Auf Wiedersehen

auf wiedersehen, meine biene-mädchen!  i think that when you have bees and care for them throughout the summer, it is very hard to say goodbye in the fall. we've been so involved in their lives and activities since the early spring, that it is hard to imagine being without them for five months or so.  alas, that is what beekeepers must face - straight out bee-withdrawal.  it is painful.  today, we checked Catherine's hive just a wee bit, to make sure that their honey frames in box 3 were right in the center.  it was sad and happy to see them one last time! we especially hope that this hive will survive our nasty maine winter. i will rejoice in april when i see that they have wintered through. auf wiedersehen, meine biene-mädchen!  stay clustered and warm!

Fall Bees

the days and nights have been a lot cooler here in maine in the last two weeks.  there is no more nectar outside for the bees to collect. the bees know that winter is coming and they need to prepare for the long, cold season.  that is why they are cranky, very cranky!  gone are our happy-go-lucky, calm, peaceful summer bee-girls.  now, they've turned into nasty girls (but only because they are so cranky!)  

lawrence got stung three times in one of our last inspections of  Astoria's hive.  (perhaps the fact that he sort of dropped two different frames of bees had a bit to do with that.)  we've been feeding the bees a 2 to 1 dilution of sugar syrup to enable them to really stuff their hive full of nectar (and eventually, honey) for the winter. sometimes, even opening the roof of the hive a crack to check their supply can lead to disaster. 

last week, i checked Astoria's hive, just cracking the lid up two inches or so to peek in.  there was syrup left in the feeder tray, so i wanted to let the roof down, but two bees had popped up on the edge of the feeder.  wanting to get them back down into the box, i foolishly blew at them.  within a millisecond, one of them stung me on the wrist.  of course, i hadn't even thought of putting on any of my bee attire just to peek in the top of the hive. i dropped the top and took off, racing through the back yard with the second bee dive-bombing me.  i reached the side porch and raced into the mudroom and slammed the door.  i could still hear slight buzzing, but i saw no bee inside the room. i cracked open the door and the buzzing increased, so i knew she was lurking on the porch, looking for me. just then, a friend came by to drop something off, so i had to go back outside to meet him.  no problem with the bee, but as soon as i got back on the porch, she smelled the "banana oil" alarm scent on me and was all over me again. i panicked and ran off the porch, tripped on the stairs and landed flat on the walkway.  my friend thought i was deranged.  in desperation, i ripped off my pullover and threw it on the grass.  fortunately, this trapped the bee in the fabric. my friend, however, insisted on picking up the shirt, and despite my warning not to, he began to turn the garment inside out.  when he got to the second sleeve, out popped the enraged bee, who promptly went after him. he left batting his head, running to his car.  i ended up with a lovely sting and scrapes and bruises from my fall. 

today, we had to go into catherine's hive to treat it for mites with apilifevar.  even with my full-combat gear on (hat, gloves, shirt, tied-down pant legs), there were a bunch of guard bees trying their best to breach the defenses.  where have our lovely bee-girls gone?

The Mysterious Ways of Bees

this is an update to the situation in bianca's hive - despite our efforts to intercede and provide a mated queen to the hive, when we inspected the hive on 9/14, we found a wild queen, not the yellow-marked queen we had purchased, in control of the hive. as usual, the bees were as quiet and contented as we had ever seen them. we spotted her in the third deep, running around.  she is very big, and rotund - signs pointing to her having mated successfully, in spite of the lateness of the season.  we thought we had  also seen a few eggs in cells and some milky substance in the bottom of cells. a week later, 9/21, we inspected the hive again and saw two frames of brood with eggs and larva in the second deep. we spotted the queen again and she looked very fit and happy, obviously laying eggs and doing her best to boost the population of this hive for winter.  it is really a miracle that she was able to mate at all, given how late in the season it was. so, for now, we have a new queen and we have decided to name her Catherine the Great, since the Russian Catheine also had to overcome great obstacles on her way to becoming one of the greatest rulers of that country. the next hurdle for this hive is to repeat a mite treatment.  we did a mite drop on a board in that hive a week ago, and found that there were nearly 60 mites on the board in a 48-hour period. this is a rate that requires treatment, especially before winter, when all the bees will be housebound and very susceptible to mite infestation. we've decided to treat them with apilifevar, a product that is not associated with extensive bee mortality. the population of this hive has dwindled, due to their issues with queens, and we would like to be sure to knock down the mites, but leave as many bees alive in the process.  we will update our main page with a picture of Catherine asap!

Autumn nectar

when we looked into Jamiaca's hive on 9/1 we found the entire third deep filled with this reddish nectar.  at the time, we worried that there might be something wrong with this nectar (usually nectar is clear or yellowish).  peggy informed us that our bees have been busy harvesting nectar from the knotweed plant.  this tall bush is actually an invasive type of bamboo from japan.

apparently, knotweed nectar makes a delicious honey similar to buckwheat honey.  we are very lucky that they have this autumn nectar source in our neighborhood.  unfortunately, our bees are still not storing anything in their honey supers because the frames are not drawn out with comb.  so only the bees themselves will enjoy delicious honey all winter, not us.  we will need to sort out our honey super disfunction next year. we think we have a plan. 

Varroa Mites - The Scourge

varroa mites in american bee colonies were first reported in 1986, and is now one of the major killers of bees. adult female mites are found on bees - they attach themselves to the soft tissue between abdominal segments or behind the head. the mites breed in the drone brood, but will also invade worker brood. the result of mite breeding in the pupae is a disfigured, stunted adult bees, with deformed legs or wings or both.  lawrence and i did a drop test for mites in july.  we have a white, plasticized piece of cardboard which is lined for a grid, which fits below the bottom screen of the hive. it is greased  with vaseline.  you leave it under the hive for several days and then remove it to make a visual count of mites that have dropped down.  the picture below shows two mites.

the beekeeper can spot bees with mites attached with the naked eye.  you can even remove them with a toothpick, but that is a bit of a challenge for hundreds of bees.  the mites attach themselves on the upper back of the bee because that is the spot that the bee can't reach to dislodge them.  bees will also groom each other, so some beekeepers dust the bees with powdered sugar throughout the summer to encourage grooming. 

mites in hives can cause damage to the developing bee, either by feeding on them or by an associated virus, which deforms their wings (deformed wing syndrome).  these poor little things can't really do any work in the hive and you will see them being flown away by the undertaker bees.  in the hive, you can see them hiding in cells (head down).  

needless to say, controlling and treatment of mite infestation is an important task for the beekeeper.  there are various products available to knock down the mite population in the hive. one is called apivar, which is a slow-release miticide that is effective, but requires that you remove honey supers to avoid contamination.  another product are mite-away strips which use formic acid as a fumigant and miticide.  lawrence and i used the mite-away strips to treat all of our hives this weekend, but made a mistake in application, which resulted in a fair number of dead bees in our home hives.  we really hope that both jamaica and astoria are not affected and that they will suffer through the nasty treatment and bounce back in about 5 days. right now (third day of treatment) the bees are very, very unhappy with us. lawrence was stung on the ear, just walking around the hive yesterday. eeks! 

The never-ending saga of Bianca

sometimes beekeepers get a peek into the mysterious ways of bees.  on august 17th, lawrence and i found a happy, plump Bianca in her hive laying eggs surrounded by milk brood and capped brood.  everything looked fantastic! during our next inspection (august 30th) we were seeing very little brood and scattered in the bottom box and found the following surprise in the second deep.

as you can see this frame was loaded with emergency/supercedure cells.  some had been hatched out, most were intact and some were being chewed out on the sides by the workers.  something had gone terribly wrong with Bianca. we saw no sign of her.  we did find this little virgin queen running around on the frame.

i also saw a little darker queen running about that afternoon.  there were nearly a dozen queen cells with some that had hatched.  we had dropped in on the killing of the other unneeded queens.  lawrence and i packed up the hive leaving everything as it was.  we needed to consult with peggy and richard. after speaking with them, we had two options - requeening with a laying queen or merging the hive with Rosie's.  we asked peggy to have a look at the hive on friday.  we captured the little virgin queen that i had seen the day before and found nearly all of the other dead queens. peggy also noticed many bees with deformed wing syndrome, which is disease associated with varroa mites. the extent of disease in the colony was a big concern so we wanted to treat the hive immediately and not wait a week or so to introduce a mated queen.  we were able to buy a queen on friday from a beekeeper in Yarmouth and she suggested putting her in a nuke with bees from the hive and at the same time, treating the main hive for mites.  the following video shows a little parade of bees traveling to the nuke from the main hive only 20 minutes after we had set it up and placed the new queen in her cage in it.  apparently, the bees were so desperate for a queen, word spread quickly about the new one and they all came running out, cramming into the little nuke. 

Bianca's happy ending

lawrence and i checked our problem hive on friday, august 17th, and found eggs, larva and even a bit of capped brood.  we saw bianca II and she is very blond and plumpy.  she is the spitting image of her mom.  we stole a frame of capped brood from jamaica's hive and placed it in bianca's so that they are sure to have young bees sooner than later.  there is an over-abundance of honey in this hive, so there are no worries about having enough for the winter. for right now, they are all set.  

August Maintenance

we wanted to show you a perfect frame in regards to laying pattern. (see post of 7/26 for reference to laying pattern).  as you can see, the entire middle oval is filled with capped brood and there are top corners that are filled with capped honey.  there are a few cells on the right bottom that are not used, but they are probably filled with either nectar or eggs. beautiful job, jamaica!

Problems with Bianca's Hive

we inspected bianca's hive on 7/13 and found everything normal.  we saw her and lots of capped brood, larva and eggs. when we went into the hive on 7/23 (ten days later) we did not see her, we found at least six queen cups about halfway through their development (which we destroyed).  we consulted with peggy and richard about the situation in this hive and they instructed us to check again on 7/25, to see if we could spot the queen and eggs.  lawrence found a queen, but she was so small that i could not be sure it was bianca, so we argued about it. we asked peggy to inspect the hive with us on 7/30 and we all spotted a young, blond queen. peggy thinks this a successor to bianca, but very young and probably not even properly mated yet.  we think that the hive swarmed in mid-July, but went unnoticed by the nursery staff.  peggy recommends that we give her another week or so to see if she's started laying eggs. fine. we went into the hive on 7/9 and saw no sign of eggs, larva or anything, but did make this video of bianca II in action.  what she is doing is a mystery to all of us.  totally backwards for a queen, or as some might say, un-ladylike. we will check on her again in a week to see if we can spot any eggs. if not, it's time to re-queen. urrrgghh! sometimes, beekeeping is a conundrum!

miscellaneous bee activities

these bees were lined up in a cute little row with only their heads peeking out

over the edge of the deep. we have no idea what they were up to.

the bees are helping out our cucumbers.

The Bee Frame

this picture shows a frame nicely drawn-out with honeycomb. there is only a small area in the left corner where there is still just foundation without comb on it. the girls have done a good job with this frame and soon they will begin to fill it. there is a pattern for what they put where on the frame, and the picture below shows the pattern.

in the picture below, lawrence is holding a frame from jamaica's hive. you can see the yellow capped honey in the upper left corner and there was also some in the upper right corner. the amber colored cells in an oval in the middle are jamaica's daughters (capped brood) which will need several more days to hatch out as baby worker bees. there was nectar and pollen in the cells at the sides. there were no drone cells or queen cups on this frame.

update 2

rosie

this morning, we visited the nursery hives for their 10-day checkup. we spotted rosie in the bottom brood chamber, doing her thing. the video above is rosie laying eggs, although we took it on a previous occasion. rosie has a fair number of hatched out cells to lay eggs in in the bottom box and she has even loaded up one of the outside frames with brood. the bottom frames looked a bit dry, but when we inspected the upper box, we found a good supply of nectar and honey in the outside frames and plenty of brood in the center frames, although there are still 2 or 3 frames that haven't been drawn out completely (or at all) in this box. this hive has had a honey super on it right along (why, i don't know). virtually all of the super frames are drawn out with comb, but there is nothing in it right now. lawrence says it is good to have a drawn out super (it's our only one), but i would like to see them finish their second story this summer. this is certainly our weakest hive, what with it being the remnants of the swarm and having had a failed supersedure queen (poor bellarosa) and now, finally a wonderful queen, rosie. we will keep feeding them until they have completed their work on the upper deep. when you look through this hive, you can really see how few bees there are in it right now, compared to our other hives. they just need a little tlc.

bianca

last stop on our bee tour was a look through bianca's hive. this hive has always had a large population of bees and hasn't suffered through a swarm and the supersedure setbacks that rosie's hive has. once again, the bottom box has plenty of empty cells from hatching out and that is where we spotted bianca this morning. thankfully, she didn't try any of her acrobatic tricks on us today. lawrence remarked about the huge amount of propolis in this hive - everything you touch is heavily glued down or together, much more so than the other hives. i noticed that the workers in this hives are very large compared to our other colonies. i wonder why. anyways, there is plenty of nectar and honey in the outside frames and lots of brood in the center frames. the top deep has five frames fully packed with capped honey and only three frames have brood on them. we've had a honey super on this hive for awhile, but the bees are still ignoring it - no drawn out comb at all up there. maybe now that they've loaded up their third story (and the rest of the hive) they will start to do some work in the super. hope so! lawrence broke open a few capped honey cells pulling a heavy frame out, so we got to taste a bit of our own honey. it was really wonderful, almost a little spicy - maybe because of their propolis fetish?

updates

jamaica

it's been ten days since we were last in the hives and i was very curious to see what the girls have been up to. we looked at jamaica's hive first and discovered that it was very full indeed! She has brood on 7 of 8 frames in each deep and all of the frames except for 1 or 2 sides had beautifully drawn out honey comb, filled of course. we decided to do an addition to her house, and added a third deep. we sprayed the empty foundation on the frames with sugar syrup and we decided to start feeding them again, to give them a bit of help drawing out comb on the 8 empty frames. we're in a bit of a dry spell and there are signs that the nectar flow is dwindling.

astoria

in astoria's hive, the bottom deep had significant space due to brood hatching out. there are a ton of bees in this hive and we had quite the time trying to spot astoria with each of the frames absolutely loaded with bees. we finally found her in the second deep on a frame that wasn't completely packed with bees. we added a third deep to this hive about three weeks ago and they haven't done much in terms of drawing out comb in it. today, we saw that they have begun to draw out comb in the middle two frames, but there are 6 empty frames yet to be worked on. we're thinking of starting to feed this hive again, to encourage them to build comb for their third story. i think they need the extra room!

about smokers

one of the most difficult things that a beekeeper must master is how to get a smoker working really well. it's really quite an art. we use three materials in the smoker as you see in the photo above.  first is pine spills, followed by sumac blossoms, and good old oak leaves. the key is to start a fire low down in the smoker and then stuff it with your flammable materials, but not too much, as to suffocate the flame. it really takes quite the touch. when you get it going well, the smoker will last the whole time that you are in the hives. if you don't get it going well, you will be relighting the smoker over and over again. what a pain!  check out the video of lawrence getting one going!

sugar syrup

occasionally, beekeepers need to supplement their girls’ diet with sugar syrup. nectar dearths, helping a newly-swarmed hive draw out comb on many empty frames, or helping to stabilize a hive with a brand new queen are a few good reasons. recently in southern maine, beekeepers are experiencing a rather severe nectar dearth. check out the excerpt below from our local bee club -

“there are several areas in York County (micro-climates) where, right now, beekeepers are finding no nectar in their hives - many of them inland locations. Some of the coastal areas are experiencing the opposite situation and honey supers are filling up causing overcrowding and swarming. A few other beekeepers from our area with whom I spoke last night are experiencing what we are with the nectar dearth. So... to keep feeding for a little bit continues to be a good idea until the bees have a chance to backfill their brood chamber.”

given this situation, all four of our hives are now being fed. nectar is the bee’s natural carbohydrate, but we use sugar in a 1 to 1 dilution. it mustn't be too hot or too cold - just right! we pop it in a freezer bag and place it on the feeder board at the top of the hive. the feeder board has a hole drilled in it so the bees can come up and have dinner. we make 2 slits in the plastic so the syrup seeps out. bon appetit!

getting organized

i met peggy at 9:00 to go through all the hives at the nursery. i’ve come up with names for all of the queens (with creative input from andrea and diana). the old swarmed queen is astoria and her successor daughter is bellarosa. the quirky, survivor, bald-head-loving black queen is jamaica and as you will see later on in this entry, our newest yellow queen is bianca castafiore.

peggy and i started with the old hive that swarmed and quickly spied out bellarosahanging around in the upper deep. we caught her in the queen cage (left) and placed her on top of the frames of the other deep to see how attractive pheromonally she was to her bees. very quickly, the cage became an orange-sized clump of bees positively in love with her. peggy and i saw many drone cells on the frames and no larva or capped brood. we also saw at least six supersedure cells scattered throughout the frames. it’s a bit of a puzzle as to what is going on with this hive. the bees obviously really like bella’s pheromone, however the presence of the supersedures may indicate that they don’t have confidence in her as a queen. she could very well be our youngest queen and perhaps she needs a little more time to really start laying eggs. we will check in on her again in a week and hopefully we will see larva and worker bee brood.

next we turned to the recently merged nuke hive. today was the day to take the piece of newspaper out. we carefully lifted off the upper deep and saw that the bees had eaten out a frame-sized hole in the paper. peggy said, “yay - that means they’re friends now!” we found the lovely jamaica lurking around again in an upper box, so we caged her and moved her down and rearranged the frames a bit. jamaica is a very strong new queen and already has a beautiful laying pattern. they are doing very well and will soon need a real home. time for dad to come home and build it for them! ps - we also had to excavate 3 pieces of very creative comb sculpture from one of the frames.

finally, we opened the old 8 frame hive. previously, we hadn’t seen a queen but we had figured that the hive underwent a supersedure, since we saw many spent supersedure cells and observed a very distinct holding-open pattern in the frames. again, in the top deep, peggy spotted the new queen. she is a total blonde, so, of course, we had to name her bianca castafiore. we did see some larva and brood already and we decided to keep feeding this hive, since 10 days earlier, we had found it very dried out and short of nectar, due to the dearth that is going on right now.

all this took 2.5 hours! i still had to talk with peggyabout what to do with the bees at home that i had gone through on sunday. the procedure she described kept getting more and more complicated by the minute, so i was extremely relieved when she agreed to come over to the house to help me with the swarm hive. we opened the hive and found astoria in the upper deep, just as i had observed the day before. we caged her and set her aside as we did a major overhaul of the hive. astoria has been extremely busy populating her colony, but then again, she is a wise and experienced queen. she has an exquisite laying pattern. peggy and i sorted through all the frames and managed to get anythingthat needed a bit more drawing out on the top deep and all of the brood, eggs and astoria herself on the bottom deep. there will be a population explosion very soon in that hive, so i will need to go to bee pride and buy a third deep, paint it and install it hopefully, very soon. don’t want this hive to swarm again! yowsers! peggy only got stung twice!