Hive inspection 2/19/2017

It was over 60 for a few days so checked hives. Hive 1 still has a sugar hill, stores and brood look great. Quite aggressive which seemed unusual for them, but it is off-season and they haven't been touched for months. Will have to give them more frames very soon.
Moved more quickly through hive 2 which has 2 supers. Lots of stores. Burr comb with larvae. Bottom box was empty so we swapped and put it on top.

Memorial Day weekend hive inspection - added boxes

Bees are building up nicely. Lots of bees in the boxes. Added a box to each, making 2 medium-frame supers on each hive. After discarding old frames whose wax had become too old and dark, we found ourselves a couple frames short. They'll have to try to do without. Actually we plan to get some more foundation and spare frames soon. We want to have another couple boxes on hand in case we can catch a good honey flow, we don't want to run out of room. Hive one bees are dark and more docile, hive two (on the right) bees are lighter brown. In the past they have gone on alert by the time we finished hive one inspection, so we started with hive two and it went better.

New bees installed

Bought two bee packages from Virginia bee supply, installed 4/23/2016. Set up one hive box for each, installed bottom boards, entrance reducers, and boardman feeders. Put the rest of the corn syrup from the package feeders into the boardmans. Checked Monday 4/25, found queens were released. Starting to fill stores from boardman - clear liquid in some cells. Did not see queens, which are unmarked. bought sugar and refilled boardmans. Here we go again, best of luck to our new girls.

Beeswax in metalworking and haymaking

Neat article from Grit magazine. I'm finding lots of interesting bee articles on this keepingbackyardbees.com site. Beeswax is used to prevent rust and blacken steel, rubbing it on heated pieces so it melts into the grain of the steel and prevents rust from starting. A mixture of beeswax, linseed oil and mineral spirits becomes a paste to rub on rusty and not-yet-rusty tools. And it can be used to lubricate the blades on your sickle bar for your haying work. http://keepingbackyardbees.com/using-beeswax-for-metal-work/

bee loss

We took down the other hive today, those bees had left as well. We will be looking for more bees in the spring.

Bee Medicine

http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/ this blog focuses on medicinal uses of honey, medical studies about any aspect of honey, etc.

Scientific quest to refine bee breeding

Breeding bees: Scientists aim to improve Canadian honeybee http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/breeding-bees-scientists-aiming-to-improve-the-canadian-honeybee/article/448633 via @digitaljournal

Hive 1 done

Last week there was some mad bee activity in the yard, this weekend it was obvious that hive one was finished. Light, empty boxes; ground beneath covered with fine white wax bits. All of the frames had been robbed, the wax cappings chewed off and discarded to litter the hive like so much sawdust. Best case scenario is that hive 2 stole it all; their boxes are very heavy.
Empty frames of drawn comb harbored a few wax moths. We froze the good frames (16) and are melting down the old black ones (chose 8 worst frames, most 2 yr old).
This is how it plays out after the previous observation; the hive had already failed. We will bring all the hardware in for the winter. Good luck to hive 2😓

Hive loss?

We gave had something strange happen, a colony we thought was our best is now nearly empty. Only a few bees are still present, we could not find a queen. Did we fail to keep up the hive, were the ants too much to bear? Did they swarm off, how did we miss seeing it? We reduced to 2 boxes, gave a frame 1/3rd full of pollen to hive 1 swapping for a un-drawn frame. Took off top feeders, re-greased the stand legs against ants. On hive 2 we put the feeder shim on top and put in a block of fondant.  Small hive beetles were present, not very numerous.

hive inspection

hive inspection. hive 1 only. Too late in the day, getting late in the season. Magic bees teleported inside my head veil and I got stung twice on the earlobe. A bee buzzing directly into my ear canal, I shouted 'take the frame! take the frame!' and pushed a few thousand bees into my wife's hands as I ran off. The hive is solid honey store in that box 3, still no drawout in box 4 - added them too late in the season, no doubt. Box 1 and 2 have brood, pollen, and beebread but don't seem to have much honey in them. Several frames are completely empty. One evening last week we observed a crazy huge number of bees in the air outside the hive and concluded that it was not a swarm, because they did not go fill the entire front yard, but orientation flights for a crazy huge number of young bees. We opened this hive after 6pm, no worker flights observed so I'm sure everyone was home and having dinner when we stopped by. After taking boxes off so we could start at the bottom, we inspected 3 or 4 frames per box. Nothing in the way of beetles or other hangers-on observed. Not a lot of time to inspect bees on frames for varroa etc. Only a very modest amount of burr comb in the brood chamber; lots of bees hanging about in that empty 4th box and in the large top shim area. Did not see queen cells. Strange that neither hive seems to use the top entrances, seeming to prefer the bottom exclusively. Did not get into hive 2.

Stung thousands of times

Hey Reuters, was it a Swarm, or was it a Hive? It couldna been both!
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0OT03N20150613?irpc=932

Hive inspection

First time in hives in a while. Hive 2 has drawn and filled the super we gave to them in April. Added another super.
Hive 1 seems to be on the path to recovery with more bees present and better brood pattern. Queen may be slow layer or possibly not well mated? Bee buildup is so slow. Took away sugar feeder as it wasn't getting much use and too many ants came in. Its hard to keep a proper grease barrier on the stand legs, and grass grows up to make ant bridges.
We are sure we will be able to get a full box of harvest from hive 2.

All about crystallized honey

Wired talks of crystallized honey - is it any good? Why does it happen?
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/crystalized-honey/

Bee spill

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/04/17/semi-overturns-bees-i5/25925049/

Varroa mite sampling

http://beeinformed.org/2015/03/know-your-honey-bee-colonies-non-destructive-testing-for-varroa-mites/ How to perform varroa mite sampling using powedered suger and a jar.

The hives survived the winter!

Temperatures got to 56 today, so we had a mini hive inspection. The hive 1 has the cluster up in the top box, hive 2 seems to still be in the bottom box. Neither has touched the candy boards. Lots of honey still in the boxes, we may have been very conservative in not taking any from them last fall but better safe than sorry. We did not lift the super off; we will probably wait for 60 to do a full inspection. Happy times in bee land!

funny pics

I have a weakness for captioned images, this one is killing me. :-D



And, BEE FAIL:

Introspective Bug:

Language warnings on these:

• Dear ... Tumblr ... This is a ... bee...
  
• Learn the difference...
  

Candy boards and winter

These candy boards full of sugar (36 cups sugar, 3 cups water in each) will go on top of the hives, under the inner cover. Bees can get thru wax paper to the sugar, and the upper entrance.

The upper entrance hole drilled into the candy board frame provides a vent to release humidity from the hive. Cold does not kill bees but the wet will, moisture must be released from the hive before it condenses. Another technique for a top vent is to shim one end of the inner cover higher than the other and leaving a gap. The gap is shielded by the telescoping cover, and the slant will help any condensation to run down to one side instead of dripping down on the frames and bees. If you drill a hole in the top box, you have to deal with the hole if you reverse your boxes in the spring. One other way to create a top vent/ entrance is to notch the edge of your inner cover.

Bees do very well with top entrances, and many feral colonies have top entrances, but the bees are really just adapting to the space. The top entrance has advantages of not getting blocked by snow, grass, or dead bees the way a bottom entrance can.

It will be 70 Monday, we will install the Boardman feeders as there are no nectar sources (already had a good freeze.) We plan to get one last good inspection, and prep the hives for the colder days immediately following. We will remove the top feeder box from hive 2 and install candy boards on both. Candy boards are made from old chicken coop door.

We have had the entrance reducers on both during the cold spell of the last few weeks, with hardware cloth over the hole as a mouse guard. Dead drones are all over near the entrance; mouse guard doesn't seem to be a choke point for mortician bees.

Bee doctors?

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141025-honeybees-play-doctors-and-nurses

Honey bees, nurse bees, observed feeding sick bees selected honeys with higher antibiotic properties.

BYU undergrad studying viral defense for American Foulbrood

http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/virus-may-be-the-cure-for-deadly-honeybee-disease-141027.htm