2015-10-25: Winter Prep

We've finally hit a few nights of freezing temps so that means it is time to complete any winter prep that needs to be done on the hives.  I have empty feeder jars that need to be removed, boxes with no stores in them that need to be taken off (the bees don't need a bunch of extra space that serves no purpose) and mouse guards to be placed on.  I also need to decide what to do with my newly established nuc hives.

Old Nucs - Yellow/Green hives:

These are the splits I made some time ago that were moved into full sized boxes last month.  They've been feed 2 quarts of syrup each in the hopes that they would draw the empty frames with wax and start filling them up.  If I found 10 good frames then I was thinking to take two nuc bodies (5 frames each) and stack them.  It is suppose to be easier for the bees to move up in the winter and it would be easier for the bees to cover 5 frames at a time instead of 10.

Yellow Nuc:

I had suspicions during the last inspection that I had waited too long to transfer this nuc to a full sized hive and they decided to swarm (I saw some torn open queen cells).  The bees seemed "flighty" and the only brood I saw were drones.  The number of drones walking around the frames was high, especially since they should all be kicked out of the hive by now!  I did spot some eggs and developing larva but something was telling me that this was not right. 

Drones, lava and eggs but no queen

So, either I have the start of laying workers or I have a queen laying all drones.  On top of that, the bees had not touched a single new frame that I had placed into the hive.  Stay tuned for more on the Yellow Nuc during my inspection of the Green Nuc....

Green Nuc:

I was a bit annoyed after pulling the first few frames since the bees had not touched them at all.  Thankfully the original 5 frames that were moved into the hive looked pretty good.  Lots of capped honey and worker brood!  Two more frames in and I spotted the queen with her pretty green dot. 

Queen with a pretty green dot

I was even nicely surprised that after I moved past these 5 frames the bees were actually drawing out one of the new frames! 

Drawing out a frame with new wax

Have I mentioned how I love festooning bees before?  =) 

Festooning bees

 Based on my findings between both nucs, I decided the one was probably queenless and had the start of laying workers and the other was queen right.  I thought it would be a good idea to take two 5 frame nuc boxes and stack them with the best frames from each hive.  I unscrewed the bottom from one of the nuc boxes and stacked it on top of another nuc box.  Crap!  They are not made to stack.  There was a large gap between the two that would be open to the air.  Ugh.  I guess I need to deal with the full sized boxes instead.  I decided to do a newspaper combine and thankfully I had one sheet of newspaper left!  I placed it across the top of Green nuc, picked up the Yellow nuc off of its bottom board and placed it on top of the Green nuc.  The bees will eventually chew through the paper and this slow integration will hopefully prevent any fighting between the bees before they merge together into one happy family.  I'm just hoping that there wasn't some drone laying queen that I didn't spot in the Yellow nuc that ends up battling with Green nuc's queen.

Newspaper combine complete

Where did that orange pollen come from?

Yellow Hive:

This is my cutout hive that has made some really good progress over the summer.  I removed the empty feeder jar and took a look through the top box.  The bees were covering about 6 frames and had most of them drawn out. 

Yellow Hive bees

Quite a few were filled with capped honey.  Looking down into the box below I saw lots of bees and some rubber bands still on the frames from the cutout!!  They typically chew through them and dispose of them but I'm guessing they've propolised them right onto the frames now.  I'll have to remove them during the first inspection in the Spring.

Green Hive:

The top honey super on this hive was filled with drawn combs that were completely empty.  I thought for sure that when I added them that the bees would fill them quickly with the Goldenrod flow.  No such luck.  I pulled this box off after clearing a few stray bees off the frames.  I pulled a few frames from the next honey super and at least there was some capped honey there.  Looks like that box will stay on for the Winter.

White Hive:

Looking at the top honey super on this hive I could see that it was packed.  I knew this from my last inspection but I had also seen a large pile of dead bees in front of the hive.  I was concerned that this hive had been robbed out by other bees.  Well not a single frame of honey appeared to be touched so this hive should have some great stores going into Winter.  It also had a nice population of bees and when I looked closely at the pile of dead bees I saw numerous dead yellow jackets in the pile.  Maybe they tried to raid the hive and picked the wrong one to screw with!

Battle aftermath

To complete my tasks I needed to put the mite sampling boards back into the hives that had screened bottoms to prevent any wind drafts blowing up from the bottom of the hives.  With that done I also wanted to put my mouse guards on but with the entrance reducers on it didn't really look like they would fit properly.  Based on http://www.honeybeesuite.com/what-size-hardware-cloth-is-best-for-beehives/ it looks like #4 hardware cloth is the proper size for a mouse guard.  So I think I'll grab some and use that instead.

I'm also considering getting or building some candy boards that come with a top entrance.  This would allow the bees to leave the hive for a cleansing flight during the Winter if the bottom entrance happened to be plugged up with dead bees.

With four hives going into Winter and some diversified genetics (one Italian, one cutout wild open mated and two "northern" queens), I'm hoping to have some better luck overwintering this year.  Wish for a mild Winter and wish the girls luck!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Fall Prep: 2014-09-24

During this latest visit to the bee hives, I set out to accomplish the stated goals at the end of the previous bee blog:

• Remove the honey from White Hive
• Perform a powdered sugar roll mite sampling
• Combine the two hives into one

With the help of my friend Keith, I was able to make it all happen in one evening.  You wouldn't think that you would open the hives up at 7 PM and a short time later you are loosing all the light because the sun is setting!  You sure don't worry about that during the summer when the sun doesn't set until well after 9:30 PM.

Step 1 - Remove the honey:  Since I have only ever had one hive that I need to remove honey from, I use a simple method of doing so.  Get an empty hive box and cover it with a damp cloth.  Remove a frame with honey on it.  Shake the frame with a sharp jerking motion until most of the bees are removed and brush the rest off.  Put the bee-free frame into the empty box and drape the damp cloth back over the box so bees don't get back onto the frames.  Someday if I have 5 hives all with multiple boxes of honey on them, then I may have to change my methodology.  Until then, this works just fine.

Step 2 - Perform mite sampling:  We live in a time when our European honey bees are plagued by an aptly named mite called Varroa Destructor.  This mite is a parasite of the Asian honey bee but was introduced here in the 1980's.  Our honey bees had no real resistance to them and they have been a huge problem ever since.  I won't treat my colonies with chemicals but it is a good idea to know if you have a really bad infestation of mites or not.  One of the methods of determining your mite level is called a powdered sugar roll.  First you take a jar with a mesh screened lid and get a 1/2 cup of bees in it (approximately 300 bees) from a brood frame.

Selecting a brood frame for mite sampling

Then you put the lid on and put some powdered sugar in the jar and then roll the sugar and bees around and around for a minute or two.

Where did this sugar blizzard come from?

The sugar causes the mites to loose their grip on the bees and they fall off.  You then shake the sugar out of the jar and the mites come with it.  Once you have shaken the sugar out, rolled the bees around some more and shaken it out again, you dump the disoriented bees back into the hive.  Their sisters are more than happy to groom the sugar off of them!  Since the sugar is white and the mites are red, it is very easy to spot them.  You spray a little water on the sugar and it quickly dissolves leaving you the mites and perhaps a few small pieces of debris.  Count the mites and you use the formula (mites / 3) * 2 = % infestation level.  You multiply the "mites per bee" number by 2 because you are assuming many more mites are in brood cells (University of Minnesota mite sampling method).

Stunned "ghost" bees poured back into the hive

For this exercise, I sampled one frame and had 4 mites.  So that gives me (4 / 3) * 2 = 2.67 % infestation level.  If you were really serious then you would do this to multiple brood frames in multiple boxes.  Or you would do this across multiple hives.  If your infestation level was high enough you would then decide to treat your hives or not.  A typical treatment threshold is somewhere around 10%.  For me, I just wanted to go through the exercise to really see how it was done.  I was also inspired by Bill over at the TheBeeVlog to get a digital microscope and take a closer look at the mites causing all these problems.  If you watch the video in that link, you will see some interesting detail on how they do the sampling.  Especially the little trick they use to get the bees in the jar.  It works!

Here are a few of the microscope photos of these nasty little buggers.

Varroa mite (top)

Varroa mite (bottom)

Mite with extended forelegs

So how would you like to carry one of these blood suckers around all day?  And you thought a Monday without coffee was rough??   =)

Step 3 - Combine the hives:  With Green Hive queenless and no hope of replacing her this late in the season, I did a "newspaper combine" of the two hives into one.  You just lay a sheet of newspaper over the top of one hive and stack the boxes from the other hive on top of the newspaper.  This allows the scents of one hive to mingle with the other before the bees are blended together.  This reduces or eliminates any fighting between the two colonies.

Newspaper combine of White and Green hives

Over the next few days the bees will chew through the sheet of newspaper and will be one big happy family ready to tough it out through the Winter.

This will be my last major beekeeping task for the year.  I did decide to buy some winter wraps and I will be putting them on the hive before the first "Polar Vortex" gets here.  I will also be placing a mouse guard on the entrance to prevent any unwanted residents during the Winter months.

As twilight descends on this inspection, it also descends on this beekeeping season.  I did not achieve most of my goals this year but I am hopeful that the bees will come through this Winter will flying colors.  I'm sure they will be eagerly awaiting Spring as much as I will be!

Until next time, thank you always for reading!