Hive Inspection 9/24/12

MAB & HELÉNA
68°F

Sunny 
Calm


Mab is having the same SHB problem as the other hives.  This has been the worst year for them since we began beekeeping.  It seems that each week or so we buy more beetle traps.  Next time we'll get a whole case.  Three traps per box should do it.  Mab has three boxes and a Slatted rack so i'd like to give her twelve traps.  I guarantee they will all have a bunch of beetles in them.

Other than that Mab is doing great.  She is back filling her top box with honey and moving the brood nest down.  Her population is good.  She even has a few Drone cells and walking drones.  Plus she's very calm and responds well to smoke.

I didn't go through all her boxes since i found the Queen on frame four in the middle box.   She looked as good as always.  Well attended by her court.  Brood patterns get spotty in Fall.  Her's shows that but still has nice consistency.

The bees have also done a great job waxing the interior of the hive.  Most of the equipment is new but has a good coat of wax.  The other colonies have never been this quick about it.

I'll inspect her again in two weeks or so.  For now i'll start feeding them syrup. This is what i wish all the colonies looked like.

Heléna as usual is doing her own thing apart from reason.  As mentioned the SHB are bad but inspecting her was the first time i had SHB crawling up into my veil.  That was as soon as i opened the hive up.  A poor start to things.

Her population is Fair.  I'd like to see more bees and she has a strong reputation as a bee maker (as opposed to honey).  Yet, there weren't enough bees to fill the slated rack which is usually full of bees.  The majority of bees were in the top box.  I assume the Queen was up there but never found her.  Did see fresh eggs though.  Odd there are less bees in her.  We had some very poor weather this Summer.  It may have set everyone back. 

The brood pattern was normal for this time of year.  More & more cells being back filled with nectar.  Less & less cells being filled with brood.  Some what spotty.  Sadly it looks like she has no interest in lowering her brood nest into the bottom boxes.  A reversal will fix that in a month or two. The brood looked healthy though and had plenty of eggs.

The burr comb didn't help either.  The biggest piece was above the top box where the top entrance is.  Not a surprise as the shim is more than half an inch in height.  However, the first three frames were one with the frames below them.  Had to clean that up just to put the frame back in the box. 

The bees here were much more defensive than in Mab.  Head butting quickly gave way to a stinging assault as i moved into the bottom box.  I spent more time smoking stings than inspecting frames.  NOT how things are supposed to work BUT with Heléna there is ALWAYS a chance of swarm cells somewhere in the hive.  Have to check each time.

She be fed for a few weeks along with the others.  Hopefully i'll find the Queen next time.

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Hive Inspection 10/17/11

NUC #5
Sunny
75°F

The only nuc i have left and the first one i have ever tried to take through Winter.  She is from a wild hive and may be Survivor bees.  They have about finished their one gallon of 2:1 syrup medicated with Fumagilin.  Since they are a nuc that's all they get.

Top Box DNB2: frames
1 - Backfill, honey, empty
2 - Mostly drawn, backfill, SHB (1)
3 - Mostly drawn, backfill
4 - Backfill, honey, SHB (1)
5 - Mostly drawn, honey, backfill

Bottom Box DNB1: frames
1 - Solid Honey
2 - Honey, backfill, brood, pollen
3 - Honey, backfill, brood (eggs) - QUEEN (marked)
4 - Honey, backfill, brood
5 - Honey, brood, pollen, backfill

Bees on all the frames of the bottom box

Population seems to only be fair.  I'd like to see more bees in here.  They have four frames with brood and that's a good thing.  Honey stores could be higher too.  There are a couple of feedings left so hopefully that will do it. 

Queen of Nuc #5 (Mab).  Sorry for the blurry pict

At least these bees know to move the brood nest to the bottom box.  I wont have to manually move them down like the others.  I will also need to insulate this nuc and get a HTF for warm weather feeding.

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Hive Inspection 10/15/2011

MARY & MYRINA
Sunny
67°F
Slight Breeze

Mid-October is the traditional time for final inspections before Winter.  Both colonies have received one gallon of 2:1 syrup medicated with Fumagilin.  The second gallon will be fed to them in the next day or two.

Starting with Mary.  Last inspection she had little brood and i never saw the queen.  After checking records I learned i have no record of seeing Mary at all this year. 

Top Box DHB2: frames
1 - Solid honey
2 - Solid honey
3 - Honey & brood (eggs)
4 - Honey & brood (eggs)
5 - Brood & honey (eggs) - QUEEN (unmarked!)
6 - Backfill & pollen
7 - Backfill & pollen
8 - Backfill & pollen
9 - Backfill & pollen
10 - Solid honey

Bottom Box DHB1: frames
1 - Honey & backfill
2 - Honey & backfill
3 - Honey, pollen, backfill
4 - Pollen, backfill, brood
5 - Pollen & backfill
6 - Backfill - most
7 - Pollen, backfill, honey - most
8 - Honey & backfill - most
9 - Honey - most
10 - Honey - most

Three weeks ago this colony had nine brood frames.  Now it has only four.  The brood frames it does have are beautiful with solid laying patterns.  Brood production always falls off at the end of the year.  Usually the Queen completely stops laying eggs around mid-December.  It may be that these bees have slowed down a little early but the last week has been cool and solid rain.  The nightly lows have also been in the high forties since the first of October.  Which might lessen the queen's urge to lay, maybe.  The population is good but not high.  I would have liked to see more bees in this colony.

Bees on every frame of the top box

 Long live the Queen.  We found her walking around frame #3 in the Top box; and she was unmarked to boot!  I thought this colony had requeened in Spring but i could not find anything in the records about it.  The last entry involving Queen Mary Actual was last year and stated she was marked blue.  So my record keeping needs some honing. This pretty Queen was treated to a quick marking with white paint and released.

2011's Queen Mary about to be marked

 The bees are nicely backfilling the brood nest.  One or two more feedings should top them off.  They are still up in the top box.  I hope they plan to move down to the bottom box soon.  Last year one of the colonies Wintered in the top box and did fine.

Backfilling the Brood nest

- - -   - - -   - - -

Myrina was a surprise.  Her population is in the tank.  SHB all over the place.  Only as much stores as so few bees can muster.  She couldn't even finish off her Fumagilin syrup before it crystallized.  What a mess.

Top Box DHB2: frames
1 - Backfill & fresh brood (eggs)
2 - Backfill, pollen, honey, brood
3 - Honey & backfill
4 - Honey, backfill, pollen
5 - Backfill, honey, SHB (10)
6 - 1/2 Backfilled
7 - empty
8 - Mostly backfilled
9 - Empty & SHB
10 - Mostly backfilled

Bottom Box DHB1: frames
1 - Pollen & backfill
2 - Brood, backfill, pollen - QUEEN (marked white)
3 - Backfill & pollen (dropped & placed in 4th position)
4 - Backfill & pollen (placed in 3rd position)
5 - Some pollen
6 - empty
7 - empty
8 - empty
9 - empty
10 - empty

Whoa!  Not at all what one wants to see at this time of year.  This is the first time since i got Myrina in 2008 that she isn't the strongest colony.  In fact she's a wreck.  I had to add two more SHB traps for now.

Choices are few but at least we have some.  To address her small population she will be broken down to a single Deep box.  A better fit there will help her deal with the cold Winter temps.  It will also help her control the Small Hive Beetles.  If her population is big enough i can add a Medium Honey Supper filled with honey.  Then they would be in great shape going into Winter.  I hope to do all of this tomorrow.  Plus I'll add a regular Bottom Board to replace the Screened one she has now. 

I could also combine the extra swarm into her.  That would boost the population but not by the amount she needs to stay in the Double Deep.  I'll have to think that over some more first.

For what it's Worth, there were no drone cells on any of the frames i saw today.  That's the first time that's happened going into this Winter.

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Hive Inspection 9/22/11

MARY
Mostly Cloudy
74°F
 
Mary doesn't seem to have any problems but it has been a while since she has been inspected.  Mary is one of two colonies i had going into 2011.  She produced honey and has not been combined with anyone.

Top Box DHB2: frames
1 - Solid honey
2 - Solid honey
3 - Good brood & honey ring, a few drone cells
4 - Good brood & honey ring, a few drone cells
5 - Eggs, brood & honey ring
6 - Brood & honey ring
7 - Brood & honey ring
8 - Empty brood & honey ring
9 - Back filling with Nectar
10 - Solid honey

Bottom Box DHB1: frames
1 - Mostly honey
2 - Mostly honey
3 - ½ Honey, ½ pollen
4 - Mostly empty, some brood & honey
5 - Some brood, pollen, honey
6 - Some eggs & brood, pollen, honey
7 - Pollen
8 - ½ honey
9 - Mostly honey
10 - Mostly honey

Her population seemed OK but not great.  I also counted 4 SHB's; all of which were killed.   Her stores need to be better.  Feeding should fix that.  Next month switches to 2:1 syrup from the 1:1 I'm using now.  More sugar and less water.  All the colonies will get Fumagilin next month too.

I didn't see the queen but there were fresh eggs.  I would like to see tons more eggs though.  For some reason this colony isn't producing much stores or brood.  We'll keep on eye on them.

The HTF was filled with ants again.  Not an issue but an annoyance.

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Hive Inspection 9/7/11

HELÉNA
Mostly Cloudy
80°F

It's the first time I've been in Heléna since the Combinations.  Her population is Very High.  There are bees everywhere.  I can't even see the frames through the bees.  The population going into winter is supposed to be as high as one can get it but i wonder if there are too many.  A swarm this late would leave too few bees in the hive.  Plus the swarm itself would never make it.

Both Heléna & Melissa have high populations from the combining.  Neither colony had drawn out a second Deep box.  The supplemental bees from the nucs only added ten frames into each big hive.  Which just equals another Deep box.  The two big hives should then only be the size of regularly seasoned hives.  However these two colonies seem to have more bees than anticipated.

Bottom box loaded with bees

On Melissa I added a undrawn Honey Super to give the bees a little more room.  She has now drawn out two frames and filled them.  She continues to draw more frames too.  I've been feeding them so the stores on these frames are the Adulterated stuff.  Which works great for me.  I'll take off the super when they go into Winter Cluster and feed it back to them come Spring.  Once the bees have emptied the frame they'll have more drawn Honey frames for next Summer.  So I'll put a Super on Heléna too since it seems to work.

We are in a Nectar dearth but pollen is plenty available.  The bees are sucking down the Syrup.  They'll take a gallon in a day.  When i looked into Heléna i saw no empty cells.  Either nectar or brood filled them all with a frame or two of pollen.  It concerns me that they may become honey bound inciting a swarm.  At some point the the queen begins to lay fewer eggs.  Those cells are then back filled with honey.

I did see nectar in brood areas.  Though, i don't know if the bees are back filling or they had nowhere else to store the syrup.  I plan to feed next week then hold off 'till October when I give them a Fumagilin treatment.  I'll be looking for a reduction of the brood nest.

Back to the inspection.

Top Box DHB2: frames
1 - Solid honey
2 - Solid honey
3 - Beautiful, solid capped brood
4 - Beautiful, solid uncapped brood
5 - Honey, Nectar, fresh brood
6 - Brood, honey, some back fill
7 - Brood, Drone cells, nectar, honey, back fill
8 - Brood, Drone cells, nectar, honey, back fill
9 - Back filling with Nectar & pollen
10 - Solid honey

Bottom Box DHB1: frames
1 - Not fully drawn nectar
2 - Mostly drawn honey
3 - Fully drawn nectar & honey
4 - Nectar & honey, some back filling
5 - Solid capped brood & Queen
6 - Solid capped brood & some honey
7 - Brood, Drone Cells, honey
8 - Pollen & honey, little brood
9 - Pollen, brood, little honey
10 - Solid pollen

Which gives them eleven frames of brood.  The colony looks to be doing well and is very strong.  Pests are at a minimum.  I did find a single SHB on the outside of the hive afterward.  It was dispatched.

We never used to see these here

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Hive Inspection 8/24/2011

MYRINA
Mostly Sunny
84°F

When feeding Myrina the other day I saw a Wax Moth & a SHB in her.  I wanted to see if she was in bad shape or not.

Not what you want to see but they did a great job a cleaning it!

The first thing i saw were bees in the HTF.  So there must be a hole in the screening in put in but i couldn't find it.  I'll make some more and scrap the ones in here soon.

DHB2: frames
1 - Filled with brood & eggs
2 - Brood, eggs, some stores.  Spotty pattern. Queen (marked)
3 - Brood, eggs, some stores
4 - Pollen & uncapped honey
5 - empty.  Starting to add honey
6 - Uncapped Honey
7 - empty
8 - Full of uncapped honey
9 - some Honey
10 - Full of uncapped honey

DHB1: frames
1 - 1/2 pollen
2 - Brood & eggs.  Spotty pattern
3 - Brood eggs, pollen
4 - light pollen & honey
5 - pollen
6 - empty. little honey
7 - empty
8 - empty
9 - Some honey (SHB x3)
10 - some uncapped honey

Her population is smaller than i like and her stores are light too.  She is, however, adding brood & stores at an acceptable speed.  Plus, this inspection includes the first feeding.  A spotty brood pattern is typical for Fall yet she has several frames filled with eggs.  Interesting to note that there didn't seem to be ANY Drone Cells.  Though I did see a few drones walking around.  Another check in a week or so will confirm the end of Summer drones.

Filthy Rotten Bug! - Small Hive Beetle

The presence of the SHB is troubling.  fortunately i only found three of them.  I added a beetle trap to help the bees out.  I might put more in later.  No Wax moth were present.

The Slatted Racks are a Big Hit with the Ladies!

There wasn't any bridge comb and the frames looked clean.  The bees were calm and moved off nicely from the smoke.  I'll keep an eye on this queen hoping she can belt out a bunch of brood soon.

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A Few Observations

Lately I've been going into the hives every other day or so checking for laying queens, comb drawing, etc.  The bees seem to be doing alright.  There are a few things i wanted to put into the record.

Mary's bees are closer to drawing out the honey comb in the super.  I had added 3 partially drawn out plasticell frames to spur her to draw out the rest.  I don't know if it was those or the main flow starting but some comb is now being drawn.

Drawing Foundationless Comb

Each frame has a small piece of Crimped-wire foundation stuck to the top bar.  You can see the wires in the above image.  I use that as the seed strip to guide the bees.  The strips also get sprayed with syrup.

The bees have begun to bring in nectar and store it up in the honey super.  Though the frames aren't fully drawn out yet.  The wax bees seem to keep just ahead of the field bees.

Uncured Honey

This is one of the plasticell frames.  After this season i hope to have enough foundationless honey frames around to chuck the last of these. 

In the Brood boxes there is some odd looking debris in some of the cells.  I think it's either bits of mold or maybe SHB droppings. 

Dirty looking stuff!?

There was a SHB in Duchess's hive last Fall when I did the combination with Mary.  Maybe there were some more that made it through Winter.  To check I put a Beetle trap in Mary's hive and filled it with Mineral Oil.  To my surprise the bees went nuts and ganged up on the trap.

Why are they doing this?

Was I supposed to use Vegetable Oil instead?  I'll ask the question in the Forum.  The bees cant physically reach the oil in the trap but it looks like they're trying.  They immediately clustered around the trap as i was adding the oil to it.  Perhaps it should go in any swarm traps I make.

Mary had one frame that was entirely drone comb.  It wasn't a Pierco frame either but a regular foundationless frame.  It's swarm season and bees need to make lots of drones this time of year.  The bees can change the drone cells to worker cells later when they're over the drone rut.  In the mean time Mary is stuck making tons of drones and Varroa.  To fix that I cut the comb out leaving and undrawn frame.

Ex-Drone Frame

I left a few rows at the top to guide the bees making the next comb.  Which hopefully will be worker comb.

The Nucs look good too.  2 of 3 are broodless but should have laying queens in them soon.  Their populations are good.  Especially Nuc3.

Nuc3 loaded with Bees

This Nuc may end up as a hive this year.  It started with 5 Medium frames filled with bees & brood.  Plus I added an extra 4 Deep frames fully drawn with pollen & honey.  These bees have done well and love to make comb.  If i add another Deep box they might just draw it out before Fall.  How well the new queen does at laying will decide.

To finish I want to post an image of a hatched Queen Cell being torn down by workers.  Most of the time these are gone before i get to see them.  This one is from Nuc2.

Old Queen Cell

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Combination & the End of Duchess

Last week Duchess seemed to be queenless: agitated bees, many torn down mid-frame queen cells, no brood, & i could not find the marked queen.  Today I went in her looking for either eggs or a virgin queen.  I found neither.  The only option I know of is to do a combination.

I read up on a simple newspaper combination.  You place a sheet of newspaper on top of the good hive and make a small slit in the newspaper.  Then you place one brood box from the weak hive on top of that.  In 24 hours the bees will have chewed through the paper.  This gives the colonies time to acclimate to each other.  Then they will all be 1 colony.

A beek must ensure that a weak colony's queen is pinched or a queenless colony is indeed queenless.  If 2 queens are present in a hive they may fight for dominance. If the better queen is killed by a poor queen the new colony my experience the same problems the weak hive experienced before the combination.  If the better queen is killed by a virgin queen then neither colony has an egg producing queen.  In summer I could get a queen from another beek.  This time of year there are no queens available.  Without a laying queen the colony will die because they can't make up their losses.  The cluster will shrink as bees naturally die.  Eventually the colony will have too few bees to produced the heat they need to survive the Winter.  They won't last long enough into Spring for me to requeen them when queens are available again in May.

 Getting ready to put Duchess on top of Mary

Duchess was combined with Mary.  Mary's performance since her own requeening has been great.  She is a strong colony with ample stores of pollen & honey.  I used Duchess's top Deep box which is full of honey.  Mary's top Deep is also full of honey.  These bees will have over 100 lbs of honey to get through Winter.  I left Mary's bottom Deep on.  So Mary is now a 3 Deep hive.  Duchess's screened bottom board, bottom Deep, & telescoping cover have all been retired.  Duchess's inner cover went on Mary.  Mary's hive top feeder and vent box were also removed.

Mary & Duchess Combined

After Duchess had been put on to Mary I had to dump in the rest of Duchess's bees that were still in her bottom and the quiet boxes.  That was easy but many took to the air.  In a combination no entrance hole is provided to the box on top.  So any flying bees need to sort things out on their own after everything is closed up.  That why you see a cluster of bees on the front of Mary above.  They are the remnants of Duchess figuring out what to do.  In the end they all went in Mary at her entrance.  I was able to watch them slowly craw in.  I wonder if that may be another sign that they were queenless.  Calmly walking into a queen right hive. It's called 'Drift' and it happens when hives are close to each other.  In this case the one hive is gone so the flying bees will drift into the next hive over. 

The newspaper will stay in for at least a week.  I will take it out after that on the next warm day.  After that I'd like to do an inspection on Mary to locate her marked queen.  If she can be found then i know the combination went well.  If not I'll need to watch her for symptom of queenlessness.  Which would mean i'd have lost 2 colonies.

To add to the stress I found my first instance of Small Hive Beetle (SHB) in Duchess as I was taking her apart.  I found a total of 4 on the pollen frames in the bottom box.  SHB are all bad and poop in the hive.  These either came with these bees from Georgia last Spring or from my neighbors hives who also came from Georgia last spring.  The same shipment of packages.

SHB in front of the bee

This poses a big problem since i just combined a SHB infested hive with Mary.  Which means Mary now has SHB.  Isn't that great! I love how this Winter is starting out...  I'll add beetle traps in the hive and read up on them.  As usual a strong colony of bees can manage a few beetles. 

The Bee Yard Now - Myrina & Mary

It's a shame to lose Duchess.  I still think i killed her queen during the last inspection.  It's something that happens so I'll need to be vigilant going forward.  Now I'm thinking about how many packages I'll want to order for next spring.  Or, maybe buy a couple Nucs locally.  I would like at least 2 more colonies next year.

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Inspection 5/15/10

2010 Hived Package (Duchess)
82 f
Partly Sunny


There have been reports of Small Hive Beetle in the packages that many of us received back in April.  My neighbor found one in her new hive and has since taken measures to control it.  I went into the new hive today looking to see if I could find any; hoping I wouldn't.  I went through each frame and didn't see any.  But I missed the Queen as well, and she's marked,  so I'll continue to watch for them.

The Hive top feeder was about at the empty mark.  What little was left had a thin crystallized cap on it.  I didn't get to it earlier this week due to a bout with the flu.  Nothing too bad, just enough to keep me inside.  I'll refill the HTF and monitor it better this time.

Only about a cup of syrup is left under a sheet of rock candy

The brood nest has grown at a modest rate.  3 undrawn frames remain while the rest are filled with brood, pollen, & honey. The first frames to have comb have a spotty brood pattern look to them.  The latter drawn frames have a more contiguous pattern.  I'm sure that's just an issue with cell availability at the beginning of the hive. 

Check the bur comb on the Drone frame

  Frames:

1. Undrawn
2. 1/2 drawn. Eggs, pollen, capped honey
3. Fully drawn. Mostly brood, lots of eggs and larva.  Pupae & Capped honey.  *Odd comb structure (the sheet not a cell)
4. Fully drawn. Eggs & pupae
5. Fully drawn. Eggs & mostly pupae. Some drone cells maybe.  hatching bees.
6. Fully drawn. Pupae, capped honey, pollen 
7. Done Frame - Fully drawn. Patch of pupae, some capped honey.  Mostly uncapped honey.
8. 1/4 drawn. Capped honey.
9. Undrawn
10. Undrawn

None of the frames had been propolised together.  Very clean throughout the hive.  The colony looks good.  It may be time for me to add the next Deep hive body.  
 

Frame 5 where the Queen cage was hung
 

Above you can see a spotty brood pattern in the middle of the frame.  That is where the Queen cage hung during installation.  After which the bees filled the hole with comb.  So that area lags behind the rest of the frame.  Currently it has eggs, pollen, & honey in it.
 

 Pierco Drone Frame

These frames would be great in Honey suppers.  They hold more honey because there is less wax.  The cell size is much bigger than the other frames to fit the larger size of the drone bees.  The queen can tell what kind of egg to place in a cell by feeling the size of a cell with her front legs.  Therefore all the eggs laid in this frame will become drones.  This frame is noticeably heavier than the other frames.  

Odd thing is that these bees like to bur comb the plastic.  This is the only frame to have bur comb both on the top and the bottom.  Maybe they don't like the plastic.  I know I'm liking it less & less in the brood chambers, meaning the plasticell & the Pierco drone frame.  At Dadant's the other day all I bought was crimped-wire wax foundation.  

Bur comb on the bottom of the Hive top feeder

Can you guess where the plastic drone frame was?  I'm not yet sold on the notion of using a drone frame to reduce to number of Varroa mites.  Yes it works, i'm sure, but I'd rather have a frame producing thousands of bees than drones & mites.  And since the frame is to be frozen before the drones hatch, to kill the mites, the frame really doesn't produce anything at all for the hive.  It may be that I will take them out for now.  In the event of a mite infestation I could put them back in then.  In the meantime I can be producing lots of bees.

A question of Supersedure came up during the last inspection.  I could not find and Queen cups of Supersedure cells.  However, I didn't find the marked Queen either.  There are lots of new eggs on the outer frames though.  So I don't know what to say.  An experienced beek told me her packaged bees may have superseded after only 22 days in the hive!  So both of us are interested in what these girls do.  Hopefully I'll find the queen next week.

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