Mild December Inspection

Not a Drop
Goes to Waste

Our temperatures have been above normal which has allowed me to keep the feeder on. I wanted to ensure that the bees were ready if we get hit with an extended period of hard weather.

10 Frames Full of Honey

They had stopped taking syrup this past week so took advantage of our 70 degree December day to inspect the hive's stores.  It's never a good idea to completely open up a hive once the bees have it sealed nice and tight with propolis so I only removed the top feeder and then the medium box which was nicely filled wall to wall with honey!

I was surprised to see the bees didn't draw out all the frames in the top brood box but the five inner-most frames were full of honey and pollen. I was pleased to see bees bringing in bright orange pollen this time of year. You may think nothing is blooming right now but with our mild temps, I have shasta daisies blooming in my front garden. Referencing the Pollen Chart it's a good bet the bees have been visiting asters and mums that are thriving since we've not had a hard frost yet.

One thing to keep an eye on during a mild winter is that the hive population will remain larger than normal and will begin building up sooner than expected. That's one reason I kept the medium super on top of the two brood boxes. This strong hive is going to explode at the first opportunity as the queen will begin laying again around the time of the Winter Solstice. I plan to take advantage of that to make an early split come spring. Until then, I get to enjoy watching the bees flying about on these mild December days.

A Booming Hive

Peeked in today to see if the bees had filled out the empty frames in the top box (they had not yet.) I didn't want to break the hive apart to inspect every box/frame but the hive is so beautifully full you can see that they're doing well for now. I decided to add another box.

I have three medium supers that contain nectar and pollen that are from the lost hives last winter. Following best practices, the frames were frozen to kill any pests/eggs that may have been in them and then stored. The bees immediately came up to explore the box and I'm sure it will keep them busy as we head into the dearth of summer.

New Queen Already?!?

Newspaper Nearly Gone

Happy to see a week later that the newspaper is nearly gone and the two hives have happily blended into one now. You can see the bees are doing a fine job of capping the cells in this upper box. I gave the frames a quick inspection for eggs and found none. The cells are nearly all filled with nectar so there's no room for brood.

I removed the top box in order to check on the progress of the queen in the two lower deeps and you can image my surprise when I spotted the unmarked queen pictured below! I inspected every inch of the hive and found no trace of the original queen. I did find two used swarm cells (there's one in the lower left of the photo and you can see the cap of another in the upper right.)

Used Swarm Cells

There's way too many bees in the hive for it to have swarmed, so I wonder:

Did the old queen leave with a small amount of bees that a swarm is unnoticeable?

Did I thwart an oncoming swarm by placing the third box on the hive? And if so, did the new, stronger Queen kill the old one?

New Queen!

What ever happened, this new Queen is doing very well - there's beautiful brood pattern and lots of eggs in the frames.

Nice Brood Pattern

I read a few years back that beekeepers are starting to talk that there's something about the Queens coming from North Carolina - that the bees are superseding them sooner than they would normally. I can't speak for the quality of all North Carolina Queens but this is the third year in a row that I didn't have a new queen make it past July. Maybe there's something about our climate in Maryland that the Queens can't adapt to, or the journey here turns out to be too much of a stress on the Queens... What ever it is, the bees know when a Queen is not performing and will take action to ensure the health and strength of the hive. I don't mind the loss of my North Carolina Queens as long as it didn't mean the demise of both my hives.

Combined Hives Today

I was hoping that I'd find a supersedure queen today but instead I found no eggs, brood or queen in the Catherine hive so I moved it over to combine with the Alexandra hive. I could have moved some brood over so they could make a queen but at the end of June, it's just too late in the season to essentially start over. The hive would never be ready for winter in time.

I used the newspaper method of combining the two hives by placing a single layer of  using newspaper between the two. This will allow time for them to integrate as they chew through the paper and prevent fighting. So now I have three deeps on one hive. The bottom one will eventually become empty and can be removed, or the bees will keep storing syrup in it and they'll head into winter with a ton of honey!

Catherine the Not-So Great Queen

Alexandra Hive Brood Pattern

The good news is that the Alexandra hive is drawing out the 2nd hive body and the queen is laying a great brood pattern up there - filling up the comb before they get the entire frame finished. Happy with their progress, I closed them up. No need to break the hive apart to check the lower box today.

Bees Hatching

I was surprised to find the bees in the Catherine hive had hardly drawn out any comb in their upper box even though it's been in place for three weeks. They haven't been taking much syrup either but they don't have anyplace to store it. Looking into the lower box, I was happy to find bees emerging right on schedule.

I began to notice how gentle these bees are acting, and didn't see eggs or larvae, and the bees were not chaining as I would pull up a frame. They're not acting 'queen-right'! Inspecting every frame, I found only spotty capped brood. No eggs. No larvae. And no Queen!

Supersedure Cell?

I did find a pair of empty swarm cells but Russian bees are known to have swarms cells handy that they never use. There was one supersedure cell that seems half built - or is it half dismantled? Hard to tell... I'll give the hive a couple of days to either cap the cell or finish removing it and that will tell me much.

Bees and Spotty Brood

This hive was progressing so well that I didn't bother looking for the queen since the last time I saw her when I put the 2nd hive body on three weeks ago. This has been a long enough period of time that they could have replaced her already but I didn't notice a virgin queen roaming around the hive even though they can be hard to spot. Thankfully, the other hive is coming along well. I just may have to move some brood over from the Alexandra hive so they may make a new queen if I am unable to find one already present.

Starting the hives so late in the year, and now this set back? Ugh! It's certainly going to increase the amount of 'Keep' in 'Beekeeping' to ensure the Catherine hive builds up strong for the coming winter!

Progress Report on the Second Week for New Hives

I anticipated that the Catherine hive would be far ahead of the Alexandra hive this week since they've had the second deep box on for seven days but they haven't begun to draw out the frames. They haven't been taking the syrup either, which tells me they're still storing it in the lower box.

The Alexandra hive has done a great job of drawing out eight frames but they've been sucking down the syrup like crazy to store it in the lower box. I added a second deep box today so plan to leave them alone for a couple weeks now to let them work on drawing comb without much interference.

We've had a week of off and on rain so the ants love the dry, dark space between the articulating cover and the inner covers. HINT: A good coating of cinnamon usually keeps them away as they don't like the strong scent. Leaving the articulating cover off during the day would encourage the ants to move along but I couldn't do that because of the rain. Now the hives smell like cinnamon buns and the bees don't mind it.

We Have Eggs!

Purchased a new camera and it's frustrating to have come out of the apiary with blurry photos! I hope it is just my technique as I get used to using a new camera. But I'm super excited to report that both queens are laying!

Catherine Queen

The Catherine hive is about a day or two ahead of the Alexandria have since she was out of the cage sooner. I also had alternated some empty frames between the drawn ones last time and they're going gang-busters drawing them out.

Larvae in the Catherine Hive

The bees are busy storing the syrup so there isn't much room for the queen to lay right now but I was happy to find a small patch of larvae. There are nearly 8 drawn frames so added the second box to ensure they have plenty of room to grow. Will check on them in a couple weeks but until them I'll keep the feed on. They still had half a gallon left so they've slowed down slightly in their consumption of it.

Eggs in the Alexandra Hive

It was easy to spot the eggs in the Alexandra hive but also noted that the bees are filling much of the cells with syrup just as in the other hive, so added alternate empty frames between the drawn comb to get these bees busy drawing them out. It's really evident at this point how the hive is behind the other but I know they'll even out soon enough. The queen isn't as dark as the other but she's still quite lovely!

Alexandra Queen

Will check on their progress later in the week to see if they've drawn out the frames are are ready for another box.

First Inspection of 2015

The bees have been busy taking just over a half gallon of syrup a day so have been busy bees! Checked in to ensure the queens were released and it's a good thing I did as the bees were busy building burr comb in the space where a frame is removed to accommodate the queen cage. Since it is after work and getting towards dusk, I placed the removed comb at the entrance of the hive so the bees could walk back in for the night.

Catherine Queen

The Catherine Queen is lovely and dark, but still rather small. She had already made her way out of the hive but I didn't bother looking for eggs just yet. (The light is bad this time of day to see them....)

Alexandra Queen

The Alexandra Queen needed a bit of assistance to get our of her cage and what a difference that makes in the disposition of a hive! The Alexandra hive was so docile I could have been in them with out gloves or veil, even when digging round to extract the burr comb. But the Catherine hive was a bit fiesty! Those bees are ready to defend their home and their queen. I'll leave them to do their thing and check in on them in a few days, hoping to find brood. I'll need to keep feeding them most of the summer until they build up a honey super full to get them through the winter, but they seem to be on their way!

New Hives for 2015

Newly installed hives

I'm surprised at how excited I am that the bees have finally arrived! The timing is later in the spring than I had hoped but I'm confident we'll be able to build up enough food stores through constant feeding till fall that they'll make it through the winter. I am able to provide each new hive with 5+ frames of comb already drawn out so that they're not starting completely from scratch!

They are Russian queens again with one very being dark and the other mostly dark, which is one characteristic I enjoy with the Russian bees.

Sugared bees

Since this is later in the season for installing bees, I am feeding fumagillin b for the first two gallons of syrup as a best practice against noseama.  I also took the precaution of sugaring for varroa mites, sifting 10X powdered sugar over the bees which allows for them to remove the mites as they clean off the sugar. They look like ghost-bees when covered with sugar. I had temporarily inserted a bottom board to check the amount of mites present but was hard pressed to find one. That's a good sign the bees came from strong hives.

I'll leave them to do their thing for a few days before checking to see if the queen has been released. I enjoyed watching them them as they got right down to taking orientation flights. I'm so glad to have bees back in the yard again!