Final Blog Post

I started this blog with the intent to chronicle the adventures of a new beekeeper, to share the mistakes I've made as well as the things I've learned from them, and as a repository for interesting and helpful information relating to bees and beekeeping.

Now seven years on, I no longer consider myself a newbie, and as there are a breadth of other helpful websites and blogs out there, I simply feel the time has come to let this blog rest. I will leave it in place so that the information remains available but I'll no longer actively keep the blog current.

Thank you to everyone who's stopped by over the years to see what's been up in the apiary!

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!