Spring 2010 update summary and third inspection

I'm behind in my bee journal. Moving and family and work and projects have led to less time for updates. To sum up the spring:

Last year's Italian colony overwintered fine, ran low on food. Spring feeding has gone well and the colony seemed to have plenty of bees. No issues.

The Russian colony failed in early spring, sometime in March. I was initially thrilled that both hives survived in when I first got into them sometime in February, but was concerned about the Russian population level. There proved to be too few bees and, while they had lots of food, one cold snap in March led to them starving to death. They formed a tight cluster on an empty section of comb and froze/starved to death. There was evidence of lots of moisture in the hive in the form of mold. There was a bit of a sour smell, though I don't suspect it was foulbrood.

On 4/26/10 I installed a new package of bees with fanfare (Mohammad and Bud were there). The new bees went into the old Russian hive equipment, though the new bees are Italians. I guess this season they will be called the "old" (overwintered colony) and the "new" (package colony) instead of the Russian and Italian. The new package has a headstart over last year's package bees as there is lots of comb and some capped honey left over from the Russians. The installation went fine. The bees got fresh sugar syrup and a pollen patty in each hive.

Also on 4/26/10 we inspected the old Italian colony. The queen was there but had not started laying.



Some weeks after installation we had to move the hives to cut down a large ash tree that was too close to the house. The move lasted a day and a half where the bees were not allowed to venture from their hives. When they were released they were thirsty and happy to be flying, but fine otherwise.



Which brings us to 5/22/10 and the third inspection of the 2010 season:



Conditions: Sunny, 75F
Present: Just me
Equipment: Removed entrance reducers and added super to new colony. Removed queen cage from new colony.
Activities: Smoked hives about 4:30pm. Inspected a few frames.
Observations:

"New" hive:

In the "new" hive there were some new bees present, though I did not observe any emerging. All the bees were concentrated in a single deep as I did not have a super on after installing the package. They seem very happy in there. The queen is laying a lot with a good brood pattern. There is food and brood on both sides of the 3 or 4 frames I inspected. There was also new comb being built on frames that were not completely built out. I didn't spot the queen, but I didn't keep pulling frames just to find her. I was happy with the quantity and quality of laying.

I did damage some of the comb on one side of the frame when removing the queen cage. I forgot to pull the two frames that were sandwiching it at the same time, then split them apart once they were both out. I pulled one of the two frames and dragged the queen cage straight down cutting through comb all the way. The aftermath was a strip of bare foundation on one side the exact width of the queen cage, the empty queen cage at the bottom of the hive, and a mass of wax and smushed brood. Oops. I hope I don't make that mistake again...

"Old" hive:

In the "old" hive I found the queen right away on the first shallow frame I pulled. She was laying only in the upper shallow super and all frames in the lower deep were empty with the exception of a few bees. I didn't know if she was not laying down there since there was no food on many of those frames or because she was preferring to be up high in hive. Because I use a shallow upper super, there is not much room for both brood and food on the small frames and I'm concerned about sufficient population build if she's not laying on the deep frmaes. I decided that either way it might be a good idea to switch the upper and lower. So I have shallows on the bottom, deeps up above that, and then a pail topfeeder. The hope is that the bees working the feeder put some food on the deep frames since they are now adjacent to the feeder, and that the queen starts laying there. I'll be happy to switch the deep back down to the bottom position in a week or two. Hopefully this is more helpful than confusing to the bees. I won't leave it this way for too long as I don't want them to pack all the deep frames with food so there is no room for brood. I might be meddling too much. The bees know what they are doing. I like to think I can help, though I'm not sure I actually do.

There was also a LOT of very large ants and ant larvae between the inner and outer cover. I still had a sheet of foam insulation on this hive and they had started burrowing in it to make a cozy home. I don't think the bees could get to the them to chase them out. I removed the insulation and all the ants I could. I trust the bees will do the rest.