Inspection 8/9/9

Mary & Myrina
95 F
Sunny

Mary
Many bad things here. Varroa mites, watered bee bread, chalk-brood, many dead bees in the hive, little to no new brood, spotty pattern, two possible supercedure cells. Am I losing her? Did I accidentally mash the queen during the last inspection? I think it's time to be in panic mode.

(click me)
Red circle = Withered wings

Green circles = Chalk/Foul brood
-
(click me)
Green circles = Varroa mite
Blue circle = Dead bee

She is now down to two brood boxes, an excluder, & a honey super (1/3 full)

Myrina
It seamed like I've seen more bees working at the entrance. Yet there is very little new brood in the hive. I will keep an eye on her to see if she develops similar symptoms to Mary.

She has drawn no honey comb this year. I took off the honey supers. She's only two brood boxes now.

The Bee Club

I forgot to mention this. I missed the meeting for July because of a previous engagement. I tried to alter my schedule but it was not meant to be. The meeting in august will be the 20th. Guess what? I'll be out of town on a family vacation. Rats...

Hopefully I'll be around for the September meeting. But if I was holding my breath I'd be dead by now. Oh well.

Inspection 7/25/9

Mary & Myrina
89 F
Sunny

Mary - The honey frames that where filled with nectar are now partially filled with brood. Not much but some. Enough to tell me the young queen is very healthy. Perfect brood pattern. Also much of the honey is now capped. So I put that honey super back on top and reinstalled the queen excluder. I then put the undrawn honey super from the top down between the brood boxes. Hoping for similar results. This Plasticell really doesn't do the job.

NO boiling over of Mary during smoking. However she seemed more aggressive than usual. This is honey season so I think it will pass.

Myrina - Still has not drawn any frames. She is still badly understaffed from the late swarm. There is uncapped brood in a weak pattern in the boxes. I'm sure there are also eggs in the boxes but without glasses I can't say positively. Will leave everything alone for now. All I'll do with her is monitor her activity. I did pull out some more bur comb though. Also I put in a longer sceened reducer at the entrance.

I used the syrup water on Myrina again, along with the smoke. Heavy, heavy, heavy spray. I'm very impressed with how well it works on the mean bees.

I've taken to feeding the bees syrup every time it rains. Which as it turns out is almost non-stop. The rains continue here even though we are in our dry season. I saw a few girls up in the Ventilator box on Mary. Hopefully they are propolising all joints finally.

Two Successes!

It worked!
If you recall neither hive ever drew out the frames in the honey supers. So to trick them I placed the honey supers in between the brood boxes. Well, the bees in Mary are now drawing out the frames in the honey super. Most frames are drawn out all the way. The added bonus is that the bees are filling the new frames with honey only. No brood at all.

Mary : Frame # 6 : Beautiful new wax


Fill 'er up!

I tried this trick with both hives. One honey super between two brood boxes. When I checked Myrina I found they had not drawn their frames yet. I will have to wait to see what happens there. It looks like I'll have a late honey harvest but at least I'll have one. Even 30lbs. Will make my day.

This week I also put a second honey super on top of each hive. I thought that just because the bees refused the first two supers doesn't mean they will refuse the second two. These two new supers are still empty. No drawn comb. This puts much space in each hive yet I've seen no problems.

Myrina is still short handed due to the late Swarm. As usual I can never find my Queens but there is good sign that Myrina has one. I tried to take a picture of a frame. I hoped that if I zoomed into the image I could see new larva. No luck though. The flash masked the bottom of every cell with a reflection. I must get a hand lens.

Myrina's brood in top brood box

The second success is the ventilation tops. Since I put them on the bees have stopped bearding during the days & evenings. I still don't know what great difference it makes but I plan to find out at the up coming meeting.

The Ventilator above the inner cover

View from the back

Venting Top Box - for Summer

I finished building a venting top box for both hives. It is 2.5 inches deep with 3 holes on each side but the back. Each hole is 1.25 inches in width. I used the same gauge screen used on screened bottom boards. I'm not worried about rain since the telescoping cover covers most of the vent holes (still there's enough of a gap for passive air circulation). It's my hope that this will cool the hives and prevent moisture build up.

My next step will be to build a screened bottom board for each hive. I'm still considering what features it will have. Boards with the tray for checking Varroa mites don't seem to vent as well as the boards without the extra tray. Maybe a taller board with side vents below the screen will do. I'll figure it out.

Also new is the use of sugar spray for inspections. I tried it tonight when looking at each hive. It did not work very well by itself. When sprayed the girls stayed where they were and began to lick up the sugar. What I wanted them to do was move further into the hive & relax. Even Mary had several bees get angry and come looking for me. She's always a calm hive but it's late in the year. SO, I added smoke to the sugar spray; a sort of double whammy. The combo worked very well as expected. The bees moved away from the work area then stayed there to clean off the sugar. This rates well with me and I will continue the practice.

Did I say I was in the hives? I checked to see if the bees were drawing out any of the honey frames now that the excluder was gone. Answer is NO. Linda, the lady from the last post, seemed convinced that the Plasticell was the problem. She also stressed that once the girls refuse a frame it's over and they'll never take it. She highly recommended that I scrap the plasticell and revert to wax & wire. So this is my last trick. I put the honey suppers between the brood boxes. I hope this will compel the girls to draw out the comb. All the deep frames I've put into the brood boxes with Plasticell have been drawn out successfully. So I hope they will get confused and draw out these too. I'll let you know.

Oddly they were making bur comb sideways on top of the brood boxes. Go figure.


I'm still excited about the up coming club meeting. I'll meet so many keepers at once plus all the questions I have. I'll likely chatter like an idiot until they just plain run from me. I should make up a list of questions and rank them. The meeting lasts an hour & a half so if I can get 10 answered I'll be doing good. Can't wait...

They've thrown me a life preserver.

Saturday we went to the Farmers Market to find some Free Ranging Chickens & eggs (found them, Awesome). While there we came across a booth for an local apiary selling their honey and wax. Once the conversation got going it lasted a good 45 minutes. One of my bigger problems is that I've never spent any time with another keeper. Everything I know is from some book. No one has ever shown me what I'm supposed to be doing. Well that seems to be finally changing.

The very kind ladies at the booth encouraged me to join the local chapter bee club. I was so happy to finally be talking to someone I forgot to ask the name of the club. They gave me directions and times for the monthly meetings. July 16th is the next one. I was also informed about the Mentoring program offered at the club. Someone will come visit and go over all the important stuff & look at my hives. WOW, no more guessing. I absolutely cannot imagine how much of a difference this will make. I wish the meeting was tonight. I'm so jazzed about this. Boy are things looking up.

What If...

With the realization that I'm looking at a No Honey year I wonder what I did wrong. Likely many things. I notice in the last two inspections that the excluders were some what packed with bur comb. I put on the excluders when I added the honey supers. Neither supper had any drawn comb; all plasticell. Could it be that I should have waited until the frames were drawn before adding the excluders? Might this explain the heavy bur comb on the bottoms of the frames?

Well at this point it doesn't matter but today I will remove the excluders on both hives. If the bees begin to draw out comb I'll have my answer.

A year without honey is going to be very unpleasant.

Inspection 6/21/09

Myrina
84 F
Sunny

By the looks of it Myrina has finally swarmed. I'M NOT UPSET. I never liked her. Great producer but the meanest queen in the world. I hope her daughter mated with a more civilized drone.

First things first. Still no

drawn comb in the honey suppers. The same as Mary. So I'll be lucky to get any honey this year as far as I can tell. It has rained multiple times a week since the start of the year. The bees just can't get out to do their work. I recently saw how another keeper was still feeding his girls to get them through. It makes sense. The more they are fed the less honey they eat & more brood they can keep. I regret not knowing this earlier. So now I'm feeding them 1:2 syrup. Even if we get dryer weather I'll continue for the brood. Especially since Myrina is at half occupancy.

A pleasant surprise was the amount of Propolis around the excluder. It's the most I've seen either hive ever make at once. I can't help but think is comes mostly from the Yellow Polar trees in the Yard. Huge mature canopies loaded down with their big flowers. But it could be from anything. I don't really know.

Once in the hive bodies I began removing the ubiquitous bur come. Only some on the tops of frames yet a great deal more on the bottoms. I did not have the time to remove all of it. I scraped half the frames today. I'll get the rest next week or so.

The brood patterns look bad. But then only half the colony is here. I can't see the smallest eggs because: 1 - My eyes are 43 years old, 2 - Reading glasses under a veil in summer do not work too well. I should get a hand lens for this purpose. However, I did manage to see fairly recent young brood. Just not much of them. In the image to the side you can see where capped honey cells have replaced brood cells. I'll need to see more to have a better idea of how the new queen is doing. The remaining bees are still as aggressive and GREATLY dislike smoke & attack anyone using a brush.

I did reposition some of the frames to help with the brood. I replaced one old frame that the girls seemed to ignore. I always put the new Plasticell frames in the middle. They draw it out faster than on a side. I intend to eventually replace all the old frames. Out of 20 there is 16 left to replace from before I acquired the hives from the old farmer. That's 9 in Myrina and 7 in Mary. Only the bottom brood hives have original frames.

The Trap is Set

This too has been some what complicated. A swarm catch is a great way to get free bees. Better yet it's more like rescuing bees from the wild. The issue is that my physical property is smaller than what the bees perceive as their Yard. So I can't really get the swarm trap out side of the bee yard. Apparently within the Yard the pheromone of the existing hives masks the pheromone in the trap. So I need to find a off site location to place the trap.

Fortunately where I work is 10 miles away. Not to far. I can check it while at work during the week. On the weekends I pass the location going to the grocery.

Once in place I'll leave it till the beginning of July. I managed to place two drawn out but empty deep frames inside. I Have another frame filled with honey in storage. I'll put it in the Nuc if ever it gets a swarm. The other frames have not been drawn out, but they're all I have this year.

Behind the garage at work

Mesh Reducers

I came up with these after the so-called robbing incident on Mary. I wanted to reduce the entrance but maintain air circulation. The answer was wire mesh.

Myrina on the left & Mary on the right

Mainly I hoped to lessen the pressure from Wax Moths & robing. The hive would still vent as fully open yet the entrance could be open only several inches. I though at first the bees would fill the mesh with propolis but they never did. It seems to work so I'll leave them in for now.