April 2019 - Ready for another year

April 15th and I'm ready for bees.  I am just getting a package this year...at least that's all I've ordered.  I may relent and get either another package or upgrade to a Nuc. I'm tired of not keeping the bees alive over the winter which is why I ordered less.  Frustration at work.  In fact, last year, with the drones taking over my hive, the bees didn't make it to Thanksgiving.  I was pretty disgusted by then so I did nothing further with them and decided to just deal with cleanup in the spring.

So about a month ago, I started looking at my equipment, most of which is down cellar.  I had moth larvae all over, but saw no moths, thankfully.  My comb was basically gone.  At that time, I cleaned off all the comb and threw it out.   My bees this year will have to work harder making new comb. 

I also decided to not store hives down in the basement anymore.  So I moved all deeps and supers to the fenced bee yard where they are sitting pretty, empty right now but clean and ready for use. I do have several frames of honey in one hive so those will need to be brought in and extracted before the new bees arrive.

Yesterday, I planted some early crops...arugula, mesclun, spinach, swiss chard and peas. I have a row tent to protect seeds from critters (at least from above).  Last year, moles seemed to find food from below. The row cover did help a lot last year and I used the white sheer cloth over the other seeds too.

Happy spring! And let the dandelions bloom!

Hive check - still drone heavy

So I know my hive will die over the winter but it hasn't yet.  There's a lot of honey in there and still a lot of bees.  But any brood I saw was drone and very little of that. I expect to see fewer and fewer bees over the next month or so.

I still put a pollen patty at the top of the hive, and merged three deeps to two.  Where I saw drone brood, I poked it to kill them. 

I also added a super that has a cedar pillow in it to catch any condensation but left the 1 inch hole open on the upper deep so air can escape.

I left on the mouse guard and closed up the entrance to the one inch size.  They can get out of the top deep in that hole too.

We'll see how it goes but I'm sure I'll be losing these bees but at least they seem to have enough food for a while just in case a miracle happens :).

disaster

Okay.  That's it. The season is over for me.  I went into the hive this afternoon to remove the apiguard strips.

The drone green frames are empty of brood but the rest of the frames...if there is capped brood at all, it is drone brood.  Most of the honey seems to be gone except in the bottom deep.

I didn't even bother to add the sugar syrup I had for them.  I give up.  They are going to eat what is left and then all die before the winter because there's not going to be enough brood (or a real queen) to keep the hive going, as I had hoped.

What a bummer.  I am just going to leave them alone and not use my time and energy for the rest of the year.  I'll think about next year.

Right now I probably have enough honey to last me years so maybe I should sell my gear and let someone else try. 

No decisions will be made today.  I just feel bad.  I try so hard to make a good habitat for the bees; I just hate to fail them.

Checking the merged hive b- 8/31

I opened the hive today to see what's going on and how they merged....and if they merged!  They did!

I now have one hive with three deeps.  The newspaper layer is totally gone.  The bees did it themselves. I'll watch the two top deeps as things slow down over the next month or so.

• Top deep - 
• had a good amount of nectar (maybe because the sugar syrup we in that hive). 
• had a bit of capped honey 
• no eggs
• some drone brood on the green frame which I removed.  I saw mites
• kept the feeder in there but didn't refill yet...probably can use it
• saw NO pollen

• Middle deep
• had a lot of honey
• I moved a few heavy honey frames from here to the top deep
• I moved a few rather empty frames from top to middle
• Saw no brood
• Saw no pollen
• Saw a lot of bees
• Bees are making comb on the drone frame but not filled in yet

• Bottom deep
• Hive loaded with bees
• Saw lots of open brood
• Thankfully I added a few frames for the queen to lay - I was so glad to see this!
• The two deeps above seem to have adjusted into this now requeened hive.
• Because I saw mites...and some dead bees outside that were either from mites or something else or even a bee fight before the hives fully merged.
• Saw mostly capped honey in frames very heavy so I moved them up and replaced with frames that could be used for brood.
• I saw one bee loaded with golden pollen from the goldenrod. I expect to see more of that shortly.

Next steps:

• I need to make sure I can use Oxilic acid after using the strips.  I'll need to research that. 
• I will try the soak a towel approach with glycerin, soak them together. then wring them out by pressing into another recepticle like described here: https://honeybeesuite.com/oxalic-acid-and-glycerin-for-varroa-mites/

Merging the hives - 8/24

Yesterday I looked in the hive and saw the queen out of its cage and a few eggs in a few cells.  If I had a lot of space for her to lay, I would have waited a few days but I ended up adding a few frames to that hive and removing the sugar syrup. 

I add a layer of  newspaper with a few slits in it and then added the two deeps from the hive with laying workers.  I didn't see any more eggs in the old hive making me believe that removing all the bees from all the frames away from the hive, worked out.  I added the sugar syrup to the middle deep after refilling it.  There was a lot of uncapped honey in these frames. This hive lost a lot of bees.  I think many ended up in the new, hopefully requeened, hive.

Today I'm in the basement extracting honey.  I have lots of frames in the freezer from last year that needed to be thawed and then extracted, as well as a few frames from this year.  As I've gotten my honey out of them, I've been putting them outside, well away from the hives, so bees will clean them off.  This seems to be the easiest way to clean them.

I also had a bucket in the greenhouse where I had honey that had thickened. Also from last year.  I finished up warming that so it was all liquid again and these are now jarred.

Update on laying workers and requeening little hive 8/17/18

After much research, here's what I did to try to rectify the laying worker hive situation described in previous post. The goal is to try to save the hive. Otherwise it's a goner.

• One by one, I moved the two deeps and one super from Hive 1 that has laying workers over to the pond side of the house and brushed every bee off each frame.
• I took Hive #2 and moved it into the spot where Hive #1 was...the point of this is to try to confuse the bees - you don't want those egg-dropping drones to find their way back to the hive. You want to break up their rhythm.
• Meanwhile I found a source to obtain a queen from Jeff Cunningham out in Westminster which I have  just put into Hive 2 where there is no queen...and no laying workers yet so I was anxious to get a queen in there.
• NOTE: that hive has a lot of honey so when I release the queen in 4 days, I will add two frames of drawn comb for her to begin laying eggs...if all goes well of course.
• Once she's laying eggs, I will then add a layer of newspaper over Hive1 and then add one or both deeps from Hive2 on top of the newspaper.  (I may decide to consolidate two deeps into one to remove some drone comb as needed)
• Eventually the bees will merge into one stronger hive with a queen.
• I will remove the one super and extract that honey and not put it back on.
• Then I will treat Hive 2 for varroa after super comes off by adding two strips per deep
• Hive 1 will need to have their apistrips removed in mid September which I'll note on my calendar

Funny thing about that hive check

So, after 6 years, I still am a newbie. Maybe I always will be.

In my hive check last week, I thought things all looked good!

This week, a Vermont Hive Inspector made an appointment and came by to look at my hives. I didn't ask for this service.  What they saw was something different.

- Hive 1 has laying workers instead of a queen so unless I do something, the hive will die
- Hive 2 has no queen either, but there were no signs of laying workers (may I add 'yet'?)

If I find a queen available, I will buy one.  If not, I will try this method below I took from www.honeybeesuite.com

The only way to save the colony is to suppress the laying workers’ ovaries. This can be done by adding open worker brood to the hive. But just as it took a while to develop the workers’ ovaries, it will take a while to suppress them. If you add a queen too soon after adding the open brood, the workers will kill her too.

One of the best ways to save the hive is to introduce a frame of open worker brood every few days until the bees begin to raise a supersedure queen. How often you have to add brood depends on how old the brood is. Eggs remain eggs for three days and larvae are open for about 5.5 to 6 days. Since the pheromone is produced by larvae and not eggs, a new frame of open brood should be introduced at least once every five or six days if the larvae are very young, but more frequently if the larvae are old.

Because it's still raining, I can't very well begin this process so will wait for better weather, although I'm getting anxious about it given the lateness of the season.   Stay tuned.