She's Dead Jim - Autopsy of White Hive: 2014-03-31

Well, I pretty much knew White Hive had died but the weather here was finally nice enough for me to verify the sad news.  At almost 60 degrees, I trudged out to the hive with my wagon to see what exactly led to the demise of the hive.  The bees were flying between Christmas and New Year's and it was right after that when the first "Polar Vortex" hit Michigan with many consecutive days of below zero temps.  A week or so after that a second one hit and even after that the temps barely hovered above the zero mark.  Generally speaking, cold doesn't kill the bees but I think this must have been a bit too extreme for them. 

I began by taking the top box off and it was heavy!  Looking though the box frame by frame revealed solid frames of honey front and back.  A few small clusters of dead bees here and there but nothing out of the ordinary.  After looking at six frames, I finally found part of the main cluster on frame 7.  I couldn't believe that the bees never even really made it to the top box!!  The bees generally start at the bottom of the hive at the beginning of winter and gradually move up to the top of the hive eating the honey as they go.  With only part of the main cluster being in the top box, it seems that the bees never even made it far into winter.  That would confirm my thought that they had died in early January.

Part of the cluster

Looking at the bottom box, frame 1 and 2 had some honey on them but after that the frames were looking mostly empty.  This is probably the area that the bees clustered on at the start of winter and they had eaten all the honey there.  When I got to frame 6, I started to see most of the frame covered by dead bees and a large area of bee bread just outside their cluster.  Frame 7, 8 and 9 were completely covered by bees on both sides of the frame.  On top of that, almost every cell was occupied by a bee.  I was very surprised to find that many bees.  It seems to me like almost four solid frames of bees would have been plenty to generate enough heat to survive.  I brushed my hand through the lifeless bees and tried to find the queen but I didn't find her.  As I did this, I was also looking to see if there was any evidence of mite damage or disease.  I didn't see any deformed wings or k-wings.  I also didn't see any actual mites.  I did see a few brown streaks on one of the frames which could be evidence of Nosema.  My hive that survived last year had A LOT more streaks like that and they survived.  Ugh.

Finally I removed the bottom box and looked at the screened bottom board.  There was a 2 inch thick layer of dead bees there!  On top of that layer of bees were a few crumb lines.  These would be from the bees above them chewing through the wax cappings and the crumbs falling to the bottom of the hive.  This tells me that quite a few bees had died but the cluster remained alive for some time after that.

Dead bees on screened bottom board

It is always frustrating to loose your bees but even more so when there doesn't seem to be any apparent reason for their demise.  My only conclusion is that the cluster was fixed in place by very cold weather and they were unable to move to the honey surrounding them.  Since a small part of the cluster was in the top box, they may have simply been caught in the transition between the two boxes when the cold weather held them in place making them unable to reach more honey.

Well, I guess I have to look at the bright side.  Spring is right around the corner and I have two packages of bees on order due to arrive in May.  All the honey remaining in this hive will be put to good use in establishing two new hives!  Better luck for the upcoming winter too!

wax crumb line on dead bees

As always, thanks for reading!

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad: 2013-04-30

We have had really nice weather here in Michigan for about the last week.  It was a long time in coming but it is finally here.  So, of course, I was eager to get into the hive(s) and see what the girls are up to.  I had a few tasks left over from winter that I needed to attend to as well.  First off, removing and cleaning up my dead hive, Green Hive.  I began to disassemble Green Hive and quickly noted that the bees from White Hive were greedily robbing out all the remaining honey left over in Green Hive!  It didn't take them long to find an undefended honey source!  I pried each box apart and hauled them away from the bee yard.  I then applied a liberal amount of smoke to each box to try and drive the remaining bees out.  Finally, the last box was removed and only the bottom board remained with the deceased remnants of Green Hive gathered in a sad pile.

I scanned through the dead bees to see if I could find the queen and I did not see her.  I plan on going through all the frames from each box and decide if I will melt down the wax or keep them for later use.  Hopefully I will find what was left of the winter cluster somewhere in there.

The second task I needed to complete was the remove the extra sugar I had placed in White Hive as emergency winter feed.  I'm not sure they really ate much of it.  Anyway, I removed it and put some empty frames back in.  Now onto the inspection!

Typically the bees will start in the bottom boxes during the beginning of winter and gradually move up through the hive over the course of the winter, eating honey as they go.  So, come the spring, you expect to find them at the top of your hive and that is where they were.  I pulled the first frame and BAM, there was the queen!  I'd like to think my queen spotting abilities have improved but this time was way too easy.  She just visually jumped right out to me.  I could see that she was doing her job as the frame was fairly well covered in sealed brood, eggs and larvae.  The workers have also packed quite a lot of pollen along the top of this frame as well.

Brood Frame

I zoomed in a bit with the camera once I saw the larvae because I usually cannot spot eggs unless I'm looking at a photo.  The eggs are about the size of a grain of rice, so I don't think my vision is that bad yet.  Can you see the larvae of various ages tucked in their cells?  They look like little 'C' shaped grubs.

Larvae

Here is a slightly closer look with a lot of pollen packed in near the off to the lower right in the photo.  Pollen is very important in raising new bees so they keep it stored close!

Larvae with pollen

As I continued my inspection, I became concerned when I saw brown spots along the top and sides of some of the frames.  These brown spots are also referred to as bee poo  =)  Normally bees are very sanitary and never "go" inside the hive.  If they go inside the hive it can be the sign of a disease called "Nosema".  It is a spore that infects the gut of a bee and causes intestinal problems.  I've also read that it could be simply "bee dysentery" and could easily clear up on its own.  I will have to closely monitor this in the future.  I may decide to swap out some of these frames once all the brood has hatched out of them.

Nosema or bee dysentery?

 During an inspection you check for a few things:  Queen?  Check!  Eggs?  Check!  Open and Closed Brood?  Check!  Pollen?  Check!  Honey?  Check!  Things are looking pretty good.  The last thing I'm looking for are drones.  Spring time is also swarm time and usually the first drones are emerging at the same time.  I'm also planning on splitting this hive and you need drones in the air to mate with a new queen.  I did not spot any drones nor did I see any drone brood, so it looks like they might be a few weeks away yet.  I saw the first dandelion in the yard so I think a nectar flow is coming soon!

All in all I guess you take the good (they survived the winter) and you take the bad (maybe have Nosema), you take 'em both and there you have the facts of life.  Sorry.  Really bad but I couldn't resist!

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Hive Inspection: 01-12-2013

With another veritable heat wave (just above 50 degrees) here in Michigan back on January 12, I had to go and see how "my girls" were doing!  Doing an inspection would also give me a chance to try out my new "J-Hook" hive tool that I received as a Christmas gift.  Exciting stuff for a beekeeper that just sits around the house in the Winter wondering how cold his bees are  =)

Flash back to previous hive status reports and you'll see that Green Hive was going strong with plenty of stores (honey) and White Hive had much fewer bees and no stores other than the sugar feed I had placed in the hive and what I had stolen from Green Hive (1 frame of honey).  What I found when I opened the hives was not what I was expecting.

Green Hive:
I opened the lid and did not see any bees in the honey super.  Still lots of honey there with almost every frame full of capped honey or nectar.  Removed that box and proceeded to look at the top box.  Strange, no bees moving around and none flying.

Top Box with new hive tool

I pried the box off with my new hive tool and after cracking through a lot of propolis (I haven't removed this box is quite some time), I removed the top box and began to look at the bottom box.  Sitting on top of the frames was a small cluster of dead bees around some areas of dark "stuff".  After brushing off the dead bees and removing some burr comb, this is what it looked like.

I believe this is a sign of bee dysentery.  One possible cause of this is too much liquid in the bees diet when they don't have the ability (because of cold temps) to fly outside and "relieve" themselves.  Another possibility is a disease called Nosema.  During warmer temps you usually see signs of this by seeing brownish streaks on the outside front of the hive.  The bees have runny stools and aren't as in control as they normally would be.  I'm sure you all are fascinated by this talk of bee poo, but I guess it is an important symptom to pay attention to!

Anyway, I pried apart a number of these frames to find another small cluster of dead bees (golf ball size).  This is nothing to really be concerned about as you do expect to loose some bees during the Winter.  The next thing that concerned me was looking through the frames to find this:

I had no idea what these little white granules were sitting inside these honey cells.  Weird.  At first I thought maybe they were some sort of insect larvae (yuck).  Upon closer inspection I quickly dismissed that possibility.  Since they all appeared to be wet with nectar, I was hoping that perhaps it was just crystalized honey.  I posted this picture on some bee blogs and everyone was in agreement that this was just crystalized honey.  Whew!  I guess everything unexpected is enough to freak out a new beekeeper!

At this point I decided to put the box back together and right off this hive as a Winter kill for some unknown reason.  I put the heavy bottom box back on the stand (there is still a lot of stores in the boxes!), and I reached for the second box just in time to see that I was being observed...

A small cluster of bees with their heads peeking up at me!  Hmm, looks like they aren't dead after all.  Sadly, this cluster is still very small and at this point I do not hold out much hope that they will survive the Winter, despite all the honey still in the hive!  Since I did not break apart the frames in this box, I can hope that there were a lot more bees that just did not want to come up and say Hi.

White Hive:
As I opened this hive, I was expecting to see very little activity since this has been the weaker hive all season.  Upon removing the lid, I was met with two annoyed bees.  They loudly buzzed around my veil and continued to fly around me.  They were probably trying to tell me to shut the lid because it was still pretty flippin' cold out!  =)  I removed the inner cover to check on the top honey super that is holding four empty frames, one frame of honey and an empty space where I put down a bunch of sugar feed.  Here it is:

 

To my happy surprise there were a handful of bees merrily crawling over the pile of sugar.  Now that's good eats!  Looking down past the sugar into the box below, it looks like there is still some stored honey there as well.

 

Although I would like to have seen a bigger cluster of bees for this hive, I am pleased to see the amount of activity that this hive is showing.  As a little extra insurance policy, I decided to take a few of the honey frames from Green Hive and move them over into White Hive.  It is possible that I moved Green Hive's problem into White Hive by doing this but if White Hive starved to death from lack of honey, they would be equally as dead, so I decided to risk it.

All in all, it looks like I might still get one hive through the Winter.  At least another two months to go before we are close to Spring, so keep your fingers crossed!

As always, thanks for reading!