A New Queen?!?

After the bee picnic I suited up and went out to inspect my hive. The sun had gone past the trees so at least I was a little shaded, although I still sweated a bunch. I especially wanted to check out the green hive and see what the deal was.

Green Hive

First off the top is the honey super. Here's a picture of the single frame which contains any appreciable honey:

You can see that it's only about 20% capped. The frustrating thing is that it's been like this for literally a month or more. The frame next to this has a little bit of nectar in it, but it is light. The good news is that when I lifted off the upper brood chamber, it was very heavy. They are putting up some honey in that chamber, but it doesn't help my extracting desires.

Here's an interesting shot of a lot of propolis. The bees use this stick stuff to, well, stick things together. The propolis is the stretched brown goop along the edge:

They also put this along the edge of each frame, which causes the frames to stick to each other. Today while I was inspecting I made it a point to scrape off as much as I could to make future inspections easier. Excessive propolis use is a characteristic of Italian honeybees.

You'll recall that this hive created a lot of swarm cells in the past couple of weeks. I first tipped up the top brood chamber to look along the bottoms of the frames, and this is what I found:

Mostly you see queen cups (the round ones with the large holes in the bottom), but there are a couple of queen cells.

There are lots of bees in this hive, and lots of honey in the frames, so I don't think it swarmed:

I saw really good brood patterns in this hive, and I wanted to find the green marked queen.

Then I noticed something on the frame in the picture above - click on it and zoom in and see if you see it, right in the middle. It's a supercedure queen cell which has been chewed open on the side. This is symptomatic of a new queen going through and destroying her competition.

As I was looking at another frame something else caught my eye - I saw a big plump non-marked queen scampering across the frame! Apparently one of the many queen cells this hive created managed to hatch and she mated and is laying (I saw very young larvae). She must have "taken care of" the older green marked queen.

So I quickly grabbed her and put her in my queen marking tube and gave her a nice blue dot on her back:

I'm getting pretty good at marking queens!

So this hive now has a brand new 2010 model queen. I took out the other queen cells I found and I hope this hive settles down.

Brown Hive

The honey super of the Brown Hive looks worse than that of the green hive. There was only one frame and it was only half filled with nectar, very light:

The queen was spotted (look in the lower right edge of the frame, in the little depression):

And she was laying some really good brood patterns:

So I moved on to the nucs.

White Nuc

I hadn't looked into this nuc at the last inspection. Here's what I saw when I opened the nuc - lots of bees!

I had a new wired wax foundation frame in this nuc, and was pleased to see the bees drawing it out and the queen laying lots in it! If you look closely you can see lots of larvae (not as easy to see as it is on a black foundation):

Pretty much after every inspection the bees are very discombobulated and chaotic - you can see lots of them on the side of the nuc in the next picture. It takes a few minutes after everything is put together for things to start to return to normal, and even then the bees schedule is interrupted. That's why it isn't good to do inspections too often.

Brown Nuc

This is the double-decker nuc. Looks like the queen is taking full advantage of the upper story (sorry for the out of focus picture). You can see a pretty complete coverage brood pattern:

This nuc has lots of bees. I got a kick out of seeing a line-up of bees along the upper edge of the nuc in the next picture:

Once I get some of the woodenware assembled and painted (that I bought from Brushy Mountain last month), this nuc will be moved into a full-size hive.

Finally, here are a couple of videos. First, a video of a drone bee being born (chewing his way out of a cell). I didn't capture the complete work, just a few seconds. See if you can find him:




Second, here's a video of the front porch of the white nuc showing classic "washboarding" where the bees move back and forth, as if they were washing clothes on a washboard:

Bee Picnic

Today was the annual Worcester County Beekeeper Association summer picnic. The weather was perfect for a picnic - a little hot, but not humid. It is a chance for people to get together and enjoy each other's company and some good food (but then, a lot of the bee club meetings revolve around food - wonder why that is?).

As we walked in, we were greeted by this fellow:

This rooster was crowing up a storm! The host, Scott, has chickens and roosters in a caged area. I don't know if this one was an escapee or not. By the looks of his ragged feathers, he is one tough guy!

Here is one of the two tables of food (mostly deserts on this one, and the picture was taken toward the end of the picnic):

Our contribution to the picnic was a watermelon, which Jacob liked (although he didn't like getting his picture taken)

A these bee picnics, in addition to all the food and frivolity, two other events always occur.

One: Ken Warchol, the Worcester County bee inspector (and all around bee whisperer) always has some kind of a contest on bee knowledge. Last year it was a table set up with flowers, honey, and bee items you had to identify. This year the volunteers split into two teams and completed on bee knowledge, as well as proficiency in finding and identifying features in a working hive (like finding the queen, looking for problems, etc.). The second thing always present at the bee picnics is getting into a working hive (which Ken combined with the competition this year).

Here is Ken giving the teams some instructions (and you can see some of the quiz items on the table behind him):

Here is the host's apiary for the "practical" part of the exam:

The teams suited up to go into the hives, with the rest of us watching (some of the observers chose to wear a veil; most did not):

(this young lady is also a beekeeper, along with her father)

Ken was right there in the middle of things, to help and judge. Without a bee suit, like usual.

The pictures don't really do justice to the experience. There were hundreds of bees flying around us, but they were very gentle (click the picture above and zoom in the sky and you will see lots of spot - those are bees). I don't think anyone got stung the entire time, and we were in the hives for about 30 minutes.

An interesting thing about these hives: the center two hives are actually double-nucs. It is a normal 10-frame hive body with a thin divider down the middle, which provides for 2 five-frame nucs. That's why you see both a front and a side entrance for this hive:

All in all it was a very good picnic. I spoke to some other people about my honey-less problem, and others are having the same problem. It could be that where I live there are no large scale nectar sources around.

On the way out we were again greeted by the bouncer:

And I had to laugh at this guy, who was picking up a bunch of hive frames from someone else at the picnic:

I sold a nuc!

I have three nucs in my back yard, which is one too many than I can use (I can make a new hive with one, and the 2nd nuc is in reserve for requeening the Sutton hive). So I put an ad on Craigslist and within a day I had someone from Essex, CT come up to buy my gray nuc.

So now there's an empty spot in my backyard where the nuc used to be...

Inspection 6-11-2010

I had a chance to inspect the home hives on Sunday. Sorry for no pictures - I am in between cameras (the one I was using is being held together by a rubber band).

The Gray Nuc and the Brown Nuc both showed a lot of bearding. I think that was primarily due to the heat, because when I opened them up, there didn't appear to be a lack of space for bees. Also, there was plenty of room for the queen to lay.

In fact, in the brown nuc the queen was in the upper section and had laid some eggs, as I had planned for her to do. The upper super has medium frames, and the bees'll draw out the foundation like I want.

The White Nuc didn't show any bearding - that's primarily because I built that nuc with a screened bottom board. There was plenty of ventilation available for the bees.

When I took a look in the Green Hive, I saw some good patterns of laying eggs. But I also found some more swarm cells. The bees hadn't brought in any more honey than before, and still have just a frame or 2 of uncapped nectar in the super.

The Brown Hive continues to limp along, with no activity in the honey super, but some good laying in the hive bodies.

I was talking to my wife about what to do about the green hive's desire to swarm. She had a good suggestion: move some frames of brood and bees from the green hive to the brown hive; this will take some pressure off of the green hive, and give the brown hive a boost as well. I also thought to take the queen excluders off of the hives to see if the bees will start using the honey supers. I don't mind at this time if the queen gets up there or not - maybe it'll encourage the bees to do something.

This weekend is the WCBA bee club annual summer picnic. Maybe I'll pick the brains of some of the people there about my problem.

Bearding Nucs

I just got home from being away for a week of Boy Scout Summer Camp, and the temperatures got in the high 90's - low 100's most of the day (and what felt like the night too!). This is what I came home to:

The weather is so hot that the bees had to park outside the hive so they didn't add to the heat load in the hive. This activity is called "bearding."

I have a 3^rd white nuc which wasn't bearding, because that one had a screened bottom board. These 2 nucs are solid boxes, with just a couple of vent holes.

I'll do an inspection tomorrow, and maybe put some Popsicle sticks under the top covers to provide more ventilation.

Recent Inspections -- sorta honey, queen marked, but 23???

The title will make sense later on :-)

I was out of town for the last week or so, and will be gone next week to a (90-degree-plus) Boy Scout summer camp, so I thought I'd give the hives an inspection.

Sutton Hive 2

I visited this hive late last week, and I knew I needed to bring more feed. Sure enough, the hive had emptied the jars (and propolised up the lids so that I had a hard time removing them!). The hive has a good amount of bees, as can be seen from this picture of the top brood box:

I had a difficult time lifting up the top box from the bottom box - almost as if it were glued together at the frames. Well, when I got it up, here's what I found:

What you are looking at is a ton of brace comb with drone brood in it. I'm not sure if the "bee space" is right or not, but apparently the bees felt the need to add comb between the upper and lower frames. They made it as drone comb, and unfortunately you can see there was a lot of damage. I scraped off everything and we'll see if this happens again. It may be that there is too much space, and I may need to trim down the box. That's a pain in the neck, because I would have to swap the frames into a different box while I do it. I'll keep an eye on things.

Sutton Hive 1

This hive is the one which has the best chance of giving me honey. But so far they haven't completed capping off any honey. Here's a picture of the "best" frame in the super:

You can see it's only about half capped. Other frames in that super are at a similar state. There are 2 shallow supers on the hive, which started out as already-drawn foundation. They are filling them nicely. Underneath those 2 supers is another super with foundation, and they have been very slow in drawing that out.

I also had to do some maintenance on that hive. The hive owner painted the hive body pieces that were unpainted, and I needed to swap them into this hive so he can paint more pieces. I had to move frame by frame the lower hive body to the new body, and I put it on the new base. Here's a picture of the activity in progress:

The bees were seriously not happy with me for doing this! There were hundreds in the air, and I am honestly surprised I didn't get at least one sting out of the experience. But now I have some more hive pieces for the owner to paint (you can see the right hive body in the picture above shows bare wood in spots). Painted beehives last longer.

Home Nucs

This afternoon I gave the home nucs an inspection. The bees have been really flying this week due to the warm weather!

I started with the Grey Nuc, because I wanted to see and mark the queen. Here are a couple of pictures of the nice brood pattern of the queen in this nuc:

My apologies that the second picture is fuzzy - we got a new compact camera and it is definitely going back to the store - I don't like the focus ability (or lack thereof).

I was able to find and grab the queen, and I tried out my new queen marking tube. Here she is after I marked her:

The tube makes it really easy to mark the queen. Basically you catch her, put her in the clear tube, and push up the plunger (which has a piece of foam rubber). You gently trap her against the plastic screen on the top, and touch her with the marking pen. Then you lower the plunger and let the paint dry for a minute. The only problem I had is getting her out of the tube - she was holding on to the screen, and wouldn't go down. I had to give her a shake, and down she went. Now all of my nuc queens are marked.

I moved on to the Brown Nuc, with the fancy painted medium super on top. The bees had been busy in the super, drawing out some of the foundation. You can see so here:

Interesting to note in the picture above is the piece of vertical perpendicular comb the bees built. This comb bridged two of the frames. I suspect they did this because the frame may have had a patch of unwaxed plastic on it.

But in the lower portion of the nuc the queen is laying up a storm. Here's a frame showing a good pattern, with honey along the top:

I had not looked at the White Nuc since I put in the new queen's cage two and a half weeks ago. I left for a week+ of vacation and didn't take out the cage, so I was worried they would fill up the spaces with burr comb, but other than a few bridges, they didn't do to bad. I was able to scrape off the comb and add the empty frame I previously removed to put in the queen cage.

I got some pictures of this queen. I bought her from George O'Neil of the bee club, and like the other queen I bought from him, she is a dark queen. You can see how dark her body is (in the 2^nd picture, she has her head in a cell - you can barely see the blue spot). I'll have to ask him about the genetics of his bees next time I see him.

Green Hive

Like I said above, the hives were very busy this past week. So I had my hopes up a little. But it was not to be - I didn't see any changes in the honey collection from past weeks. There is one frame which is pretty full of nectar, but as you can see, they aren't even starting to cap it:

When I got into the upper hive body (below this super), I did find a couple of heavy frames full of nectar/honey:

So maybe they are putting things here in stead of up top. You can't tell bees what to do so I will have to put up with it.

I found a frame with some new eggs on it, so I know the queen is doing her job:

(again, sorry for the bad picture). The eggs are in the center of the picture in the sun-lit area. Her brood pattern looks real good too:

So I think things are doing well with this hive. Imagine my shock when I take out the next frame and find this!!!

Look along the bottom - those are swarm cells. On this frame, there were ten swarm cells (a couple of them capped). On the next frame over were an additional thirteen, making 23 swarm cells in this hive!

Back in May I had removed a couple of frames due to the presence of swarm cells (that's where I have 2 new nucs). I certainly don't want nor need 23 more nucs, so I decided to remove these swarm cells. It could be that the hive thinks there is not enough space to lay, since those frames of honey are in the middle of the brood area. I moved the honey frames outward, and moved in some of the empty comb. Hopefully the hive will like that and not swarm. I'll check next week and see what is happening.

Brown Hive

This hive is doing well, but is not very populous. The queen is laying well, as can be seen by this frame:

Based on when I put in the queen, in another week or so we should have a lot more foragers. But what was interesting when I checked the bottom brood box, the comb there was absolutely empty - just one frame had a little pollen in it. There was no honey, no brood, nothing. Some bees were down there, but it looks like the bees are ignoring the bottom chamber and working only in the top. There is still plenty of space up there, so I am not inclined to do anything unless I have a good reason.

And finally, I took this picture. You can see all the little worker bees lined up in a row, sticking up their heads along the top of the frame, looking out at what I am doing. I thought it was cute! :-)