Bear visits early Nov. 2016

Ok, I've had enough of this!

Last week, a bear broke into my shed where I had some honey frames waiting to go to the dump.  My shed door has one of those 1/2" steel pins that goes into the floor to keep the door in place.  The bear bent it sideways and got in.  He scattered all the frames over my vegetable garden until he was done, knocking over anything in his way.  The garden fence was flattened as he made what looks to be his exit.

He also got into my compost bin on the other side of the yard.  He had to dig deep to find the household compost stuff...I had it all covered with  mowed leaves.

He came back at some point and went through the garden looking for frames he left behind but we had since taken them to the dump. He lifted a fake rock that goes over my propane tank cover, tossed it aside, looking for goodies under there.

Then yesterday at about 5PM, he sauntered into  my yard, rested on my front lawn and generally acted like he'd been here before.  In fact, he acted like he owned the place.

I took these shots and a video.

Here he was about 20 feet from the front porch. Then he came to the tree and lied down for a bit.  That's when I shut the door loudly so he'd take off.

This morning, I see he's been back and has broken into the greenhouse.  He broke into it last year around this time as well, but I have nothing stored in there anymore, other than empty flower pots.  Looks like he never made it inside but he tore off one of the panels to get in ...a potting bench that runs the length of the greenhouse was in his way however.

Then I happened to look outside at my pond.  It's practically empty!  And I see Butterfly bushes growing beside it flattened.  I need to go see if he ate the water lilies too! (he didn't.) I'm assuming his claws have punctured a hole into the lining.  Yet another fix-it job perhaps I also wonder if he didn't jump and splash around to cause the water to spill out..  I'll fill  it and then see what happens. I had just removed the pump and hose that goes to little waterfall a few weeks ago.  Otherwise, he'd have probably ruined at least the hose.

One last point.  He didn't go anywhere near the electric fence around the beehives. I won't remove that until I'm sure he's gone into hibernation.

Very discouraging

Today is 10 19 16.  I went out to the hive with my binoculars to watch the girls as I like to do.  Had to go in mid-afternoon since it's getting dark earlier and after work, I can't see them as well.

What I saw were hive beetles going in and out.  That prompted me to do some research real quick and get out to the hive with the strips glued to the bottom of corregated cardboard so that the grooves are exposed, stapled the strips to the smooth side and taped to the bottom board.  That was after cleaning out dead bees and shredded comb.

Then I started removing frames to see what I had.  Basically a lot of diseased looking frames, and no honey left.  A few bees grabbing what they could.

A week or so ago, I saw so many bees.  Now I realize what I saw was robbing going on.

Now I have nothing again.  I'm very discouraged and am not sure if I'll try again or not.  I need to think about it.  I certainly haven't done very well with this hobby and feel very bad about it.

I may put a Nuc with brand clean frames that have some comb into the greenhouse and add pollen patties for them to eat.  Maybe I'll be able to keep a few bees that way.  Maybe it's wishful thinking.

Watched a bee hatch before my very eyes!

I watched a bee be born a few days ago...at least one.  So I believe I witnessed some of the last batch of bees to be born this season.

What worries me is that I just didn't see a huge number of bees.  It seems that by this time of year, I should see more.  But I saw a bit of brood...not much.  And the bees hatching...I wonder if "hatching" is the right term.  Being born then.

The hive is not the usual setup.  I have all the brood and most of the activity in the upper deep.  And the lower deep is the honey stores.  And the stores aren't all that great either.  I just don't know if I have enough bees to cluster and make it through the winter.

I have closed off the entrance to the 3 inch width with the mouse guard over that.  I just have the two deeps there now.  I will add pollen patties very soon and will need to replenish them often this winter to ensure they have enough food.

At this point, I'll order another nuc soon, for next spring.  I had hoped to go into the winter with a very strong hive but that's not what I'm seeing.

I didn't see the queen there this time but that's not unusual, but with the fewer bees on the frames, I think I should have seen her.  But I didn't check every single frame either.  I spot checked. So that could easily be why I didn't spot her.  She had been active fairly recently given I watched some of her babies be born.

Always a mystery.  I do hope, and will continue to do what I think are the right things :) and try to get these girls through the winter.

brood chamber in upper deep

I feel like I must have switched the deeps around but I really don't think I did.  During today's inspection here was my action list:

• remove supers and take honey for me
• add varroa mite strips to the two deeps
• add sugar water in the top hive feeder
• inspect all frames.
• add mouse guard to hive opening
• mow the grass around the hive in the fenced area

I saw good brood patterns and many eggs, capped and uncapped honey.  It looked good...except all this was in the upper deep.  The lower deep had a lot of uncapped honey; some brood pattern, some capped honey.  I'm worried now that they won't have enough honey stores to get them through the winter.

There is a lot of pollen again now with the goldenrod in full bloom.  I hope they can fill up some of that uncapped honey and cover for their own use this winter.

I did buy pollen patties to help them later on.  I guess we'll see what the next weeks show.

I really wanted to add another deep above the other two but that's probably something I'll want to do in the spring.  Or if I can, I'll start another hive in the spring.  But first I need to see these through the winter.

puzzling inspection

I went into the hive this week...just a week after my last inspection.  This time, I think I saw the queen in the most outside frame in the lower deep.

But I didn't see any eggs in the lower deep this time.  I saw some eggs in the upper deep though, but not many.  And I saw one frame that had a bunch of drone brood so I removed that frame.

There were still a lot of  bees but I'm not really sure what's going on right now. Could it be a new queen I saw?  I did find an empty queen cell so maybe the queen I saw was a new queen that hasn't had her flight yet.

Last week's sugar syrup was gone so I added more.  I left the supers on the hive for another few weeks and then I'll take off what I can and hope to see more eggs in the hive.

It's mushroom foraging season.  At this time of year, my free time is spent walking in the woods looking for mushrooms.  Yesterday I found some lobster mushrooms and various fresh boletes, including porcini.  There were others but weren't fresh enough to take.  Then time was spent cleaning and frying up.  Then into the freezer.  Sometimes I dry the harvest but it depends.  Some mushrooms dry up very well, like black trumpets.  Others, like chanterelle, get rubbery if you dry them so I fry them up and then freeze them.  That works well.

Taking off some honey

When checking on the hive yesterday, I see several frames in the supers full and ready so I took off 4 frames that I will extract.  I will leave the rest there for now.

When I looked into the honey stores deep, I found capped and uncapped honey...more capped than not.  I also saw brood in various stages and bees bringing in yellow pollen.  I think the dearth is over with goldenrod blooming.  But in my yard, there's not much goldenrod blooming yet.  Not sure I'll have that much this year since I deadheaded them last year.  I think that was a mistake so I won't do it again.  I want the goldenrod for the bees.  Not so good for my sinuses but it's the price you pay I guess.

I was pleased to see the activity in the hive.

However, when I removed the top hive feeder, it had a lot of yellow jackets in there dead.  I have a yellow jacket nest somewhere in my porch ceiling.  As I read more about the dearth at this time of year, I read that stealing is a major concern with other insects wanting the sugar water or honey.  I decided to close off the venting.  I have holes in two boxes, a deep and a super, which I drilled to give more ventilation in the hive.  I plugged them up with corks yesterday.  I also added back in the entrance reducer at it's widest opening to further close up the entrances to the hive.

I had been noticing a lot of flurry there at the hive and I think it was due to fending off predators. Hopefully they can now relax a bit and not use their energy to fight them off.

And I filled the feeder with  more sugar water to keep the bees fed in case there's not enough flowering plants to satisfy.

It's time to begin thinking about wintering over the bees.  I will need to buy bales of hay one at a time since I no longer have a truck.  That is, unless I can figure out another alternative.

Adding room in the brood box so queen can lay eggs in them

I noticed the other day that my brood chamber had a few frames with uncapped honey and pollen on them...but no eggs or larvae.  So today, I swapped them for a few frames with comb so that the queen has a place to lay eggs. I wanted to do this before they ramp up production again with the goldenrod in a week or two. These were the only deep frames I had with comb on them...at least that's what I thought until I saw I had a few in the freezer from last year.  I guess I should extract what's in there and put them back into production.

I may need the frames from the freezer soon since the two frames I added will need some amount of cleanup. I've heard that it's faster for them to make new comb than to clean up old comb.  Not sure if that's true or not but I do have many frames with  no comb at all.  I thought I'd start off with them next spring to give them plenty of time to build.

Thanks to the "fat bee man" on youtube for the advice.  He's a great resource to supplement the local folks who also provide so much good information and learning.