Split Shifts

Honestly, I don’t know how people who have large apiaries do it, especially those who do it as a side hustle. I suppose the more hives you have, the less you fret over each. That’s certainly been the case with us. I mean, we fret in the sense that we try to do what’s best for them, but I think we’re a little calmer about the possibility of things going wrong.

Thankfully, we seem to have settled with six colonies, at least for the time being. Still, we’ve had to split our hive checks into two days. It’s just too hard to go through six hives in one go. Hence the double wordplay in the title — it’s split shifts because our bee duties have been split into two shifts, and split shifts because four of the eight hives we’ve had this year were the result of splits.

Today, we checked 1A, 1, 2, and 2B.

1A was split from 1, taking the original queen with it. It’s our only eight-frame hive, and it’s pretty packed. If any of our hives is a candidate for swarming, it’s this one. The fact that there were eight or ten queen cups on the bottom of a couple of frames would lend weight to this possibility. With the discovery of eggs in several of those cups (turning them into queen cells), a swarm becomes even more likely.

Since we also saw the queen — and she was clearly laying well — we’d normally split the hive, but frankly, we’re running out of room and supplies, despite having spent about $400 on wooden ware in the last month.

Instead, we took out that brood-laden, multi-queen cell/cup frame to move to another hive and added another honey super because the first one is full of capped and uncapped honey and nectar.

They may still swarm, but we bought Swarm Commander to spray on the little bushes the last swarm picked. According to several people who should know, if you spray a little on a cotton ball and attach it where you want swarms to land, they’ll go there.

Apparently, nothing else does the job quite as well. I sure hope they’re right because it’s $35.95 for a 2 ounce bottle!

We moved on to 1, last checked on 20 May. There was a queen present on 11 May, but no larvae, eggs, or evidence she was laying. When we looked on the 20th, we didn’t see any either, so we’d given them a frame of eggs to make a queen if they needed one. Now, we’re questioning if we bothered to look in the super because today we did, and there was brood, eggs, and larvae. We didn’t see the queen, so we took out the queen excluder, hoping she’ll move downstairs where there’s more room.

There was also lots of honey in the supers, so we swapped two fully capped frames for some empties.

So, the good news is the hive is queen right and they’re making honey. The bad news is she’s been laying in the wrong place.

On the other hand, some beekeepers swear the bees make more honey if there’s no queen excluder to hinder their work, and I’ve kind of wanted to see if this is true.

Maybe this is our chance to find out.

One worker, who apparently took offense at our presence, stung me through my glove. I can’t blame her for being cranky. It was a hot day (mid 80s), and the hive was crowded, especially upstairs in the “nursery.” It hurt a bit, but the stinger scarcely penetrated the glove. Of course, the bee’s crankiness cost her a lot more.

There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere … something about a person’s bad temper causing them more pain than it does others maybe?

Next, we came to #2, the one where we watched the queen emerge. When we last peeked inside, we saw the queen — who was nice and big and therefore clearly mated — but no evidence she’d started laying.

We went through the bottom box … and found lots of pollen, nectar, and honey, as well as some comb they were drawing.

Thinking something had happened to the queen, we put the brood-laden frame with queen cells in the box.

I love the pattern made by the varied colors of the pollen.

It wasn’t until we reached the top deep box that we found what we were looking for — brood, eggs, and larvae, followed by a spotting of the queen.

Can you spot her?

I’ll make it a little easier for you. Here’s a couple with The Engineer’s hive tool pointing at Her Loveliness.

Are you ready for a challenge? See if you can find her below!

I’ve circled her. Did you spot her?

So, what will happen to the queen cells from the other hive? Our hope is if the bees are happy with their queen — and they have no reason not to be — they’ll ignore those eggs and let nature take its course.

Still, who knows what goes through their tiny little brains?

Last up was 2B, the hive from the swarm. We have a board with mason jars acting as a honey super for this hive, in the hope they will make comb in a jar for us.

So far, all that’s happened is the comb “starter strips” keep falling down, and the jars have gotten moisture in them, which we’ve tried to alleviate by adding a couple of sticks beneath the board and an inner cover with a front entrance to allow more circulation.

Since we had to do some repair work on the starter strips, we decided we might as well check that hive too.

We spotted the queen, as well as some larvae, eggs, and brood, and the bees have been making comb.

However, they still have three empty frames in their living quarters, which explains why they’re not interested in making comb in jars.

When we took the jars off to repair their strips, we discovered the ants had moved in. We’ve been ignoring ants around the hives ever since we learned they produce formic acid (the same stuff we use to get rid of the dreaded Varroa Destructor Mites). Still, nesting in our experimental comb honey jars before the bees even got in them was pushing it too far, so we used the old cinnamon trick to discourage them.

In writing this just now, I’ve had the idea that perhaps we should steal some brood from the crowded hives, say 1 or 1A, and put it in this one to give them a little boost. I’ll have to discuss that idea with The Engineer to see if he agrees.

In summary, today we checked four hives and either saw queens or evidence one had been busy laying in all of the colonies.

Later this week, we will check 3A and 3B. 3A should have a queen because when we split the hive, we moved her into that colony. 3B is the tall nuc, which may or may not have a queen yet. If they do, she’s probably not started laying.

After that, hopefully sometime next week, we’ll treat the hives, probably with Formic Pro since most of them have brood.

Welcome to the OH Honey Apiary!

From left to right, we 1A and 1 (checked today and currently sporting heavy beards), 2 (also checked today), 3B (tall, skinny pink nuc we will check later in the week), 3 (on picnic table), empty nuc box (in case a hive wants another option to swarm to), 2B (swarm hive with comb honey setup).

Other than that, we’ve enjoyed seeing Tears for Fears and Garbage (a Christmas gift from Darling Daughter) at a nearby venue. We were very grateful DD sprang for pavilion seats (for us oldies) because it poured buckets as soon as we got out of the car.

I’ve exited the shower drier than I was when we got to our seats. Fortunately, it was warm so it didn’t spoil the evening.

Two days later, we went camping for four nights where we dined on such delicacies as pie iron samosas.

Once again, we snagged a site by the river, so fell asleep to the rippling of the water.

It was delightful.

Although we left the kayak at home (we were driving to Columbus and didn’t want to leave it in a hotel parking lot overnight), we hoped to rent one for a days paddling. Unfortunately, the river was too high, so we spent two days cycling a nearby rail-trail

Near one of the trailheads, there’s a grass strip. We paused a moment to envy the pilot who was using it.

It’s a nice bike path. I recommend it if you’re ever near Mansfield, Ohio.

After camping, we threw all our gear into the van and went to Columbus. There, we ate gyros with Darling Daughter and Partner. It was so pleasant to see them again … and to enjoy dining in their screened-in porch.

We were in town to see the Beach Boys, who were performing a free concert at Columbus Commons, (another outdoor venue, but one without pavilion seats). Disappointingly, a major storm came through just as the gates were supposed to open. Because it was significantly cooler than the previous concert night, and we’d already had our outdoor shower for the week, we decided to skip the concert.

Instead we enjoyed the novelty of a bed that wasn’t the ground and food that hadn’t been cooked outside.

It rained all night, so this decision turned out to be the right one, at least for us.

On the way home, we were passed two R-Vs. Both had unusual spare wheel covers, although I was only able to capture a picture of one.

In our twenty-four hours at home, we managed to get the camping gear unpacked, although not re-packed, and The Engineer cleaned the van. I got in a fast visit to my mom, did the laundry and made a dish for the Memorial Day picnic we were attending.

I made this super-easy and delicious cinnamon cheesecake. I’ve seen a similar recipe made with lemon, which I’ll try sometime, but I don’t usually have lemons on hand, so it will wait until we’re not quite so busy.

The picnic was yesterday (another hotel night — thank heaven for The Engineer’s points from all his nights away before retirement), with lots of delicious food and good company.

Thankfully, this week we have no plans that involve overnights away because, in addition to bee work, we want to try out the kayak on our local lake, get some house work done, and prepare for our garage sale.

I’m looking forward to having two days with nowhere to go but inside a garage full of our cleared out stuff!

Minus One, Plus One

Well, I’m not going to bore you with the details, but when we inspected Hive 2A (the split from #2), we discovered it had the original queen. This was the hive where we ended up doing a “walkaway split” by putting frames with eggs in both the original box and the split and leaving them to it. We did this because when we went through the original box, we didn’t see the queen.

Having found the original queen, we took the hive down to one box and called our friend MJ to take it for the nuc we promised her.

We also have another friend coming on Sunday for a nuc, which would take us down to five hives, but after MJ took hers, we were temporarily at six.

Today, we inspected the hives with new queens to see if there were eggs. When we finished, our apiary looked like this.

Yes, we have seven hives.
Again.

You see, we looked inside Hive #1 (second from the left), which we last left nine days ago with a new queen. Today, we found no queen, no eggs, and no larvae. Either she didn’t mate successfully, the bees didn’t like her and killed her, or she just hasn’t started laying and we missed her.

Any of these possibilities is as likely as the rest.

We stole a frame with eggs from 1A to put in. If they are queenless, they can make a new queen. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Having a break in eggs hatching might be a good thing for that hive anyway. They are still very full.

Then we looked in Hive #2 — the hive where we watched a queen emerge. We didn’t see any eggs there either, but we did see the queen. She is gorgeously big, which should signify she’s mated successfully and just hasn’t started laying. So fingers crossed for that one too.

Last, we opened Hive #3. It was full of brood and bees, likely from the eggs and larvae that were in it when we last checked. But we didn’t see a queen or eggs, and it was full(!) of queen cells. Like, maybe 25 of them?

So, clearly if they have a queen, they’re not happy with her. And why would they be if she’s not laying?

The question was what should we do with all those bees, brood and queen cells? If we did nothing, we would almost certainly end up with another swarm on our hands.

The logical solution was to split the hive (again), putting brood and queen cells in both, along with honey, pollen, and nectar for food.

The only problem is, we’re now back up to seven hives, and will only go down to six instead of five when we give away the split.

In the end, I expect this situation will resolve itself because I find it hard to imagine we’ll have six hives going into winter.

The problem is we’ve been waiting to treat the hives because I’ve heard it’s pointless to treat only part of an apiary because bees do sometimes “drift” into neighboring hives and can take those nasty Varroa Mites with them. I’ve also heard it’s not good to treat when they are in the delicate process of making and/or accepting new queens because the smell of the Oxalic or Formic Acid can mask the queen’s pheromones.

Unfortunately, we are stuck playing the waiting game. In a week or ten days, we will check the hives again, but I’ve given up trying to predict what we’ll find. We may have to just treat them no matter what state they’re in. This is the time of year when Varroa can really take off, but you sometimes don’t see the problem until August when it’s too late to do anything about it.

In other news, we went to Michigan for a concert and came home with a tandem kayak.

This is not quite as impetuous as it sounds. Because we enjoy canoeing and kayaking, we’ve been considering making such a purchase for several years. We just didn’t plan on acting on the idea this week!

However, we were cycling on a riverside path in Ann Arbor, and the people in the water looked like they were having so much fun! We discussed the idea again, and when we got back to our motel room, I looked at the REI website because I have a 20% off coupon for their yearly anniversary sale.

The ones we liked were a little more than we wanted to spend, so I looked on Craigslist. Lo and behold, twenty minutes away there was this beauty being offered complete with life jackets, paddles, and scupper plugs for what seemed quite a reasonable price.

We made an appointment to see it, found there was an REI store within two miles of our hotel, and bought what we needed to strap it to our luggage rack.

It was as good as it looked online, and the deal was struck.

Yesterday, we drove to the Watercraft Agent and registered it.

I can hardly wait to get it on the water!

Lots of Queens

When we called our friend, MJ and told her we had a swarm if she wanted it, she was so happy. We were too because we knew she was anxious to get another colony started.

So, The Engineer carefully shut the openings and put mesh over the vents on our plastic nuc box for transporting.

This morning MJ came over to pick it up.

We gently loaded the box into her car, careful not to jostle its contents, and MJ drove away.

About twenty minutes later, I got a phone call.

“It’s a good thing I was so careful driving and carrying that nuc box,” MJ said. “When I opened it, there were three bees inside.”

What the heck?! Sometime yesterday, those crazy girls must have returned to their original home!

We recently learned this happens sometime and usually means the workers left without a queen. Oops!

On a positive note, we have hope that at least one or two of our three splits will soon have a viable queen so MJ can take it as a nuc.

Meanwhile, in an effort at preventing any more swarms from that hive, we did a complete check, intending to remove all queen cells except the two biggest.

There were many, some open and some closed.

And then, The Engineer noticed this!

A queen was emerging from her cell!

It’s a very in and out process!

You can watch video of it here. Because it takes a while, I also did a time-lapse video, which sped up the action so much you can hardly see what’s going on. 😦

When the new queen was fully emerged and had scampered on her way, we moved on to Hive #3, the one we planned to split on Monday.

Now, we generally cover open boxes with a towel when we’re not working on them, and today when I lifted the towel on the second box, I spotted the queen … who promptly flew away.

$#@%&! Had we lost the queen forever?

All we could do was make sure both the split we were making and the original hive had eggs to make a new one.

But, then we found another queen, larger than the one I saw. So, she was probably the original queen. We put her in the split.

There weren’t any queen cells, and the many queen cups we saw last week hadn’t developed further, but maybe we missed one that resulted in the flying queen. The bees would have to make a new queen from an egg.

Hive #1 has been looking crowded, with a lot of bearding (as you can see in yesterday’s blog), which is weird because when we split it, we put the queen in the split. This means they don’t yet have a laying queen. We weren’t even going to check for one until nearer the end of the month, but it seemed so full, we decided to put on an extra honey super to allow bees a little more room.

This group of bees were clustered on the inside of the telescoping (outside) lid. To me, they looked like they were saying, “I’m not going out there! You go!”

When we looked inside, we were surprised to see a queen! She also had to be quite newly emerged because there were no eggs, no larvae , and only capped brood. Since we split on 22 April, this makes sense. It takes about sixteen days for a queen to develop, and another week or two to really start laying well. It’s only been about twenty-eight days.

Evidently, we must have left in quite a lot of eggs and larvae when we split because the hive is bursting at the seams. When she begins to lay, we will need to get on a second brood box posthaste!

We also found a queen cell on a frame in the honey super, which we set aside to put in the now queenless Hive #3.

So, after we closed up Hive #1, we moved back to Hive #3, opened it, and went to put the queen cell inside, only now there was also a queen on the frame. Perhaps the one that flew off?

The OH Honey Apiary

Now, we have (left to right) Hive #1A (laying queen, split from Hive #1), a very crowded Hive #1 (new queen, needs another brood box very soon), Hive #2A (tall nuc split from Hive #2), Hive #2 (aka the “swarmed hive,” newly hatched queen and queen cell), Hive #3 (freshly split with queen and a queen cell), Hive #3A (laying queen, split from Hive #3), Hive #2B (swarmed from Hive #2, probably has a queen).

With Hive #2B, we are attempting to get the bees to make comb in a jar. It’s supposed to be difficult to get the bees to start building comb on a glass surface, but it sounded interesting, so we decided to give it a shot.

All the hives with new queens (#2B, #3, #2, and #1) will need to be checked to for eggs in a week or so. If there are eggs, the hive is “queen right.” If there aren’t, we give it another week, and then it will need another queen from somewhere.

Since we really don’t want seven hives, we hope to be able to give a queen right hive to MJ and possibly another acquaintance as well.

What an exciting couple of days in the bee yard!