Inspection 04-07-2012: First of the Season

I so believe weather forecasters are the biggest teases around. They'll predict a high of around 56 or so, and then when the day comes, it isn't past 45. I've been keeping an eye on the weather, waiting for a day in the mid to high 50's. We're just not there yet here in New England, apparently.

Today was another mid-50's promise, but the most it got to was around 47. So around 2:30PM this Saturday I decided to go into the hives in the backyard for the initial spring inspection.

Pink Hive

I started with that weird Pink hive - the one where I couldn't figure out if it was alive, or if it was just being robbed.

I opened it up, and saw some bees on top eating the sugar candy I never bothered to remove from this hive:

I pulled a couple of frames where I saw the most bees on the top, and saw a patch of brood.

Then I flipped over the frame, and look what I saw!

According to my Queen Bee Heritage spreadsheet, this is the queen from when the hive swarmed last year in June. So she did make it through the winter!

The interesting thing is that just a few frames over,there were a bunch of dead bees head-in to the cells; classic starvation.

What I surmise is this: some time during one of the warm winter days, it got warm enough that the hive cluster relaxed / spread out some. Then a cold snap occurred, and the cluster accidentally split into two groupings. One of those die (luckily not the one with the queen). Now what is left is a small group of bees.

What you see, repeated on 2 or 3 frames, is the extent of this cluster. If I would have been thinking, I would have moved over a frame or 2 from the brown hive to give this hive a jump-start. I still may do that tomorrow. This hive won't increase in numbers until more babies are born. And you can't have more eggs than you have enough nurse bees to care for them. A frame of bees and brood will help. I ended up adding more sugar syrup to this hive, and a pollen patty as well.

Brown Hive

Of all the three hives, the Brown Hive shows the most signs of activity. Whenever the weather is the slightest bit warm, those bees are out and about. Here's a frame with a lot of nectar and pollen:

And here is some brood:

The previous frame shows a second batch of brood being worked by the worker bees. Do you know how I know? Normally the queen starts in a center of a frame and lays eggs there, then moves to the edges. In this frame, the edges have capped brood, while the center has older uncapped brood and in between are either empty spaces or very young. The bees originally laid in the center of the frame have hatched, and the queen has laid replacement eggs there. I like this queen!

Speaking of the queen of the Brown hive, here she is:

Her white dot has worn off a lot, and there's just a ring left.

Here are more frames of good brood:

I also found about 4 frames along the edges looking like this:

This is capped honey/sugar syrup. I'm not sure which, but I suspect it is left over from last year. I will keep an eye on the hive because I don't want the queen to run out of space for laying because of frames like this. If I need to, I'll remove these frames and put in some empties.

I then moved down to the bottom chamber, and found this:

It's a frame with more brood. It's a semi-circle, the bottom "half" of the brood cluster. This is a good sign! Did I say how much I like this queen? If/when I do some grafting, it's going to be from her lineage.

I decided to put on a honey super of undrawn foundation, and add some jars of feed. My hope is that the bees will draw out the foundation so I can use it for honey collection later. If they do put up any of the sugar syrup in to that honey super I know it isn't honey, and if they do, I'll take the super off later and let the bees rob it out to get rid of the sugar; then I can put it back on (without feeding) to have them collect actual honey. I don't know any other way to get the bees to draw out foundation (unless there is a serious honey flow going on).

Green Hive

I then moved on to the Green Hive. It has a lot of activity, but not as much as the Brown Hive.
Here's the top of the frames in the top box:

She had some good brood patterns as well, plus nectar and pollen:

And I got a view of the queen herself:

All in all, I was pleased to see that all 3 hives survived. That makes me 5 for 5 (including the 2 hives in Sutton). In a few weeks once the weather is consistently warm, I'll look into making some queens by grafting.

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In the past years I haven't had any luck catching any swarms around my house. I suppose it's because I don't have the swarm trap nucs in the correct place. I heard they need to be up high and facing south. Since I can't really get into my trees well, the only place I have that is high and facing south is my ... chimney!

So I put together a nuc with some frames of old comb and strapped it to the top of my chimney. I attached it to the flue coming out of the chimney (it goes to our fireplace, which we don't use) so it will stay there.

Who knows - I may catch something!

Mating Nucs - A Little Work

As reported last time, I purchased some mini queen mating nucs. The mini frames within the nucs have a slot where you are expected to put a small amount of wax foundation so the bees can draw it out. I decided to do that Monday evening as I had a few minutes free.

I had a small crock pot with wax in it that I had used for re-coating some plastic frames (I purchased the crock pot expressly for dedicating to this task, as for marital harmony, you should never use any of your wife's cooking items for anything having to do with beekeeping and especially bees wax!!). So I plugged it in and let it heat up.

I had also purchased a pack of 10 sheets of wire-less foundation, to use with these nuc frames. I cut up one of the sheets into about 1" strips, and put them in the slot in the frame. Then I dribbled a little melted wax on the edge to hold the foundation in. Here's the result:

Not too exciting, but now the mating nucs are ready whenever I am (or, I should say whenever the bees are). Looking back, I realized I didn't need to buy wire-less foundation - I could have taken one sheet of wired foundation and just cut out strips in between the wires. Now what am I going to do with 9 1/2 sheets of unwired foundation? Maybe make candles...

The weather hasn't been too great lately - it got down to 25 degF the other night, and it's been cold and rainy. Old Man Winter is getting in one last dig!

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Also, I just noticed that this is my blog's 200^th post!! Yay bees!

New Toys from Mann Lake!

I decided to put in an order with Mann Lake Ltd., a beekeeping supply house. They have free shipping on orders of $100, which is pretty darn easy to do for beekeeping equipment! Well, the order arrived today!

I decided if I was going to try to raise queens, I needed to have mating nucs. I have a few 5-frame deep nucs, and even a pretty crappy queen castle I made last year. I did some reading in the bee blogs about mini mating nucs, and they have positive and negative points about them. I thought about making some, but I saw in Mann Lake's catalog that they were less than $17 if you buy 4 or more. So I bought 5.

The mating nucs are made of dense Styrofoam (polystyrene). Here's the unit closed up:

And here is what it looks like opened up:

Let me describe what it consists of, from front (nearest the bottom of the picture) to back.

• Sliding entrance closure (white Styrofoam) - you can close off the nuc
• Ventilation grate (yellow)
• Three mini frames (more on that later)
• Division with a small queen excluder (yellow)
• Chamber for feed / syrup

There's also a sliding bottom to more easily plop in the bees when making up the nucs.

Here's a picture of the mini frames:

Those frames are about 5 or 6 inches across (I should have included a ruler for scale in the pictures).

The theory on these is that you only need about a cupfull of bees to populate the nuc. The bees draw out wax on the mini-frames and the queen can lay eggs there (I also bought some plain foundation to put some starter strips in the mini frames).

The pros of these mini-nucs is that it doesn't take many bees to populate it. You can make a lot more of these with the same resources.

Some of the cons are that the frames are special, only for these nucs. What do you do if/when the queen fills up the frame with brood? Plus, what do you do when you are done with queen rearing - the frames don't fit in a full-size hive?

I'll probably see if I can make some frame which hold multiple mating frames. That way when I am done I'll put the mini-frames in a full-size hive and let the bees hatch out.

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I gave the hives a quick peek at the feeding jars on Tuesday. The brown hive had emptied theirs (that hive is by far the strongest); the green hive had about 1/4 left in each jar; but the pink hive had over half of a jar left. I still don't know what that hive is doing - I see a few bees flying in and out with pollen, and it doesn't look like robbing. But I'll know better this weekend. Hope the weather holds out!

Hive Check 03-17-2012 - Feedin' Time!

Today the temperatures were in the low 50's, and the weather is projected to be warm for the next week or so. I decided it was time to start feeding some sugar syrup to stimulate the bees to start to reproduce, and last night I cooked up a batch of 1:1 syrup (with 10 lbs. of sugar). I haven't built any top feeders yet, so I filled up some quart mason jars, with lids with small holes in them. This was the same way I have always fed.

I started out at the Sutton hives, to check up on them. The last time I checked, they were doing well. Today was no different. I was extremely pleased to see the bees bringing in pollen! That is the first I've seen that, although some of my local bee buddies have been reporting pollen for a week or so.

The hives looked good, with lots of bees on the top bars:

Here's where I added the two jars of sugar syrup. Not too exciting, but the bees like it.

I always put the jars to the side, not directly over the inner cover hole. That way, if I have a jar leak, it won't rain down on the bees.

I ended up putting the shim on the top side of the inner cover (it used to be below the inner cover, to leave room for the sugar patties). Then I put a medium box over the jars, just to protect them and keep the bees out.

I am glad these hives made it through the winter. Last winter I lost both hives. So hopefully they will start makin' babies and build up in strength..

Then I did the same for my backyard hives. I saw pollen being brought in the brown hive, but not yet in the green hive (I guess the brown hive was being stingy with that information!).

Here's the Green hive - lots of bees, like I like:

The Brown hive was also looking good:

Both got jars of syrup, and empty boxes over it.

Then I thought to take a look at the Pink hive again. It still had no traffic to speak of.
Here's what I saw when I popped up the inner cover:

This definitely looks like a small winter cluster. It continues to confound me. I didn't feel like taking it apart to look for the queen - I'll do that on another warmer day. But I did give it some sugar syrup too, just to see what it'll do. Who knows - maybe the queen is still in there!

On all the hives (even Sutton) I also took off the mouse guard, and put an entrance reducer on the medium setting. Some people don't bother with entrance reducers in the spring, but I figure with the reduced population of bees, they can defend a smaller entrance easier.

So here are the backyard hives (I didn't have another medium for the pink hive, so it got a larger box).

Backyard Check 03-08-2012 - 1 Dead Hive?

Last Thursday I worked from home due to parent teacher conferences, and the weather happened to be warm enough for a hive check. Over lunch, I gave my backyard hives a quick peek. I also had some more sugar patties to feed in case they needed it.

It was warm enough for the bees to be flying:

However, I have three hives, but I only saw bees flying from 2 of them. Uh oh! The pink hive had no flyers:

So I popped the top on the Pink Hive, and this is what I saw:

This looks like a cluster of bees, although a bit on the small side, so I was confused why they aren't flying. I pulled a frame in the middle, and saw plenty of live bees on the frame:

But this is what I found when I pulled the next frame:

The bees on the left half are all dead, stuck head first in the cells. This is classic starvation. The bees in the upper right were also dead, just stuck in place. This is classic freezing. The next frame had more starvation bees:

So I am confused. I did see a lot of bees coming in the upper entrance; it could be that they were bees from the other two hives coming in and taking whatever food they could. Or the cluster could have become split during a warm spell, then half of the bees died.

I lifted up the top brood chamber and saw this on the bottom brood chamber:

It's a pile of dead bees, quite a few (the white thing is the left over from some mite treatments late last year).

So it looks like this hive is either dead or on its way. But I have two others, so I can repopulate. I'll wait for decent weather to take apart the hive and check it out.

Lifting the Green Hive's cover showed the typical winter cluster of a decent size:

And the Brown Hive was similar, if not a little larger clump:

They hadn't consumed all of the sugar patties, so I just scooted them a little closer to the cluster and left them be.

It's not warm enough to start feeding liquid feed - the weather has to stay above freezing for pretty consistent times. So I'll give it another week or so.

What should I focus on this season?

The beekeeping "season" is generally divided by the winter. If you start a beehive from a package, you do so in April. If you had bees going into the winter, then March is when you start working them again. You may also have die-offs during the winter, so you start again in the spring.

I realized that I am entering my fourth season of beekeeping; and I've been keeping my blog ever since I started. Time flies!

Now that I have 3 years under my belt, I pretty much have everything I need, equipment-wise, to be a beekeeper; I have enough frames and boxes, I have a couple of nucs, and I will be fine if I just want to tend the hives.

But I feel like I want to do something more / different. In years past that may have been building boxes or frames to get me ready for the basics.

Here is a list of items (in no particular order) of things I could do this season:

• Start a Top Bar Hive (TBH). A TBH is a different type of hive, and managing it is a little different. It has some advantages to a traditional (Langstroth) hive in that it is usually cheaper to build. But it takes some extra care to manipulate. I've been reading up on the hives and they are interesting to me.
• Raise some queens specifically. Last June I made a queen cup frame, and purchased the materials needed to graft queen cells. But I don't have enough mating nucs to do more than a couple of queens. I made a queen castle last year, but it turns out my lack of attention to the dimensions made it a pain to deal with. I may need to build a Cloake Board for this as well.
• Build a better Queen Castle and some mating nucs (see previous point).
• Build a top feeder. I could buy one, but why? :-)I found a neat set of plans for this.
• Make candy boards for next winter (easier to deal with than sugar candy patties)

Anyone have any other suggestions? I'd like to hear them - comment here or on my Steven's Bees Facebook page.

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Last Saturday I went over to the Sutton hives. I hadn't been there since Jan. 1 when I put some sugar candy on the hive. I looked for a blog post about that, but couldn't find one. I'm pretty sure I put bee candy on them, but maybe I forgot...

Anyway, the hives looked good. Here are the tops of the two hives:

The first picture definitely looks better than the second - there are a lot more bees there! Also I saw no evidence of any sugar candy, so maybe I did forget. In any case, I added candy at this time:

Also a week ago or so I gave a peek in my backyard hives. They hadn't consumed all of the sugar patties, but I added some more just as insurance. The pink hive's cluster was looking a little small, but I am not giving up hope.

All in all, I am hopeful for all 5 hives making it through the winter. Next month, mid-March, I am planning on starting the liquid feeding to get them stimulated to start laying.

Mid-winter Check

It's hard to call this mid-winter given the mild weather we've been having. I think I've used my snow thrower a total of 2 times (and since it was a new bigger snow thrower this year, it wasn't a chore). But after all, it is the end of January!

The weather this winter has been good bee-wise. We have had a few days of mid-40's to 50's, and that lets the bees fly and not have to be huddled up in their cluster the whole time. They can move around in the hive and hopefully reach more food when it is warm.

Today got up into the low 40's, so it was a good time to give the backyard hives a quick check. I wanted to see how they were doing on the sugar candy I gave them three weeks ago. I put in my bee jacket and veil, even though I was just going to lift up the lid and have a look (last winter I took a peek just wearing my winter coat, and a bee flew up and stung me on the forehead).

Here's a picture of the green and pink hives' clusters:

These clusters looked good, and they hadn't consumed all of the sugar patties yet. The brown hive looked just like the second picture, so I didn't take another picture. It was interesting to note that the cluster in the pink and brown hives was up to the inner cover (when I lifted the cover, half of the cluster was attached).

So I'll give them another couple of weeks before I look to add more sugar.

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A few days ago the weather was in the 50's and my wife took some pictures of the bees flying. Since this is a bee blog, you can't have too many pictures of bees!!

52 Degrees In January?!?

I couldn't believe it - the temperature got up to 52 degrees this afternoon!

I still had to put out the bee candy on my backyard hives, and the weather was perfect for it. This early afternoon it was 43 when I started working with the hives. Cracking the cover, I saw the Brown hive and Green hive had appropriate looking winter clusters:

However the Pink hive didn't look the same:

I could see quite a few bees in between the frames; but I didn't want to disturb them. I am supposing that the bees have broken cluster due to the warmer temperature, and moved down in search of more food.

In any case, I added 2 pie plates of sugar candy to each hive (the same I added to Sutton). Here's what it looks like:

I gently (as much as possible) scoot the bees over and lay the candy right on top of the frames. You can see the (grey) shim which gives about 2" of space between the frame tops and the inner cover. I'll check them in about a month if we have a warm-ish day to see if I need to add more.

As mentioned, the temperature got up to 52 degrees later in the afternoon, according to the bee thermometer in my back yard:

With the temperature so warm, the bees were able to fly, and fly they did!

I was glad to see a good number of bees flying from the Pink hive, so maybe they were just lower in the box.

Since there are no flowers to get nectar from, the bees were mostly doing "cleansing flights." That's just a pleasant name for bees going out and going to the bathroom! And we had evidence of that - both of our cars were spotted with brown bee poop all over! It's good that they can do these flights, because during the winter the bees "hold it" and wait for warm weather, which can be months away. Not my idea of fun!

Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew...

During warm weather, if you need to feed bees, you feed them a sugar syrup solution. But once the temperature drops below 40 or so, this won't work. You hope that the bees have stored up enough honey in the combs to last the winter, but sometimes you need to do "emergency" winter feedings.

I put emergency in quotes because it's not the optimal situation, but it beats the alternative (starvation). For the winter you need to make and feed "bee candy."

Bee Candy is essentially sugar candy. There are a variety of recipes out there (you can Google search and find one you like), but you basically boil sugar and water until it reaches soft ball, almost hard ball stage. Then you pour it into pie plates and let it harden. You then set the bee candy on the top bars, and the bees can eat it. Some people like to use just granulated sugar for emergency feeding, but I had a bad experience with that and I prefer the candy.

Last year I learned a couple of things about making bee candy:

• Hot sugar syrup is hot. Don't get any on your fingers when pouring!
• Pouring into plain paper plates will cause the candy to stick to the paper, and peel a layer of paper off when you take it off the plates. This year I laid down a layer of aluminum foil first, and had no sticking.

Here are some pictures and comments. Not exciting, I know; but it may be instructional.

Did I mention that the hot sugar syrup is hot?

I lined the plates with aluminum foil this time. They are also sitting on insulated cookie sheets - don't want to run the risk of have a problem on the counter with the heat.

The finished products, all stacked up!!