire rack tipped over backwards opening all boxes and causing confusion. I moved the rack to the ground set everything back up all of this without a single bite. It wasn't until about 2 hours later that I realized that the frame was directly on the ground. We came out and by the Light of the cars headlamps we set the rack back up. I came out the morning of the 5th both large hives are flying, but the cook has had only one be going in and out of it. Not sure it's status.

This is the comment from my friend Michelle regarding splitting or not.

The nice big hive I'm referring to is the one that's next to the hive I gave you, not Tracie's. If that Hive is jam-packed full of bees, you could make a split into a nuc box and put the queen cells in there. If that big Hive has a Virgin Queen in there she's going to mate and you will have a laying Queen soon. If for some reason that Hive doesn't have a queen, and the so-called Virgin Queen doesn't exist, then you could recombine the nuc when it has a laying Queen.

The temperature this morning at 10 a.m. is just 60°. That may be why the other Hive has no flying bees.

Hive check March 16 2018

South  (Tracy's) Hive was looking pretty good today. Had nice food pattern in the upper chamber which I flippef to be the lower one so that it will now have all them emerge and let the queen move up into the upper chamber. I did see two queen cells being constructed in the lower box so I moved it to the upper box once I flip them. They were only about halfway built.

The West (Michelle's) have also had a decent brood pattern and it built out seven to eight of the frames I think there might have been a swarm cell in Michelle's box that was beginning to form next time I come out I will bring a nuc box. However, because the East nuc was low on brood, I did not see any larva or capped brood from what should be a new Queen, I moved a frame from Michelle's into that nuc

The Nuc seemed like there were quite a few bees but as I went through it I could not find a queen or eggs. It was cloudy today so perhaps I just couldn't spot any, but there wasn't any larvae either. The gnarly cell queen queen cell had hatched out so we'll see what happens.

My Blue Hive, the East hive had no brood and it to speak of. I'm concerned that the new Queen which I had heard pipping was damaged when everything fell over. If I don't see any brood next week I will take a frame from one of the other hives to encourage them to build a new Queen. All of the hive seem calm, that's why I'm thinking there are Queens, just not fully laying. Only time will tell.

Update 3/17/18
After having breakfast with The Beekeeper this morning and discussing Queens, it became imminently clear that those Queen cups needed to go into split mode. On the two hives that had Queen cups, I was able to find the queen in one but not in the other. Have split them out. Will not open the hives with the queen cups for at least 21 days probably longer in fact. Because the cells must build out, (day 4 egg starts becoming queen cup, capped at 9 days, emerging at 16 days)the queen must emerge (day 16) take her mating flight come back and start laying.. If  today is the 17th of March and the cups are 5 days old, , it will be at least  11 more days until she emerges (3/28) and if all is successful at least (6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 2 days sperm storage = 12 days) or 4/8  before she is laying well. I am feeding one to one sugar water and pollen patties made with sugar water pollen and some corn syrup. Suddenly I have six hives if they all make it! 3 nux 3 hives.

These notes are from honeybee suite blog:
Count the days before she lays

Looking at the math, we can see that if everything went as fast as possible, the queen could begin to lay as early as 8 days after emergence:

5 days maturing + 1 day mating + 2 days sperm storage = 8 days

But that almost never happens. More typical would be:

6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 2 days sperm storage = 12 days

But toss in a week of rain and it might look like this:

6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 7 days rain + 2 days sperm storage = 19 days

In fact, many people believe 2 to 3 weeks (14 to 21 days) is a good rough estimate of the hatch-to-lay timetable.