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.