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This past week was a bit weird. I caught some bug from my lovely daughter – it is very painful for a beekeeper to get sick in May… More importantly, I noticed a couple of big changes this weekend. To begin with, the rate of wax build-up dropped substantially in my outyards in both Henrico County and Charles City County. I really only checked 3 yards, but two of them were my two strongest yards. The rate of wax buildup/nectar storage dropped by a large margin this past week, compared to the three weeks before that. My guess is that we’re going through the temporary lull until the next set of blooms hit towards the end of the month. But, we’ll see.
 Hybridized Daily from Wilton Gardens Returning to my home yard (which contains immature hives and a ton of Nucs), I made another (clearly related) discovery. The Nucs had pulled much more syrup this past week. Clearly, the weather or the available blooms made the syrup more attractive. I have even heard of a couple of cases of robbing (from new beekeepers, so this is not confirmed and may just be orientation flights! I remember my days as a new beekeeper well!) Regardless, all signs point towards something different. We’ll see how they look next weekend.
The honey harvest has been good thus far. I have taken something between 20 and 25 gallons of honey off of two outyards (and I did not take all honey supers from each.) I now have a bunch of empty (although wet) supers to super any hives that need it. I should have done this before now! It’s nice finally feeling like you’ve caught up!
Finally, I’ve been getting really good feedback on the Nucs. All of the work and patience are paying off.
This year has really been a banner year for honey in most of my outyard’s. As posted previously, I have been having a devil of a time keeping up with my hives. This weekend, I was already down to the last 4 Mediums from the 20 that I ordered a few weeks back. I also found a hive that had just swarmed because they had simply filled up 3 Mediums and a Shallow and were starting to fill the bottom two supers (the brood nest) – I simply dropped the ball on this one. It was time to take a new tactic. I decided to extract now, instead of waiting until late June. Taking honey from the oldest supers on my hive (capped only), I could return the next day and give them empty supers to refill (well, that’s the plan…)
Pulling 1 Medium and 4 shallows, I ended up with a little over 10 gallons of honey and a big mess in the kitchen (I’m still trying to get this process down to something that is more ‘wife friendly’…) In the process, I experimented with the ‘leaf blower’ tactic. Basically, you pull the full super off of the hive, set it up on its side and then hit it with a leaf blower to get all of the bees out of the super. I am somewhat neutral on this.
On the one hand, it was much quicker than my normal ‘take one frame at a time, brush off the bees and stick it into a sealed holding tank in my truck’. On the other hand, I did NOT get all of the bees out of the supers. When you blow them, a bunch of nurse bees (who really don’t fly) end up on the ground in the outyard. I hope they made it back to the hives. On the other hand, the bees that CAN fly simply fly back into the super as fast as you can blow them out. So, in the end, I took a bunch of bees from that yard and had to hand brush them off anyway, before I could take them into the house to extract. This would probably make more sense for someone who was extracting from a hundred supers.
The actual uncapping process probably took the longest. Since I have been in an ‘increase’ mode (this is where you split or create nuc’s from strong hives, before they can really store much honey, with the overall goal of increasing your hive count, not extracting honey), I really had mostly foundation at the start of this year. So, most of my supers required a fork to uncap, with is a bit of an arduous/tedious process. The good thing is that I put the wet supers back on with evenly spaced 9-frame setups. If they happen to fill them up again, I should be able to use my heated uncapping knife and make short work of it.
The other thing of interest was the temperature. Last year, I took honey in late-June/early-July (and again in the Fall.) It was much hotter. On the day that I extracted this weekend, the temps got into the low 50’s at night. I was worried that the honey wouldn’t come out well. Honey at lower temperatures has a higher viscosity and simply does not flow well. I could really amp up the extractor, but this was the first year that I had a bunch of frames without wires. I was already worried that they might ‘blow up’ in the extractor. It seemed a certainty if I had to really turn up the extractor to a high speed.
But, it all ended up simply being a bit of a longer process. I was able to get the honey out at lower spin speeds by simply letting it spin longer (I had plenty of time, as I had to uncap so many daggone frames with that accursed fork!!) All of the wax frames came out perfectly with no damage.
The real challenge comes later today, when the wife and daughter return from their Mother’s Day trip to her family. There seems to be wax and honey in a lot of places in this daggone kitchen and I have my doubts that I’ll get it up in time…this may be my last blog post…
The other evening, around 6 pm, the cellphone rings and a fairly nervous fellow begins to explain that a mass of bees has created a nest under the picnic table at his work! Based on the initial description, I immediately thought ‘yellow jackets’ (and that’s not something I tangle with…)! But, as he went on to explain the scenario, it became clear that he had a swarm of bees under his picnic table… Weird, I thought. I am used to swarms hanging on branches or gutters, but under a picnic table?! His business was down in Colonial Heights, just to the south of my home outside of Richmond, Va, so I assured him that I would be down there in a little over an hour to take care of it.
 Colonial Heights Honey Bee Swarm From this guy’s tone, I could tell that a little over an hour was a little over an hour too long. But, there was nothing for it. I had Anne Katherine in my charge and I wasn’t about to take my daughter on a swarm call. That would be bad for both daughter and pop (once mum found out….) So, I waited for my relief (mum-in-law), placed a call to confirm that they were still there (Oh Yeah! They’re still here!) and off I went, arriving about 1.5 hours after the initial call.
And there, handing from the bottom of the picnic table, was a very nice swarm. In addition, several fairly nervous men were about, keeping their distance. I could tell what the problem was, as the picnic area was just outside of the main work entrance to the warehouse. Interestingly enough, the men all thought the bees were building wax and creating a new home. Of course, this got me to talking about bees and how they were not building a home, but ‘hanging out’ while the scouts found a new home for them, either in a tree or someone’s attic. They mentioned that the maintenance guy had offered to spray the bees with Raid, but they decided to try to save them instead! I owe the manager some honey for that one.
Hiving the swarm was pretty easy. The Deep body slid perfectly beneath the seats and under the mass. I got on one end, lifted the table about a foot off the ground and dropped it. The ball fell neatly (well, not THAT neatly, but good enough) into the hive body and that was that. I waited around for about 45 minutes for the foragers to come home and off I went.
Well, I am not a whiner. Take the bad with the good, is what I say. But, my current experience in the bee shop (translated, messy garage turned into workshop) may have had a profound effect on me.
Three weekends ago, I realized that I was short on Mediums. I use them as the top ‘hive body’ on my brood nest and for honey supers (I also use shallows for honey supers, which I was running short on, but figured I had enough for the honey.) Right now, I needed second stories to several swarms that I had caught earlier in the month.
I am mainly a Dadant customer, so I first checked them. The freight was nearly $200 for my order (and this was just to tide me over until Mother’s Day, when my wife would be in Chatham (Dadant’s Va branch) to be able to get a bigger load)! I couldn’t stomach that and even considered, multiple times, just driving down there. Finally, I ordered from Mann Lake, since they had free shipping. The merchandise was more expensive, but the total cost (Dadant included freight) was less than Dadant. I started building and painting supers.
Two weekends ago, I went out to hives that had between 1 and 3 honey supers on them, to check to see who needed more. I have already used up the meager supply of drawn wax supers, so I am in the ‘add a super of foundation’ phase, which has to take place 1 bloody super at a time. When you have several supers of drawn wax, you can literally drop them all on (I have never put on more than 2, but I know some folks that put on 3) before the flow and the bees (assuming you’ve chosen a strong hive) will happily fill all of the frames in all of the supers with honey.
On the other hand, if you dropped a bunch of supers with foundation on a hive, it would start working on the middle and probably give you a headache at harvesting time. So, I was looking to see who could use another super. I brought 6 with me, as I didn’t feel like trucking the trailer down to Charles City and 6 is about what I could store in the Trailblazer with the inspection gear, spare Nucs and other beekeeping junk that I drag all over the world.
As of the second outyard, I was out of supers… Heh. Those gals were really pouring it on (of course, I have the laggards that will probably become Winter Nucs this Fall, but most were really putting it away.) At the time, I figured no problem! I’ll grab a few more supers from my shed tomorrow and make the rounds again. Much to my dismay, when I returned home that afternoon, I found zilch on the super front. I didn’t have a single one left. I knew I was out of Mediums, but had no idea I was out of Shallows (I need to be better organized.) So, I open the box of Medium frames from Mann Lake to get to work and suddenly realize these things are not wedge bars!!! The wax I have won’t fit it and the wax from Mann Lake hasn’t arrived yet!
Panic mode.
Again, I think about driving to Chatham, Va. But, then I remember a posting on the Richmond Beekeepers mailing list from Tiny or Anthony Abate regarding a fellow in Mechanicsville that sold bee supplies! I called him first thing and bingo! He had what I needed. He is a dealer from Brushy Mountain. I ran up to get enough for 10 Mediums, which I was hoping would get me through Mother’s Day.
So, here is where we get to the guts of it. Mann Lake and what this guy sold were identical. A bit more expensive, but amazing woodwork. I had grown used to forcing super rabbets to fit together and the occasional warped frame. With these new ones, not a single problem. In fact, putting the stuff together was a piece of cake. Not one single equipment problem (2 of the super sides were damaged in shipping, but Mann Lake was resending them at no charge!) I have over 50 hives and only the Lord knows how many Nucs. Each of the hives have at least 3 boxes (2 hive bodies and 1 super) and most have 4 or 5. I have a ton of Dadant equipment. I like the folks at Dadant. But, this Mann Lake stuff has me thinking that I may change horses. With free shipping, it makes it much easier to swallow. I haven’t officially made the switch yet, but I’m leaning that way a lot!
On a final note, I ended up getting an open bottom on my frames. I have always used a closed bottom. No reason for it. It’s just how I do my thing! But, about 50% of the time, I have to trim the wax to make it fit without buckling. These open bottoms eliminated that task completely! All in all, I have decided to make this change for sure. Wedged Top Bars with open Bottom Bars! Easy as cake.
In normal years, I would be checking on some of my early Nuc’s now, looking for eggs (or the queen) and seeing about scheduling some pick-up’s over the next couple of weeks. But, this year I am already into my 3rd round of Nucs with a bunch already out the door! I actually believe that I will get everyone on my primary list at least 1 Nuc before the first week in May (crossing fingers for at least a little rain – we are very dry in Richmond, Va these days…)
My Deep Nuc’s have been nearly 100% successful. I kept one of my February Nuc’s (and it was the weakest one), just to watch how it does. So far, so good – I am confident that it will finish filling out the Deep well before the end of April. Brood pattern looks great, but I have to wonder if it is possible that a poorly mated queen can still have a good brood pattern, but run ‘dry’ much earlier than normal. We’ll see.
As to the Medium Nuc’s, I have had a huge struggle here. I am very confident (which probably isn’t a good thing – confident beekeepers, in my experience, typically have major issues all of the time!) that I have the ‘early’ Deep Nuc plan down to a science. But, that plan simply doesn’t work with the ‘early’ Medium’s. I think my success rate on those is a little over 60%. Currently, I think the problem was that I needed to shake more nurse bees in those small boxes. Shaking two Medium frames of Nurse bees simply is not the same thing as shaking two Deep frames of Nurse bees into a Nuc. You just get fewer bees. I’m not sure why that didn’t occur to my dense brain at the time, but most of my failures definitely centered around bee populations. The other possibility is that you just don’t have as much capped brood on a Medium frame as you do a Deep. Maybe I need to put more frames of capped brood in (which would lead me to charge more for them next year!) I have never been a fan of the ‘all Medium’ set-up and this experience is only firming that belief (wrong or right) in my mind.
The other big learning experience was with the queen rearing. I will be starting another round this weekend and hope to benefit from my earlier experiences. The key with Queen Rearing is (in my opinion) the Starting and Finishing hive(s). You have to get that right and monkeying around with it is a sure fire path to problems.
In closing, I have to pat myself on the back about this year being the ‘Year of the Swarm’. I have collected more quality swarms this year, so far, than all of last year. With much less enthusiasm, I must admit that (year to date) I have also had more hives swarms this year than I had swarm all of last year… Heh. With great rewards comes great sacrifices! Interestingly enough, about half of my swarmers already have a super of honey and are well into the second super. I have surely lost out on honey production, but this year’s crop is looking to be so good that I am hoping I won’t miss it.
 Honey Bee Swarm in Chesterfield, Virginia I received a swarm call referral (through David Stover) from a family down in Chesterfield (Andy and Pat). When I arrived, it was a nice-sized swarm that was positioned perfectly on a shrub off of their front porch. While talking with Pat and Andy, I commented that it was not a huge swarm, but a nice one none-the-less. Then came the drum roll, to which they responded ‘If you think that one is nice, you should have been here last week!‘ Heh. Hard words for a beekeeper to hear, but sort of funny.
Fortunately, they had taken a picture of the primary swarm, with the old queen. The real benefit to me was knowing that I had a virgin queen in this swarm, which has to be checked a little differently (it mainly means that I definitely want to give them a couple of weeks to get going and then I have to make absolutely certain that I have a mated queen that is showing signs of a solid mating.) Either way, it’s great news as it represents an influx of genes into my queen mating area. I actually used the hive to start a new outyard about a mile from my main queen-mating yard. I hope to add at least two more hives (with more new genes) to the yard over the next couple of months. This hive will be called the ‘Chesterfield Hive’ going forward!
The neighbor had actually located the main hive, well up in a nearby tree. The weather has been so great that they issued two swarms (and maybe more to come.) More signs that the year is getting off to a ‘charged up’ start!
 Primary Swarm from 1 Week Ago
This weekend could have had the potential for being a fairly big event for me. Based on my calculations, the Queen Cells in the Nicot system would need to be moved to Nucs or Queen Castles on Monday. That meant that I would need to setup the receiver Nucs/Castle Banks on Sunday. Although I wasn’t really supposed to look at the Rearing Frame until Monday, I had to have a peak to get an idea of how many cells had been capped! If 20 were capped, that would mean that Sunday would be a busy day. If none were capped, it would mean that I could do my regular bee work on Sunday. I also was a bit paranoid that I had left a rogue queen cell in the Finishing Hive, which would mean she might get out and kill all of the queens on my rearing frame.
My expectations were high, even though I kept telling myself that I should expect the worst since this was my first go of the system. When I had moved the hive from the Starter to Finisher, I could see that all (or very close to all) of the cells were being started. Lots of bees were clustered over each cell. Seemed like a slam dunk.
Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, I found several rogue queen cells in the setup. The synopsis goes like so: The key to any queen rearing system is a queenless ‘Starter Hive’. Studies have shown that queen cells started by a queenless hive have a much higher rate of acceptance then those started otherwise. There are several ways to create a queenless hive – I chose the ‘Cloake Board’ method. Although there is more to it, you basically install a queen excluder between two hive bodies (your upper and lower deep, for instance) and make sure you queen is down below (I did this 5 days before the queen eggs would be ready – this is where the issue started). When you are ready to move your new eggs (on the Rearing Frame) into the ‘Starter Hive’, you install a divider (part of the ‘Cloake Board’) over the queen excluder (1 day before you put the rearing frame in). Basically, you make your upper hive body suddenly think they are queenless. They are supposed to do a stand-up job of starting your queen cells now.
Unfortunately, I purchased a Cloake Board that was about an inch and a half deep, with the queen excluder section at the bottom. For whatever reason, my bees thought they were queenless when I did this. I think that extra 1.5 inches between the two supers did it.
So, when I put my Rearing Frame in, I already had several rogue queen cells started. When I came back to open up the Cloake Board, I found 3 frames with capped queen cells on them. Being somewhat greedy (this could have been my big error), I used all three frames to create new Nucs. The problem is, I also took the nurse bees and resources that were on those frames (from the bees that were working on my queen cells.) In retrospect, I see now that I was being too cocky. It appeared that I had a ton of queen cells started and I figured ‘anyone can do this’. Taking those bees from the Queen Finisher didn’t seem like a big deal to me.
In the end, I have 5 capped queen cells (out of what should be closer to 20.) Several of them were definitely started and simply abandoned. There are a couple of lessons that I am taking from this first go of it:
- I will probably just use a regular queen excluder next time, and swap it with a bottom board when I need to. This will hopefully reduce the rogue queen cells in the Starter/Finisher hive body
- If I do find queen cells, I will either cut them out or destroy them. I will not take the whole frame of nurse bees from my finisher, which I believe is the primary reason for my low success rate this first time
I expect to give it another go Easter Weekend, so we’ll see if I learned anything then!
Basically, the open ‘Cloake Board’ made my bees think that they were in a queenless situation, even though they were not.
We had a nasty bit of beekeeping weather the last couple of days in Richmond, Va, temps dropping to near freezing. It’s no sweat for the established hives, but it can be very tough on the little guys (aka Nucs) coming along. I had only created one Nuc over the weekend, primarily due to the VSBA Spring Conference. I stocked her with nurse bees, so I do not have much doubts. I am a firm believer (I should translate this – I do not have a ton of experience doing this, but it is my current beliefs based on my knowledge of bees and successes (and failures) last year) that March Nucs in Richmond, Va (especially early ones) actually need a bit more nurse bees and frames of brood then late March or April Nucs.
In March, it can get really cold (we’ve really only had a couple of days like that this year), so the bees need to be able to create some kind of cluster. Drop one frame of eggs and some resources into a Nuc and you reduce your chances of a good queen, in my opinion. Later, in April, I start most of my Nucs with only 3 frames from a hive and they do great. But, I’ve had some failures with 3 frames of Nucs in March (specifically in 2011). The other benefit of taking a bunch of bees from a strong, full grown hive, in March is that it acts like swarm prevention (in my opinion). It frees up the space in the hive without setting it back very much. Usually, they can recover in a couple of weeks (brood-wise). Based on my inspections today, it looks like it paid off.
Of my 3 February Nucs, 2 raised their own queen and I gave a queen cell from Nuc 2 to Nuc 1. I think the problem with Nuc 1 was that I didn’t confirm eggs – I only confirmed 1 Day old larva. That was a good lesson, as I didn’t know what one day old larva really looked like (now that I have used the Nicot system, I am certain what they look like.) I think that Nuc ended up with 2 and 3 day old larva and simply never tried to start a queen. But, they took care of that queen cell and I found her walking on the frames today. In two of the Nucs, I can already see a nice pattern (eggs and larva – nothing capped). I am not ‘sold’ on them yet, but all signs point to green at the moment. I’ll check again in a week and hope to find 3 solid Nucs, ready to go.
I finally went back to the ‘cut out’ that I did from the old hive a few weeks back. I had decided to put in SHB traps (hangers that you put oil in). I do not have a ton of faith in them, but I figured every bit could help. The hive appeared full of the things. To my surprise, I found very few SHB on the inspection. I do not see them in my other hives, but only time will tell. I did find where a new queen had hatched. I am not so sure that I killed the old queen, as they had capped cells when I moved them (which I squashed under my foot by accident, like an idiot!) I think they had swarmed the day before I picked them up. A few frames later, I found the little queen. She was amped up, like a typical young queen, and bouncing around the frame. The really cool thing about this was what happened next. As I moved to put the frame back in, she let out the queen bugle! She was issuing a challenge! Of the dozens and dozens of new queens that I have seen, I had never heard this call before. It was really cool. But, it also got me to wondering ‘who is she challenging?’ Three and Found frames later and I found out – 2 more capped queen cells! I both frames and put into one of my queen breeders. They will need another frame of brood/nurse bees, but I didn’t have time to go get one. I’ll probably do it tomorrow or Friday.
So, I have around 25 Nucs started and I haven’t even gotten going good yet! Good times. I am really wondering what I am going to find in my queen rearing system this weekend. I am going to have to construct some more queen mating boxes asap!
Today was the day to move the ‘started’ cells to the ‘finishing hive’. Since I am using a Cloake Board, the ‘Finishing Hive’ is the same hive as the ‘Starter’. I just remove the divider between the upper and lower deeps, leaving the queen cells in the upper chamber (protected from the queen by the queen excluder.)
Well, the first thing that I found was queen cells on my frames in the upper chamber. These were capped, which meant that they started them when I installed the Cloake Board. Since I found no queen cells in the lower chamber, I firmly believe these cells were emergency cells – the bees thought they had lost their queen. I am not sure if this is because of the distance created by the Cloake Board (it was an inch or so) or if the queen excluder was the problem. The bottom line is that they started these well before I put the divider in place (they were already capped.)
In the end, I created 1 Nuc and banked three other frames with cells on them in a Nuc that I setup back home. I plan to deal with them tomorrow – tonight we may have a frost, so I decided not to create Nucs with them today (I didn’t get home til 6:30 or so and it was already in the 50′s.)
But, the real excitment from this venture was that every single queen cell was started on my rearing frame! I really don’t know how many that is, but it is probably around 20. Assuming this continues to play out successfully, I believe I could have tripled that number, since I took a very small number of started larva from the Nicot system! At any rate, I should probably be knocking on wood…the fat lady hasn’t sung yet!
It is also important to note that I’ll have to go back into that box again on Wednesday, just to double-check for queen cells once again. If I missed just ONE, it will mean that little wench will come out and kill all of my started queens! Argh!
I will probably build my own Cloake Board going forward, to alleviate the problem with the upper bees thinking that they are queenless before I am ready for them to.
I finally decided to give the Nicot system a go. I need to get a picture up, but it is basically a queen rearing system. You confine the queen in a small box where she lays eggs. You can then take the eggs and easily put them on bars that the bees will draw queen cells from (that’s a real high level overview, which I may delve into deeper if I actually have some success!)
One of the things about any queen rearing system is timing. There are certain tasks that must be done at a certain time – you can’t wait one day or do it one day earlier. Once you commit, you have to perform each task exactly when it should be completed.
For me, this meant that I had to move my 1 day old larva into the rearing frame (a frame with crossbars that lets you attach the eggs to it, so they can draw out the cells) and then into the Starter Hive (I hope to go into this more later). The bottom line is that I had to open 1 hive, get some stuff out of it and then go to another hive and put the stuff into that hive.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, for one, we had the VSBA Spring Meeting this weekend. So, I had talks and stuff going on all day. Fortunately, there was a 2 hour break for lunch.
Next, the two hives were 25 miles apart (that’s lesson two for me). That meant I would be pushing it to get all of this done.
Finally (and most beautifully), it was raining…
All in all, I can say that it was a bit of a cluster. I do believe that everything went as well as it could and am hopeful for a good batch of queen cells from this experiment. More later.
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