Backyard Apiary

I inspected the four main hives in the backyard apiary this morning. The split from Hegemone is replacing its queen. From the amount of capped drone cells, I’d say that the previous queen didn’t mate very well. There were a few capped and uncapped queen cells. They haven’t drawn out any more comb and their honey stores were looking a little empty. I removed two frames, one from each the top and bottom box and put the deep frame feeder. I ordered the wrong part from Brushy Moutain and ended up with a deep frame feeder instead of a medium. That should be enough food to keep them going and possibly encourage them to draw out a little bit more comb. I’m not sure if the hive will build up enough to survive a winter. I’m not sure if I’ll combine it with another hive or see if it can survive the winter.

Antheia is strong and doing well. The queen is laying in the bottom two boxes and the third box is mostly capped honey. As the strongest hive in the yard, I think that the hive has been getting most of the syrup from the communal feeding. Since all frames were fully drawn or mostly drawn, I gave the hive back it’s fourth box and pulled a frame of brood up from the second box. They already have plenty of stores for winter, so I’m hoping that they’ll draw more frames that can be given to other hives.

The split with the purchased queen is doing well. They still haven’t fully drawn the second box. I refilled the entrance feeder for the first time since the spring honey flow. The hive is strong enough that robbing shouldn’t be an issue.

Hegemone is doing well. I found some cocoons on the outside under the outer cover and on the bottom of the hive below the screened bottom. Could possibly be wax moth, but I’ll never know because I crushed them all. I saw a hornet snatch a bee off the top of the hive. My attempts to burn the hornet with the butane torch failed and it flew off.

I wanted to keep feeding the top bar hive without the flaws of using the screen. I bought a 2.75″ hole drill bit. This is the size needed for a regular mouth jar. It’s a very snug fit, so its best to either widen the hole with a file or use the drill to widen the hole a little bit.

I planned on inspecting most of the hives today, but ended up only opening the Nuc on a Top Bar Hive. I built the hive based upon the plans provided by Michael Bush. When using the hive in such a way that there is not a solid top to keep the rain out, it works fine as is. I wasn’t able to provide a solid roof to the hive because of the Nuc sitting on top of the front half of the hive. This wasn’t so bad, as the only entrances for water were the gaps between the first and second frames that served as the entrance to the hive.

The real problem was when I decided to feed the bees using an inverted jar. I took an entrance moving screen, laid it across the hive in place of a few top bars and then put the inverted jar on that. It gave easy access to the jar for the bees, but kept them behind the screen to allow me to refill the jar without crushing bees. There were a few issues with that. The bees kept climbing on to the top of the screen, which made it impossible to replace the jar without crushing bees and it provided a nice big opening for rain to get in to the hive. The inverted jar prevent the plywood from covering the screen. My original plan was to get a drill bit the size of the jar tops and use a piece of wood to prevent water from getting in. I never found the time to make that happen, so I cut corners.

End result was that all this rain that we’ve gotten in the past to weeks made its way in to the hive and had no place to go, so it just sat there. There was about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom of the hive with many dead bees floating in it. It smelled disgusting. I ran and got my drill with a 3/8″ bit to put a few drainage holes in to the hive.  I then spent the next 30-45 minutes scooping out the dead bees and using the hive tool as a squeegee. The cardboard follower had to be tossed and this explains why there was always a mass of bees on the screen. They were desperately trying to dry out the hive.

The main lesson to be learned from this is that you should always assume that water will find its way in to the hive and it needs a way to drain out.

A close up shot of eggs. They are the tiny white things in the cell that looks like a grain of rice.

I went through the hives to make sure the bees have plenty of food stockpiled. To my surprise, Hegemone had lots of swarm cells. All of the queen cells were uncapped and looked to be empty. They are just preparing to swarm. I think I caught it in time to do a preventative split. I removed 11 frames of brood, pollen and honey to start the new hive. Eggs are very difficult to see in ideal conditions. Many of the brood frames from Hegemone that were not completely capped had very dark comb, which is not ideal. I was able to see eggs (possibly larvae) when I looked at the frame in direct sunlight.

The extended period of 90+ degree days has kept me from being outside and building more equipment. I have everything I need to start a 5 frame NUC, but I don’t think pulling only 5 frames would have done much to prevent Hegemone from swarming. I am lacking 10 frame hive tops and bottoms, but luckily I had scraps of plywood to make due. I used the queen castle bottom, which has a small inch wide entrance on three sides, instead of a full width entrance on one. The three entrances are designed to give each of the 3-frame mating hives their own separate entrance. The top box of the split has one frame of capped brood and my last nine assembled frames. It’s time to endure the heat and get to work assembling frames. I also need to finish building the long hive and get that moved over to the Garner Grows Community Garden.

Hive count is at eight and I need to be more attentive to Hegemone in the next couple of weeks to make sure she doesn’t swarm. If the hive caps those queen cells, then I will probably make a few more splits that will be sold. The hive has sent out 3-4 swarms this year, so it’s not really surprising that they want to send out another.

I added a second hive body to the swarm hive by the raspberries and to the split with the purchased queen. The new queen’s hive was especially unfriendly today and netted me a sting on a finger. The bees were attacking the hive tool, headbutting my veil and encouraged me to put on gloves. Such are the joys of inspecting a hive in a dearth. I also think I kept the hives open too long and triggered a little bit of a robbing frenzy. All of the hives are strong, so I’m not worried but there will be a few more dead bees than usual in front of the hives.

I was curious to see if a dead bee could still sting and also wanted to boost my resistance to stings, so I stung myself on the hand. The answer is, yes a newly dead bee will still sting and pump venom.

I inspected the split today to see if they released the queen. When I opened up the hive, it was overflowing with bees. I had put 3 frames full of capped brood and half of them emerged. All those nurse bees easily accepted the only queen they’ve ever known. The nurse bees will not have much to do until the queen starts laying, which should happen in the next day or so. This should give them plenty of time to draw out new comb.

Hegemone's 3rd swarm up in the Red Bud tree

About 2 weeks ago, I contacted the state bee inspector and scheduled for him to check out my hives today. I wanted to make sure that they are good an healthy before distributing them to other locations. It’s a lot easier to keep tabs on a hive when it’s 100′ from my back door. He went through all of the hives, even the one on top of the shed. He noticed a drone with deformed wings, which could be sign of varroa. I need to keep an eye on that hive to make sure they don’t become a problem. Aside from that, all of the hives are doing well. The split and 3 swarms all have lots of eggs and are building out comb nicely.

I moved a few empty supers with frames near Hegemone and Antheia, so that I could add more if it looked like they needed the space. They were still drawing out the frames I initially checkerboarded in my feeble attempt to prevent swarming. As I was placing the boxes, Hegemone started to send out a swarm. It’s a good sign of strength for the hive, but our potential honey harvest has dropped to an even lower amount. We’ll definitely get a few frames, but we won’t get the obscene amount my wife wanted.

I have the equipment to make a single complete hive and that is slated for Chloris. While catching the 4th swarm of the year, I was introduced to Marc, a fellow beekeeper in the development, who lost both of his package bees over winter. I called Marc and got him to bring one of his empty hives and help catch the swarm. His reward for helping was I let him have the bees. This was the easiest swarm for me to catch, despite it being about 20′ off the ground. I bought a 14′ telescoping tree pruner, a painter’s pole, a 5 gallon bucket and the least expensive hand roller that could attach to the pole. I drilled a hole in the center of the bucket, threaded the pole through and then used the hand roller as a nut to hold it all together.

Marc held the bucket under the swarm and I used the tree pruner to remove extra limbs and then finally the branch holding the swarm. Most of the swarm fell nicely in to the bucket and stayed there until I the bees in to Marc’s hive. The entire process took less than 10.

I inspected the hives today with Dan as a helper. It’s good having a second set of hands and eyes when inspecting a hive. Both hives will swarm. Due to the weather keeping me from getting in to the hive earlier than the last inspection turns out to mean that I missed my opportunity to prevent a swarm. Antheia has over a dozen capped swarm cells and Hegemone has a few. It seems that I was too late with the checkerboarding and the queens ran out of space. This explains all of the drone comb in the top box. The queen must have been desperately looking for empty cells to lay and the only ones available were previously used for honey storage. I’ve read about queen piping, but never heard it myself. I had the opportunity to hear piping queens in Antheia. It’s an interesting sound and had I not read as much as I did about beekeeping, I wouldn’t have recognized the sound. The lesson from this is to keep reading as much as possible because you never know when you’ll find the information to be useful.

I had wanted to split Antheia during the previous inspection, but didn’t due to the questionable queen status. Since the hive is going to swarm, I chose to make a split using the queen cell that was capped last time. I took 1 frame of capped honey, the frame with the queen cell, 2 frames of capped brood and a foundationless frame that was only partially drawn. The hive will share the name of last year’s attempted split, Chloris. The queen cell was capped last week, so she should emerge in the next couple of days and will hopefully be laying before May 1. This hive is slated to be relocated to a friend’s property about a mile away.

I have no chance of preventing the swarm, so I’ve shifted my strategy to swarm catching. I placed two empty hives with swarm lures. One is placed on top of my shed and the other is located on a play structure. My hope is that when the hives do swarm that they take up residence in one of the provided boxes, or stay in my property long enough for me to get home and catch the swarm. If I manage to catch two swarms, then I’ll need to scramble and make more equipment to hold the two packages I will install on May 1.

I made it through today’s inspection without getting stung despite earning at least one. My bees must have phoned ahead to my friend’s hives in Wake Forest. I visited Dave and had the opportunity to see his hives that were moved on to his roof. While standing on the roof about 15′ from the hive, I got “tagged” in the ear. It took a few minutes before it hurt at all, then it turned red and is now comically swollen. He apologized and felt bad. As a beekeeper, I expect to get stung whenever I am near a hive.

For the past few days, the hives have started to beard. This is common as the temperature increases, but I noticed that Antheia had a little beard at 8am when I was getting ready for work. A clear sign that the hive was not too hot, but short on space. I opened up the hives today to give them more space. Every box was overflowing with bees. I would pull out a frame and the bees would just pour out behind the frame. It is really cool to look down between some of the frames and see a row of hundreds of little faces staring back at me.

Antheia had a single capped queen cell at the bottom corner of a frame and many empty swarm cells. Oddly, there were a few frames of nothing but capped drone cells. There was some uncapped brood, so she is still laying or at least was laying a few days ago. I can’t see eggs through the veil. Perhaps she didn’t have much space and laid the drones in honey cells. At least all the other hives in the surrounding area will get the chance to gain some good local genetics.

The queen did something odd. She jumped out of the hive. I saw her large dark body crawling around on the ground in front of the hive. I picked her up with the hive tool and put her on the top of the frames. I had to encourage her to stay in the hive by blocking her attempts to escape. She eventually went between the frames instead of off the edge. Hegemone’s queen was in the top box between 2 frames that were combed together. She contrasts her sister queen with a golden body. The hive had a good amount of capped drone, honey and pollen.

All frames in both of the hives were drawn. As I shifted frames of brood and honey up to the new super, I put a foundationless frame in its place. In less than 5 minutes, I noticed the bees festooning on one of the new frames I added. I will be surprised if they have many undrawn frames before the flow.

I’ve been using my droid to record inspections. It has turned out to be a very effective hands free way of keeping track of what I see. I am looking in to an easy way of posting the audio clips in case anyone cares to listen.

The temperature today reached the upper 60s and this might be the last chance to open up the hives until spring. Hopefully this winter is mild and has plenty of warm days in December that will let me feed the bees. The inspection of both hives was very quick. The bees were very calm and I didn’t need to smoke them, but the smoker was going strong just in case. Both hives had lots of activity at the entrance and the bees were bringing back an orange pollen. I’m not entirely sure what it is from, but I do have dandelions and camelias  blooming in my yard.

I only inspected the top box of each hive and only a few frames. I could see many frames of capped honey and was relieved to see that Hegemone is much stronger than I originally thought. A few weeks ago I was worried that the hive was weak because I could see any bees through the bottom screen. I placed a sheet of newspaper over about 2/3rds of the hive top and poured 1 lbs. of dry sugar. I moistened the sugar a little with a spray bottle and covered up the hives. I flipped the inner cover to give more space. I’m not entirely sure this was a good idea, but I’ll figure it out the next time I open the hives. I hope that they don’t build any bur comb up there or seal the inner cover to the outer cover with propolis. The top ventilation hole of the inner cover is blocked by the telescoping top. The sugar should add a bit more insulation to the top of the hive and will absorb moisture. I’m a bit of a pessimist and think that the bees will probably consume the dry sugar before the cold weather really sets in and then suffer moisture problems.

My wife and I plant lots of plants to attract beneficial insects and it seems to be working. Our inspection started with seeing a pair of assassin bugs mating.

I went through the hives today and things are looking good. Antheia has a queen, but no capped brood. I checked every frame, in both boxes, but couldn’t see any sign of a laying queen. I’m assuming there are eggs that I cannot see through my veil or she has been spending her time getting friendly with the local drones. I know about 3 other hives within a quarter mile, so she should have a good selection of drones for her mating. I don’t know why Antheia keeps replacing queens, but as long as the hive is still strong I don’t really care.

Hegemone is doing extremely well. The inspection stopped after looking at four frames in the second (top) hive box. All four frames were full of capped brood. There were two foundationless frames on the far side of the box that have not been drawn out yet, but I decided to give them another box and move one of the fully capped frames up to the third box. Three medium boxes is slightly larger surface area than two deep boxes, so the queen should be happy to have all this space.

Me sporting my UltraBreeze Jacket and holding a frame with an unmarked queen (on the back)

For the first time in my life, I opened a hive to do an inspection. A local beekeeper, Bob, was kind enough to let me join him for hive inspections. We opened a total of 5 hives. The first two were strong and doing well. Each was a single 10-frame deep.

Beekeeping Tip: Label all of your frames in a consistent fashion so that you can replace them in the same orientation. E.g. mark one end of each frame and make sure all of them in a hive box are along the same side.

The first had a queen marked with a red dot. The second hive’s queen was not marked. We found her on the 3rd frame and gave her a red dot. Each year Bob uses a different colored, water soluble  marker. Tagging all of his queens to a specific year lets him know the age of the queen and if a queen has been superseded. He lets the colonies decide when the queen needs to be replaced. Some beekeepers and books will state that you should replace your queen every year. From what I’ve read, queens will remain productive for several years. The only time I plan on purchasing a queen is if my hives face an emergency.

The third hive we opened was devoid of live. The bees had most likely froze to death. It was really sad to see a few workers who survived trying their best to remove the bodies of their dead sisters. We cleared out the hive of all bees (live and dead) before closing up the entrance. This was done to keep wax moths out of the hive while it is unoccupied. Hopefully the survivors join another colony.

The fourth hive consisted of a medium super on top of two deeps. This hive had a little bit of bee traffic at the entrance, but it turned out to be bees from other colonies. They were robbing out the honey and pollen. It seems that these bees froze to death also. The bees were covering the brood trying to keep it warm, instead of clustering to keep themselves warm.

The fifth and last hive was the same as the fourth. All of the bees died covering brood. After having the hive open for a few minutes, the stronger hives start to rob it. This hive had the most capped honey of the other hives we opened. Bob decided to leave it open to help feed the other colonies.