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!

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!

Mite Sampling: 09-10-2013

I hate to even talk about this because just the thought of mites sucking the blood (hemolymph) out of my bees and perhaps transferring diseases to them pisses me off!!  But the Varroa Mite, is now an integral part of any beekeeper's management and there is no escaping their impact.  So, what to do?  I long ago decided I want no antibiotics or chemicals in my hives, so those kind of treatments are out.  This leaves me with various IPM (Integrated Pest Management) techniques to use.  Before you use any of those techniques, you need to determine what kind of mite load your hive is currently dealing with.  Of course, there are numerous ways of doing mite sampling and there is a great article here scientificbeekeeping.com about the different techniques and why you would or wouldn't use them.  I decided to start my sampling by doing the sticky board drop test.  It isn't perfect, but it is quick and easy and a good place to start!

Mite Drop Test:
All you do to perform this test is put a board with a sticky substance on it underneath a hive that has a screened bottom.  You leave this on for a few days and then take it off and count the mites.

I put some vegetable oil on the board (next time I'll use vaseline) and put the board under the hive for 48 hours and this is what I found:

What you end up seeing is a plastic sheet covered by bee debris.  The debris consists of pollen, dripped honey, dust, dirt, a bee leg or two and some mites.  This is one of the reason you don't leave the board on for too long....you can't spot the mites because of all the debris.

Here is a close up of the debris:

See any mites?  The big chunks of pollen are pretty easy to spot but telling the difference between a piece of dirt and a mite is a bit more difficult.  Here are the mites:

If you look very closely you can see the legs sticking out from their body.  Once you get a feel for the size, shape and color, they become easier to spot.

Counting the mites, I ended up with a total of 21.  Divide that by the number of days and you get just over 10 dropped per day.  There doesn't seem to be any rule set in stone that says "if you have this many then you need to do this", so right now this will be a baseline number that I use as a comparison.  I believe this is a relatively "low" number for this time of year, but I will plan on doing more tests in the future.  It is easy enough to clean off the board and put it back on the hive for a few days.

I would like to try the powdered sugar jar sampling method in the future.  That sounds interesting, you don't end up killing the bees, and you end up with a bunch of powdered sugar covered ghost bees walking around your hive for a while!!

Until next time, thanks for reading and I hope my mite numbers go down!

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!