For a December holiday — Christmas or his birthday, I can’t recall which — The Engineer got a Topdon thermal camera that works with his phone.
We thought it might help keep tabs on the bees in winter. And it could — at least in theory — except we wrap all the hives but LoLa. This action is more effective at retaining the hives’ heat than we expected, so the winter pictures didn’t show much.
This is actually good news, just not the sort that lends itself to dramatic photos.
Still, the camera is useful for identifying hot and cold spots in our house which may require attention. As a matter of fact, when we were goofing arround with it in our living room, we were shocked to discover how much heat our old VCR player was throwing off. This discovery pushed us to make the not-difficult decision to finally get rid of a device we hadn’t used in years.
It’s always a good thing to get rid of something we don’t use, and this had the added bonus of ridding ourselves of the old videotapes too.
Fast forward a few months to now when, for various reasons, we’ve removed the wrapping from several of our strongest hives. Since the nights are still cold, we decided to see where the bees are hanging out in those hives, to make sure they were still keeping together to stay warm.
The Engineer has just come in from taking photos of all of the colonies except he forgot LoLa.
That’s okay. The bee cluster in LoLa is so pitifully small, it would probably have just been depressing to have it documented.
Here are the photos.
This is hive #2, which still has the foam box around it. You can clearly see where the heat is escaping beneath the lid and out the entrance.
This is #6S, and although it’s wrapped, you can see the bees are primarily on the right side, mostly in the bottom box, but with some in the top also.
Here’s #2A, one of our unwrapped hives. See the bulk of the bees near the middle in the bottom box, with a layer across the top box, and sort of a crooked column of them on the left in the top box.
Hive #3 is also wrapped, and you can see the heat coming out the bottom and the top. It looks like maybe the bees are mostly in the middle of both boxes? It’s also possible the heat signature has more to do with the wrap. I don’t know.
This is #4, also unwrapped, with bees mostly in the bottom right and some directly under the lid.
And hive #5, the monstor hive, has quite a big mass of bees in the middle of the two bottom boxes.Since we added the top box only because they were crowded, this makes sense. There’s probably not yet any brood for them to keep warm there.
Most importantly, all the hives are clearly warmer than their surroundings. Although in the first three photos, you can see the paving stones below the stand are retaining some heat, the ground beneath the last three is mostly a cool purple.
Kind of a cool way of looking at the bees, don’t you think?
It’s been cold (in the 20s, just a typical Ohio spring, dropping 30 degrees in a day), but today it warmed enough to take another look at two of the hives we plan to sell and take a peek at LoLa’s progress.
As previously mentioned, selling our three 10-frame hives is part of our plan to cut back to five hives — four 8-frames and LoLa (the Long Langstroth).
LoLa’s growth in population is slow, but steady. The queen is doing a great job laying, and we hope they’ll soon have enough bees for us to give them a frame of brood from another hive.
We turned to #2A, which we last looked at about three weeks ago. At that point, the queen had only laid one frame of brood, which we stole to give to #2 to make a queen to replace a drone layer we had to pinch. Fingers crossed!)
After seeing how much brood some of our other hives had, we were a little concerned #2A might have a queen issue as well. The first box we looked through did little to alleviate those concerns. There was some brood, but there was also a fair amount of drone brood.
Then we got to the second box.
Our worries were for naught. There was plenty of brood and bees, and a big healthy queen.
On to #4.
We marked this queen ourselves, and you can tell. The color is meant to be on her thorax, but I missed and hit her wings.
But look at the difference in the coloring of the queens! Interesting, eh?
Also in the lower right picture, you can see a queen cup on the very bottom (you may have to zoom in).
Sometimes bees make these to get ready to make a queen. And sometimes, they just make them just in case. Our bees tend to keep at least one of the “just in case” cups in their hives most of the time, so we’re not too worried about this hive swarming just yet.
If there were a lot of them, or an actual queen cell (or many), we’d be concerned.
Today’s Status Report: Two 10-frame hives with laying queens, and plenty of brood and bees, all ready for their new homes. Now, we just need to finalize their purchase and get them ready for pickup by moving them to the front of the house.
Last night as I was falling asleep, I suddenly thought about what time of year it is and realized I’d forgotten a date that brought an event that changed my life forever.
On 18 March, thirteen years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
It is my cancerversary.
We generally commemorate 18 March in some way. In the early years, we would go out to dinner or I’d cook something special. Lately it’s just been taking a moment to toast being alive and also me having hair.
I didn’t forget because I was doing anything particularly exciting. Monday was just a normal day. I got up, went to work out and visited my mom. Later we went to a bee association meeting.
And so, I am remembering my cancerversary now, grateful to still be here and appreciative of normal days. I also hope to never completely forget that no one is guaranteed a single day more than the one we are living.
In truth, I do forget sometimes, getting caught up in the minutiae of daily living and plans for the future. Eventually, something always comes around to remind me to take a moment to lift up my head and look around.
With all the horrible things going on in our world — and there are many — I count myself fortunate to have many reasons to be happy to be alive.
If you’d like to read about my cancer year, here is a link to my blog, Keeping A-Breast: Cancer Lessons. The lessons are no longer in order, so if you’d like to read them chronologically, you will need to search by number, starting with the Cancer Lesson #1.
It’s been a beautiful day today, sunny and the high 60s — before we plunge back into the 30s and possibly 20s.
Yes, it’s just another typical Ohio spring, where beekeepers have to seize the days of good weather to work in our apiaries. Because we’re retired, we were able to take advantage and do a first post-winter check on the two hives we hadn’t yet done.
Hive #3 was up first. This was one I’d rated in February at about 3 out of 5. (These ratings, based only on what we could see from the top of the hive, can be found here.)
This is what greeted us when we took off the inner cover today. There were a lot of bees and plenty of brood on a total of six frames, with a few being almost full.
Also, we found larvae, eggs, and the mother bee.
Nice wet larvae, moist with royal jelly.
I tried to take a photo of the hive’s eggs, but only managed to get one in the frame.
The egg is in one of the bottom cells, almost in the middle of the row.
Notice how it’s off-center? That’s usually a sign of a laying worker (which you heard about here), but we saw the queen, so that’s not the problem. Sometimes a new queen will take a while to learn to do the job properly, but she is at least a year or two old, so it’s not that either.
I did notice this queen was moving slowly, so perhaps she’s another one who is beginning to wear out. We’ll find out in the coming weeks, I’m sure. And if she is on her way out, she’s still laying enough for the sister bees (workers) to make a new queen. Failing that, we can give them eggs from another hive to make one or, as a last resort, buy one.
Since there was so much brood in this hive, we were going to steal a frame to give to LoLa, our low population long hive, but when we looked in on that one, we saw eggs, larvae, and brood.
Although the queen s laying well, the population will remain low until the new bees emerge. Another frame of eggs and larvae to look after might be too much for them to handle right now so we’ll wait until they have enough bees to take care of an extra frame or two.
Instead, we stole a partial frame to give to #2A since we’d taken that hive’s only frame of brood and larvae to give to Hive #2 (who need to make a new queen to replace the drone-laying one we’d had to pinch).
On we moved to Hive #5, which I had rated 4.5.
Great buzzing clouds of bees! This hive is rocking!
There were So Many Bees! Like how-can-this-hive-be-so-full-so-soon? Like a strong-hive-in-the-middle-of-summer population. Like okay-this-is-a-bit-extreme quantity of bees.
Like a hey-we-need-to-split-this-hive-pronto situation!
There were eight — count ’em — eight frames with brood (including drone) and/or larvae and/or eggs. And this time, I managed to get a picture of some eggs.
Compare the egg placement in the cells below to the lonely single egg in the picture above, and you’ll see what I mean about being in the center or not. You may have to zoom in.
Did I mention both these hives had plenty of pollen and honey?
No? Well, both these hives had plenty of pollen and honey, with more pollen coming in. In fact, all seven hives have been foraging like mad! They were even out a few days ago when the temperatures were in the low to mid-forties, which I don’t recall seeing in the past.
But since today was so warm, and Hive #5 was so full, with plenty of brood and food, we discussed going ahead and splitting it right there and then.
Then we realized the equipment we needed was in the hangar, we decided to temporarily put another box on with some comb and honey to allow them space to breathe. We’re hoping for a window of good weather to split it tomorrow. It’s way early, but we don’t want to take a chance on losing them to a swarm.
To sum up, the status of our hives is as follows: LoLa — Watch and add frames of brood as their population increases. #2 — Hands off until the start of April, unless we can pop up the top box to look for queen cells. Hope they are making a queen. This hive is one we will be selling once it’s queenright. #2A — Check to see if the queen has revved up at all; add brood as necessary. Another hive we will be selling once we are sure it is strong. #3 — Monitor population and split as drone population increases. Keep an eye on the queen. #4 — Monitor. Make sure queen is good before finding a new home for this hive. #5 — Split as soon as possible, then monitor for rearing of a new queen. #6 — Monitor; split if needed.
I mixed up a bowl of Small Hive Beetle bait and have been refilling and cycling out the old dried out bait in the traps. The nematodes are also ordered so I’ll treat the soil once the threat of frost is gone. That seems to help keep down the SHB population.
In addition, we’ve treated all the hives with Super DFM. I’m convinced it makes a huge difference in preventing Nosema (kind of like bee dysentery).
As soon as all the hives are rearing brood, we can check for Varroa and treat if necessary. Also, The Engineer has swarm boxes he’s going to put out, mostly in the hope of catching our own bees if they swarm.
Those are all the upcoming tasks I can think of right now. I’m sure I’m missing something, but at least this helps provide a small window into beekeepers’ lives in the spring.
There it is … the not-so-good news. Actually a bucket of sad, wet, dead bees is bad news, and there’s no two ways about it. It’s a horrible sight.
The dead bees are from LoLa, and honesty compels me to admit that related to the photo above is the equally not-so-good news that there are only about two frames of living bees in that hive.
At least the situation didn’t come as a complete surprise, since we had already discovered LoLa had a moisture issue. And this was our first winter with a long hive, so we’ve learned a few things and will adjust our wintering plans for the hive to prevent this happening again.
Now, for the better news: There was a small amount of brood and larvae on both the bee frames, along with the queen. And they have plenty of honey.
How does a beekeeper handle a hive like that? Well, these beekeepers cleaned up the mess, scraped out the majority of the dead bees, and removed the extra frames. Next, we pushed the bee frames — along with a few honey and pollen ones — to the dry(er) end of the box. with a follower board to keep the bees from wandering around in the empty part of the hive. .
Then, we moved on to Hive #4. Much better news (bordering on great, actually)! The hive was not only full of bees, with only a few drones (see yesterday’s saga), and — drum roll, please! — five frames with brood, larvae, and eggs! Two of the frames were full; the others were partial. We also saw the queen, busily doing her job, though we caught her for a moment to do a somewhat sloppy job of marking her.
We selected a partial frame, making sure it had future bees in all stages of development, and slotted it into LoLa. In adding only a partial frame, we hoped to give the workers no more brood than their small population could care for.
Next up was Hive #6. This hive was also full of bees with about four frames of brood, some partial, some full.
That queen was already marked, and we easily found her as well.
We stole a frame with eggs, larvae, and brood from this hive too, adding it to #2 to give them an even better chance at making a new queen.
Two more hives to go! Unfortunately, it’s supposed to get cold and snow this weekend, so we won’t be able to get into those until next week.
Also, we did see a few hive beetles, one of the banes of keeping bees in a yard that’s not very sunny. All the hives have beetle jail traps , which we’ve found to be quite effective, but I need to make up some fresh bait.
Gosh, I hate those little b—–ds, almost as much as I hate Varroa!
I’ll let you know how accurate my guesses turn out to be.
And now, for a bit of shameless self-promotion: Since we’ve decided to downsize to five hives, #4 is one of the 10-frames we’re parting with, and she’s ready to go. A complete hive including woodware (two deeps, screened bottom board, inner cover, telescoping cover and a medium super for honey), overwintered bees, and an Ohio queen (also overwintered) who is laying — all for about as much as some people charge for a nuc. And this hive is strong, so if we were keeping it, we’d expect to have to split it soon. We’d rather let someone else do the work on that, so, if you’re an Ohio beekeeper looking to grow your apiary, drop me a line.
When a beekeeper finally gets the chance to look into a hive after winter, there are several things s/he is hoping to see — plenty of bees, food, a frame or two of brood, maybe even the queen.
This is what we expected when the weather temporarily warmed enough for us to begin full hive checks. After all, we already knew all our hives have enough bees and food to make it to the spring flow.
Turns out we were right … to a point.
First, we opened #2. Oh yes, there were plenty of food and bees, but why were there so many drones?
If you’re a beekeeper, you already know where this is going.
Here’s some background for my readers who aren’t beeks: A queen bee normally doesn’t start laying drone eggs until later in the spring, when resources are plentiful enough to support bees that don’t do any work inside the colony. (To be fair, research begining to show drones do play more of a role than previously believed.)
Seeing drones usually means swarm season is coming, but March is (usually!) too early for that. Later in the season, we can expect to see a colony population with about 10-15% drones.
This can be confirmed by looking at the hive’s frames. Both a drone-laying queen and laying workers lay only drone eggs.
This is because a drone-laying queen has run out of fertilized eggs, while a laying worker never had them. An inspection will reveal only drone brood, with no worker brood to be found. (Click through to posts with pictures of each.)
Now, I know common lore says only mother (queen) bees can lay eggs, and for the most part, that’s true. However, if there if a hive is queenless (not queenright), without her pheromones to dampen the workers’ ovaries, the sister (worker) bees can begin laying eggs. And in their effort to make a new queen, they do. They know a queenless hive is eventually a dead hive so they are desperate to replace her.
The problems with this are two. Because workers haven’t mated, their eggs are all unfertilized (drone) eggs. They can’t make a queen of one no matter how hard they try. And because these sister bees have shorter abdomens, they can’t properly straddle the cell opening and end up laying multiple eggs in the cells. Again, doomed to failure.
This is a Big Problem, and the link above explains how it needs to be handled. (Hint: It isn’t an easy process and rarely worth the effort.)
It’s not surprising she’s outlived her usefulness.
Although this situation isn’t as dire as having laying workers, it’s bad enough. Fortunately, the beekeeper can fix the problem by pinching the old queen and giving the hive a new one.
A new queen can be purchased (at a cost of about $45 plus shipping if you don’t live near a queen rearer or store that sells them), or you can let them try to requeen using a frame of brood — preferably including some eggs so they can start from scratch — from another hive.
Because we’re cheap, we usually choose the latter option, even though it take a lot longer.
So, on we went to hive #2A, looking for some eggs. We found plenty of food, lots of bees, the queen (spotted by The Engineer this time), and one frame of brood, with some very tiny larvae.
Since mother bee was clearly laying and healthy, we stole the frame of brood for #2. We also know the queen in #2A is from last year because the hive was a split from #2 (hence, the name #2A), so she should be good until at least the end of the season … or until the hive decides otherwise.
We then went back to #2, pinched the queen, smearing her remains on the top of a frame, gave them the frame of brood, closed the hive, and crossed our fingers.
Smearing her guts on the top of a frame may seem like overkill, but it supposedly spreads the news more quickly that the hive is no longer queenright. And the sooner they start making a new queen, the better.
When beekeepers rear queens by grafting (way too much work and math for me!), they start with tiny larvae, so even though we didn’t see eggs on the frame, we are hoping #2 can still raise a queen from the minuscule larvae.
On another topic, I had hoped to do mite checks on #2 and #2A with my new “Varroa Easy Check” cup. I’ll be honest, although we’ve been diligent about treating our hives, we’ve been less so about doing the mite checks afterwards. After watching our bee inspector use one of these cups, I was impressed by how much easier it made the process. Now, I’m determined we will make regular use of ours.
Unfortunately, checking mites involves taking bees from brood frames, and I wouldn’t expect to get an accurate count from one frame (or none). The task will have to be completed later, maybe in a few weeks when the nectar is really flowing, and the hives are feeling confident enough to really get going.
The next time it’s warm enough (maybe this weekend if we’re lucky), The Engineer and I plan to go through two more hives. If we find an abundance of brood, we may borrow some to replace #2A’s loss, to add to LoLa (they seem to have the smallest population) and/or give to #2 if they haven’t made any queen cells from the frame we gave them Monday.
Note: We have had laying workers in the past, and at the time, everything I read said they wouldn’t accept a new queen. Both times, we discovered the problem after we’d already purchased the new mother queen, so we introduced her anyway, allowing a long time for them to get to know her before giving up and releasing her into the hives. Through sheer dumb luck, both times, the queen was accepted, but I wouldn’t count on this happening in the future.
The Byrd and the Bees 