Friday, May 27, 2016

May 27th Inspection


Another great inspection today, folks! The girls were much better behaved today. We used less smoke and it wasn't so cloudy. This is a pic of them gathering underneath the feeder in the inner cover hole. I will generally blow a tiny bit of smoke in that spot so they will go back inside the hive. Some chose to stay on the inner cover when it was taken off, and that's okay.

Victoria was elusive again, but it was clear that brood production has slowed as they have not built up the wax combs to hold more babies. They will be getting more productive this week as the newer bees will be old enough to start producing wax. I have a feeling by next week they will be building wax comb like crazy! They have filled out 5 frames at this point with the outer frames just getting started. 


I thought you'd enjoy a couple closeups from inside the hive. This is a worker. I love how furry they are! A big difference between bees and wasps. Wasps have smooth bodies.


This is a drone in the center. Check out his big eyes! They are bigger bodied and have bigger eyes. It's like they have aviator shades on! 

When I opened the hive, I noticed some wonky comb being built. It was built above the foundation of the frame and bees were working underneath the comb. It wasn't a good fit and it was affecting the shape of the comb in the frame next to it. It had to come out.  Have a look:




You can see that they stored a bunch of the sugar water in the cells and were not giving the queen much room to lay her eggs. Egg production has definitely slowed to a crawl.

We moved into Tim's hives next. He had a great frame with an awesome laying pattern happening from his overwintered queen! He was pretty happy with the looks of this frame.


Can't say that I blame him! It looks great. We added a honey super to one of his hives plus added a brood box to another. It was a very productive day in the bee yard.

Until next time, bee kind 🐝

Friday, May 20, 2016

May 20th Inspection

Happy Friday, everyone! 


I found this pretty girl working hard while I was walking dogs earlier. Isn't she awesome? 

Today was my third inspection on the hive. I opened the hive much more carefully today than last week. There was some burr comb again but I was ready for it! No crashing of frames, but I have to tell you, my girls were really cantankerous today. Totally cranky! They had a very unhappy buzz to them and one of them stung Tim right in the finger as he was pointing something out to me! She went right after him, it was crazy! Angry bees today!

The girls have slowed down wax building production a bit. They have built out about 5 frames of comb but I thought they would've been further along by now. After some post inspection discussion, we have determined that the package bees, my originals, are probably dying off at this point and the new girls, aren't old enough to do any of the building yet. That usually comes ten days after they're born. My guess is in about a week they will be back building comb like crazy. That will have given the new babies time to get their groove on.

Here's a little snippet of the view from the top of the frames with my angry girls.



You can definitely hear some angry buzzing going on in here today. There was no sunshine, so they could've been pissy about that. We also used some smoke on them and sometimes they don't like that either. I'll experiment with that a bit more next week. They've been pretty docile so far, but they can change since the queen is producing new bees. The new bees will be different than the bees that came in the package since Victoria is not their original momma. 

I found a queen cup in the middle of one of the frames. I'm not going to worry too much about them making a new queen since this one is still laying well. There were larvae a few days old at most so I'll just keep my eyes open for any changes. 

This is a queen cup. It's much different than a regular cell the queen lays egg in. It has to be bigger to hold a queen sized bee. 

Photo credit: romancingthebee.files.wordpress.com

All in all, I liked what I saw inside the hive. I wasn't happy they were so grumpy and I was especially unhappy that Tim got stung while trying to help me. Cranky girls! Hopefully next week they will be in a much better mood.

Until next time, bee kind. 🐝

Thursday, May 19, 2016

The Varroa Destructor Mite

Today, I went to Tim's to bring about 2 gallons of bee juice to feed all the hives for a couple weeks. My girls had drunk another quart, so I brought them another. They now have three quarts to drink for a little while. They are happy girls.

While I was there, Tim brought out a green frame of drone brood that had been fully capped. This is what they look like before the bees work on them:


These are used for IPM or Integrated Pest Management. You will insert this frame into the hive on the outermost edge inside.  Once the drone cells have been capped, you pull the frame out then can check for mites by pulling out the larvae. You can freeze the frame for 48 hours which will kill all of the mites, then you can put the frame back into the hive and the bees will take care of cleaning it up. There are other ways to check for mites, but today is about the green frame.

One of the biggest reasons of the honeybee decline, other than pesticides and illness, is the Varroa Destructor Mite. They are parasitic mites and suck the blood of honeybees infecting them with all kinds of diseases. They were not a problem for the honeybee until 1987 in the United States and it changed the way beekeepers have kept bees. Australia is the ONLY country/continent left in the world without the varroa mite. It's sadly just a matter of time before they invade there as well. They are nasty little creatures. They latch onto bees and rarely let go. 

Photo Credit: mecaibg.com
You can see them in this magnified picture. They are very tiny in real time though. They are hard to catch or see when you're looking at thousands of moving bees in the hive. If you compare it to humans, it would be like us walking around with a parasitic pancake on us. Like a gigantic mosquito sucking our blood! They are so gross. 

Here's a video of what we found after uncapping a drone.



If you look closely toward the end of the video, you can see a second varroa on the back leg of the larvae crawling around. 

The Varroa can give honeybees something called deformed wing virus. 

Photo Credit: http://sciblogs.co.nz
They can't fly and end up dying very quickly. If varroa take over and infect a colony of honeybees, they can wipe out the entire hive in less than two weeks. It's really really awful. It's so important for beekeepers to do pest management on a regular basis. 

The varroa prefer to jump into the cells of drone bees because they take longer to emerge from their cells. A Queen takes 16 days from egg to birth. A worker (female) bee takes 21 days from egg to birth. A drone (male) bee takes 24 days from egg to birth so the varroa have more time to procreate in those cells. Using the green frames will allow the queen to only produce the drone brood because the cell size is bigger. It can help entice the varroa to that frame which, if used timely, can help keep your mite counts in check and keep your honeybees healthy.

Until next time, bee kind. 🐝


Monday, May 16, 2016

Nucleus Boxes

Hi there! Today I wanted to show you a tiny video of another way to obtain a colony of bees. As you may remember, I bought a 3 pound package of bees, which is simply a screened box of 10,000 bees, also included is a sugar water can and a queen inside a cage. I brought them home via my backseat. Easy peasy.


Well, these are nucleus boxes of bees. 



As you can see, the bees are flying all around and acting like these boxes are their homes. Well, technically, they are, just temporary ones. I don't think I would've wanted all of those bees flying around in my back seat though!

What is the benefit of having nucs over packages? The biggest difference is your nuc (usually) has 5 frames of drawn out comb that doesn't need to be built. It's already been done. They have 2 or 3 frames of brood already in various stages of life, plus 2 or 3 frames of pollen and honey to feed them.  A package of bees is starting from scratch. If you've put new frames in a package hive, they need to build that comb and basically build their home from nothing. The nucs get a few weeks head start over the packages. Nutrition is very important in the early stage so you can get the workers in building and brood rearing modes. 

I found this awesome graphic that has a fun chronology of the bees stages of life. Check it out.


In the summer months, the honeybees usually only live about 5-6 weeks because they literally work themselves to death. They are so committed to their colony and will do everything to keep it growing strong and healthy. Gotta love that.

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Friday, May 13, 2016

Stuff Happens...

Howdy, folks! So sorry for the long stretch between posts. The weather hasn't been very good so I haven't been able to look inside my barbie dream house. Today's inspection was, in a word,  disastrous! There is a reason they tell you to work slowly and not rush things. 

To start I'm going to apologize for the lack of photos. Once you hear what happened, you'll understand.

Soooo, all was fine when I took off the hive cover and the two medium boxes that surround my feeder. It went downhill after that...

As you know, I have a feeder sitting on the inner cover. Instead of taking the feeder off first, I left it on the inner cover and decided to lift it off in one shot. Bad idea. The bees, without my knowing, had built some comb under the inner cover which is connected to the frames below it. Once I lifted the cover, it pulled up the frames it was attached to and bringing the bees up with them. The comb started to rip so the frames crashed back into the hive making the bees insanely angry. The frames landed all crooked so I couldn't put the inner cover back down. I had my mentor with me and he helped to get the feeder off the inner cover so I could put it down. Holy "this hive is so pissed off", Batman! They were everywhere and trying their best to show me just how pissed they were. Thankfully I was wearing my veil, gloves and suit. We used a little smoke too, which did seem to help.

We got the frames back in order and they started to settle down. They had bearded on the front of the hive (meaning they are all over the front of the hive so it looks like a big beard on a face)

photo credit bunnybeeonline.com
My biggest fear was Queen Victoria was in the lot of bees that were flying everywhere and falling onto the ground. There were SO MANY that came out of the hive when the frames fell. I looked at all of them and couldn't see her anywhere. I started checking the frames once we got them back into the hive. On the third frame, there she was in all her glory. YAY! It was the first time I'd seen her since the installation. She was still very busy and making great brood patterns on the brood frames. That was a huge relief. Because I had made them so angry, I was doing a fast check so I could close up the hive. I wanted to photograph her, but I will wait to do that next time. 

They were still drinking a ton of their bee juice. They were down to about 2 quarts so I will bring more for them this weekend. My mentor has now switched from regular sugar water, to the sugar, tea, thyme, essential oils infused bee juice. His bees started drinking it like crazy and were not drinking the regular sugar water very much at all. Hey, they know a good thing when they get it! 

I took the time to put the beetle blocker shim back on the hive. We took it off due to the placement of the queen on the paint stick during the installation. It was getting in the way. It'll start getting pretty warm in the next weeks so I don't want to give the small hive beetles any opportunity to get inside. They can get inside your hive and "slime" your hive with their larvae if they get out of control. This shim was created by Clark Taplin and has really done well for many beekeepers. I have high hopes for it. Here is a video about it below:



I got all of my frames back in order, saw my queen, and closed the hive up so they could get back to business. My mentor said it best when he said, "shit happens!" And boy did it ever today. At least I stayed calm and got the hive back together. My queen is safe and can get everyone back in line. We just needed to shave off the comb so hopefully this won't happen again. I'll be sure to be watchful next time I open the hive, though. I really hated stressing out my girls.

Here is a shot of the front of the hive after we were finished.


Most of the girls found their way back inside but a few stayed on the front porch for awhile. I can't say that I blame them. Some serious stuff was going on inside! Hopefully during the next inspection, my girls will remain calm and not be stressed out by my fumbling around. I knew I would be making mistakes and I definitely learned a big lesson today. That's good though, one less thing to repeat going forward. Right?

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Working Girls

Today wasn't a big day, but I went the hive to check on the girls' bee juice. I replaced two jars since they had all but finished their juice. They were so calm that I wondered if I should suit up or not. I was able to change out the jars in about a minute so I didn't suit up nor did I get stung. *whew* Honestly, they were unfazed by me being there. I made sure to approach the hive from the side. If you walk toward them from the front, you're walking into their flight path and that will make them a little angry. They will fly into you and you could definitely get stung that way, so bee careful.


I did see one of my girls working hard on a pear tree blossom. I can't verify if it was in fact one of MY girls, but her coloring is like our colony so I'm going to claim her. If you look closely on either side of her, her "pollen pants" are getting pretty full. She has yellowish pollen collecting in pouches on her rear legs. She will rub her legs together and mixed with nectar, the pollen will stick to the hairs on her rear legs. She will actually carry her weight in pollen before bringing it back to the hive. 
Just another thing that makes honeybees so dang cool. Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Our First Inspection!


Today is the day! I couldn't wait to poke my head inside the hive! It had been over a week since I had been able to check on them. You should generally give your queen a week or so after she's released to start making baby bees. And laying eggs she did! By the way, I have named her Queen Victoria as she was the longest reigning English queen in history. Here's hoping our Victoria has a long productive reign in our hive. 

My main objective in this inspection was to find Victoria or to find eggs. I did not see her, but I saw plenty of her handy work. When I opened the hive, I noticed some burr comb being built under the inner cover so I shaved it off with my hive tool. It had bright orange pollen pieces on it. Signs the foragers were busy bringing home the bacon.


Notice the upper right corner of the blade has the pollen on it. The bees will eat that wax and produce it for another time. Not to worry. They're very efficient.

I pulled out my first frame and noticed lots of comb being built. When I first installed the bees, I didn't have the frames at the proper spacing so they built some comb a little thicker in the spot at the bottom. I'm holding the frame upside down so I'm handling the top of the frame. They will work it out, though. Did I mention they were efficient?


Look at all of those happy girls working hard! They had filled some of the cells with nectar as this wasn't much of a brood frame. Moving through the frames, I pulled out a center frame hoping to find Victoria busy at work. Sadly, I didn't see her, BUT, she's been very busy this past week. I saw lots of eggs and larvae in many stages, plus some capped brood as well.


Here is a close up of some of the cells and bees. You can see the larvae in different stages of life!


Isn't that amazing?? Nurse bees are busy feeding them and making sure everything is in order before those cells are capped. I couldn't be happier with what I saw inside the hive. Seeing Victoria would've made my day but knowing she is inside and working hard to grow her colony will do just fine.

They had drunk nearly 3 quarts of the 4 quarts of syrup I gave them so I'll be making more "bee juice" for them. Friday will be in the 70's so I will bring new bee juice for them then. The next couple of days will be cold and rainy so I'll just let them bee 😉 See what I did there?

Oh! One of the coolest parts of my day was when I was helping Tim with his hives. I watched a baby drone emerge from his cell! It was the coolest thing ever! My gloves would not allow for my iPhone to work so I wasn't able to document that, but it truly was amazing to see! If I get lucky enough to see that while in my own hive, I'll be sure to get some pics or maybe even video.
Until next time, bee kind. 🐝

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Bringing Home Baby, err, Bees - Thousands of Bees

Ok, I've got a new obsession, read some books, watched some videos and have built my hive boxes, so what about my bees? This is the most exciting part! I've been given a pick-up date from the apiary where I ordered my bees. Holy crap, this is really happening! What do I need to do before I pick them up? The hive is built and it has been setup in the bee yard. What do I do with them once they're in the hive? Do I need to feed them or can they find flowers on their own? Well usually the answer is yes they can forage for flowers, however, it's still very early in Spring and my bees need to eat, but the nectar isn't flowing yet. What do they eat? Well, honey, of course, but sadly this is a brand new home with no honey combs yet. We will have to settle for some sugar syrup/water. Sugar syrup/water can be harsh on their midgut so a fellow beekeeper gave me a recipe that helps with that. You steep one cup of chamomile tea with thyme leaves then add it to 10 cups of sugar with 9 cups of water and some essential oils.
The chamomile tea raises the pH level of the sugar water bringing it closer to levels in honey and makes it easier on their midgut. Thyme leaves help with pests like varroa mites. You boil a cup of water to make the tea and while it steeps with the thyme leaves, finish the rest. You get the water just hot and not boiling, add sugar and stir until it's all liquified. Let it cool then add the tea, essential oils, and a pinch of sea salt. Ta Da! You have your spring (1:1 ratio of sugar to water) syrup.


The essential oils help with feeding them yes, but they also help with comb building, brood rearing and all around good nutrition for them. I put the syrup in four feeder jars and refrigerated them. The feeder jars have tiny holes in the cap so when they are upside down it acts like a vacuum and allows the bees to drink from them without drowning in a gallon of sweet water.


The jars go into a wooden shim like this:


The feeder goes directly on top of the inner cover, that way the bees can come up thru the inner cover and get their drink on.

Alright, the sugar is ready! Let's go get our bees!


Here they are! 10,000 amazing little creatures plus their new queen, all in my backseat! They had such a happy hum going that I didn't even turn on the radio. I just wanted to listen to them. 

Inside that vented box is a syrup can, so they can eat while they're being transported. The queen is in a cage which is allowing the bees to get used to her pheromone without harming her. This was not the queen in their original colony so they need to accept a new one. A few days to a week is about the time it takes for her to be released from her cage. 

So let's get them home! Here is a video of the installation. I do apologize for all of the butt shots!



Ok, so you crack open the box top, pull out the sugar can, pull out the queen cage, check to see if she's okay, then get everyone inside the hive, close up all the boxes and let them check out their new digs. It's a bunch of things all at once and it usually takes just a few minutes.

We placed the queen cage on a paint stick and taped it down. This way we could slide the stick out to check on her without disrupting the rest of the hive. It takes 3-5 days for the queen to be released. Released? What does that mean? Well there is a cork on either end of the queen cage. Behind one cork is the queen plus a few nursing bees taking care of her so do NOT pull that one unless you want her out. The other cork has candy on the other side of it. The candy, once exposed, will entice the bees in the hive to eat inward while the bees inside of the cage are eating their way out. Once the candy is gone, the queen and "her court" will be released into the hive, then the queen can get busy.

Here are a few shots of the bees checking out their new digs.


The little girl at the top and a few to the right are actually fanning their scent so the bees that are flying around know that this is their new home. It's like a scent beacon for them. So amazing to watch.


The lighter wood is an entrance reducer. When they are installed into a new place, it's good to give them a much smaller entrance for a few reasons. First and foremost, they don't have their home developed yet and aren't strong enough to defend a larger space. Secondly, the smaller the entrance keeps the queen scent stronger inside and finally, it will keep it a little warmer since it's still very chilly outside.


The girls kept crawling around and checking everything out. 


It was a fantastic day!


Here is a view of the feeder jars inside the hive. They are drinking happily from their new watering hole(s).


It took much restraint on my part not to check on them everyday. We installed on Friday the 22nd and by Tuesday the 26th, the queen was released! This is what the cage looks like now that everyone is out. Under the black tape is where the candy was located. It was nice not to see any dead girls left behind. Everyone survived and now they can get to work. The queen will start laying eggs in the comb that the workers have been building while she was inside. 

I don't know yet how much they have built but I'll know in a couple days. I had to wait a week to see how they're doing which means that this Tuesday I'm going in! I'll let you know how it goes!

Until next time, bee kind 🐝