The Benifits of Good Photography.

As I told you in my last post, I combined my colonies to ensure the weaker one will at least supplement the stronger colony. As I was checking the colonies my photographer, my 15 year old son, was taking pictures. As a new beekeeper, I am not as familiar with what brood looks like as I should be. However, after checking the pictures he took when I got home, I realized I made a mistake.
 I ran back out the next morning and separated the boxes. I then went back through the weak hive and found the queen. Whew! I was worried that they already comingled and that one of the queens were dead. Everything turned out ok. It looked like there was a decent amount of brood, not as much as I would like but not bad and the queen was laying eggs. I am hoping the bees that hatch out will expand the brood nest and increase the colony strength considerably before the end of the summer. Fortunately we have fairly long summers here so they should have plenty of time.

Here is one of the pics that changed my mind. All the open cells appear to have brood in them as well. I am pretty happy about that. I will keep an eye on this hive and keep my fingers crossed.

Till next week,
-Robert

 

Colony Failure

I went out today with the intention of putting the screened bottom boards on. However, things were not looking good.
Well, I tried over and over again to get my weak colony to flourish. I thought for sure what I did last week was going to work. It did not. I don't seem to have a queen. There are no eggs, no brood and no new bees. The brood I put in last week are all hatched out and they were building what looked like an emergency queen cup.
At this point, I just gave up. I combined the two hives. To combine them, I just removed the top cover from the healthy colony, stuck a sheet of news paper down and placed the two boxes of the weaker colony on top.
 I am fairly certain that they will thrive now. Hopefully the increase in population will get the colony to a nice healthy level.
 Unfortunately that brings my colony count to one. That means I have no fall back if something else goes wrong. I really need to catch a few swarms. I even set up a full ten frame hive as a trap out back. I should probably move some of them out of my yard and into the local woods.
 Not a lot of good pics for this. But here are some pics for the sake of something to look at.

 The healthy colony

 Bees a buzzing

 Can't tell if this is empty comb or maybe pollen?

 I little bit of brood but not enough in my opinion

 A very uneven pattern.

Crystal clear honey.



What appears to be an emergency queen cup.

 



 A bee eruption from the big colony

A dead bee on the bottom board.

Some Bee Ventalation

As promised here are some pictures of the completed screened bottom boards. Bear in mind that all my stuff is made at home with the exception of frames. There is no way I am going to make those when I can get them so cheap.
 None the less, feast you eyes on this...

 Here is a nice top view of the screened bottom board.

Notice the slot under the screen for a mite sticky board.



Here you can see the whole slot for the mite sticky board.

I sure hope the bees like it.

 

-Robert

The Grapes of Endurance

While not about bees, this saga happened in my back yard and thus bears telling.
 Several yeas ago, four, I believe. I figured I needed some grapes. Not that I planned to get them or anything. They just looked cool at Sam's Club. A box of four but for whatever reason, only three varieties. Still, I imagined the vast amounts of raisins and wine that would soon be in my future. My own vineyard. What could be better?
 I purchased my grapes and proceeded to plant them about 20 feet from the back fence. Plenty of room for them to grow and me to mow and hopefully harvest my bounty. I left the tags on the grapes so I knew where the varieties were so I could anticipate my fruit. At this time I had no clue how to grow grapes. I just knew the were a vine and the source of, as I stated earlier, raisins and wine.
 Apparently I picked a really bad time to start a vineyard. That summer was the beginning of a bad dry spell for the area. I tried to keep everything watered but lost two vines that first year. The next year it was even worse. I lost two dogwoods, four blueberry bushes (I likely would have lost more but I only had four) a good bit of my privet hedges and what appeared to be my last two grapes. My wife also mowed over my son's blackberries in an unrelated incident.
 I figured it was all over and the whole vineyard thing was a write off. So I pretty much just planted nothing the following year. Surprisingly, as I wandered my non fruit bearing yard, I saw something coming up from one of the holes where the grapes was growing. At first I thought it was a weed but it ended up being one of the grape vines! well I tried to water it kind of half heartedly and it grew about three fee but died off about half way through the summer. I figured that was a wrap and I was done. It was stupidly hot and no rain in sight. No way it could survive.
 Unbelievably the next spring, it came up again! Well, I figured since it was trying so hard, maybe I should put a little effort into it. I began watering it daily. I placed fertilizer stakes around it. I also figured I needed some grape growing know how and hit the internet. I put up a trellis and attached it to the trellis. I was doing really well at this point. Shockingly well. I managed to get the vine trained down the bottom wire of the trellis and got the top started. I have it shaped like a "T" with the trunk in the middle and vines going left and right away from it. I also had another vine going up to a higher wire and it is also "T" shaped. The lower vine reached about 20 feet before winter set in and the top vine was about 8 feet. I was worried that because the vines were so thin, the ends were almost like little toothpicks, that they would freeze and die again. I just hoped for the best.
 Spring came and it budded all along the vine. Even to the very tips! This vine was determined to make something of itself. Well apparently to get grapes, you have to have a main vine that you grow one year and the following year the little branch vines that grow off that produce grapes. My little vine is currently so full of grapes that it is making my cheap PVC trellis posts bow.
 I have no idea what kind of grape it is, the label was lost the first time I thought it died. Hopefully the fruit will ripen and then I will know.
 I am just glad it did not give up as easily as me. It's really cool seeing all those bunches of grapes out there.

 The CD is to keep the birds off my grapes.

Failing Hive

Well, I was trying not to make this an educational blog, but I am going to have to lay some groundwork for this one. I ran into a bad situation at the hives today. I was out to check on my weak hive to see how it was doing. I opened it up and much to my dismay, it appeared that I had (say this in a dramatic voice to yourself) "Laying Workers". Some of you in the bee business know what a laying worker and what the prospects for the colony are. Those of you who do not know what a laying worker is, well prepare for some education.
 When a queen dies or is failing, after two to maybe three weeks, the hive, in an attempt to boost population or just some kind of innate need to have a queen, produce what is called a laying worker. This is a worker bee that does not have the reproductive parts a queen does and therefore cannot mate. All of her offspring will be drones because they only require half the genetic information thus no need for fertilization. Drones are not a good thing to have in excess in a weak colony. They are consumers only, they do not gather or do colony chores. It then becomes a self inflating problem till the colony dies off. This is NOT what I want to happen to one of my only two colonies.
  There are limited ways to combat this. You pretty much have to remove the laying workers and requeen the hive. My issue is that there was a queen in the hive and she was happy as a bug in a well hive, I guess. I am wondering if the laying worker's pheromones may have over powered the queen's.
 So here is what I did. Who knows if this will work?
 First, I caught the queen and put her in a box, all alone.
 Second, I moved all the hive parts 50 yards away.
 Third I shook, or blew ALL the bees off ALL of the hive bodies, comb, foundation, bottoms and tops. I removed EVERY bee from the hive.
Fourth, I removed a nice comb of brood from my healthy colony and placed it in the weak hive.
Fifth, I rebuilt the weak hive and let everything settle down for a minute.
Finally, I released the queen back into the hive.

 I will go check on them next Friday.
  The reason for moving the hive away and getting all the bees off is to try to get rid of the laying worker(s). Supposedly they are too heavy to fly so they just die there in the grass.
  I placed some good brood in the weak colony to help bolster the population. The bees in there are approaching a month old since I last saw brood. Hopefully the infusion of new bees will get things going again.
  Now the fun part of this whole episode was retrieving the brood from the active colony. As usual, the colony built bridge comb from the bottom box frames to the top box frames. They then filled this comb with honey. To get at the brood, I had to get in the bottom box. I have failed to mention that until I went into this hive to get the brood, I was wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants. No gloves, no smoker, no veil. Well as soon as I broke that honey comb, the bees got angry. I swear they were Africanized! They were chasing me around, digging in my hair basically trying to sting me repeatedly. At this point, I left their hive in two pieces and went and got my smoker and veil. I finally managed to subdue them enough to get what I needed from them and to teach them a lesson, I scraped off the bridge comb....again.
  I will let you know next week how they are fairing. And hopefully I will have some screened bottom boards and some ventilation ekes made that I can share with you.
 Till next time.
-Robert
 

Swarm Traps

There are several commercially available swarm traps. There are also plans online. I just built a couple of five frame nucleus hives so I decided to bait them.
 From what I understand, trapping a swarm is the purest of luck. However, they seem to swarm in the same place year after year. At the bee club meeting last night, one of the big apiary owners says he has captured seven swarms at the same church this year. The church has had bees in the walls several times. I suppose that is a good lure. He also noted that he has two nucs set up. One at the north end of the church facing north and one on the south end facing south. Both nucs have attracted bees but he says he has had the bees in the north facing hive leave after a short time. He now has both hive entrances facing south. In each nuc he placed one frame of old comb and four empty frames. For a scent lure he is using a few drops of lemon grass oil placed on the top of the frames. Hopefully he will report on his success next meeting.
 I have had a couple of five frame nucs out hoping to trap a swarm. In my Nucs there were five frames of wax coated plastic foundation and some wax from my active colony with a little honey mixed in. So far, I have attracted ants.
 Today, I decided to mimic his setup as closely as possible. I visited the health food store and purchased lemon grass oil. I then pulled all the frames out of the hives except one each. I took a sheet of foundation and cut it in one inch strips. I then fitted the strips into the tops of the frames and painted the bare ends with heated bees wax I harvested from my active hive (remember the burr comb sticking to my screened inner cover?). I then moved the stand and hives to the south side of the shed so they will face south. I think I am going to put a roof over the stand. The tops are just painted quarter inch plywood and are beginning to delaminate in the rain.
 Now they are reassembled and ready to attract bees by the thousands. Hopefully the pictures will help illustrate what I have done.

Wax painted on the bottom of the starter strip

Starter strip in place. You can see the full foundation frame under this one.

My traps aka my nucs.

    Inside the hive. An old queen box in the back to help with pheromone lure.

Number 8

"Number 8", you say. "What the heck is that?". Well, it is the size of the hardware cloth you need to keep bees in their hive and mice and other things out. I had a very difficult time locating it. Number 8 hardware cloth has square holes in it that are approximately 1/8" in width and height. You would figure it would be at any local (ugh local...more on that in a minute) hardware store. You know, just laying there glistening in the sun with the chicken wire and such.
 I am here to tell you that is NOT the way it is. I started my search so I can start making screened bottom boards and inner covers for my hives. It gets very hot here in Northwest Louisiana so the bees need all the help they can get.
 Of course, the first place I looked was the big box stores. Then a feed store, and then a farm supply store or two and finally another hardware store. I finally resigned to just ordering it online. There are several places to get it online but oddly the shipping is more than the screen itself. I figured I would put it off for a while and see if maybe someone has a sale or something.
 Of course, every time I stopped at a place that did not have it, I said to myself "Self, You really need to check the hardware store down the street from the house, I bet he might have some.". I drive by this little store daily, likely 3 or 4 times daily. Not directly in front of it, mind you, but a block away from it. Every day....three or four times a day. Not stopping, just driving by.
 Well, today I had to drop off my scout leader uniform (both my boys are in Boy Scouts) to have some patches sewed on. Conveniently, the hardware store is next to the tailor.
 I walk in, expecting disappointment again. The hardware store owner, who is always there, asks if he can help me find anything. I say number 8 hardware cloth, you know 1/8" squares. He replies "I have a whole roll of it, how much do you need?".
 I was flabbergasted, flummoxed and excited all at the same time. However I did retain the mental faculties to ask for some. I ended up with a five foot by three foot section. Plenty to do what I need for now.
 Just goes to show you, start close before heading out into the wild oh, and support local stores.
 I will post up some pictures when I start making the ventilation parts.

Robert