Backyard Apiary

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.

On Friday, I inspected the long hive to see if they raised their own queen. Drones are just starting to fly, so a virgin queen shouldn’t have to wait much longer to find a few mature mates. It’s been about three weeks since I added the two frames of brood to the long hive. There were signs of a few queen cells, where one emerged and the others were ripped open. No eggs or larvae in the hive, but the queen has only been going out on mating flights for about a week. All of my hives have capped drone cells now to help spread the genes.

I inspected all of the hives on Saturday and need to start my swarm prevention steps. To keep the long hive’s numbers up, two frames were moved from Antheia containing the full range of brood. Hegemone’s queen was laying in the top (3rd) box and all of the frames were fully drawn and being filled. A fourth box was checker boarded on top. Antheia will get her fourth box as soon as I finish rotating the cleat from the wedged frames to make it a foundationless guide.

I poured the last bit of the 2010 harvest in to a half gallon jar and a quart jar. It’s slightly crystallized, but still delicious.

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.

This weekend started off with making a split for the queen that was installed today. It’s good to make the split queenless 24 hours before introducing the new queen (in a cage). This makes them more willing to accept her. The split was created from 3 frames of capped brood (and bees) from Antheia and a frame of pollen and honey from Hegemone. I intentionally did not give the hive any eggs or larvae because I did not want them to try and raise their own queen. The split was a little small, but it will get a big boost in numbers when the brood emerges. All those empty cells give the queen plenty of space to lay.

The installed queen was purchased from <a href=”http://www.carolinabees.com/”>The Carolina Bee Company</a>, and she is a graft from a feral hive that was evicted from the roof of a school gymnasium after many years. Her genetics are a welcome addition to my apiary.

Hegemone appears to be queenless. There were no eggs or larvae, but a few empty supercedure cells. There was an uncapped queen cell with something in it, but I’m not sure if it was a live queen. Just to make sure the hive has everything it needs to survive, I gave it a frame of eggs from Antheia. This will ensure that they can raise start a new queen cell if needed.

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.

I had the privilege of sitting through the Born and Bred in NC workshop today. It was a good introduction to the biology of the queen and queen rearing using the Doolittle system. There was a lot of information shared during the workshop and I’m glad I recorded the Q&A session at the end.

I ordered a from Brushy Mtn. and a few other supplies needed to graft and raise my own queens. Grafting is extremely difficult. Imagine playing Operation, except you are trying to pick up something so small that you can barely see it without a magnifying glass and you are using a dentist pick instead of tweezers. If you touch the sides, you risk damaging the larvae.