Backyard Apiary

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.

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 did a quick outside inspection of the beeyard. The split I made to prevent a fall swarm was all but dead. The hive’s top was a piece of plywood, which warped enough to open most of one side. In the entrance to that opening, I saw a wax moth cocoon. To get a better idea, I quickly propped the top open about an inch and saw many more cocoons and dozens of wax moths squirming around. I suited up and started to rip through the hive. It was a complete loss. All of the drawn frames have extensive damage from the moths and there was no sign of a laying queen.

The have wasn’t very strong during my previous inspections and that is the main reason it couldn’t handle wax the moths. The hive only had about 10 frames of drawn comb, but was in two medium boxes with the intention of letting them expand from feeding. They were also in the process of replacing a queen. The missed brood cycles, the extra large opening in the top and a pollen patty to feed the wax moths are to blame. It’s also possible that the hive was robbed out because it had a frame feeder and a population that cannot defend from the stronger hives.

I disassembled the hive and shook out all of the bees. I stomped as many cocoons and larvae as I could before standing up all of the equipment away from the hives. The local birds should get a nice snack in the morning. Over the weekend I’ll need to scrape all the equipment clean and then put them in the freezer to make sure any eggs I missed are killed.

The nuc on the top bar hive was the other hive I gave a pollen patty, so I did a quick check to make sure they were not suffering the same fate. I opened the top of the hive and it was overflowing with bees. I looked down the top bar  opening and there were no signs of wax moth. The hive has very small entrances and a good sized population. Unfortunately, it looks as if they have not drawn out any of the top bars. I think I’ll need to move them in to 10 frame equipment or quickly build a long hive.