Guest Beekeeper : 2014-06-25

One of the fun things about beekeeping for me is teaching others about bees.  I have found many seemingly willing students.  Or at least ones that feign interest while I blab on and on about the bees.  I have also tried to get as many of these people as possible into the beehives.  For this inspection, I was fortunate enough to have Byron be my guest beekeeper.  It sure doesn't hurt to have an extra set of hands either!

My main concern for this inspection was to make sure the bees hadn't run out of room, since each hive consisted of only one box.  At this point they should be covering most of the frames and be ready for a second box to be added.  I was also hoping I hadn't waited too long and they weren't preparing to swarm!

Green Hive:

I took my time going through this hive since I wanted to be able to show Byron all the facets of beekeeping.  How to separate and manipulate the frames.  How to use the smoker and hive tool.  And what to look for in the hive: nectar, pollen, honey, eggs, larvae, capped cells, workers, drones and the queen.  The bees had just started to draw wax on the first two frames in the hive so I was able to show him how they create the wax in an empty frame.  He was also able to see the festooning behavior of the bees as they constructed the new wax comb.  The queen in this hive remained elusive and we did not spot her.  Although we did see some eggs and very young lava so she was there somewhere.  A second deep box of empty frames is now on this hive.  I have a feeling I should have used a technique called pyramiding to encourage them to move into the new box.  If they haven't done so by the next inspection I will make it so.

White Hive:

This hive had a second box added with some frames from the hive that died this past winter.  Some were empty brood frames and some were filled with honey.  Since this hive appears stronger, the bees were already working these frames.  After going through these I let Byron take over the inspection.  I'm sure it was his observation of my fantastic abilities that allowed him to jump right in like a pro!!  LOL

Byron inspecting the hive

The queen in this hive seems incredible to me.  She has solid brood patters across almost every single frame.  This hive will sure need the room in that second box!

Lots of brood

Even more brood

I never get tired of seeing new bees being born and emerging from their cells.  This inspection was no disappointment when we spotted 3 drones being born at the same time!

Welcome to the hive boys

After Byron had pulled 8 frames I thought for sure I was going to strikeout in showing him the queen.  But when we pulled frame 9 there she was!

Smile Queeny!

After watching her run around for a bit, we completed the inspection and closed up the box.

All in all, both hives are doing well and it was a great evening for an inspection.  Next inspection I will hopefully see that the queens have moved up into the second box and started laying eggs there.  I'm also planning on creating one or two nucleus hives and buying a "northern" queens to put in them.  At worst, this will allow me to have some backup hives in case one of the hives fails.  At best they will become fully established hives with better genetics for surviving these horrible Michigan winters!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

First Inspection of the year : 2014-06-01

Twenty one days since I installed my two packages and I finally opened the hives up to take a look.  I should have done so much sooner but it sure seems like everything needs to be done all at the same time during the late spring.  It is always exciting to dive in and see what the girls have decided to do inside the hive despite the guidance the beekeeper has given them!  Bees don't read beekeeping books to figure out what they are suppose to do  =)

Green Hive:

The one nice thing about the inspections early in the year is that there aren't as many bees as there are during summer.  It makes it much easier to pull frames and move things around when there aren't bees covering everything.  You also don't need to use as much smoke since a few puffs can easily get most of the bees to move.  I was able to pull the first three frames quickly since the bees hadn't even touched them.  They are foundationless frames, so they are completely empty and the bees haven't thought about drawing out new comb on them yet.  I reached frame 4 and I could see the beginning of the honey and pollen storage. 

First inspection of Green Hive

Frame 5 had more pollen and honey and frame 6 was the first brood frame.  Interesting pattern on this frame with bits of pollen scattered among the brood cells.  About a third of the frame (on the right side of the photo) was all drone brood.

Brood frame

A little spotty so far but not something I'm too concerned about at this point.  It can be common in new queens.  I'm happy the queen is raising brood and she is fertile enough to have worker brood.  Next frame over was almost identical with drone on one side and worker brood on the other.  I spotted a queen cup but it was empty.  It is not uncommon to see queen cups.  The bees like to make them just in case they need them.  Frame 8 had some new, white comb drawn by the bees and they were starting to bridge it over into the next frame.  This is one of the struggles of letting the bees build their own comb.  They don't always build it in perfectly straight sections.  I cut some of the comb out and mashed some more together to try and make it straight.  I also swapped frame 9 with 8 in the hopes that they would make the small amount of comb there straight.  The last frame was empty. 

I did not spot the queen and I didn't specifically see any eggs but they seem to be going along pretty well.  As long as I see some new larva during my next inspection, I'll know the queen is still there.

So, besides doing my first inspection on Green Hive, I was also ready to deploy my Smart Hive Arduino system I have been working on.  It was a bit of a pain to run the one sensor through the inner cover without having someone to hold it but I was able to position it between frame 5 and 6.  Now I can only hope the bees don't chew through the wire insulation or decide to build bridge comb all around it and make a mess.  The second sensor goes out the side vent hole to measure the outside temp and humidity.  The third sensor rests near the Arduino in the vent board.

Arduino deployment

I'm looking forward to posting the first data points in my next blog entry!!

White Hive:

 The frames in the White Hive are fully drawn out plastic Honey Super Cell frames.  They fit much tighter in the box than the wooden frames in Green Hive do.  I have a "J-Hook" hive tool and it really helps to pull that first frame out.  A few bees danced across the frame I removed and I began to pull the second frame out.  For some reason, I did a mental double take and picked the first frame back off the ground where I had set it.  My eyes popped open when I realize there was the queen!!!  Running around on the frame with only a handful of other bees there!  Very unusual since the queen usually has a group of bees around her taking care of her needs at all time.  I quickly picked the frame up and hovered it back over the middle of the hive until I saw her walk off the frame and back down into the box.  That could have been bad if she had walked off into the grass or dirt somewhere!

The next two frames were empty like the first but on frame 4 I found the first scattering of brood.

Drone comb on plastic frames

On the bottom of this frame you can see that the bees decided to build some comb off of the bottom of the plastic frame.  Since the bees cannot enlarge the plastic cells, they have to build spots of comb with cells large enough for the queen to lay drones in. The next frame had a little brood on it and some nice colored pollen in the upper cells........plus the queen I almost squashed earlier!

Hi queenie!

Can you spot the queen the frame?  Starting from the middle bottom, about a third of the way up, just a bit to the right of center she sits in all her glory.  I pulled the next frame and was pleased to see it was solid brood!  A really nice pattern with very few cells still empty.  To my surprise, the next two frames were packed with brood too!  Wow!!  This queen is really a good egg layer.  I pulled frame 9 and it looked almost entirely empty until I held it up with the sun at my back.  When the light revealed the bottom of the cells, they were filled with tiny eggs.  This hive is going to be booming in a short period of time with this queen!

It is looking like a nice start to the 2014 beekeeping season.  The first new bees should start hatching any day now so the currently diminishing population of bees will make a nice turn the other direction building up to the hive's peak population in the summer.

Until the next inspection report, thanks for reading!

Hive Inspection: 08-21-2012

TBH:

Let us all bow our heads in silent prayer as we fondly remember the Top Bar Hive.  It was a good hive, filled with the expectant hope of new life and a bountiful harvest.  Alas, it twas not to be.  Let us not focus on how it died, but on how it lived.  <end sermon>

Well, as you can surmise, the TBH is kaput.  Deceased.  Passed on.  Gone to join the choir invisible.  Pushin up the Daisies.  It is an EX-TBH.  Sorry, bad mimicry of Monty Python's dead parrot sketch.  Anyway, I'm not 100% certain on the prelude to its demise, but something happened to weaken the hive and that allowed a bunch of wasps of various sorts to raid the hive, killing most of the defenders and the queen.

So, lets look on the bright siiiiide of life <whistle>:

• The bees were "free", since they were won at the Spring MBA conference.
• They added to the learning experience of the beekeepers
• I was able to purchase and apply a disease test kit for both American Foulbrood and European Foulbrood which both came up negative  <whew!>
• Since the bees will no longer be needing their honey, it was liberated

Opening the Foulbrood test kit

Removing a dead bee larvae

Test results.  If a line shows under the "T" it is postitive

Green Hive:

Thankfully, this hive is still going bonkers.  The bees have only barely started to draw out the wax on the second honey super I added, so at this point in the year I won't be expecting to harvest anything from this super.  Anything the bees store here before Winter, they will keep.

The first honey super I placed on this hive has almost every frame 80-90% of glorious honey capped!!  I was ecstatic to see this!  I have heard that you don't often get a harvest during your first year but it appears I will at least get a little bit from this hive!  Not really sure how much honey to expect from one super but I ordered two cases (12 each) of 9oz glass Hex Jars.  I guess if I fill them all I can always use Mason jars or some other container.

Lots of capped honey

I have also been surprised at the vast amounts of propolis the bees on this hive seem to make.  I guess I'm not familiar with the different varieties of honey bees, but the ones I have seem to make a lot!

Lots of sticky propolis

White Hive:

I am still surprised at how hot it can get in a bee suit even when the temperature is "only" in the 70s.  Since at this point in my inspection I had sweated off most of my body weight, I made this one quick.  My friend Keith was also helping me and I'm sure he appreciated the expedited inspection.  I pulled a few frames finding the first still empty of comb, but the next two were increasingly built up.  Frame 9 had about 50% comb and Frame 8 had about 80% and Frame 7 had about 95%.......and the Queen!  I've gotten fairly decent at spotting her finally!  Can you see her in the photo?

White Queen

After a short debate we decided we might as well add a honey super.  I don't really expect them to do much with it at this point in the year so any honey they store will be for the bees to eat over the Winter.

Wow, I can't believe we are hitting September at the end of this week.  Fall is quickly approaching, as is the close of my first year of beekeeping.  What a ride!

As always, thanks for reading...

07-10-2012: Triple Disaster Strikes

After having pretty decent success for a first time beekeeper, I have finally run into problems.  Lots of problems.  Maybe even major problems.  Ugh.

Top Bar Hive:

My friend Keith and I opened up the Top Bar Hive (TBH) and noticed that the bees really hadn't built up any more comb in almost four weeks.  From the outside they seemed fine but on the inside was a different story.  After looking at the first few combs things seemed good.  There were honey and pollen stores and the bees moved calmly over the combs.  Then I started noticing this (see the red circles)

Lots of dead larva.  Black larva.  Very spotty brood.  Lots of empty cells that appeared to have no eggs in them.  Perforated cell cappings.  Not good.  Well, maybe since it has been VERY hot lately, it has caused a lot of the brood to die and the workers are still in the process of clearing the dead out??  Lets look at the next frame

More of the same.  A few healthy looking larva here and there but more of the same evidence as before.  I am a little familiar with some of the brood diseases but now I really need to know what is going on.  American Foulbrood?  European Foulbrood?  Sacbrood?  Or just me overreacting?  Crud.  Anyone have any experience with this?

The last sign of bad news on this hive was when I checked top bar #1, the one closest to the entrance.  Notice anything?

Count the number of drones on this comb.  Holy smokes you almost can't see any workers!!!  Is that because most of the drones like to hang our near the entrance?  By the way, we did spot the queen on comb #2, so maybe they just like to be near her too?  Sure seems like a TON of drones.  So if having some brood disease wasn't enough, now I have a drone laying queen or even a laying worker???  Awesome.

White Hive:

This hive has been running behind Green Hive for a while now.  But as of late, it has appeared that the population was catching up (at least from the outside).  So, upon opening the hive I was happy to see many bees covering all the frames

As I mentioned, I had been worried about the progress of this hive since it seemed way behind the Green hive and during the last inspection I had found the last four frames completely empty.  Thankfully this was not the case this time.  I inspected each frame finding nice stores of pollen, honey and nectar.

I was not expecting this monster frame of almost SOLID honey!  I should have known just from the weight of the frame and I pulled it out.  You wouldn't think it would be so heavy but when you are trying to lift it by the two small tabs at the end and trying not to squish any bees, these frames can really pack on the pounds!  Now that the bees were covering all the frames, I added the second box.  I took two frames of brood from the lower box and moved them up into the new box and replaced those frames with new foundationless frames.  Of course this wouldn't be a "Triple Disaster" if I didn't find another problem!  There was a bit of brood comb built onto the bottom of these frames and to make them fit into the new box I had to remove the comb.  It was a bit gross as I scraped it off with my hive tool and a whitish liquid ran out (sorry baby bees).  Since I now had a piece of comb where all the brood would die, I decided to open the comb to see what was in there (in the name of science of course).  Well, this is what I found

If you look closely, I have circled in red two small brownish red dots.  Those are the now infamous Varroa mites.   GRRRRRR!  I have heard that "everyone" now has Varroa mites in their hives but I held the false hope that mine would not be among them!  Now I have to track down my recent issue of "American Bee Journal" and re-read the article about doing powdered sugar shakes on the bees.  This is a technique that does two things: The powdered sugar loosens the mite's grip on the bees causing them to fall off and in the process of the mite falling off, you can count them to see how bad the infestation is.  Guess I'll be planning on doing that in the near future.  LAME!

Green Hive:

If two issues weren't bad enough, here comes number three!

Two weeks ago I was excited to add the second box to this hive.  It was bursting with bees and there was always a lot of activity at the entrance.  Last time I checked, there was no new comb built on the empty frames.  I was kicking myself for not bringing up a few existing brood frames into the new box to encourage the bees to expand there.  Well, two more weeks have gone bone and now it looks like they are making some progress.  You can see the comb, right?  The dripping honey from the ruptured cells is just one of the casualties of an inspection.  One frame out, lets check the rest...

What the heck is this?!?!?  Holy smokes they decided the build the comb PERPENDICULAR to the frames!!!  No!  You can see in this photo there are two frames side by side and the comb is bridging from one over to the next.  Nicely wrapped around my support wires of course.  AHHH!  Seriously, what am I suppose to do with this now?  To my surprise, the bees have almost filled the entire box in two weeks!  Should I go in like King Kong and just destroy all the comb simply so I can have straight comb??  I guess this is one of the dangers of using foundationless frames.

Well, at least there is one frame in here that is "mostly" straight.  Good grief.  After my hands were running with honey and being flustered after my findings in the other two hives, I just gave up and decided to just close up the box.  At this point the bees were just going nuts from all the honey being all over the place.  Funny thing is that in the mad rush of pulling these frames and putting them back in, I don't recall seeing any brood in these frames.  I think they were solid nectar/honey.  So, would you just let me "bee" and just chalk it up to experience?  Or would you rip it all out, brush the bees off and make them start all over again?

Sigh.  Anyway, with so much honey in this box and the bees having built on almost all the new frames, I decided to put a honey super on.  Thankfully it has FOUNDATION in the frames!

Thanks again for reading and please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about the issues I'm having!

Second Hive Inspection: 05-22-2012

B+33 Days and counting...


Weather Report:
65 degrees, sunny with a slight breeze

As the hives are now well past the 21 days it takes for a newly laid egg to develop into a new bee, I am expecting to see quite a bit of population build up during this inspection.  Up until recently, the population would have been slowly decreasing as the original bees that came in the packages were dying off, either of old age or other causes.  Assuming that my queens are laying a lot of eggs, I hope to see more worker bees.

Inspection Report:
White Hive:

I popped open the lid of the white hive after giving it a few puffs of smoke and I noticed that I really needed to pry the lid up.  The bees have been collecting propolis and applying it liberally!  Propolis is a resinous substance that bees collect from the sap of various types of trees.  They typically use it as a type of "bee glue".  If they find a crack anywhere in the hive they can seal it up with propolis.  It also has antibacterial properties and helps to keep the inside of the hive sterile.  In some cases, the bees can even use it to cage up unwanted pests in the hive.  If you look around the outside edges of the hive box, you can see the yellowish, waxy, sticky propolis.

As I began to inspect the frames, I also had to make more of an effort to pry them apart as they had also been stuck together.  The bees are currently covering about four out of ten frames.  I spotted lots of capped honey, pollen and brood.  I was hoping to see more bees in this hive and more capped brood but maybe the queen is still a bit skeptical laying eggs in these plastic frames.

Speaking of the queen, I spotted her!  After no luck seeing her during the last inspection, here she is in all her glory!  Can you spot her in this picture?  She has a long golden abdomen in the upper third of this photo and slightly to the left of center.  It can be a bit of a challenge spotting her (especially since she is not marked).  I'm guessing it will be even more difficult in the future as more and more bees are added to the hive.


Having seen everything I wanted to, I closed up the hive and removed the empty feeder jar.  I think at this point there should be enough natural nectar sources that they no longer need any supplemental feeding.

Green Hive:
This hive is coming along nicely and the bees have built up partial combs on six of the ten frames.

 I'm pleased with their progress and I am especially happy that there appears to be a much more uniform brood pattern on these frames.  As you can see in this photo, they have drawn out about 60% of the frame and it is almost entirely covered in sealed brood.  There are only a few open cells, either where the support wire is or where a bee has already hatched.  Even in the hatched cells the queen has already laid a new egg there!

In this photo you can really see the difference in the area where the bees have already hatched. 

The comb is a darker amber color instead of the golden color of new wax.  The comb will actually continue to darken over time as more and more generations of bees are raised inside those cells.  With each new bee born, it leaves behind a microscopic layer of the cocoon it spun while inside the cell.  The remaining capped brood near the hatched cells will no doubt be hatching in the next few days.

Continuing the inspection, I found two frames that had been connected by comb the bees decided to build between the two frames.

 As I pried them apart, the comb was torn open exposing all the honey that had been stored there.  The bees rapidly formed up along the new trough of honey and began gobbling it up!  They certainly wasted no time in recovering what they had worked so hard to store up!  Thankfully, I noticed this right away and I didn't flip this frame upside down.  Otherwise I would have been covered in honey and the bees would have been all over me  =)

Inspecting the last few frames I was treated to another gift.......the Green Queen has been spotted!

A bit easier to see her in this photo since I am pointing her out.  Looks like she has her head buried into an empty cell to see if she can lay an egg in there.  You can also see in many of the surrounding cells, some mature larva that look like they will be capped any day now.  My gut feeling is that the Green Queen is doing much better than the Black Queen.  The next few weeks should really be telling, especially if the population of Green Hive explodes while the White Hive only slowly increases or stays the same.

As with the White Hive, I completed the inspection and removed the empty feeder jar.

In closing, I was very happy to have spotted both queens.  Both hives appear to be doing well and as I often tell people, "I haven't managed to kill them all yet".

Thanks again for reading, and I'll leave you with this AWESOME picture that my wife took from one of the frames in Green Hive.  It has already become the desktop background on my computer.  I don't know how she captured the light and geometry so perfectly, but she really did a great job.  You can also witness a new bee chewing her way out of her cell here (just to the right of the center of the photo).  This photo really shows the miracle of God's creation!

I've Been Framed!

Since deciding which bee suit/veil combination was such as dramatic struggle for me, it wouldn't be possible that making all the equipment decisions would be any easier!  Fortunately or not, I have already read three books on beekeeping (Beekeeping for Dummies, Complete Idiots Guide to Beekeeping and The Beekeepers Bible) and turning what I've read into a concrete action is a big deal.  Each book has a different philosophy and approach to what kind of boxes to use (all mediums or mediums and deeps), what style of hive (Langstroth, Top Bar, etc) and frames (plastic foundation, foundationless, Honey Super Cell).  So after much consternation I decided what approach to use and ordered all my equipment, minus one Langstroth style hive that my son-in-law built for my birthday.  Despite some reading to the contrary, I decided to use two deeps for brood and then mediums for all the honey supers.  I also decided that I like the idea of a more "natural" approach and I will be using some Honey Super Cell (HSC) frames to start my packages on and have foundationless frames for the rest.  Well, who knew how expensive HSC frames would be?  I planned on starting with two hives in the spring but at $6.25 per frame, that is $125 for 20 frames!!  Shipping cost is not included either!  I had read similar reactions on other blogs so I am going with a half way approach.  I bought 10 frames of HSC and I will put my packages on 5 frames in each box.  I'll make some follower boards for the extra space in the 10 frame boxes.  Once the queen is using the all HSC frames to lay in, I will slowly introduce my foundationless frames.  After the first generation of bees is born they should all be regressed and they can build whatever cell size they want on the foundationless frames.  We'll see if theory turns into reality.

Speaking of frames, I have enjoyed assembling them so far.  I really want to build all my own boxes but the detail in the frame pieces (not to mention the quantity of them) made me steer clear of attempting to make those myself.  Here is my first effort at frame assembly

and wiring....

It has been a long time since High School wood shop, but I managed to assemble eight frames so far and I still have all my original fingers!