County Inspector Visit 6/16/12

Summit County Bee Inspector Laura Durban called ahead Friday evening (very courteous) to announce her availability and intent to inspect my apiary Saturday 6/16/12.  I asked that she not inspect hives actively rearing queens (denoted with bricks on top of hives, queen right hives have rocks weighing down the telescoping outer covers).  I accidentally had a brick on top of Hive 6, so it was not inspected even though it is queen right.

She came after I had left for Father's Day related adventures, so I was not present of the inspection.  She left the following report:

We went last year with an AWOL county inspector and therefore no inspection.  Welcome, Laura!

First Swarm Call

I'm not on any swarm call list and I don't have a truck or a cell phone.   I'm not a prime candidate for scoring lots of swarms.  I did get a call on 5/13/12 from a neighbor on Alger Rd. who we know vaguely since our kids attend the same school.  They called to say a swarm was atop a tree in the middle of their circle driveway and while they were leaving, I could come and try to catch it if I wished.

The tree was a 35' tall ornamental pear and there were bees at the very top.  I set up my 20' tall folding ladder and tied it to the tree.  While standing in the tree just above where the ladder reached, I was able to cut down 4' long sections of branches that had bees on them.  None of them was a tight cluster of bees that might contain a queen, though.  They must have left already.  What remained was about 100-200 bees that were high enough to make me think the swarm might still be up there.  When the neighbors returned they confirmed it was a big mass of bees when they called, about the size of a basketball.  They had seen some on the brick face of a peak of their house under an eave.  There were still a few dozen bees there  and I climbed up to make sure there was no queen.  I brushed them off and they came right back.   The did not seem inclined to try to go up and in the gap between the house and the soffit.

I left a single deep hive there in case any of the scouts thought it a better home than where ever they flew to, though I think that unlikely.  Good luck to you, wild little swarm!

2012 Nuc #2 (ended 6/2/12 with combine to Hive 6)

Hive status:  New nuc in 2012
Hive origin:  Split from H4 2012
Queen type:  None yet, eggs from H4 2012

Significant events/observations:

5/8/12:  Started this hive to prevent swarming of H4.  Consists of 3 frames of brood and eggs and one frame of food, each with bees.  The Queen from H4 was found during the split and placed back in H4, so this is a nuc that is certainly queenless.  With no nuc boxes, it is in a deep with 4 frames that have no drawn comb and 2 frames with a small amount of drawn comb.

5/13/12:  3 uncapped queen cells present, perhaps 6 or 7 days old.  They must have realized they were without a queen with enough time to use the eggs from 5/8/12.  If a healthy queen emerges she should be mated and perhaps even laying by the end of the month.

5/21/12:  I checked in on this hive in case there were queen cells on more than one frame to try to start another nuc.  All 3 queen cells were capped on the same frame, so I let them bee.  The queens will likely hatch out tomorrow.


6/2/12:  Combined with 2012 Hive 6.  Refer to that post for additional info.

2012 Hive #2 (ended 6/2/12 with combine to Hive 5)

Hive status:  Overwintered from 2011
Hive origin:  Nucleus in 2011, combined with 2012 Hive 5
Queen type:  2012 Italian from H#4 eggs.
Significant events/observations:

2/24/12:  Installed a candy board with pollen patty embedded in it (experiment).  Overwintered with a deep and shallow super only.

3/11/12:  The hive had a small brood nest with eggs observed.

3/21/12: Reversed hive bodies (shallow on bottom, deep on top) and removed entrance reducer.  Added a new deep hive body with drawn comb on top and replaced candy board on top of that.  It is probably 80% consumed.

4/15/12: Smallish brood nest for this time of year with slower population build, but eggs spotted.  Spring drones present.  This hive overwintered with a shallow and a deep which were reversed in March.  The queen has not started laying in the upper deep yet, which is largely empty.  Will keep an eye on this hive as a potential need for population boost from a thriving hive.

4/29/12: Newly queenless on this inspection, no eggs and very little capped brood.  Moved one frame with a nearly capped queen cell from H3.  As a backup I also moved 2 frames from H4 in that had some eggs in case the one queen cell is not viable as it was moved at a sensitive time in the queen larvae's development.  This is a setback.

5/6/12:  No new queen spotted.  2 capped queen cells noted, generated from eggs moved over on 4/29/12.

5/22/12:  New queen spotted! She's laying just a little on one frame so far, oldest larvae are about 5 days old.  One supercedure (threat?) cell was noted and left.  They'll likely tear it down if she proves to be a good layer.  Moved extra super to H1 so they can focus on filling their 2 deeps.

6/2/12:  Queen present but not laying.  She was removed to a new nuc, 2012 Nuc 4 with one frame of bees and the rest combined with 2012 Hive 5.  Refer to that post for additional info.

Spring weather - freeze warning 3/26/12

It is the warmest spring on record and everything is in bloom from flowering pears to wild cherries.  Low of 26 tonight.  I wonder if the bees will have forage come tomorrow!  Spring dearth?  I hope not.

Update 4/15/12:  We've had a few snows and there have been some trees that have suffered (the magnolias look terrible) but things are blooming and the bees are bringing in nectar and pollen.  I did not have to resume feeding.

Format change to blog

In 2009 and 2010 with 2 hives I generated a blog post for each inspection.  I intended to do the same in 2011 with 5 hives, but my records were poor and sporadic.  However, it clearly would have been difficult to track the progress of a particular hive through many different posts.  This year I'll be trying a single post per hive.  Significant issues/changes will be documented in the post body via an update.  Minor inspections, feedings, and observations will be documented as comments.  Hopefully this will allow the tracking of individual colonies.  The dates on the main posts will not be relevant and the "labels" cumulative, but the comment dates will remain relevant.  Not sure what to do with photos as bulking up the posts too much will make it hard to read.

6/5/12 update:  I had to figure out how handle combines given the current posting format.  I decided that I would keep the hive number of the hive that is queen-right during the combine and continue the updates for that hive.  The non-queen right hive will be updated with a link to new hive and state that the hive ended on the combine date and that hive #/year combo retired.

For example, Hive 2 (not queen right) was combined with Hive 5 (queen right) to create Hive 5.  The original post for Hive 2 was shut down and linked to Hive 5, which will continue.

Overwintering: Early spring 2012 Update

Of the 5 hives going into the winter, 1 starved out by late December.  I inspected on a day above 55 at the end of December and that hive was dead, the one that had so many bees and had produced so much honey in 2011.  I suppose I pulled off too much honey in the fall, even though I left a full super on top of the two deeps.  It's too bad as that queen laid like crazy.  Despite moving some bees from this hive to boost others there were too many bees going into the winter.  They might have lived if I harvested NO honey.

The winter was unusually warm.  I think I shoveled the driveway only 3 times.  Seemed like everytime it snowed it was followed with weather warm enough to melt it.  The bees fared well.  The remaining 4 colonies have decent sized clusters and did not starve.  3 of 4 overwintered in two deeps and I began feeding pollen patties on Feb 24, 2012 and sugar syrup on March 7,2012.  1 of 4 overwintered with a deep and a shallow (started 2011 as a nuc) and I began feeding on Feb24 with pollen patty embedded in candy board. 

Candy board was a new thing for me, courtesy of Allan T.  For candy I used 10lbs of sugar in 2 cups water with 1 tsp vinegar and 2 tbsp Honey Bee Healthy.  Once heated to a uniform slurry, I poured it into a frame that had hardware cloth on the back which I lined with wax paper.  I embedded pollen patty in the candy and allowed it to cool and solidfy.  The entire board went on top the super and under the inner cover.

Fingers crossed for the best bee and honey year yet.