Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Quick inspection

It was relatively warm yesterday so I did a quick inspection of the hives and pulled off the HopGuard.

The original hive had pollen and nectar in the bottom box and capped brood in the middle box. I swapped the bottom and middle boxes so the brood would be on the bottom. The food stores looked pretty good. I was somewhat surprised that there were not more bees, but I probably should not have been. They are tapering down to the winter population. I did not see the queen, but I also did not look too hard. They are still working on their syrup. I put duct tape over most of the entrances and reduced the size of the bottom entrance.

The split hive had capped brood in the bottom box. They were drawing comb and filling in the middle box. There is still some room in the top box. I did not see the queen, but again I did not try too hard. I was trying to minimize the time spent in the boxes since it was late in the day and breezy. Again I put duct tape over most of the entrances and reduced the size of the bottom entrance. They are also working on their syrup.

I have not put on homasote to winterize them. I am still trying to decide on whether to put in a top entrance or not. It was something I read online as an option. I wish I could have made it to the last open hive to ask questions about winterizing.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Syrup for both again.

The split was completely out of syrup. The original hive still had a little, but I pulled the jar anyway. Full jars of fall syrup. Perfect weather. Both hives are heavy. I saw lots of pollen going into the split. It might actually be heavier than the original hive right now. This will probably be the last syrup unless the weather stays warm. I still need to do a last inspection and pull the HopGuard.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Syrup for both

Today I gave jars of syrup to both hives. Perfect fall weather.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Still another jar of syrup

I gave a jar of syrup to the original hive. The split still had half a jar. It was cool and windy so I moved quickly and did not open up the hives.

Friday, October 2, 2015

Syrup & Fumagilin

I gave a jar of syrup to the split hive. The stronger hive still had some syrup. That was yesterday. I will check them again tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Another jar of syrup

I checked the hives yesterday. The original hive had finished its jar of syrup. The split still had half a jar left. I gave the original hive a new jar with Fumagilin so that should be 2 gallons for that hive.

It is pouring rain today so I will check the jars again tomorrow. I will try for a hive inspection this weekend, weather permitting.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Syrup & Fumagilin

Yesterday I gave the hives another jar of medicated syrup. The jars are less than a half gallon so I will be doing more than 2 doses to administer 2 gallons per hive for their fall treatments. They still have HopGuard. I'm glad it's not temperature sensitive. We got down to 29 last night.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Syrup & Fumagilin

Yesterday I gave the bees their next jars of syrup with medication. I think they are both well supplied with stores. The hives are heavy.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

One queen at least

I checked the hives today to see if their misadventure did much damage.

I did not see the queen in the strong hive, but I did see capped brood, larvae and milk brood. I might have seen eggs, but the lighting was uneven so I'm not sure. They have pretty good stores. Most of the brood is in the middle box. I put in HopGuard and a jar of syrup. They should be good for a few days.

I did see the queen in the weaker hive. She is in the bottom box. I added in the 2 frames of honey from the other hive. If she keeps laying I think they'll be good for the winter. I did not move a frame of capped brood from the strong hive to the weaker since I did not find a good frame of capped brood. They were all partially filled with a mixture, and I really wanted just capped brood. I put in HopGuard and a jar of syrup. I will check the syrup in a few days. I got stung once on the back of my arm. I don't know why there. 

I will watch the syrup jars for the next week or so and try to leave them alone.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Gravity always wins!

I knew that the landscape timber my hives were sitting on was starting to sag. I was going to put a cinder block under the timber to support it. I waited too long. I heard a crack and a thump. I looked out the window and both hives were on their backs on the ground. Syrup buckets spilled. Bees flying around everywhere.

I don't own a bee suit, just a veil. I decided to improvise. I got out a light colored pair of cotton pants, socks, sneakers, an old white hockey jersey and a pair of leather work gloves. I tied the jersey tight around my waist and wrapped vet-wrap around the ends of my sleeves and pant legs. I put on my veil and set up new bases for the hives.

Fortunately it has been a week since I checked my hives so they were stuck together with propolis. I pried off the bottom boards and each of the medium boxes one at a time to reassemble them on the new bases. The frames seemed to be glued into the boxes by propolis so I'm hoping not too many bees were crushed. I'll check for the queens in a day or so since I still need to add HopGuard. The top box of the strong hive was full of honey so I pulled out 2 frames and put them aside for the weaker hive. I put a jar of syrup back on the weaker hive. I need to assemble a shim to put a jar on the other hive.

Overall it could have been worse. It could have been cold and/or raining. The frames could have fallen out. I could have had lots of bee stings. The hives are nice and stable now. Enough for today.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Fall syrup 1

Put on the first dose of Fumagilin-B with 2:1 syrup on both hives. I tried to work without a veil. Mistake. I was pursued around the corner of the house after I took off the telescoping cover from the booming hive. The weather was iffy so all the bees were home. Put on a white hockey jersey and my veil and finished with the hives. Much less stressful. It's supposed to rain tonight and part of tomorrow so hopefully they will make short work of the syrup. I will add HopGuard on my next inspection.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Status

Yesterday I inspected both hives.

The stronger hive still has good stores: larvae, pollen, and capped brood. I think I saw the queen. I did not see any sign of disease. They are using 3 medium boxes. The boxes,  are not full, but are in pretty good shape. I think next week I should start medications for both hives.

The split hive is actually doing OK. I saw the queen. She is marked with her blue dot and is considerably larger than the queen in the other hive. It makes me wonder if I really correctly identified the queen in the other hive. She has started laying eggs in the second box, the middle one. I probably should have pulled a frame of capped brood from the stronger hive to put in and boost the population, but I am still not completely sure about when to do that. I will probably do that next week when I start medicated syrup and HopGuard.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Checking in

Yesterday I opened up the stronger hive. It is not full, but still seems to be doing well. I saw one drone without wings, but other than that no signs of disease. I saw eggs, milk brood and capped brood. There is still room for honey stores and pollen. I pulled a frame of capped brood and a frame of honey to put into the other hive. I did not see the queen. I did not go into the bottom box, just the top two.
I opened up the split and found they had finished the syrup. There is still lots of room in the hive, but they are working on putting in stores. I did not see the queen. The weather was turning so I only spent enough time to put in the frame of brood and the frame of honey in the bottom box. I put a frame that was only nectar and partially drawn comb above the inner cover so they can clean it out, and I added another jar of syrup. I'm trying to leave them alone. I expect to start Hopguard treatments and Fumagilin syrup in a couple of weeks. I will probably be rearranging frames then, and I hope to see the queens.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

She is doing well

I opened up the split to see if the queen I purchased was ok. On Friday I confirmed that she was not in the queen cage any more, but I did not see her so today I was checking more carefully. I did see the queen with her pretty blue dot on her back. She was on the frame of capped brood and had chewed through the 2 emergency queen cells. She had also laid some eggs in some open cells on the frame so there is hope for that colony now.
I will be checking the other hive tomorrow, I hope. I am planning to move another frame of capped brood from the strong hive to the weak one to boost the population some more. I need to make sure that the strong hive has room for food and brood. It is nice and heavy and appears to have a large population.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Queen check in

I opened up the split to see if the queen had been released. She had. There were a bunch of workers in and around the queen cage. I'm not sure why, but I removed it from the hive. I'll give her a week and then go looking for eggs. They still had syrup and frames with honey, pollen and nectar. I limited the entrances to discourage robbing. Everything else looks fine in the colony. I did not check the original hive. I will look at both hives next week.

Got Honey! And working on a split.

On July 22, I pulled 4 frames of honey off of my hive and attempted a split. I rented an extractor from the Honey Exchange and extracted the honey into a bucket with a honey gate--minimal investment in new equipment. I picked up the extractor on Tuesday July 21, pulled frames the next day, extracted and washed  the next day, and returned the extractor the following day. Little did I know that the rental charge was per day. My mistake. I bottled the honey in 12 oz and 4 oz Mason jars and estimated that I got about 16 lbs of honey. Finally something out of instead of always into the hives!

The split however did not succeed. They did not make any queen cells so the population of brood hatched out and the overall population of the split started to dwindle. I purchased a queen from Karen at New Moon Apiary on Monday August 10. I figured it does not hurt to have more genetic diversity in the yard, and this saved time for the colony to build up for winter. I pulled a frame of mostly capped brood from my existing hive so there will be nurse bees to assist the new queen in the split, and I placed her queen cage and the frame of brood into the bottom box of the split. There was food in the colony, but I also added a syrup feeder on top because it was supposed to rain on Tuesday. It poured on Tuesday so I took a look at the queen cage on Wednesday. The frame of brood had an emergency queen cell under construction, and the queen was still in her cage. They had only half cleared the sugar plug. I decided to leave things as they are and check again on Friday August 14. Trust the bees...

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Booming

I went to an open hive at the Honey Exchange last Saturday to maybe learn more about what to do this time of year. Phil Gaven was checking a couple of weak hives, however, so I did not learn much in the way of new stuff. I did learn that Phil is using screened bottom boards. That is different from what Larry suggested. Also he keeps the entrance reducer on his hives--or at least the weaker ones in the back of the yard. I did collect my courage to venture into my one hive yesterday. 

The hive is booming! The noise of activity is almost a roar. I did not see the queen, but I did see eggs, larvae and capped brood. The bottom box was mostly pollen and nectar. The next 3 boxes had some brood in each of them, and the top box was mostly nectar. I saw one swarm cell that was started. I scraped it off. The boxes were almost too heavy to take off, and they were definitely too heavy to put back on. I had to pull 4 frames and put them into the bee brief to get the top 2 boxes back onto the stack. There was some burr comb that was broken when I pulled the boxes, but it wasn't too bad. I took off the Hop Guard finally. It was pretty much shredded, and the shreds were on the bottom board under the screened board. I was afraid that the pile was from cappings and that the hive had been robbed, but that was not the case. I saw no evidence of robbing. I got stung once. Not bad for the number of bees. Hopefully the queen was unhurt by my manipulations. I did not see any bees with the chronic paralysis virus, but I did see one drone with malformed wings so the hive does have virus issues. I think as long as the mites are suppressed the hive can survive the viruses. I'm going to keep to the Hop Guard and fumagillin and hope that the bees build resistance to the viruses over time.

I am thinking of putting follower boards in at 1 and 10 to lighten the load. I was also reading a post by Michael Bush that suggested making a split by "dealing out" boxes. Put out a bottom board next to the existing hive and split up the boxes: one brood for stack 1, one brood for stack 2, one food for stack 1, one food for stack 2, etc., and finish with a new empty box on each stack. The queen will wind up in one stack and the hive will make a queen for the other stack. He advocates being a lazy beekeeper and minimizing painting equipment, searching for the queen, administering medications, and dealing out splits. Getting the most bang for your buck on time spent on the hives and letting the bees lead. I don't know if it is too late to make a split or not. I don't really know how to harvest frames yet either. This weekend there is another open hive with Larry Peiffer in North Waterboro. The first time it's actually close to home. I am planning to go and ask questions about harvesting. Last week's open hive did not have enough bees or provisions to discuss harvesting. I will decide on the split this weekend. I think I will try since I'd like to have 2 going into the winter.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Hopguard Time

This past Tuesday, May 25, I finally got my hands on some Hopguard. I stopped in at the Honey Exchange and picked up a package. I would have bought some previously, but they were out of stock.

I had noticed a wingless drone at the entrance to the hive the previous week and figured that I must have some mites with their associated viruses. The Hopguard is messy, but easy, supposedly safe, and not temperature dependent. I found that all 3 mediums had brood, nectar, honey and pollen so I put 2 strips per brood box into the hive and added another medium of foundation. The hive seemed to be well-populated, and I saw some eggs, but not the queen. I did see some sick bees. Besides seeing another wingless drone (Deformed Wing Virus), I saw some black greasy-looking bees and some others that were not fully black, but also not normal. I did not have my camera, but I looked for similar images on the web and found these:


These are indicative of Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus. Another in the list of diseases transmitted by mites. I looked around on the web and from the discussion there is no cure or treatment and bees can be asymptomatic and healthy while carrying this virus. It seems like they show symptoms when the mites weaken them. The Hopguard is supposed to stay on for 30 days and does not affect adding supers. It can be applied 3 times a year so I expect to keep the current dosage on for a month and then assess the status of the mites. At the very least I will apply Hopguard again in the fall.

I had actually hoped to see some swarm cells, but I guess the hive was not overcrowded yet. Adding another box should keep them happy for another week at least. I was hoping to harvest honey this year, but so far that is not looking good.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Second bucket of spring syrup

I gave the remaining colony a new bucket of syrup today. There seems to be a fair amount of activity with bees bringing in pollen. I will be doing an inspection really soon... I don't think they are active enough to worry about a swarm, but I can't say for sure until I do an inspection.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Spring Feeding

I gave my surviving hive (1 out of 3) its first spring feeding with Fumagilin-B and Honey B Healthy.

The candy board that I had made out of the queen excluder did not appear to be touched by the bees. Either they did not need the sugar or maybe the waxed paper that I used to line the bottom was too tough for the bees. Either way I'll probably melt this down for the next bucket of syrup. I'll check the syrup after a few days and see how things are going, but at least they are alive.

The other 2 hives that had candy boards died over the winter. I think the problem was that I put the boards on wrong-side up so that the bees could not reach the sugar easily and the moisture in the hive was trapped below the boards. The hives seemed damp when I opened them up, and there was mildew on the homasote boards in the hives. I should have contacted the guy who made the candy boards to make sure I was using them correctly. As it is the bees in the hive were all head first in the cells like the colony had starved, but the candy boards were untouched. I'm guessing that the cluster could not break up to move and access the candy when the boards were wrong-side up. Add the moisture problem and the hives were doomed.

I spoke to Phil Gaven when I went to purchase the Fumagilin-B, and he said that a lot of people lost hives over the winter. Including master beekeepers like Phil and Erin Forbes. The usual problems with mites and starvation and small clusters all contribute to winter losses. I just wish I could avoid user error, but I am still learning, and the bees are recovering, I hope. Now it's just a matter of waiting for better weather. The snow is still deep in the shade of the trees, but the fields are melting.