Conditions: Sunny, 70F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Added a second honey super to each hive
Activities: Smoked hives about 6:15pm. Inspected honey supers in both hives. Inspected deep super for brood in the new hive.
Observations:
New Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. After the initial inspection we made up more frames and added a new honey super beneath the full one. Really want to stay ahead of them providing space to not have a late swarm. Finally spotted the queen, who is marked. She’s a fat one and laying happy. I’m thrilled she’s almost keeping up with the overwintered hive.
Old Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. This colony is working faster as they had a 5 frame setback during the last inspection and still caught up to the new hive. (The 5 frames were destroyed due to excessive drone comb)
We should be able to remove a frame of capped honey from each hive to go down to 9 frames in the new supers at the next inspection, 1.5 to 2 weeks from now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
6/17/2001: Sixth Inspection and Honey Super
Conditions: Sunny, 78F
Present: Just me
Equipment: Old hive: Removed pail top feeder, added honey super
New hive: No changes
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old Hive: New frames in the medium super were all built out since the last inspection, which is great progress. Lots of bees, removed the top feeder and added a honey super. Got a sting on the finger when turning around the lower deep to have the shortcut hole (upper entrance on deep) moved to the front side. Bud installed this backwards when reversing during the last inspection.
New Hive: Lots of bees, plenty calm. Not much progress building comb in the honey super added during the last inspection. Really looked for the queen this time but still did not spot her. She continues to lay well, so no concerns.
If there is still not much comb building progress in the honey supers at the time of the next inspection I'll consider moving up two or three frames of capped honey from the other super to get bees trafficking there. Since these are older frames and may contain sugar-syrup feed instead of nectar-made honey, I would return them to the bees and only extract from the new frames once everything is built out.
I'm interested in using 9 frames in the honey supers which enables deeper cells containing more honey, so I'll have to watch the comb building process closely. I have to remove the 10th frame only after 9 frames have fully-built comb. Not sure how this works if some of the cells are capped. Do they uncap it and build it out to add more honey and recap? Hmmmm...
Present: Just me
Equipment: Old hive: Removed pail top feeder, added honey super
New hive: No changes
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old Hive: New frames in the medium super were all built out since the last inspection, which is great progress. Lots of bees, removed the top feeder and added a honey super. Got a sting on the finger when turning around the lower deep to have the shortcut hole (upper entrance on deep) moved to the front side. Bud installed this backwards when reversing during the last inspection.
New Hive: Lots of bees, plenty calm. Not much progress building comb in the honey super added during the last inspection. Really looked for the queen this time but still did not spot her. She continues to lay well, so no concerns.
If there is still not much comb building progress in the honey supers at the time of the next inspection I'll consider moving up two or three frames of capped honey from the other super to get bees trafficking there. Since these are older frames and may contain sugar-syrup feed instead of nectar-made honey, I would return them to the bees and only extract from the new frames once everything is built out.
I'm interested in using 9 frames in the honey supers which enables deeper cells containing more honey, so I'll have to watch the comb building process closely. I have to remove the 10th frame only after 9 frames have fully-built comb. Not sure how this works if some of the cells are capped. Do they uncap it and build it out to add more honey and recap? Hmmmm...
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
6/10/2010: Fifth Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 76F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Removed 5 frames from shallow super on old hive and replaced with new frames of blank foundation due to excessive drone. Removed pail top feeder from new hive and added a honey super.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:00pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old hive:
Notice a bunch of drone cells and little food in the lower (shallow) chamber since reversal. The bees have not been storing food here, and all brood is drone. We removed 5 frames of comb with high numbers of drones or empty drone comb and left 5 frames in that had honey, brood, or nothing, but were of normal cell size (not drone comb). 5 frames of foundation were added to allow drawing of comb and storage of food. This is a minor setback which did not allow for supering this hive with a honey super. I mixed up one more batch of sugar syrup to continue feeding until the new frames are fully drawn out.
In the deep, which was on top, we saw tons of bees, brood, and quite a bit of capped honey. The queen was spotted on a frame with lots of open cells, moving to a part of the hive to keep the laying going. She’s doing great laying in her second year and I don’t know whether or not to requeen in the fall. Some people (certainly queen breeders) recommend re-queening every year. The population was larger here than the new hive, which is to be expected. We reversed the chambers again to have the shallow super on top and encourage the building of comb by having those frames close to the pail top feeder. Hopefully the queen will stay down in the deep chamber now that there is lots of food and brood on the deep frames. Perhaps in a week or two we can super?
With all the reversing and pulling and re-pulling frames to decide whether or not to keep them we had this hive open a long time, maybe 20 minutes. The bees were good, but you could tell they were growing impatient with us the longer we were in there. No stings, but I changed from bare-handing it to wearing gloves as we went. I was pretty sure I would have gotten a sting (or several) if I kept at it without gloves.
New hive:
The upper (shallow) super was full of bees and capped honey. The lower (deep) had plenty of brood in a good pattern. So we removed the feeder and added a honey super! We did not pull every frame just to see the queen, so she went unspotted. Based on the young larvae and capped brood, she’s laying just fine. I hope to see this queen soon, though. Funny that I keep spotting the unmarked queen but haven’t found the marked queen yet. No reversals for this hive this season as they started in just a deep and I added the shallow from the other hive after that. The pollen patty was nearly fully consumed.
I think it’s been a good spring with early warm temperatures, sufficient rain to keep nectar flowing, yet enough dry days to allow for long days of foraging.
Now if I could just keep up with planting the garden…
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Removed 5 frames from shallow super on old hive and replaced with new frames of blank foundation due to excessive drone. Removed pail top feeder from new hive and added a honey super.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:00pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old hive:
Notice a bunch of drone cells and little food in the lower (shallow) chamber since reversal. The bees have not been storing food here, and all brood is drone. We removed 5 frames of comb with high numbers of drones or empty drone comb and left 5 frames in that had honey, brood, or nothing, but were of normal cell size (not drone comb). 5 frames of foundation were added to allow drawing of comb and storage of food. This is a minor setback which did not allow for supering this hive with a honey super. I mixed up one more batch of sugar syrup to continue feeding until the new frames are fully drawn out.
In the deep, which was on top, we saw tons of bees, brood, and quite a bit of capped honey. The queen was spotted on a frame with lots of open cells, moving to a part of the hive to keep the laying going. She’s doing great laying in her second year and I don’t know whether or not to requeen in the fall. Some people (certainly queen breeders) recommend re-queening every year. The population was larger here than the new hive, which is to be expected. We reversed the chambers again to have the shallow super on top and encourage the building of comb by having those frames close to the pail top feeder. Hopefully the queen will stay down in the deep chamber now that there is lots of food and brood on the deep frames. Perhaps in a week or two we can super?
With all the reversing and pulling and re-pulling frames to decide whether or not to keep them we had this hive open a long time, maybe 20 minutes. The bees were good, but you could tell they were growing impatient with us the longer we were in there. No stings, but I changed from bare-handing it to wearing gloves as we went. I was pretty sure I would have gotten a sting (or several) if I kept at it without gloves.
New hive:
The upper (shallow) super was full of bees and capped honey. The lower (deep) had plenty of brood in a good pattern. So we removed the feeder and added a honey super! We did not pull every frame just to see the queen, so she went unspotted. Based on the young larvae and capped brood, she’s laying just fine. I hope to see this queen soon, though. Funny that I keep spotting the unmarked queen but haven’t found the marked queen yet. No reversals for this hive this season as they started in just a deep and I added the shallow from the other hive after that. The pollen patty was nearly fully consumed.
I think it’s been a good spring with early warm temperatures, sufficient rain to keep nectar flowing, yet enough dry days to allow for long days of foraging.
Now if I could just keep up with planting the garden…
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
5/29/2010: County Bee Inspector and Fourth Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 76F
Present: Summit County Bee Inspector and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 12:30pm. Inspected numerous frames.
The summit county bee inspector dropped by on Saturday 5/29 and we checked out the hives together. I was particularly interested in talking about my decision to reverse the upper and lower chamers on the overwintered colony and if that was working outwell. He said the old queen is laying all over the frames in the deep now (which is now on top) and he said everything looks great, very normal. So I guess it was a good move. No diseases noted in either hive and very low levels of mites. Lots more bees in the old colony compared to the new, but the new has more food stored up (from the previous colony), so they have a bit less work to do. Not quite time to super either hive yet, so I continue to feed sugar syrup. I will go ahead and ready some additional frames to super, maybe as soon as next week in the old colony. They'll have to build out comb in those supers, but they should produce some surplus honey, at least from the overwintered colony. I'm excited to super!
Present: Summit County Bee Inspector and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 12:30pm. Inspected numerous frames.
The summit county bee inspector dropped by on Saturday 5/29 and we checked out the hives together. I was particularly interested in talking about my decision to reverse the upper and lower chamers on the overwintered colony and if that was working outwell. He said the old queen is laying all over the frames in the deep now (which is now on top) and he said everything looks great, very normal. So I guess it was a good move. No diseases noted in either hive and very low levels of mites. Lots more bees in the old colony compared to the new, but the new has more food stored up (from the previous colony), so they have a bit less work to do. Not quite time to super either hive yet, so I continue to feed sugar syrup. I will go ahead and ready some additional frames to super, maybe as soon as next week in the old colony. They'll have to build out comb in those supers, but they should produce some surplus honey, at least from the overwintered colony. I'm excited to super!
Monday, May 24, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
11/30/09: Insulating
Conditions: Cloudy, Dark (night) 40F
Present: Just me
Equipment: Adding insulation.
Activities: Removed pail feeders, added insulation at about 7:30pm.
Observations: Observed nothing. I was in and out as fast as I could be so as not to chill the bees. The insulation is roof-top only, between the inner cover and outer cover. It's 1" of green foam board, about R = 5.0. The pail feeders came off empty. With those gone the hives should be able to stay warmer. If I can find some relatively cheap local hay bales I'll build them a windbreak...
Present: Just me
Equipment: Adding insulation.
Activities: Removed pail feeders, added insulation at about 7:30pm.
Observations: Observed nothing. I was in and out as fast as I could be so as not to chill the bees. The insulation is roof-top only, between the inner cover and outer cover. It's 1" of green foam board, about R = 5.0. The pail feeders came off empty. With those gone the hives should be able to stay warmer. If I can find some relatively cheap local hay bales I'll build them a windbreak...
Saturday, November 7, 2009
11/7/09: Another feeding (last of season?)
Conditions: Sunny, 61F
Present: Just me
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Refilled sugar syrup with Pro Health and Fumagillin B additives.
Observations: The Italian hive had taken all of the syrup from their feeder, the Russian hive had left about 12 oz. The sugar syrup did not have as much mold or fuzzies growing. It is probably primarily due to the Fumagillin B, though the cooler temperatures probably help, too. This may be the last feeding as it will soon be regularly freezing. It's a beautifully warm and sunny weekend and the girls were flying most of the day. They like their sunny spot.
Present: Just me
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Refilled sugar syrup with Pro Health and Fumagillin B additives.
Observations: The Italian hive had taken all of the syrup from their feeder, the Russian hive had left about 12 oz. The sugar syrup did not have as much mold or fuzzies growing. It is probably primarily due to the Fumagillin B, though the cooler temperatures probably help, too. This may be the last feeding as it will soon be regularly freezing. It's a beautifully warm and sunny weekend and the girls were flying most of the day. They like their sunny spot.
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