Backyard Apiary

This winter is off to a bad start.

Sadly, I discovered today that two of the three hives in my backyard have failed. One was my strongest hive, Hegemone, going in to winter with nearly two medium boxes full of honey. There were 2-3 dead bees total on the frames, lots of capped brood, no honey stores, lots of pollen, and no signs of major bee die off. It is very odd and very sad. My guess is that the numbers were too high for the early cold weather. The light activity at the entrance that I saw at random times was most likely foragers from other hives.

The other dead hive was my top bar hive. A dozen or so dead bees on the bottom of the hive, no stores, with capped brood and plenty of pollen. The few frames at the entrance of the hive had what appears to be a bacteria/fungal infection that looks like it is eating away the comb. I wasn't confident that the hive would make it through winter, but the rotted wax is unexpected. Due to the infection, the box is most likely headed to a fire pit. I took pictures and bagged a frame or two to pass along to the state inspectors to see if they can shed more light about what it is and what happened. I also bagged sections from hegemone that contained brood.

The third hive in the backyard is strong and feisty. I lifted the outer cover to check for signs of life and they almost immediately took to the air to let me know I wasn't welcome. I refilled their entrance feeder and also gave them another jar above the inner cover to make sure they have access to syrup at all times. Due to the failed sister hives, this hive will be pampered throughout the winter to help ensure it is strong enough to breed queens and make splits next spring.

This is a good trend that has been taking place over the past few years. Are there any businesses in your area that are keeping their own hives to enhance their core business?

Hotels get into beekeeping business

— Thanksgiving dinner guests at Carmel Valley Ranch can expect the Central California resort to serve a honey of a meal.

It would be nice if all honey was inspected on the way in to the country. The illegal honey from China and a few other asian countries makes it difficult for US beekeepers to make a living and it subjects US consumers to a disturbing amount of antibiotics and chemicals.

The only way to be sure that what you are buying is actually honey, buy local. Most farmer’s markets have local honey available. Prices vary, but the flavor will be much richer than the imitation “honey”.

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey. Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins. by Andrew Schneider | Nov 07, 2011. More than three-fourths of the honey sold in US grocery stores isn…

The combination of a busy schedule and a heat wave (over 100 F) has kept me away from the garden hives for much longer than I wanted. I made it out there this past weekend expecting the worst, but the hives were all quite strong. Immediately upon parking the truck in front of the hives I could see lots of activity at all of the entrances.

Both langstroth hives had a limited amount of capped honey and the extended heat wave prevented them from being able to fully draw out all of the frames in their topmost box. They’ll most likely need to be fed at least a little bit to prevent them from reducing their stored honey even more during this hot weather. I quickly found signs of laying queen in both hives. I stopped the inspection on the middle hive after finding a frame full of eggs on both sides. This frame was found after looking at a frame full of capped brood. That hive has a really good queen.

The long hive is doing well, despite a poor hive design. I managed to snap a picture of the queen despite only inspecting a total of five frames from the hive. I noticed some tiny wax moths living on the tray beneath the mesh. There was also a dozen small hive beetles being corralled behind the follower board. I caused a jail break when I moved the follower board. I made amends by crushing all of them. Seriously, why do bees not kill the beetles or at least bite off their legs.

Long hive beetles really like to hide in the grooved bottom portion of frames. As soon as I find a frame manufacturer that sells solid bottomed frames, I’ll buy from them. Frames are not cost effective for a hobbyist to make. It might be feasible to buy frames and make the bottom piece myself since those can be batched out quickly with a table saw and router.

There are a few significant flaws that have led me to the conclusion that the next time I visit the garden, I will most likely move the frames in to a vertical hive. Here’s a short list of some of the more significant flaws.

Pests can hide between the mesh bottom and the bottom tray, but the bees cannot easily get down there

I could increase the space between the mesh and the tray to allow bees to easily climb down there. This would require completely rebuilding the rails and I’m not sure it would help. Small hive beetles and wax moth can easily move through the mesh to escape the pursing bees, but the bees have to exit the hive and hike from one of the ends. Increasing the space would allow more and larger pests to get down there.

The bees propolised the tray in place

Bees put propolis over almost any crack they can. The only way to prevent this would be to use a non wood tray to see if they don’t propolise it. Or to slide the tray frequently to prevent them from sticking it in place.

The single piece top is too heavy and bulky

I could make multiple top pieces, but that means more tie down straps to keep the wind from blowing them off and that provides a crack for rain to get in to the hive.

It’s almost impossible to replace the front inner cover without crushing bees

The bees enter the hive from the top and crawl to the inner cover opening. The outer cover is propped up in the front to allow the bees to enter anywhere on the front third of the hive. Whenever I remove the front inner cover, the bees pour out and a traffic jam starts to happen at the front edge of the hive. Any attempts to move the bees is a futile effort because scurry up from the frames and scouts continue to return home. I could possibly drill entrance holes in the front of the hive in the hope that they use those instead. That would at least reduce some of the returning bee traffic, but still doesn’t solve the problem of trying to place down a piece of wood that has four very large crush zones. The normal trick of turning the inner cover in to place can only work if I also remove the middle inner cover.

Moving frames is a pain

One of the management strategies for a long hive will require me to move the honey frames towards one end of the hive and the brood nest to the other. This needs to be done before winter because the bees will only migrate through the hive in a single direction. If there happens to be a few honey frames in the front of the hive, I need to move about 20 frames to get them positioned in to the back. The way I have been inspecting the hive has been to start in the back and deal with the jailed beetles and check their stores. I then skip to the middle to find the edge of the brood nest to make sure the queen is laying. I could switch to starting at the front and working my way back. This would mean I would pull aside the honey frames and adjust everything to the front and then add the honey frames to the back. This doesn’t work if I need to then move a frame forward.

I finally managed to check on the hives again today after way too long of a lapse. Both splits that I made from the super queen are no more. The 10 frame hive was failing during the last check and it had completely failed and wax moths moved in. The split in the double nuc seems to have lost their queen and the population dropped drastically. There were multiple eggs in cells, so there is a chance of a laying worker. I moved the hive and shook out all of the bees to let them find a new home in one of the other hives. The swarm pulled from my neighbor’s pine tree is doing well. It’s built up from a tiny hive to a weak hive. I’ll give it a few frames of capped brood on my next trip out to the hives.

The top bar hive is doing amazingly well. They’ve drawn out almost every frame. They haven’t drawn any past the east side of the entrance space. I merged the ~6 frames in and moved the entrance space to be in frame positions 2 & 3. The entrance frames were not drawn out straight because of the gap and I don’t want to give the bees a chance to mess up any more. I checked every frame and they are still attaching honey comb to the sides, but no attachments at the bottom. It helps to scrape the wall next to the frame to make sure nothing is connected before pulling the frame. Every frame has capped honey at the top and brood in the center, except the last 2.5 frames on the west end of the hive. Those are honey frames with the larger cell sizes and no brood. Unfortunately, there is only space for 2 more frames. Hindsight, I should have moved most of the frames to the very end of the hive instead of spacing them in the ~20 frame brood nest. I guess they’ll just have to start back filling.

I pulled three frames of capped honey (~4 quarts) from Hegemone and the super hive. Hegemone has many more frames of mostly capped honey that should be ready for harvest soon. The long hive at the garden should have ~10 frames of capped honey for me to harvest.

My asparagus is blooming and the bees seem to love it. There were honey bees, bumble bees and another blue-ish native bee.

It seems that a researcher in Switzerland found that signals from cell phones might have a negative effect on a hive and deserves more extensive studies. The researcher theorizes that the electromagnetic fields cause the foragers and older bees to not return to the hive. Read the article.

Seems that the article/”research” has been debunked as lacking proper sources and validity.

It’s probably a good thing I never got around to installing the wireless temperature and humidity sensors in to the hives. If I ever finish building them, I’ll need to conduct my own experiment by not installing them in every hive.

I inspected the caught swarm, the nuc, the split and the top bar hive. I ended the day with two stings; one to my left palm while holding a frame to take a picture and the other in my left thigh after a bee from Hegemone crawled up my pants.

The caught swarm is still very weak, but is alive. I’m viewing this hive as a banked queen more than anything else. It still has many months to get strong enough to try and survive the winter, but unlike the weak hive experiment from last winter I’ll scuttle the hive before wax moths get a chance to destroy the comb.

The nuc hive most likely has a laying worker. Many eggs were laid in the cells and I couldn’t find a queen despite looking very intently. There are a few ways of dealing with a laying worker hive (Bush Bees, Laying Workers). I have plenty of hives for my needs and the nuc hive is weak, so I will most likely just shake out the bees and end the hive.

The split is also weak, but the queen is looking plumper than I remember. I plan on feeding this hive frames of brood from Hegemone and the bought queen hive to keep those hives from swarming.

The top bar hive is doing amazingly well. They’ve drawn out most of the bars I merged in to the brood nest during the last inspection. There were 3-4 frames of solid capped brood and a few more with a mix of eggs, larvae and uncapped brood. I went through each frame and removed a few attachments that the bees made to the sides. The next TBH and top bars I make will have the guide further from the edges. This might help reduce the attachments because they only seem to attach the honey comb toward the top of the hive. There were 1-2 frames with a small attachments at the bottom. After doing a better job of leveling the hive during my last inspection, all of the comb is now perfectly straight. Glad I fixed that when I did because the comb hardens with age and wouldn’t have corrected itself as easily.

Black widow spider wrapping a bee in teh front of a hive at the community garden

I inspected the garden hives this past weekend and there was a giant black widow spider that set up shop under the leftmost hive. I tried cruising it’d with a stick, but it fled under the hive and I wasn’t going to go chasing after it.

The other weak hive that overwintered at the garden is no more. The hive was queenless and the population was only a few hundred bees. The hive was too weak to save and wax moths had started to move in. I shook out all of the bees and have begun the process of cycling frames through the freeze to kill off the moth eggs, larvae and worms. I can only fit 3 frames at a time and have left the others out in the yard for the bees to clean up. The tulip poplar is blooming so the bees are only visiting the free meal on days that it rains.

The long hive at the garden is doing really well. Many frames of capped brood!

There was a carpenter bee burrowing in to the side of a box. The box walls are only 3/4″ thick, but apparently that is more than enough room for a carpenter bee to make a home. After I chased it out, I plugged the hole with sticks. That really won’t do much besides slow it down a little bit, but hopefully that’s a good enough measure until I can permanently plug it.

The backyard hives are doing well. The nuc split had three frames with capped queen cells. I gave one to the mostly drone hive and another to the hive I captured from my neighbor’s tree. Now there is no doubt that every hive in the yard has or will have a queen.

The foul weather on the 29th has the bees in a really unpleasant mood. While standing about 15′ in front of the hives, a bee cited me for loitering and stung me right next to my eye. I’ve been stung a fair number of times as a beekeeper (two in a week) and I must say that this is one of the most unpleasant places to get stung. I took some allergy medicine in an effort to prevent swelling.

I moved the captured hive in to the yard and the bees seem to like their new home. They were festooning on a single frame instead of the wax attached to the pine needles. I checked the tree where I caught the bees and there was a tiny cluster of the stragglers.

The top bar hive bees are booming! They’ve already drawn out two bars of wax and started working on a few more. I cleaned out the scrap pieces of wax at the bottom.

One of the splits has a capped queen cell. The other split is mostly emerged drones and I didn’t see any queen cells. The split needs to be merged with a viable hive or given eggs so the can raise their own queen. I got a good picture of a few drones almost completely emerged.