New Colony - ROZINA

Today we hived that package into two ten-frame mediums.  These boxes were filled with the remnants of this Winter's Dead-outs.  These bees start off with a full box of honey & pollen along with a full box of drawn out and somewhat filled comb.  This gives them a huge start to the year.  I hope it translats into honey.

Newly hived Package

Since i'm practically starting over again all new hives will be mediums. This hive is made up of a;
Telescoping Cover
Hive Top Feeder
Medium
Medium
Slatted Rack
Screened Bottom Board (closed)

We are still having cool nights but come high Summer the hive will look like this;
Telescoping Cover
Inner Cover
Imrie Shim (top entrance)
Honey Super/s
Medium
Medium
Medium
Slatted Rack
Screened Bottom Board (open)

I might put an Imrie Shim between Honey Supers.  I've done it before but with inconclusive results.  The idea being an entrance per Super allows the bees to transfer the nectar faster thereby improving production.  We'll see how this year goes.

Anyway, back to the bees.  These girls were a calm bunch.  They didn't explode from the package nor did they fly around manically during the procedure.  They dropped in and spread out in the box. The only oddity was a few handfuls of bees walking away from the hive along the ground.  I've never seen it before.

The bees took to orienting immediately but went back in for the night soon after.  As always i hive bees late in the day to better keep them in the new location.  The next day they were back at it flying wide arcs in the apiary.  I went down later in the day but saw no pollen coming in yet.  They still need to find those sources.

The gallon of 1:1 syrup i gave them is half way down.  From what we can tell by the bees lack of interest in old left out honey frames and pots with sugar residue the Spring flow is on and quite strong.  The Maples are done but Dandelions are popping up everywhere.  This is great for the bees to have natural forage as apposed to pollen patties and syrup.  The best thing for a new colony.

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On a sad but not unexpected note; Mab is dead.  I broke down her equipment and tossed it into the freezer.  She had a laying queen and brood in February or so but something happened and now she's gone.  What a shame.

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Hard Winter

MAB & LITTLE MISS
58°F
Sunny
Calm

It is the beginning of March 2013 and out of my six hives only two remain.  The oldest of the remaining two (Mab) is queenless and dying off.  The other (The late 2012 swarm) has two and a half frames of brood and three plus frames of bees; a good population for a small Nuc.

Dying Mab to the left and strong Little Miss on the right

The rest of the hives died out during December and January.  Their populations weren't brooding up like they should have been last Fall.  They went into Winter with less vigor than required.  This Winter has been colder and longer than the last handful of Winters.  The bees took a beating.

I got real busy on other projects last July and left the bees to themselves.  They never looked bad and produced a good bit of honey.  However, a late Summer dearth lowered populations and shut down brooding around August.  This wasn't apparent (to the unobservant) 'till critically low populations were noticed in December.

As a stop gap measure the remaining two hives have been supplied with low wattage shop lamps to aid in heating the small clusters.  Mab, who is queenless, can be resurrected if her bees last long enough to make a queen for her.  About a month from now.  Might still lose her anyway.  We'll see.  The moment I see a drone anywhere around here we'll make queens.

Also, since so many hives are gone I have a pile of drawn frames stacked in the basement.  More than i ever intended to have.  Been watching for the Wax moth and have found only a few.  Two frames lost is all.  Freezer is pack with frames.  The rest are staked, post freezing, inside.

Any swarm i catch this year will be immediately put on 20 frames of drawn and mostly filled frames.  Lucky girls.

December Fly Day

December Hives

This is the first fly day this month.  The poor girls have been stuck in their hives since before Thanksgiving.  Today's temp was in the high 40's.  Not to warm but enough for the bees to break cluster & preform hive maintenance.  Cleansing flights and dead bee removal is all i could see.  I'm sure they were all getting into honey cells they couldn't reach before.

"Bring Out your Dead"

Under the entrance of each hive was good sized pile of bees; Winter attrition.  Mary was flying first with a good number of bees.  Myrina came out later with as many bees though.  I used a stick to pull out the dead bees  stuck in the entrances.  Myrina seemed to have more piled behind the reducer.  Can't tell if that is a sign of a problem or not.

Mary's Girls

The Sun coming out helped them the most.  We have a few more sunny days in the forecast so maybe they can fly again tomorrow.

Yellow Snow

As expected there was good sign of cleansing flights.  I say good because it didn't look like Nosema.  No great large stain in front of the hives.  Just tiny individual spots all around the yard.  If it were warmer they could get a little farther from the hives.  Which would be nice.  But its still cool so they're staying close.  Good thing the paint doesn't stain!

Myrina's Bees

I had to open the entrance a little more for Myrina's bees to get all the dead out.  I hope she's not going under.  We will see...

Here is a great detailed shot of a younger bee taking a stroll outside.

Bee on Myrina's hive

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New Brood Boxes

Yesterdays inspection showed that the New Colony (Duchess) needs an additional brood box.  Today I assembled the crimped-wire wax foundation frames and sprayed them with sugar syrup.  I finished painting 2 Deep Hive Bodies a day ago.  One is for the new hive and the other is for Mary.  I filled one with the frames and put in on the New Colony.  I used the smoker but didn't need it.  The bees were very calm.  The Hive top feeder was full, so that slowed things up a bit.  The 2010 package is now a Double-deep hive.  Moving right along.

I wanted to add-on to Mary today as well but couldn't.  I took her stored frames out of the freezer a few weeks ago to thaw.  Today when i opened the trash bag they were in I saw wax moths.  Dang it!  So i put them back in the freezer for a few days to kill them off.  I thought the trash bag would protect them but was wrong.  Oh well, lesson learned.

Mary's new DHB replaces an old DHB only; no new frames.  It will be filled with the established frames from the old DHB.  It was removed when Mary's population crashed last Winter.  She was reduced to a single DHB at the time.  The established frames are almost full, with honey & pollen.  Though there are some bare areas where I scraped the wax moth damage off.

I'll inspect Mary in a day or so when i can put the new box and frames on.  I expect to find the she has filled her current brood box.  If so it won't take long for her to fill the holes in the second brood box.  That being the case I could feasibly start adding honey supers to her if her population grows fast enough.  Her re-queening is still on schedule as soon as the breeder has them available. 

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Inspection 2/21/10

Mary & Myrina
54 f
Sunny

Really...it's 54 degrees. Really!

Mary-
She is in her last days unless I do something drastic. Even then she might not make it. Her end is at hand. Poor Mary, she never could figure things out.

Before i opened the top there were only a few girls flying around the hive. The first fly day since mid-January. One would expect there to be tons of bees taking cleansing flights. When the cover came off I saw hundreds of dead bees covering the sugar on the inner cover.

95% of these bees are dead

This sugar was put on the inner cover Jan 18th. It had hardened over from the moisture in the hive. The brown stain is bee waste. It could be Nosema but I'm not sure. When I cleaned out the entrance lots of dead bees fell out. Maybe it was clogged, so the girls had nowhere to go. I regularly clean the dead bees out the entrance. They are apparently dying faster than I am cleaning.

Nosema or clogged entrance?

This is the Vent box. Very messy. The Inner cover was stained just as bad. If you click on the image a larger image will open. There you can see where the girls chewed the styrofoam around the vent holes to make them bigger.

Now I got a good look at Mary's cluster. What a sad sight indeed. A couple of hundred bees is all that remains of Mary. Her cluster could fit in a two cup measuring cup. She can't possibly generate enough heat to survive these cold Winter months now. Egg laying should be starting soon if not already. Without sufficient heat to rear brood, let alone lay eggs, Queen Mary won't have a chance to replace the dead bees with new bees. She is over the edge. Past the point of no return.

The Last Stand

I pulled out all the frames to see what's going on. Four frames were light on stores so I replaced them with honey & pollen frames I had in waiting (The cleaned Wax moth frames from this post). The remaining frames had plenty of honey in them. Plenty of dead bees too. Two types of dead bee. The 'Starvation bee' & the 'Cold bee'.

Symmetry in death

The 'starvation' bees are tails out of the cells. They were inside the cluster when they died. The 'cold' bees died on the outside of the cluster where the temps were coldest. They were likely too cold to re-enter the cluster to feed. You can see the outline of the cluster at the time these 'cold' bees died. Oh, might I add a giant 'I Think" to the above hypothesis.

Also I found where Mary's girls were storing the sugar in one of the frames.

Sugar in cells

Notice how they put it in the brood area of the frame. Apparently beneath where they were clustering. Must have been done on a few warmer, but not fly, days. I replaced the hard messy sugar on top of the inner cover with fresh sugar. I hope it helps.

I've posted a question about their plight on the BeeMaster web forum. Lots of ideas there. I'll post what I do with sad, sad Mary.

Queen Mary nearing her end

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Myrina
What's to say about an aggressive clean freak who's population is sky-high. Other than she's doing fine if not great. Popped her cover to find thousands of bees moving freely around the inner cover where i put the sugar last month. I swear one of them yelled at me with a Brooklyn accent "Hey yous,..Shut dat door...We's workin' here". These bees came out of that hive like it was on fire. All of them head-butting me to move me off. I can't imagine how bad honey collection is going to bee in July when it's hot.

Myrina

The best part of this was that I could not find ANY dead bees. All her dead have been removed with the efficiency of a well oiled machine. Note that you do not see any bee waste anywhere. These are some very hygenic bees.

Next I took off the inner cover to look at her population. After all those bees came out to greet me I didn't think I needed to but should just to make sure.

Myrina's Legions

I don't think Myrina knows it's Winter. Just thousands of bees busy with hive chores milling about. Remember she's a double deep so there is much more than you see here. Again, not one single dead bee was to be found. I began to pull a frame to check for brood when another cloud of bees came at me. I realized I did not have the smoker with me. I didn't bring it thinking it was to cold to need it. Again Myrina always likes to prove me wrong. I called it a day and closed her up. I'll check her brood on the next warm day instead. She's healthy & strong. No need to pester her just yet.

Inspection 1/15/10

Mary
57 F
Sunny

The second fly-day in a row a good time to check the bees. This is my second Winter with bees so one might think it would be easier on me but it's not. I think last Winter I was too inexperienced to know what was happening. Fortunately it was a mild Winter. Yet, this year Winter has been very harsh and I now know just enough to be worried all the time, Ha ha. The girls just spent a month in cluster with daytime temps in the 20's. However, next week's forecast calls for lows in the 30 & highs in the 50's. A warm spell sure would be welcome.

First a quick note about Mary- Weak, under productive, & limping along. SBB (closed), Single Deep, IC, Vent box, & T-cover.

Now back to the inspection. Approach at mid-day, bees flying around the hive. Veil and gloves but no smoker today. Much more evidence of cleansing flights today than yesterday. Good thing I'm wearing the veil. A cloud of bees takes to the air as I remove the T-Cover. A couple hundred bees had congregated inside the vent box above the IC. Yet i still see several bees holding on to one another as if they're still in cluster in the IC opening. Once that comes off i see where the majority of bees are on the top of the frames in the middle of the Deep. Not a great amount of bees, population somewhat low in numbers but I still think they'll make it

For orientation I stand behind my hives and number left to right; more or less. Frames 1 & 2 are still filled with capped honey as are frames 9 & 10. Frames 3 & 8 have capped honey corners and partial pollen filled centers. Frames 4 & 7 are 2/3's empty. Frames 5 & 6 are too busy with bees to check. I replace the frames in this order: 3, 4, 2, 1, 5, 6, 10, 9, 7, & 8. Bees on moved frames were brushed onto 5 & 6 to keep them together. Then it all got put back together. I'll replace the empties with full ones soon. I figure the bees will bee balled up in the middle for now anyway.

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Issues.
*Moisture & Condensation. -Again with the puddle of water in the hive. They did this last year too. So over Summer I replaced the solid board with a SBB. I added a Vent cover above the IC with 1.5" holes in it. And all the wooden ware is new. Not much water probably several table spoons worth resting on the luan beneath the SBB (and dripping out the back!) . The T-cover was dry. The IC was dry. As far as I can tell the bees were dry. So why is there water puddling in rows beneath the frames? 8 out of 9 vent holes were closed off so I opened one more, left side, to increase ventilation.

Water leaking out the through the closed SBB ^

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Two puddles on the left side beneath the SBB ^

*Heating. Passively that is. -The vent box is 2.5" tall. Heat escapes upwards of course so this box draws heat away from the cluster. To fix this I bought some foam insulation to fill the box. I'll leave enough room, or channels, for the humidity to escape through the vents though.

Vent box currently ^

*Dead bees. -2 kinds of dead bees. The ones that are still standing where they were in the cluster when they croaked. And, of course, the bees that starved head first in a cell. Very few dead in the cells. More dead from the cluster locations.

All dead ^

Starvation ^

Then there's this bee. I believe she wandered away from the ball during a warm spell. Found a whole frame of honey to eat. Then didn't make it back to the cluster before the temperature dropped at night. Poor girl.

(click to enlarge) ^

I did not get into Myrina as I ran out of time. I'll try to inspect her within the week. Although Myrina almost never has any problems.

aun Aprendo

First Fly Day of 2010

It's been almost a month since the last fly-day. Compared to last Winter when it happened about every week so I've been concerned. Both hives are brewing with warm bees today. At 55 degrees & sunny it's a great day for flying & the all important Cleansing flights. Tomorrow is to be 56 or so but then it's back to being in the 40's. Tomorrow afternoon I'll peek in each hive to measure their reserves. I have 6 deep frames filled with honey & pollen to replace any empty frames.

Myrina

If you're from the north and need a fix just put on your veil and turn up the volume

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Mary was the first one out at Noon. Odd I thought since she's the weaker & smaller of the two. It made me nervous about Myrina's condition.

MARY: A good showing

Yet not an hour later out came Myrina to show Mary how it's done. Of course Myrina does have more bees...

MYRINA: Bring out your dead!

We had one not so cold day 2 weeks ago. It was warm enough for the bees to move around some but not fly, 47 degrees. The ground was covered in snow. All the bees did was to toss out the bees that died. The snow was peppered with dead bees in front of the hive. That plus today makes for a big piles of bees. Hopefully the queens will start laying eggs again soon. I have some pollen substitute ready to go. I'll make patties for them. I plan to start some time before the end of the month. Next week might be warmer than this one has been. So hopefully we'll get more days like today.