It's been a good Spring so far

Is been a busy Spring but it's really been good over all.  My two packages of Russian bees came a week early at the end of March.   A couple days later we had several days of below freezing weather.   I managed to take some comb from the KTBH and wire it into my new Warre hive so the bees would have some place to stay warm. I put syrup on the KTBH and the Warre but I was afraid they wouldn't be able to get to it so I made some fondant and put it on both hives,  too.  I also wrapped the Warre with insulation and threw a blanket on the KTBH.

I was really kind of proud of how I fixed the fondant in the KTBH.  First, I put the fondant in a plastic sandwich bag and cut one end off.   Then, I tapped a small nail into the top of a bar next to where the queen cage would be.   Finally,  I hung the bag on the nail with the open edge facing the cage and cluster. The fondant was just the right size to fit between the comb. That way the cluster didn't have to move to get to the food.

When I opened the hive to see if the queen was released,  the heat came pouring out of the hive, so I knew they were fine.   The Warre came out fine, too.  The problem with the Warre was that the comb I wired on had become brittle because of the cold.  The comb,  and the queen cage,  fell to the bottom.  The queen and the bees survived but weren't very happy.  My biggest issue with my Warre hive is that it was so cold when I got the bees that I couldn't get in and check on them much.  With top bar hives it is very important to monitor the comb building often for cross comb especially if there is no existing comb for them to follow.

You basically need to check it every few days to a week at first.   If the comb isn't straight you need to remove it and press it back on straight. Ideally, you will do this before the comb is more than a couple inches long. In my case, because of the weather,  I didn't make it into the hive until the whole first box was full. Now it is a cross comb mess.  I'm going to have to let it be rather than destroy all of their work.  They now have three full boxes (of cross comb) and I will need to add another box this weekend.

The KTBH is going terrific so far.  It had a lot of comb left over from the colony I lost this winter.   This colony has now expanded to fill the entire hive with the exception of three empty bars that I added tonight.   Now I'll have to keep checking it and either pull bars of honey to make room or end up making a split.   I'll keep you posted.

Now that I'm caught up on working the hives,  building a house for our new ducks, and planting a few bee-friendly flowers I'll have more time to post.

The bees have arrived

I was going to make a joke about being like Crimea since the russians arrived, but couldn't make the joke come out right.  In any case,  my packages came in on Saturday.  It was a wonderful day around 70F.  The bees went in rather  uneventfully and I got the hives put back together.

Things changed a little later when my brother and I went to his house to install his packages.  (He has two Warre hives.)  The wind picked up to about 20 mph.  I stood next to the hives as he dumped them in to try to block the wind.   Of course the wind was from a cold front that was moving through.

Yesterday the temperature was in the forties and today it was in the thirties. Since I knew it was going to be cold,  I put fondant in plastic bags and hung them between the bars of comb in the Kenyan top-bar hive next to the queen cage.  It worked out well because when I went into the hives today to pull the cork from the queen cages the KTBH was really warm.

I'm a little concerned about the Warre hive because the comb that I had wired up fell along with the queen cage.  I pulled the cork out and set the cage next to the cluster,  so she may be okay. 

The bees are coming!

This week I was informed that the bees I had ordered were coming a week early.  That happens to be next weekend.  I was expecting March 29.  The problem is that it has been and still is pretty cool up here in Maryland.  Not so in Georgia where my bees are being packaged for their trip here.

I still have to finish preparing my hives for the packages when they arrive.  I finally got around to cleaning out my Kenyan top-bar hive this weekend.  It's either been too cold or I've been too busy to deal with it.  This is what I saw when I opened it:

All the bees were huddled around each other trying to stay warm.  Unfortunately, they couldn't reach the food that I gave them and didn't have enough energy to keep themselves moving and died.

The cluster was mainly on some old Langstroth frames that I had cut down and the comb was getting pretty dark so I just through it out.  I also took out a bar with brood comb on it (the darker color) and gave it to my brother so that he could put it in his Warre hives when his packages come--the same time as mine.

I consolidated the bars with comb, left around four empty bars at the end before the follower board, and then closed it up.  The four empty bars are so I can put a jar feeder inside the hive with the bees.  I could leave the hive the way it is, but I wanted to replace the bottom screen.  Looks like I may not have time.

My Warre hive still needs its screened bottom and the cloth to go over the top set of bars.  Then I need to notch the ends of the top bars so that I can remove them easily (since I will use a nail at each end to keep the bars from sliding side-to-side).  With snow tomorrow and freezing rain on Wednesday, it looks like Thursday and Friday will be my only chances to get it done.

I'm glad I'm getting my bees earlier than last year, but I wasn't prepared for this early.  I guess I've learned my lesson.

Sad news

Looks like the bees didn't make it.  We've been having a few really cold days over the past few weeks, and I doubt that the bees had enough food stored away in the comb to hold them over.  I did have some fondant in there to try to keep them going, but it didn't help.

When I found out that they didn't make it, it was kind of like a friend passing away.  I enjoyed checking on them and seeing them flying on warm days.  The only thing I can do now is try to figure out what went wrong, and try to keep it from happening this year.

Good luck with your bees, and I hope you have better fortune than I with overwintering.

Beehive in January

My hive in January.  The boards leaning against it are from when I moved it. They are supposed to make the bees reorient themselves so they can find their way home.

I'm planning for the new year, and I'd like to host two more colonies this year.  They will probably be two Warre People's Hives.  I'm not giving up my Kenyan top-bar hive.  I haven't had any big issues with it, and the observation window has really been helpful with beginning beekeeping.  The People's Hive is another type of top-bar hive designed by Abbe Emile Warre, so it is in keeping with my current beekeeping method.

Now, my current issue is where to get the colonies.  I could try making a split in the spring--that's if my current colony survives.  I'd really like to let my current colony be and get a couple packages.  Those couple packages would ideally come with locally raised/mated queens, so if anyone knows of a good source in the Maryland area, please leave me a note.  And if those packages come with Russian queens, even better.  I'll let you know what happens.

For anyone out there thinking of starting beekeeping this year, a lot of bee suppliers just started taking orders, and they have limited supplies.  So, now is the time to be planning:  finding a local beekeeping club, signing up for a class, researching getting equipment and bees, etc.

Not much new here.  The temperature reached the 50s (F) again this past week and the bees took to the air.  I feel a little relief every time I see them flying.  They had a hard summer this year just getting started (and their host just getting started, too).  I will be keeping an eye on the temperature and whenever it gets up in the 60s again, I'll be adding another cake of fondant.  So far, so good.

The bees have been flying

We had a freakishly warm weekend and the girls took the opportunity to stretch their wings.  On Friday, it barely made it into the 50s (F) and they were already active.  Saturday it made it to 60 and Sunday it made it to 70.

I also took the opportunity to check on their stores.  I had put a few pounds of fondant in the hive this fall and they had been making their way through it.  I went ahead and put a couple more pounds in there for insurance.

The cluster seems to still be pretty healthy.  Through my observation window, I can see that the cluster is between four rows of comb, but I can't see how far into the row the cluster goes. Hopefully, I don't get an awful surprise down the road, and they are just on the edge of the comb.

Cold outside, but warm inside

It's winter now in Maryland, by the weather, not by the calendar, and the bees are doing okay so far.  A couple weeks ago we had a few nights where the temperature was down in the teens, much like tonight, but then the wind was blowing at about 30 miles per hour.

One of my favorite features of my top bar hive is my observation window.  After the cold spell around Thanksgiving, I took a peek through the window and noted that there were a few dozen bees on the screen at the bottom of the hive.  They may have been from the cold spell, but from what I hear, several of the bees die off around December so the colony doesn't need to use as much of the food stores.

Whatever the reason, after it warmed up above 55 F the other bees cleaned up the hive and went back to their business.  Looking through the window, the cluster doesn't seem really big, but it spans about four or five bars of comb.  Considering that the top bars are about 18 inches long at the top and the comb is probably 8 to 10 inches wide at the bottom, that is still a lot of bees.

I had added about 4 pounds of fondant to the hive, just in case.  There is still about 2 and half pounds of fondant left.  I just leaned the fondant cakes between the side of the hive and the comb on either side next to the cluster.  I also moved the hive about 10 feet so that the house would block the North wind.  Hopefully, the next sunny day will make it warm enough in the hive for the bees to get to the fondant.  The hive is painted dark green, so that should absorb some heat too.

Some people have wondered whether screened bottom boards would not provide enough insulation for the bees.  I did have a few bees die, and that may have been from the cold, but as a whole, it didn't seem to affect the colony very much.  To me, it seems to be worth using the screened bottom board to help with the varroa mite problem.

I'll let you know again this weekend how the bees are doing.  It didn't get above freezing today, but this weekend it should be a little warmer.  I'll take a peek at the bees then.

Fondant

Today I tried my hand at making fondant for the first time.  I used 4 cups of sugar, 1 cup of water, and 1/2 teaspoon of cider vinegar.  It turned out pretty good--at least it looks like it did.

Since it made it up to 64 degrees F today, I went ahead and put the fondant in the hive after it had cooled.  The brood nest has contracted away from the follower board, so I laid the fondant against one side of the hive as close to the brood nest as I could get it.  The temperature forecast looks like a roller coaster for the next week and a half.  Hopefully they make their way to the fondant on the warmer days.  The hive has morning and mid-afternoon sun, too, so that may keep them active a little longer as well.

The recipe I used was from this website.  It's a "prepper" website, which may turn some people off, but those types of sites have a lot of good DIY tips.

New queen?

I've been really stressed lately about the bees.  I combined the two hives, but they didn't seem to be very friendly to each other.  I did a quick check a few days ago and I didn't see my old queen, which was marked.  From what I could tell, not only did the combine not go well, but my old queen was dead.

I checked the hive again tonight and, to my amazement, I found brood--lots of brood.  I went through and checked every piece of comb for the queen, but I couldn't find her.  Either a new queen just hadn't started laying yet when I checked before, or the bees killed my old queen when I did the combine and made their own.  In any case, there is a lot of brood with a honey dome around them and the bees seemed a lot happier.  Now that the combine is done, I'll start feeding them again to make sure they have enough for the winter.  Here's a picture of what I found when I opened the hive.

Now if I could just find a way to have Congress pass a budget . . .

Had to combine the hives

The new queen didn't get mated, so I had to recombine the hives.  The original hive doesn't have a queen anymore and the new hive with the queen doesn't have a lot of foragers.

Last night I used wet newspaper to create a barrier wall in the original hive.  With the original colony on one side, I put the bars from the new hive on the other side of the newspaper.  The idea is that they chew through the newspaper and by the time they get through the two colonies are acquainted and accept each other.

Today I checked on them and there are a lot of bees fighting.  I don't know if the bees found an opening along the side of the paper, or if they just went outside and came back in the other opening.  Hopefully, they get together and make peace soon, or I will be starting all over next spring.

New queens are tooting

So last night I went out to the main hive to check on the bees and started hearing a noise.  After looking around I realized it was coming from the hive.  It seems the new queens are emerging from there cells and are tooting.

I had heard about tooting before but I wasn't really familiar with it.  After googling it, it's really an interesting communication method the new queens use.  Tooting is a form of "piping".  The other form is called quacking.  Newly emerged queens toot and queens about to emerge from their cells quack, which has a different frequency and pattern.

The queens pipe by moving their flying structures without moving their wings.  The vibrations travel through the thorax and into the comb that it's thorax is pressed against.  It's thought that the queens make this noise to search for other new queens.

The first queen to emerge will travel around the hive killing other queens it finds whether they have emerged or not.  Of course, a battle ensues if the other queen has emerged.  Generally, when a new queen starts tooting, the queens still in the cells will start quacking.

The worker bees will go to a few of the quacking queens and prevent the newly emerged queen from killing them.  The workers will then keep the new queens in their cells and feed them through a slit in the top of the cell.  The workers will then release a new queen one at a time and let the new queens fight.  Sometimes both queens die in the fight, so this process helps to prevent the colony from going queenless.

I managed to record the tooting with my phone.  It's not the best recording, but you can search YouTube for some good recordings.

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.