So, why would I go into 10 hives today (well, 6 hives and 4 overwintered nucs)? The weather has simply been very unusual for Richmond, Virginia beekeepers this year. Based on my calculations (which, as ludicrous as it may sound, are based on a hybrid Maple’s blooming date this year, vs previous years), I thought that Drones might be walking on the comb as of today (and I mean exactly today!) So, I took the risk. I figured that I would be unlikely to kill any of the queens, but worse case could only be one dead queen. I was willing to take the risk.

I started out going through a full hive. I found capped drone brood (= drone walking on the comb by March 1 for sure). Stores were great, population was great and brood pattern was at a 10 (I ran into several 8′s that day and one 5, but this one was a 10 – Grade A Queen and definite Nuc parent.) I then hit my 4 Nuc’s. All looked good except for 1, which was literally slam out of food. They had a small brood nest (but the pattern was a 9) and no food. This was the swarm that I found in one of my deeps in the shed last Fall. You can’t expect a Fall Nuc to build up much, but these guys were completely out (I had a Nov swarm that had more). This got them a 2 on the Winter Stores scale. We’ll see how they score out by March. But, the bottom line is that they will live to March because of my inspection today. When I found them without any honey, I dropped a fully frame of capped honey from the hive that I started the series with. That will get them by for 2 or 3 weeks (based on their population), when I’ll check ‘em again.

At this point, with the exception of the one nearly starved Nuc, I had found Drone cells (capped) in the one hive and all Nucs. Opening the last Nuc, I figured to find the same. Wait? What was that? A Drone just starting to make his way out of the cell!! In truth, only his eyes were visible. Being the lazy male that he is, the workers have to cut him out of his cell. So, there he was, smiling at me. This means drones will be walking on the comb in a day or two!!!

Why do I care about walking drones? This is the number one flag for Nuc makers. If a Drone is walking on the comb, you know with near absolute certainty that Drones will be flying to Drone Congregation Areas in 14 days. You also know that it takes a Queen 16 days (give or take a day) to hatch and another week (at least) before she heads out to be mated. So, if you see walking Drones, you can start a Nuc on that very day and feel comfortable that Drones will be out to mate with your virgin queen when she is ready! So, walking drones are critical for Nuc makers and Queen rearers.

So, seeing one trying to poke out was encouraging. But, I was not that excited, as I had expected to see one walking…wait..what was that?! A big, fat beggar drone making his way among the workers looking for food! And this was just a Nuc! Ha! Drones are out in central Virginia! Booyah! (Man, I love this time of year.)

For me, I like to wait a week or so after the first Walking Drone so that I get more drones out there for my queens. I have no idea if it makes a difference or not (I will experiment one of these years, but not this year.) So, my target date for the first round of Nucs (March 3 to 5) is holding steady!

All in all, the inspections went well. I didn’t get deep into several of the larger hives, as it started to get a bit late. If you go into a hive and break her apart , they need some time to get back together even in this kind of weather. I don’t like to break them up inside of 2 hours before sunset when the temps are going down into the 40′s or lower that night. Regardless, all hives are alive and (with the exception of the one Nuc) with more then enough stores to make them to the holly bloom. Dandilions are blooming now (although I do not see my bees working them.)

We’ll see what March has in store, but I’m going on record saying that this will forever after be known as the Year of the Swarm. It is very clear to me, based on full hives and nucs, that the bees are ramping up very strong right now. I am confident saying that swarms will happen the first week of March around Richmond, Virginia. I’d bet big money on it.

One of the best things that I did as an early beekeeper was to begin making journal entries on my hives. It started with simple notes, such as date, weather, hive temperament and any unusual observations. As time went on, I added items (and removed some), including # of frames of brood, # of frames of resources, pests, number of bees with deformed wing virus, and the list goes on. It’s amazing how valuable this resource has been. Occasionally reviewing the old entries of a particularly strong hive or even a weak hive has been very educational. You are able to step back and view the big picture, instead of focusing (and frequently fretting!) on the individual events of the day. This has proven particularly invaluable in identifying the best hives to breed new colonies from.

One of the things that you can observe in a normal January is ‘Russian’ behavior. The Russian strain of Apis mellifera is known to fly at lower temperatures than the other honey bee strains. I like this trait and make a note of which hives fly in the upper 30′s (something I rarely see, except on a really sunny day) and the 40′s. All honey bees should be out doing their business once we hit the 50′s, but the lower temperatures are always of interest. Flying early is a benefit, in my opinion. I view it as ‘good work-ethic’, as it usually means they are out the door earlier in the morning to collect nectar in the early Spring (when temps can be low on occasion) and may work a bit later. It’s just an opinion, but I’ll keep tracking it to see if I find trends down the road.

Effectively, the spores spread into the honey. So, when the hive finally weakens to the point where it is robbed, the other bees in your yard take the tainted honey back to their hives and the infection starts all over again. To be fair, the State Apiarist has told me multiple times this year that AFB has been almost non-existent in Virginia this year. But, all I had to do was read up on it during a quiet moment one weekend and it’s been bugging me ever since (is that hive just light or is it really suffering from AFB? Will I end up losing the whole apiary if I don’t check now?!) At any rate, I went into a few hives for the last time (I have said this so many times that I’m probably the only one that really believes it at this point) until January.

The very first hive that I went into had next to no brood. Here we go, I figured. I found the queen and she looked great. The honey stores were fine and the colony was strong in numbers. No signs of deformed wings or anything weird. Basically, except for the lack of brood, everything looked great. At this point, I was actually irritated (what the heck?! these guys were fine 3 or 4 weeks ago! tons of brood! now, she just decides to fail on me?!) On to the next apiary with a weak hive, still cogitating on what I should do about this hive. New apiary, new hive – again, no brood!!!! Now I am starting to freak out. Then, I remember (I am getting old…hell, I am old) that it’s late November! We’ve had a couple of nights below freezing…the day length is shortening quickly…EQUALS the queen stops laying!

Heh. The weather was so warm that I really had pushed it from my mind that we were well into the Bee’s Winter. But, to squash any possible nagging doubts in the days/weeks ahead, I broke down all of the hives in that apiary (5 in total). Every one the same – always no eggs (well, if they were there, I missed them) along with either no capped brood or just a handful. My queens are taking their well-deserved vacation! They won’t start up again until the days start getting longer again, probably in January.

The real key to this is that I now realize that I do not think that I have ever been into the brood nest of one of my hives in late November, so I have never seen this before. Of course, I could be crying the blues come Jan/Feb if all of these hives do have a serious problem, but I am pretty comfortable that everything is good to go. Regardless, this little surprise has me determined to go into a brood nest in January. I sort of went into one last January, when I was trying to save the Albo hive (which did survive, but I whacked the queen in April) and slid the frames to the middle of the hive, pulling one of the outside frames before I did so. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.

IMPORTANT: I do NOT recommend that anyone reading this blog actually break open the brood nest at any time after October 15 and before March 1, especially not in January or February. When I do it, it will be on a strong hive that I can stand to lose if something goes wrong. But, I am confident (or is that foolish) that I can do it if I get a day in the 50′s (we always do) in Jan.

For a couple of years now, a successful beekeeper in Buckingham county that I collaborate with, has been talking up nutrition, specifically in the Fall (which was the theme of a couple of talks at the VSBA meeting.) I have always been reluctant to experiment with this, ONLY because of the SHB. I had found out early on that pollen patties in my hives in August meant SHB problems. But, Dave had an answer for that – you put your feed mix (he called it protein feed, as opposed to pollen feeding) into a wax paper bag with a single slit in it – giving the bees an easy area to defend. He also stressed that you only wanted to give them what they could eat in a couple of days. These two items have me thinking that next Fall I will give protein feeding another shot, in a hive or two. We’ll see how it works.

It only makes sense that giving the bees a source of quality protein at this time (early August for me) would be beneficial. In early August, they are raising the bees that will eventually raise the bees that go into Winter, or what I call the ‘fat bees.’ This is a critical time for all beehives, so a little extra quality feed can help. Dave Mendes recommended the publication ‘Fat Bees Skinny Bees’ by Doug Somerville (sp?), as this seemed to be the basis of his methods. I’ve posted his ‘secret recipe’ here.

Another really interesting talk focused on Nosema ceranae. The researcher had found that it appears that this newest Nosema has been around longer then we had thought. In addition, it is starting to look like it is displacing Nosema apis. It’s hard to say whether this is a good thing or not. Regardless, we are seeing an increased presence of this virus, so they are watching it closely.

There was another great talk on feeding, by a fellow along the VA/NC line who focuses on selling bees and queens. He mirrored much of what Dave said, but was even more adamant about the early Fall feeding. He had found that feeding at this time was much better for the bees then any type of feeding in the Spring (syrup or protein) or even feeding during the Winter months. The bottom line was that he found that his bees came out of Winter much healthier with a focused, late Fall feeding. He also noted that the presence of Drones, Drone larva and Drone eggs was a big determinate for feeding protein at other times of the year. Bees with weak protein stores or sources would eat the Drone larva first, then the Drone eggs, for protein. A lack of both of these, in a Spring/Summer hive, was a sign that the quality of the pollen coming in was poor.

There were many other good tidbits of knowledge, but those are the ones that hit home the most for me at this stage. I want to start looking at Fall nutrition. We’ll see where it takes me!

Once I got the swarm back to my house, I put 5 frames of drawn wax with 5 frames of foundation in a Deep and placed a top feeder on them. Most will ask ‘why didn’t you put them in a Nuc?!’ It’s a valid question. The main reason I put them into the Deep was because of their need for feed. I know you can feed a Nuc, but I have found that my Beemax top feeders (for full-sized hives only – they have something similar for Nucs, but I do not own any) are the absolute best mechanism for me to get syrup into hives. It was Oct 19! I had no time to mess with an entrance feeder (plus, I was worried about robbing). So, I gave them drawn wax to immediately start laying in and foundation (in case they were a swarm and were ready to build wax, like Spring swarms do.) I dropped the feeder on them and began feeding them.

At the last moment, I dropped another deep frame that I had which was mostly honey but had been ravaged by SHB back in July. I had frozen the frame for 3 days and kept it in my basement since then. Although I knew some of the honey was shot, I figured some would be fine for them (I had already seen the bees clean out 2 similar frames when I placed them out in the open in my Nuc yard earlier in the year, so I knew there was value in what the frame had in it.)

The problem is that these frames have a different scent to them. It seems to really draw bees quickly, which I really didn’t think about when I dropped it into the October swarm. The next day, it looked like I had a robbing situation. As always (and usually to my detriment – and the bees!), I try to get into the heads of my bees – I figured that we have a new swarm of bees, moved about while being captured and now in a new location (trying to get oriented) and I have created a robbing scenario! Before they could even get their feet under them! Now, it’s going to be hard to follow my twisted logic, but hang in there…

Seeing what I thought was robbing, I looked closer and could see bees fanning OUT of the hive. At that exact time, I thought that this was the bees trying to get the scent of the SHB frame out of the hive, which (again, enjoy the roller coaster ride of my weird logic) was only inviting more robbers! I did my quick trick of dropping a wet towel over the hive and waited until nightfall to remove it and seriously reduce the entrance.

So, all kinds of things are going through my head now. On day 3, I finally figured out that it wasn’t robbing. It was merely flight orientation of a ton of bees (remember, the whole hive (experienced foragers included) had to reorient.) I know full well that you need to see a lot of fighting to know that there is robbing going on (which I hadn’t seen), but I figured (here I go again…) that the problem was that the swarm had never really made the hive their home – so they weren’t defending it yet. Oh well.

So, the weekend arrives and I go in to have a look. These bees were making really good use of the feeder and had basically put cured syrup (most of it was already honey) in ALL of the frames. What the?! Is the queen going to lay anywhere. Again, cursed with my brain, I began to think back on the fanning bees and dropping the wet towel on them. Did I have  virgin queen in this swarm that had gone out only to be thwarted from returning by my towel?!?! I checked again – no queen and no place to lay. I could also see a few gals still fanning, as if to say ‘The grand lady will be coming home any moment now – keep sending our scent out there to guide her home!’

At this point, I was pretty sure that I had lost the swarm and would need to combine. But, I know full well to let the bees alone for as long as possible before enacting my own will upon them. So, I decided to give it another week.

Today, as the temps rose into the upper 50′s, I opened up the Deep to have a look. I actually had a Nuc setup nearby, as I expected that I would not find a queen and wanted to combine them with another Nuc that I have from an Irene cut-out. Much of the syrup in the frames had been moved, but no eggs. The problem was that it was still somewhat cold and there were a lot of bees in this swarm – they were very good at fully covering all 5 drawn frames. I find that lightly blowing on bees makes them disperse, so I was able to check a few cells to no avail. I did find where they were drawing wax (before today, if anyone told me a bee would  draw wax in October, I’d think they were smoking crack), but nothing…until frame 4! The queen! There she was, inspecting a cell and inserting her abdomen into it! Bonzai! Patience, when it comes to bees, always pays off for me.

These bees have a tough road in front of them. I did not notice any pollen, but the bees were covering nearly every cell. They have about 20% of the honey that they will need for the Winter. They also are only now building up brood. I have no idea how hardy the current set of bees are (are they made up of Winter bees? how many are Winter bees that can make it to February?!) If I had more experience with October swarms, I’d know what to do. The wise man would probably kill the queen and combine with one of my hardy Nuc’s. But, I have never been called a wise man! So, we’re going to see how it goes.

What’s up next? Over the next week, we’ll have good beekeeping weather (temps closing on or even eclipsing 70). I plan to go out to the Albo hive and pull at least two Deep frames of honey. I also plan to grab a shallow or a medium off of one of the hives at Shirley Plantation (they have extra supers on them). This super will not be full of capped honey, but it will be at least 50% full, based on my last inspection. Finally, I will add a spacer on this hive and put a few pollen patties on them (I have the mix, but have never made them, so be ready for another adventure posted here in the next month or so.) I think that will give them the best chance at making it.

(I may initiate another plan, moving them to a 2 Nuc high setup – depends on how many deep frames I feel comfortable taking from Albo – plus, I do not have a Nuc spacer, so I’ll have to build one – another reason why this option is the least likely one….)