Completed a split

It's been a stressful few days for this new beekeeper.  I few days ago, I noticed the bees were making a queen cell, and a few weeks ago they were making drone comb.  All in preparation for them to swarm.  They don't know it, but now is not a good time of year for them to be swarming.  They would split the population in two and it's possible that neither half would survive.  Here's the picture of the queen cell.

Once I found the queen cells, the best thing to do was to take my good queen and move her to another box.  The only problem is that I didn't have another box.  Yesterday, my brother helped me put together a couple top bar "nucleus" boxes.  These are top bar hives that are about a foot long--enough for about eight bars of comb. 

These are screened on the bottom like my full size hive to try to keep the varroa might population down.

Today I got into the hive to look for the queen.  Thankfully she is marked, especially since I am so near-sighted.  So, while I was looking for her, I also needed to find comb without any swarm cells to move to the new hive with her.  What I found was very few combs without swarm cells.  It also turns out that the original swarm cell I found out was one of the newest ones.  I found one that was nearly ready to be capped.  That's also the time when the old queen would swarm.

Oh, and while I had the hive open, I hornet flew into the hive.  The bees got on it right away and pulled her out of the hive.

I finally got both hives put back together.  We'll see what happens next.

Queen Cell?

So here's a question for you veteran beekeepers out there.  Is this a queen cell?

It's pointed down, on the edge of the frame, it's bigger than the a worker cell, and it has an egg it in.  The next question would be, what do I do?  If the colony wants to swarm, it will swarm.  Whatever's left may not be strong enough to make it through the winter.  I am thinking about pulling the frame and trying to make a nucleus colony out of it.  Any thoughts?  I guess maybe the hive was doing too well.

Changed the feeder

Yeah, the good news is the hive has really built up.  The bad news is the hive is really built up.  The quart chick waterer I was using is being emptied every day now.  I really don't want to be bothering the bees more than I need to.  Also, they are getting a little crabby with me now that the flowers are pretty much drying up.  (I got stung twice this weekend.  Once when I just lifted the lid off the hive.)

I decided to get a gallon jug from the store and try putting holes in the top.  Yeah, this never has worked right for me.  I always end up making the holes too big, or cracking the lid.

This eventually stopped dripping, but it would make a huge mess if I put syrup in it.  Next, I tried the gallon ziplock bag method.  This didn't work well for me either, so I just put it out for the bees, ants, and anything else that came along to finish off.

I finally cut the top off the gallon jug, asked my brother to drill some holes in a block of wood (my drill stopped working long ago), and just floated the block of wood in the jug with syrup.  This will be a lot simpler and I won't have to open the hive as often.

Last weekend, I moved all the plastic frames to the end of the brood nest.  Next year, I'll move them all the way to the back of the hive so that they can be used for honey stores and the bees will be using all new comb for the brood.  There are 12 to 13 bars/frames now that I inserted two blank bars in the middle of the brood nest.  I'll probably wait until next month and then make sure all the brood is arranged at the front of the hive and the stores at the end of the hive.  After that, I don't want to be messing with the bars as the bees will be setting things up for the winter.  They are also doing a really good job of spreading the propolis around and sealing the hive up tight.

The four bars on the right don't have any comb on them yet.  I set the feeder beneath them.

It's August now, and I should be switching from 1:1 syrup to 2:1 syrup pretty soon.  I have a beekeepers association this week, so I'll check with the old-tymers to see what they think.

Lots of bees

Wow!  Tonight I refilled the feeder for the bees, and the hive was so full of bees that I kept knocking them off the comb and the sides of the hive as I lifted the feeder and set it back down in the hive.  When I took the cover off the hive, one bar was almost completely covered with bees sealing the edges of the bar with propolis (would that be propolising/propolizing?).  Next time I feed them, I'm going to have to move the follower board.  It doesn't have a good fit (amateur carpentry), but since I have the other end of the hive plugged, it really shouldn't matter.

I think when I move the follower board, I'll insert a couple more blank bars in case they feel like building more comb.  Whenever they start on a new bar, you want the new bar to be between two other bars of drawn comb.  That way they build it straight and you don't get cross comb.

On another note, there are some trees in Olney on Georgia Ave. that look like they are getting a second bloom.  They usually bloom in April, but they have blossoms again.  I thought that maybe it was fruit or nuts maturing, but there were petals on the ground under the trees.  I'll have to look them up to try to identify them.

Hive inspection 8/4/2013

I opened up the hive this afternoon, and the bees are doing great.  There were eggs, larvae, capped brood, capped honey, and I saw the queen.  I also saw for the first time what I think is drone brood.

I want to work the original cut plastic frames out of the hive, so I rearranged the brood nest to put them farthest from the front of the hive.  Since there are two frames/bars with nectar and capped honey in them at the very back, that's as far as I could move the plastic frames.  I also had a partially drawn bar that the bees started working on, so I put that between the plastic frames so the bees would draw it out straight.

When they finish drawing out the new bar and the partially drawn bar, there will be eleven bars of comb.  I'd like them to have a couple more before the winter, and with all the bees in the hive now, they should be able to build them out easily, as long as I keep feeding them.

Nuisance

The past two mornings, I have been greeted with the sight of the cover askew on my hive.

This week two stray dogs tore a hole in my chicken coop and killed three out of four hens that we keep for eggs and as pets.  Now this.

I had a rock on top and the cover does has some weight by itself.  I put a strap on the hive, so it should be safe, but now it will be a slight hassle to get in and out of the hive.

Feeding the bees

Someone asked me how I feed the bees in a top bar hive.  Usually, the rule of thumb is to not feed them unless you have to.  My colony got a late start and now there isn't much of a nectar flow, so I need to feed the colony to make sure it is populated enough and has enough food stored for the winter.

So this is how I do it.  First I take the cover off.

The cover isn't really part of the hive.  It just keeps the top of the hive safe from the elements.  The top bars themselves make up the top of the hive.

Since I started with plastic frames, I laid the top bars that were in their place upside down on top of them.  Langstroth frames aren't made to touch each other and leave beespace between them, so the upside down bars cover up some of the space.  If you look closely you can see the bees putting propolis in the gaps to try to seal them up.

I know since I've been feeding them that they haven't started building on bars 12-15 yet, so I can remove them and lay them to the side.  The "F" bar is the follower board.

Some people use an upside down mason jar to feed their bees.  Since we started some chickens from day-old chicks, I had a chick waterer that I could use.

So far I haven't had to use any gear when I refill the jar.  Some people think the bees are calmer since I am only exposing part of the hive at once instead of taking off the lid right over the frames with a Langstroth hive.  I expect that is probably true since you can see there aren't many bees at this end of the hive.  You can see below that there really are a lot of bees in the hive.  That's through the observation window.

After I take the jar out of the hive, I dump out the sticks and knock off any bees that are still hanging around.  Then I refill it and put the base back on.

I put sticks in the base because the first time I used it, a couple bees drowned.  None have died since I started using the sticks.

The last thing to do is to put it back in the hive and close it up.  I set it right on the screened bottom.

I've been using three cups of water and three cups of sugar (1:1) with 3/4 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  The vinegar is supposed to lower the pH of the solution (Nosema spores like a higher pH) and the acid in the vinegar breaks the sucrose down into fructose and glucose, more like nectar.  The bees are still pulling in a lot of pollen so I know they have a good protein source, too.

Well, that's all there is to it.  This amount lasts about two days.  They are never through with it in one day and they are always through with it in two days.