Not Doing a Good Job Keeping Track of Bee Management!

 I'm not doing a very good job keeping track of our bee management. I'll try to catch up.

April 30th: Larry and Chris were working on the chicken house so I worked the bees by myself. I did another split from Wheeling because that hive is still so strong. They should have a laying queen since it's been 24 days since the split. Next warm, sunny day I'll check. If they don't have a laying queen we'll add a frame with eggs.

May 12th: Bee check. Cleveland had lots of ants. We washed them out. Another hive had ants as well, but I can't remember which There was a lot of drone brood in Morgantown so we took some of it out and also added another box to discourage swarming. Everything looked pretty good. Lots of nectar and pollen coming in.

We did another check but I don't remember the date. We think that Cleveland swarmed since there seemed to be a lot fewer bees. But if that's the case they don't have a queen and need to rear another. So we'll need to keep watch and figure out what's going on there. 

I need to make sure I record data the same day as inspections because I can't remember what I had for breakfast, much less the detail about five hives. If I wait a few days I'm lost!

The Temps May Still be Tropical, but It's Bee Winter Already!

St. Gobnait joins St. Ambrose and
St. Valentine as a patron of beekeepers.

And time to get the girls ready. We usually reduce the boxes to three and feed. But when we examined the hives today, the two large colonies had stores galore! So we only fed the smallest, two-box hive. There are plenty of bees in that hive, but limited food. We transferred a full honey frame from each of the two larger colonies and gave those girls a bag of sugar syrup. The other two bags will go in the refrigerator and be brought out for the next inspection in mid October.

We reduced the largest hive from five to three boxes and next time will plan to reduce both hives to three. There was just too much going on in the hives to do the reduction today -- and that is not a bad thing!

Lots of pollen is still coming in: yellow and bright orange. How lovely to behold!

Hopefully, all will be well for all three colonies. Going into the winter strong is key to a healthy colony in the Spring.

June 18 - Bee status: All's Well!

Golden Rain Tree is good choice for attracting bees.

We had a revelation last week on what NOT to do with your bees. Putting a bee escape on Queen Bianca's hive before we were ready to harvest honey was REALLY DUMB. We ended up with the full box of capped being invaded by robber bees and ants who uncapped some of the honey and helped themselves. Can't really blame them, but, after wising up and removing the bee escape, the poor bees have lots of work to do to repair the damage. 

We checked them today and they are, in fact, busy refilling empty cells with nectar and recapping the honey. Hard lesson learned for these two beekeepers. We won't make that mistake again.

We only checked the top box in Queen Bianca's hive today because we put on a new box with new foundation last week. We did a more thorough examination in Queen Rachel and Queen Anya's hives. We only went as far as the second box from the bottom in Queen Rachel's hive where we found plenty of frames of capped and uncapped larvae. We didn't see the queen but, once we were sure things were A-okay, we stopped looking and put the hive back together. No sense disturbing the bees more than necessary. They are doing fine.

Queen Anya's hive still has room to work. We added a new box on June 6th, but the queen is so busy laying we need to prepare another super (bee box) so they don't run out of room. Go, bees, go! 

Another good week in the bee yard. 

We stopped down on Water Street because the trees there (Golden Rain Trees) are blooming. There were honeybees all over them. We plan to buy some next Spring and plant them. They are fast growing so we should see results within three years. I was reading comments on one nursery website and a customer said his tree grew six feet in one season. Wow! Sounds like it takes three years until they bloom. I think we'll plant a few in the Fall.

Splitting the Bee Hives

We examined our hives last week on a nice warm day and, oh my, the queens are doing an incredible job of providing workers for the nectar season. Such a good job that we need to split the hives and hopefully prevent swarming. We sure wouldn't want to lose these two ladies with another good year of laying ahead. So the past few days,

1) Larry went to the bee store to buy new equipment while I played with two little girls whose mommy just had a new baby.

2) Larry and Bianca put the boxes together.

3) Marianna and I filled the frames with wax foundation (sort of like a blueprint for the bees to draw honeycomb).

4)The girls helped us prime the boxes before they went home to love up their new baby brother.

5) Larry and I finished the painting the next day. (I love the green and yellow!)

6) Then we went out to play with the bees and introduce them to their new homes. Lots of fuzzy, healthy looking Spring newbees! We couldn't find the queen and ended up making a nuke with four frames of bees including queen cells with larvae and a frame of capped honey. We left active queen cells in the old hive as well.

7) Next to the last step, take the nuke to a temporary location so the foragers don't return to the original hives and leave the queen and nurse bees without outside workers. My brother's house several miles away makes a perfect temporary home away from home for the new nuke hive.

Bianca keeps an eye on the hive that will house "Queen Bianca" and her court.
(From a safe distance. She knows that, "Bees sting me.")

8) Last step will be to bring them back to our bee yard after a week or two when we see that a new queen is established and laying.

NB. We didn't get into our other hive until the next day when we realized Queen Elizabeth must have swarmed because there were at least twice as many bees in Queen Ann's hive and it was always the weaker colony. We put an extra super on to give them more room, but expect Queen Ann will swarm and hope we will be able to catch her and her court before they disappear. It will be an interesting new experience for us if we do. Meanwhile, the bees are busy as can bee and the early nectar flow is in progress.