Backyard Apiary

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 inspected all of the backyard hives on April 3rd and the long hive has a queen! The hive has been sustained and this new queen is an offspring from the purchased queen, which has been dubbed “super queen” because of her size and how much she lays. Antheia, Hegemone and super queen are expanding nicely. Hegemone had a few swarm cells on a few frames. As far as I could tell, the cells were empty. I added another box and swapped in several empty frames to help keep them from swarming.

The morning of April 8th, the long hive and Antheia were moved to the community garden. Both bee yards have a mix of genetics and at least two strong hives to help ensure any issues can be addressed easily. Both hives originally at the garden are weak and possibly caused by me leaving the top feeders filled for too long. Their queens didn’t have much room to lay because every cell was being filled with syrup. They’ll get more space and a brood boost soon. There were not many forages out when the hives were moved because it was early in the morning and a little chilly. I put a nuc about 15′ from where the long have sat. There were not the typical dozens of confused bees flying around trying to locate the hive. I found two bees in the nuc this evening and dropped them off at the entrance of Hegemone. Any forages from Antheia would have drifted to the super queen because her hive is now on the end.

Spider with a bee corpse

I mixed up a large batch of 2:1 (40 lbs sugar, 20 lbs water) syrup for my three hives at the Garner community garden. Next time I’ll need to do 50 lbs of sugar to completely fill all of the feeders. Two of the hives were small swarms. During the last inspection, they had barely started to fill their second box. Today’s inspection showed that all three hives were doing well. They all had drawn out more frames and the right most hive even had 4 frames of capped honey in the top box. I only had enough sugar to fill half the feeder for this hive. I feel strongly that this hive will survive the winter. It’s already has a decent amount of stores and a several frames of capped brood in the bottom box. The hive has a screened top with a spider “foraging” on the screen. I managed to get a picture of it dragging around a bee corpse.

The middle hive had me worried after first removing the inner cover. Just like last time, there were a few wax moth larvae and a small hive beetle crawling around in the empty feeder. This prompted a full inspection. I didn’t see any signs of either in the hive. I guess the bees ignore the pests in the feeder because it’s separated from the hive.

I’ll need to bring an inner cover and two trays to start closing up the hives for winter.

With the help of a friend, two hives have been moved to their new home at the Garner Grows Community Garden. Both hives were two medium boxes. The hive by the basket ball hoop (with the blue top) was light. That hive started as a small swarm and has not been building up quickly. The other hive I moved was the large swarm that moved itself in to the swarm trap on top of my shed. It was much heavier and a lot more active. Unfortunately, I think the hive will get a slight set back after losing a lot of foragers. Typically, you want to move hives at night when the bees are all at the hive or at least very early in the morning before they are out foraging. That’s not really practical for my desire to sleep. I moved the hives at 9am and it was already over 80F. The foragers will return to where their respective hives have sat for the past few months and be very confused. They will think they got lost on their trip home and retrace their steps. After they fail to find the hive a few times, they will begin to circle outwards from where they last remembered their hive and eventually find one of my other hives. If they ask nicely or return bearing gifts, the other hive should let them enter and they will have a new hive to call home.

It is not uncommon for bees to drift from one hive to another. Typically bees will drift to stronger hives or toward the hives at the end of a row. In nature, feral colonies will find a hollowed tree, a wall or some other covered space they can call their own. The modern beekeeping practices are designed to reduce costs and improve efficiency…for the beekeeper. The bees do not appreciate the fact that painting all boxes the same color costs less, or that using a consistent hive design allows the beekeeper to work his hives in less time. All the bees know is that when they fly home after foraging in the hot day’s sun, they return to a row of boxes that are the same color and approximately the same height. Hopefully when the bee returns to the second box on the right, it is their hive and the pesky beekeeper didn’t add another hive to the row messing with their orientation.