Queen, Queen, Who's got a Queen?

I'll start out by apologizing for missing a week.  I did get into the hives last week, but had a closer-than-I'm-comfortable-with brush with heat exhaustion, so I never got an entry written.  It's been some hot, as you can tell from the all the girls hanging out on the front porch last week.

You can tell it's July in Alabama

I did pull a mite sample and the numbers were not good.  There were at least 12 mites in the sample.  That's more than twice the number from last week and well above the 6 mite per sample threshold to treat.  I believe that I'm going to treat with thymol this go around in order to rotate the treatments.  I'll use thymol now and OAV again around Thanksgiving when brood rearing has slowed down some.  It's been a little too hot to use the thymol around here.  Plus my husband stored it in one of our out-buildings and temperatures in there get to be about 343,082 degrees which is well above the recommended storage temperature of 85 degrees.  That means I've gotta order some more.  So, all that is to say that I do plan on treating, but will have to wait a bit to do so.  Will I regret waiting?  Probably, but it is what it is.  I also pulled the last 7 frames of surplus honey off my hives last week.  They have been in the freezer this week and will be used for chunk comb honey which is what several people have been asking for.

On to today.  I actually dreamed about my bees last night.  I think I'm officially a beekeeper now.  So, I did a full check on all the hives today; just to see how everyone is doing.  In the outyard, the hive that swarmed last did not successfully requeen and has been overtaken by SHB.  It sucks, but it's too late in the season to be throwing good resources after the bad.  I'll treat the ground with a drench once it gets dark to keep the problem from spreading to the other hive.  Speaking of the other outyard hive, the queen has really started laying well.  They seem to be bringing in a little nectar from somewhere.

In the backyard, the dark green nucs are looking....okay.  One half cast a swarm a few weeks back as best I can tell.  I didn't see a queen, or eggs/larvae, in the hive today, but they didn't act queenless.  I'll give them another week or two and if I don't see anything then I'll combine them with the other half.  Speaking of that other half, they have a queen, but look like they might be in the process of impeaching her.  I saw the queen, but also saw a sealed queen cell..  If they aren't happy then I'm not happy and I'm going to let them do their thing.

In the Auburn nuc, both halves look fantastic.  So much so that I ended up going through every frame to make sure they weren't making any plans to swarm.  I didn't see anything.  I think it's getting too late in the year for them to really have the urge to do that, but I thought that two weeks ago too and lost two swarms.

All of the full-sized hives looked good too.  Everyone has a queen and eggs/larvae/brood.  Everyone actually seems to have pretty good stores of nectar too.  I'll probably have to feed the nucs a little, but the full sized hives are okay right now.  As long as it rains more than it did last year and goldenrod doesn't fail again, we should be on track for minimal feeding this fall.  Woo hoo!  I'm pretty sure that the girls at the grocery store thought I was making moonshine last year with all the sugar I had to buy.

Finally, I went out to look at a removal for a friend of a friend.  Neither one of them knew anything about bees, or exactly what they were looking at so they couldn't tell me what kind of job it was going to be.  So, I pack up all the stuff for a cut out, a trap out, and a swarm removal.  I get there and find out that the neighbor had bought the house a few months ago.  The previous owner had two beehives and had only removed the hives two weeks ago.  These were the stragglers that were left behind.  They had become defensive so that the new owner couldn't even get out and work in his garden.  There was also a MASSIVE SHB infestation on the wooden siding of the out building that one of the hives had been sitting on.  When I first looked at it, I was almost sure that it was going to be a cutout because bees were covering the siding in one place.  When I started brushing them aside I found hundreds of SHBs.  It was absolutely disgusting.  On the bright side, I got to play with my bee vac.  It definitely needs some tweaking.  So all-in-all, even though I don't want these bees anywhere near my yard, it was a good experiment.  I left a cardboard nuc box with baited frames to pick up the bees that I couldn't vacuum up and I'll go get them next weekend.  I feel bad letting the bees die, but I figure that if the SHB problem was that bad then they are probably suffering from mite infestation too.

Out of the frying pan...

...And into the heat of an Alabama summer.

Did a check on (almost) all the hives today.  In the outyard, the hive that I have been concerned about has finally started getting rev'ed up.  The pictured frame is like like this front and back.  The pattern isn't going to win any awards, but I think it will be enough to get them through the winter.  The queen has gained some size and has started on a second frame of eggs.  Whew.  I guess the bees really did know what was best.  

  

The new queen has finally gotten busy.

The second hive in the outyard has a virgin queen, pictured below.  They also have an unhatched queen cell.  I left it in and am questioning that decision, but the virgin walked right by it and didn't attempt to cull it.

Another (blurry) queen pic.

In the backyard, the orange hive has filled and capped 7 frames in the super that they were left.  It's very pretty, white capped honey.  I put the escape board down and will pull it tomorrow.  They looked like they were doing a pretty good job of filling the top box.  I didn't see any brood, but it's still a bit early for that.  

In the white hive, the bees were in a very foul mood.  When I opened them up, they poured out of the inner cover and all around me.  One of them found her way into my jacket and a few found a way through my jacket, so I had to put on a second jacket.  That's never a fun thing.  Thankfully, the beekeeping gods were shining down on me because the very first frame I pulled contained eggs, larvae, and capped brood.

The Auburn nuc looked good.  I thought I smelled slimed honey, but didn't see it or really very many SHBs for that matter.  Both sides had a strong population, so maybe I'm just being paranoid.  

The dark green nuc was a mixed bag.  The weaker half finally has a queen.  It's funny because I had to go down to the last frame in the bottom box to find any evidence of a queen.  When I did find it, I could have sworn that I saw multiple eggs in some of the cells.  I know that young queens sometimes release too many eggs at first.  I was seeing two, sometimes three, eggs in a several cells.  Just as I had convinced myself that I had a laying worker, I spotted the queen with her back end stuck down in a cell laying.  

The stronger half of the nuc has apparently either cast a swarm or decided to requeen for some other reason.  I'm thinking swarm because there were about 6 queen cells that were capped (or close to it).  They must have started building these things just after I closed it up last time because I've been keeping an eye out for signs of swarming.  This is the second time this year that I've had a hive swarm after the solstice with seemingly plenty of room left.  This half of the nuc had 3 frames of foundation that they hadn't even started to draw out.  In fact, I'm kind of concerned with the amount of comb that's not being drawn right now.  There is obviously something still coming in.  I've tried feeding twice in the outyard and both times the syrup has fermented before they used it.  So they definitely aren't going hungry.  But at the same time they aren't drawing foundation either.  This is happening in multiple hives, so I just don't know what to think.

I didn't get in the light green hive today due to a close call with heat exhaustion.  I didn't realize until it was too late that the temp had gotten up to about 94 degrees.  I tried to do too much and almost got sick.  Let that be a lesson to you boys and girls.  Drink lots of water and pace yourself.  Don't be like me.  

C'est la vie

In the outyard, I'm finally starting to see some signs of life out of the hive in the old stand.  There is still only a little capped brood, but almost a full frame, front and back, of open brood.  I'm interested in seeing how much of that actually gets capped.  I'd been thinking that queen might have mated with a son or grandson, and that would explain why the poor laying pattern.  That hive also had tons and tons of bee bread, so they should be in good shape to raise brood if the queen is ramping up.  Overall, I'm feeling hopeful for this hive's survival.

Also in the outyard, the other hive seems to have cast a swarm.  There are a handful of queen cells and no eggs.  The youngest larva I saw was maybe 5 days old, so that is probably about the time they left.  Truth be told, I'm a little perplexed by this.  They had plenty of room to expand.  There are still at least 5 frames of undrawn foundation and plenty of room for the queen to lay.  The main flow is also over, though the frequent rains have extended this year's clover bloom some.  They were also just moved into this location two weeks ago and I would have thought that would have quashed the swarming urge.  The only thing I can think of is that this queen came from the same batch as the other queen that swarmed on me this year, though I know that swarm was totally my fault.  I feel really bad about that, because I do live in a city and I do try my best to keep my hives from casting swarms.  I don't want them moving into the neighbors' houses.

The light green hive is still working diligently to fill the top box for winter.  I went ahead and checked the bottom box to prevent any more late-season swarms, but didn't see any queen cups, so so far, so good.  I took a mite sample from the frames that still have brood in the top box.  I suspect that I will soon have to go all the way into the bottom box for broodnest samples.  I had to shake two frames today in order to get enough bees for the sample.  I ended up with 5 mites in the sample.  That's the same as it was last week.  Still not great, but at least it's not any higher than last week and it's (slightly) under the 6 mite threshold for this time of the year.

For a change of pace, I got to play with some chickens today.  Unfortunately, it's not at my house.  My city doesn't see the benefit in allowing backyard chickens.  We helped build a coop for some friends who were recently gifted some chickens from someone who was moving and couldn't take them with him.

Just a quick nuc update

Nothing like spending the Fourth of July in a hot bee suit checking on the girls.  Gotta love it!  I decided to take a peek in on the nucs yesterday.  I've decided that if I had it to do again (and for that matter might transition to n the future), I'd definitely concentrate on raising nucs rather than full sized colonies.  They take a little more attention, but inspections are so much nicer.

So, the older half of the dark green hive is chugging along.  They have a good bit of brood, but they also look like they are starting to turn the upper box into winter stores.  This is a good sign.  I believe that there is still forage available because the hives in the outyard that are being fed are not taking it nearly as quickly as I would have expected if we were in a true dearth.

The newer half of the dark green hive is starting to draw out the foundation that they had, so that's another decent sign that the summer dearth hasn't totally set in yet.  They are still very slooooowly raising brood.  But it seems that there is mutiny amongst the masses.  I found two queen cups in what would traditionally be considered a supercedure location.  I believe that these are being used or going to be used because I saw workers going in and out of them.  I couldn't see for sure whether there was an egg in it or not.  (On a side note, why does the sun have to go behind clouds just as I need a good bright light to see eggs?)  I've been debating what to do about this colony for a couple of weeks now.  The queen had gotten a slow start, but now doesn't seem to be ramping up at all.  She's also still quite a bit smaller than her sister queens.  The workers now seem to have caught on to this fact too and are attempting to raise a queen before winter.  I hope it works for them.  There are still drones in other hives, so I think that we still have a little time.  I called my local source for queens, but they are out for the year, so if this colony is going to make it then they are going to have to raise a queen.

Both sides of the Auburn nuc look fantastic.  One side is starting to fill up the top  box for winter while the other is still raising a lot of brood.  That side will make an excellent brood donor if I end up needing it.

Initial Results

I did an alcohol wash on the light green hive this afternoon.   I found 5 mites in a half cup sample.   Before isolating the queen,  it had a mite count of 11.  So that's a reduction of about 65%.  It's not as effective as I'd had hoped to see, so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.   But I'm not prepared to give it up just yet.   I'll take samples for the next couple of weeks to see what happens.  They seem to be filling the top box with honey and moving down into the bottom box for brood. 

The outyard hive in the old stand are not taking the 1:1 and they are still not really doing much in the brood department either.  There's some eggs and young larvae, so I know that the queen is there.   And they didn't do anything with the test frame I gave them so they aren't unhappy with the queen's performance.  The population got a boost from the frame of emerging brood they got last week.  

It's funny how things work out sometimes.

I've been feeling a little bad about neglecting all the nucs lately, so I decided to take a peak at them after work.  It's a good thing that I did.

The older half of the dark green hive was completely full and probably were only a day or two from swarming.  I found one frame with a queen cup that looked longer than a normal cup.  I couldn't tell if there was anything in it yet, but there was a worker going in and out of it, so I would hazard a guess and say that there's something there.  There were also two frames with empty, dry queen cups.  I pulled the frame with the queen cell and replaced it with foundation.  I then moved it down the street to the hive in the outyard with the hinky queen.  Maybe they'll decide to replace her.  I thought I saw a few eggs today, but still nothing record breaking.

The newer half of the green hive has some nice looking activity.  I saw the queen, but I didn't see any eggs.  The queen came from the Auburn nuc half that probably swarmed on June 1st, so it's likely that she's not quite old enough to be laying yet, especially if her mating flight was delayed by rain.  She has the elongated thorax of a mated queen, but she's smaller than the other queen in the dark green hive.

The newer half of the Auburn nuc, the half that didn't swarm, is also booming.  Lots of brood, lots of honey.  Enough brood that I was able to take a frame from them as a donation to the hinky hive down the street.  But no swarm cells.  It seems that this colony got the memo about it being after the solstice.  

The half of the Auburn hive that did swarm is doing alright.  There are eggs and very young open brood.  The queen made it back and is laying in what seems to be a very nice pattern so far.

I also checked the white hive in the backyard.  They look good.  Finally.  The hive in the outyard that is on it's second queen got a frame of emerging brood and a frame with young larvae.  I'm hoping that this will give them a boost.  Normally, I would think twice about throwing that many resources at a hive that has been questionable at worst.  But with the resource hives sometimes you need to pull frames to keep them from getting too full.

On those days where I wonder why I do this:

Liquid Gold

This.  This is why.  Well, that and the fact that bees are freaking fascinating.  The total ended up being just shy of 4.5 gallons or 26 pints (I'd already sold two by the time this photo was taken).  Estimating 1.5 lbs per pint, that's 42 lbs.  Not too shabby off of one hive.  According to the USDA, the average yield per hive in my area was 47 lbs in 2015 and 52 lbs in 2016, so I'm not too far off of average.  Especially considering that they still have six frames that they may or may not finish, so there may be a small second harvest in the fall, depending on what the summer brings.

It's been a long day.

I never want to have to clean a slimed out hive again.  I'm like 80% sure that if there's a next time then I'll just burn the frames and be done with it.  That sucked.  The smell.  The slime.  The gross little larvae crawling around.  No thank you.  I still need to treat the ground with a drench, but I seem to have misplaced the bottle of Gardstar that I had.  And I almost passed out from the heat.

What I ended up doing was pulling the entire slimed out hive off the stand and replacing it with the queen and five frames of brood from the orange hive.  I left them in a single deep box for the time being.  Just like starting a nuc, only a little later in the season than I'd prefer.  I'm hoping that this will do two things.  First, I hope that this will be a strong enough colony in a small enough space to ward off the small hive beetles.  Second, I'm hoping that cutting down the size of the orange hive will make them a little less defensive once they've (hopefully) become queenright.  They definitely remembered me this morning.  Like 10 of them met me at the gate.  I guess that means that my Sunday morning coffee time next to the hives is over for the year.  But the joke's on them because I wore double gloves, jacket, and pants today so none of them were able to get through.  The heat was a bitch though.

I reduced the other hive in the outyard down to a single deep too.  They have a queen, but I didn't see a whole lot in the way of open brood.  Maybe between the dark comb and the bad lighting there's something there that I'm not seeing, but it's not looking good.  If I don't see an improvement next week then I'll pinch the queen and give them a frame of eggs from somewhere, but that will be the last resources I throw at them this year.  This is the second queen that has returned to that hive to only to seemingly quit laying after a week or two.  Add that to the two virgins that never made it back to other hives and it's been a very bad year for queens here.

I ended up doing the OAV treatment on the light green hive first thing this morning.  I'll be taking samples each week for awhile to see what my mite numbers look like after isolation plus OAV.  I really need to peek into the nucs and the white hive in the backyard, but I just didn't have it in me today.  I'll probably regret that.

0/10. Would not recommend.

Well, last week I said that things could be worse.  Apparently, the universe took that as a challenge.  Today was one of those days where I ask myself "Why did I think that beekeeping was a good idea again?"

I woke up excited because today was going to be honey-spinning day.  The weather wasn't cooperating, so I suited up in full gear and headed out between rainstorms.  I started at the outyard.  I only had supers on the hive sitting in the new stand.  I open it up to an odd smell.  Small hive beetles had slimed every frame in my super!  That's odd.  That hive had been doing really well prior to my putting supers on it.  It appears that they had done so well that they decided to swarm.  Four weeks ago if I had to guess.  And the virgin never made it back (that's par for the course this year).  This is totally my fault.  I assumed that because they were the queenless half of the split from early April and that they had plenty of room in the supers that their swarm impulse would be quashed.  I was wrong.

Right now, the plan is to remove all of the slimed frames and clean them out.  I'll probably just shake the bees out.  Then I'll move one of the nucs from the backyard to that place and feed them until Goldenrod starts.  I'll treat the area around both of the outyard hives with Gardstar to keep the problem from spreading to the other hive because it's got a queen, but she's not kicking ass.

That brings us to the orange hive in the backyard.  They were not happy to see me.  They were even less happy with me when I started pulling frames of honey.  I ended up having to add a second bee jacket on top of the one I was wearing because they managed to get through the first one.  they landed about a dozen stings, including two on my ear from some determined girls that managed to make it inside my veil.  It wasn't pretty.  They surprised me by filling out one full super of honey (less the two frames that they decided to turn into brood comb) and making a good effort on a second one.  I got 12 frames of honey from them and gave them 6 frames back, on top of a queen excluder, to finish curing.  Next time they will get a bee escape.

See all the stingers?  I probably took a couple of hundred stings with about a dozen getting through.

More stingers

Their population is massive.  So much so that I'm afraid of a swarm.  We're in a dearth, so I hope that will prevent it until I can do something about it.  I think that I'll pull them into a nuc to replace the one that's going to replace the slimed hive in the outyard.  I had planned on isolating their queen for mite control today, but that's on hold for now.  I still have to treat the light green hive with OAV tonight.  I need to get my jackets in the wash before I do that.

It's still draining, but it looks like I'm going to get between
3.5 and 4 gallons.  Not bad for one hive.  

But then it was time to extract.  I got to use my new toy.  It took five or six frames to really get the hang of cutting off the cappings.  I can really see how using a nine frame setup with the correct spacing would make life easier when it comes to decapping frames for extracting.  I think we'll give that a try next year.

Happy Father's Day

Today's theme in the apiary is "Well, that could have been worse."

I think I need to break out the weedeater.

Today's weather has been hit or miss.  I took advantage of a small break in the clouds to get a little bee work in, but the bees were not in a very good mood.  First on the agenda was to release the queen that's been in queen jail for the last 18 days.  They'll get an OAV treatment on Saturday night and then I'll take mite samples for the next couple of weeks to get an idea of how effective the queen jail technique really is.  The queen release went a lot better this time than the last.  Slightly twisting the cage before pulling it out seems to be the right technique.  The queen walked out and seemed to immediately start looking for cells to lay in.  I then said the beekeeper's queen prayer and closed up the hive.  You know the one.  "Please don't let me crush the queen closing the hive up."  

Anecdotally, I had to cut out a queen cell found in the middle of the frame where the queen jail was located.  I believe that traditional wisdom holds that an egg only exists where the queen lays it.  But recently, there's been rumblings in certain corners of the bee world that bees can actually move eggs around if needed.  I'm beginning to believe that there may be something to that theory.

This was my husband's "artsy fartsy" shot

While I was out there, I went ahead and checked on the half of the Auburn hive that was split off on 5/21.  They weren't too happy to see me (and let me know LOUDLY) when I opened the hive, so I thought that maybe they hadn't been successful in requeening.  I never did find the queen, but I did find some pretty compelling evidence that she is there.  There's not much capped brood, but there is quite a bit of uncapped brood and eggs, so she's been laying for a couple of days.  I think I'll try to get an OAV treatment in this evening since they are in a good configuration for it.  Again, said the queen prayer and closed up the hive.  

I also poked around the dark green hive.  The older half is doing well and has a pretty good brood pattern going on.  The newer half is doing better than expected.  The younger queen cell was torn open from the side so it looks like she was dispatched by a rival queen.  I think I saw that rival queen walking around a frame in the first box.  She was kind of walking around poking her back end into cells, but I'm not sure that she was actually laying eggs.  I didn't see any, but the light wasn't great for egg spotting.  She was born from a queen cell that came out of a nuc that I believe swarmed on June the first.  It's not outside the realm of bee math that she could be mated and laying already.  I think I've got time to wait on the last bit of capped brood to emerge before an OAV treatment.  I think that I'll do it Saturday when I do the light green hive.  I did crush what appeared to be a small hive beetle larva that was between the inner cover and the top box.  I didn't see anything inside the box itself and really didn't see any adults in the hive either, so that's something I'll have to keep an eye on.

In the outyard, the hive sitting on the old stand has a queen and she's laying.  I even saw her.  The brood pattern isn't fantastic.  It's kind of spotty so far and there's more drone brood than I'd like to see, but the bees don't seem to be trying to replace her so maybe they know something that I don't.  I did notice a drone walking around with DWV.  That kind of surprised me.  They've had two separate brood breaks this season, so their mite numbers should be fairly low in theory.  This is something that I'll have to consider soon.  I like to have the last mite treatments done by August 15th.  It also didn't look like they had even started taking the 1:1 syrup that I gave them on Monday, so I removed it.  I don't like leaving syrup on for too long because it will ferment.  I'll try again in a few days.  Some hives will only take supplemental feed if there is nothing going on naturally.  It looks like this might be one of those hives.  

To Feed or Not to Feed. That is the question.

The weather down south is heating up.  Summer is officially still a week away, but as was leaving work today I noticed this:

Triple digits are the harbinger of the summer dearth.

To be fair, this was mainly due to the car sitting in a hot parking lot all day.  By the time I picked up my kiddo and made it a few miles down the road, the temp had gone down to the high 80s, which really is about average for this time of year.  

At first glance, it seems kind of counter intuitive that the deep south would have a short honey flow. But upon further inspection you see that when the temps get this high this early things start getting dry and crispy pretty early.  I generally pull honey around the Fourth of July which is kind of late for my area, but it's a that I usually have a couple of days off work to do it.  That means the dreaded summer dearth (or the June Gap as Ron over on The Bad Beekeeping Blog calls it).  And that means that the age old question about feeding comes up.

There are quite a few opinions about this.  I'm sure you're all shocked to hear that.  The old saying goes that if you ask 10 beekeepers a question then you'll get 11 different answers.  Some people believe that bees should never be fed as natural sources of food are best.  Some people believe that you should always feed under certain conditions (for example, when I installed my first package, the advice was to feed until fall).

My personal opinion is that you should feed them when they need it.  Or when the beekeeper is trying to encourage them to do something specific.  Last year, in mid-September, my hives were all very much underweight.  The fall flow had failed and they were wholly unprepared for winter.  I fed them each about a gallon of 2:1 syrup every night to every other night for three weeks in order to get them up to weight.  Between two hives and a nuc I went through at least 100 lbs of sugar.  But everyone pulled through winter (and early spring) with a little in the way of stores left to spare.

So why am I talking about feeding now?  The outyard hive that has had the queen issues this year has only barely started to touch the top box of foundation that they have had on and off (mostly on) from the early-April split.  As of Sunday, they had a laying queen so as long as nothing goes off the rails again, I've got until late October to get them ready for winter.  I decided to go ahead and give them a couple of liters of 1:1 syrup to try to a.) draw them up into the top box and b.) encourage them to draw out the comb.  Will they use it?  Who knows.  Some hives will not take syrup if there is a natural flow on and some will take whatever you give them.  I guess I'll find out when I check on them this afternoon.

For the purpose of this post, let's assume that we are just talking about feeding syrup.  There are other considerations to take into account like pollen vs. pollen sub, but the hive I'm working with seems to have plenty of stored pollen and bee bread for this time of year.  

Long Live the Queen!

I poked around in the outyard hives this morning.  In the hive on the old stand, I was checking to see if the requeening attempt from 5/13 had worked.  On the frame where the queen cells had been, I found a queen cell that had been opened from the bottom as well as one that was in the process of being torn down by the workers.

The Royal Nursery

A few frames later, I caught sight of Her Majesty.  She's walking around and laying eggs.  I'm a bit concerned because the capped brood I'm seeing seems to be heavily weighted towards drones.  I'm hoping that is just a fluke and she did get well-mated.  If she didn't then it's really getting too late in the season and their population is too low to try to let them raise a new queen on their own.  I'll have to bring in a new queen.  Which it wouldn't be the most terrible thing in the world to expand the genetics of the yard a little.  

Yes, I need a new camera

The other hive is doing much better.  They were given a super of mostly uncapped nectar from last year and they are finishing it out.  I have six frames of beautiful, fully capped honey, two frames that are 1/2 to 2/3 capped, and two frames that were drawn out, but not filled (they were on the far end).  I moved the partially capped and empty frames to the center and moved the fully capped frames to the outside edges to encourage the bees to finish out those frames.  Hopefully that will work.  This hive has a second super of foundation and starter strips, but they have only barely started to draw it out.

Yum!

Fragile? It must be Italian.

Nope, no ugly leg lamp here.

Not exactly.  While the Italians do make some excellent extractors, I went with the Maxant.  You may also see that I choose the 2 frame version.   There were a couple of reasons for this.   The first is obviously cost.   The 2-frame version is about $100 cheaper than the 4-frame version. Interestingly enough, it turns out that the 2-frame extractor plus the 6/9-frame basket is the same price as buying the 6/9-frame version outright.   You'll pay a bit more in shipping in the long run if you can't get it locally,  but it's worth it to me to spread the cost out a bit.  The bee gear fund is a little low right now.  And by a bit low, I mean in the red.  I don't foresee needing to spin deep frames and I really only have two hives that are going to produce any measurable surplus of honey this year,  so this fits my needs for this year.  Now the hard part is going to be waiting the two or three weeks until harvest time to play with my new toy.

All in all, I can't say enough good things about Rossman Apiaries in Georgia.  It turns out that they are the closest Maxant dealer that I could find, which means lower shipping cost and faster delivery.  They also had them in stock, which is a plus.  The Maxant website was showing three week delivery time, but Rossman had it to me in three days.  Granted, I didn't need it right away, but it's nice to know who delivers quickly in case of emergency.  

Choosing the Right Extractor

It's that time of year where thoughts turn towards honey harvesting.  Last year we only had one hive that produced a surplus, so we opted to to the crush-and-strain thing.  It was messy.  And sticky.  My kitchen floor felt like a movie theater floor.  It also seems wasteful to me to destroy all that perfectly good drawn comb.  So, this year we are considering purchasing an extractor.

A good piece of advice that I've heard is that when you purchase an extractor, you should keep in mind where you plan on being in 2-3 years, not necessarily where you are now.  If you plan on expanding the number of hives you have then it might make sense to buy something a little bigger than you currently need instead of buying twice.

One drawback to buying a bigger piece of equipment than you need is obviously going to be cost.  If you don't want to (or can't) spend the money up front then maybe consider something that can be upgraded down the line.  A handcrank model is going to be cheaper than a motorized unit, but there are several models with a conversion kit.  Some models even allow you to upgrade to additional inner components to hold additional frames.  It's going to be more expensive in the long run, but cheaper than buying two or three different extractors over the course of a few years.  

Something else to consider is whether the extractor is radial or tangential.  Radial means that the frames are positioned like bicycle spokes and the honey is slung from both sides of the frame at once.  In a tangential setup, frames are positioned so that one side faces the side of the canister and honey is only slung out of that side.  There are pros and cons to each style.  A tangential frame has to be pulled out and reversed, sometimes twice during the course of an extraction.  For example, you'd start spinning the basket and spin about half the honey on one side out.  Then reverse them and spin the honey out of the other side.  Then reverse again to get the last of the honey out of the first side (doing it this way prevents blowouts).  Radial baskets on the other hand don't have to be reversed, but it's not necessarily as effective as a tangential setup.  You end up with wetter frames and less extracted honey at the end of the day.  

I'm currently considering something in the Maxant 3100 series right now.  This series allows you to upgrade from a 2-frame setup to a 4-frame setup to a 6/9-frame setup by just switching out the inner basket.  The 2- and 4-frame options are radial (which is somewhat uncommon in those sizes) and the 6/9 can hold 6 medium and/or shallow frames radially and 3 more frames of any size tangentially.  

Right now, the plan is to buy either the 2- or 4-frame version and upgrade to the 6/9-frame basket when needed.  The two-frame does not accommodate deep frames, which isn't exactly a dealbreaker right now.  The 4-frame can hold a deep frame, which would be nice if you have a hive that becomes honeybound, but it is an extra $100.  If I'm going to upgrade to the 6/9-frame anyway it would be more expensive in the long run to get that bigger initial basket.  Since I have minion labor available, I can hold off on the motor kit for now.   

Lessons Learned

Urban (or suburban in my case) beekeeping comes with it's own set of considerations.  A lot of non-beeks take a NIMBY stance on bees.  And some have good reason to.  Those of us who live in a city need to keep our neighbors in mind when it comes to our bees or we may find that the city will start passing laws against keeping bees (boy, do I know about that one).  I try to do my best to mitigate the hazards that come when bees and people live in close proximity.  I supply them with a close water source.  I position the hives so that there are obstacles that force bees to fly upward before they cross into the neighbor's yards.  I do my best to prevent swarms, though I daresay that is as much for my benefit as theirs.  On that front, I seem to have failed.

I opened up the Auburn hive to peek in on them.  On the half that held the original colony, I found two frames with queen cells.  One of them was sealed.  My brand-new, marked queen was also nowhere in sight.  Based on the age of the youngest brood I was able to find I'd say that they took off about three days ago.  It's totally my fault for not paying enough attention.  I'd been doubting my decision to leave the old queen in place and move the swarm cells during the last split.  I know now that I was right to question that decision.  I won't do that again.

I have been planning to pull a couple of frames of brood off of the orange hive to start a nuc after honey season ends.  I want to go into winter with 5 full colonies and 4 4-over-4 nucs.  If you're interested in my reasoning for this configuration I encourage you to check out some of Michael Palmer's talks regarding his sustainable apiary.  It's good stuff.  So, to make light of a bad situation, I split the two frames from the Auburn hive with queen cells between two nucs and gave them each half of the resources.  I'll have to boost their numbers with frames from other hives (probably the orange hive), but this will give me a bit of a head start.  They are going to require a lot of TLC though.

In other news around the beeyard, the light green hive still has their queen caged.  I did have to cut a few queen cells out of the hive, but not as many as I had expected.  The orange hive got another honey super.  I don't expect them to do much with it this year, but it'll give them something to keep them busy.  In the outyard, the hive on the new stand hasn't done much with their second super, but they are at least starting to draw it out.  The hive on the old stand got a second story to work on.  I suspect that they will need some supplemental feeding once the summer death sets in.

Mite Control

Tonight was the night that the green nuc was treated for mites with OAV.  If you'll remember, the queen was isolated in a push-in cage 25 days ago.  Six days ago, she was released back into the colony.  Any brood that was in the hive prior to her being caged would have emerged from its capped cell by now and any eggs and/or larvae that she'd laid since being released would not yet be old enough to be capped.  Therefore, every brood cell in the hive should be uncapped.  And that's when OAV works best.

Oxalic Acid Vaporizer.  Note, you should not put a car battery on concrete.  I got that lecture from my husband earlier.

For those of you who have never done oxalic acid vaporization, it's really not as daunting as it first seems.  You have a vaporization wand and a battery.  You should always follow the directions that came with your unit.  My particular model says to put 1/2 teaspoons of oxalic acid (wood bleach) into the reservoir, insert the wand all the way into the hive, and drape a damp towel over the entrance to seal the entrance.  Then hook the unit up to a car battery for three minutes, and only three minutes.  Then unhook the unit and let it cool for two minutes.  Finally, pull the wand out, but leave the towel in place for another 10 minutes.  So, in 15 minutes you're done.  Easy peasy.

While I was waiting on the 10 minutes to be up, I decided to take a peak at the light green hive.  This one has been giving me fits for awhile.  I now believe them to be the source of the excessive amount of crawling bees that I've been seeing on the ground.  Some of the crawlers have either K-wing or deformed wing virus, which I've also seen inside the light green hive.  Dissecting the midgut shows tan, healthy-looking intestines.  That hopefully rules out nosema.  I decided to do a quick alcohol wash to get a mite count.

An alcohol wash is simply taking about 1/2 cup of bees and putting them in a jar with isopropyl alcohol.  A half-cup is somewhere around 300 bees.  I try to take these from the broodnest, that is a middle frame that has capped or uncapped brood on it.  Make sure the queen is not on this frame.  Shake the frame into a large tub or container.  I use the top of an old Tupperware cake carrier.  One of those under-the-bed Rubbermaid boxes would probably also be ideal.  Now that you've got a thousand upset bees in your big container, simply (ha!) use a household measuring cup to scoop up a half-cup and put them in a jar.  I use a pint-sized, wide-mouth glass mason jar.  I used the band that fits the jar, but instead of the lid, I cut out a circle of #8 hardware cloth cut to fit inside the band.  Slap that lid on the bees and then pour the alcohol over them.  Now it's time to shake, shake, shake.  Then pour the alcohol back through the hardware cloth into a light colored bowl.  Repeat until no more mites come off.  You can reuse the alcohol by pouring it back into the jar.  I don't love having to sacrifice bees, but if it helps the colony survive then I can live with it.

Alcohol wash with bees that made the ultimate sacrifice

The results of my alcohol wash were, as expected, not great.  I found 11 mites.  That's just under 4% infestation rate.  Randy Oliver (who's website, Scientific Beekeeping, rocks) suggests a target threshold of 1%.  In addition, Keith Delaplane recommends a jar count of no more than 7-19 mites in the fall for my region.  So, something's gotta be done.

Ewww.  Okay, so some of these spots aren't mites, but most of them are.  

I considered treating with a series of OAV treatments, but decided to give the queen isolation method another try.  I caged her tonight.  I'll cut out the queen cells this weekend and uncage her on Father's Day.  One thing I did with this hive that I didn't do with the last hive was to cull drone comb.  It wasn't exactly planned this way, as I didn't have any drone frames in this hive.  They just happened to have built a large portion of their drone comb on a single frame.  I pulled it out and put in the freezer.  I'll give it back to them this weekend when I cut out the queen cells.

Unofficial Start of Summer

Happy Memorial Day everyone.  While it's the unofficial start of summer for the rest of the country, for beekeepers in my neck of the woods it often signals the end of our spring flow.  I'm getting reports from areas both north and south of here that they aren't seeing much movement on their hive scales.  Locally, I'm still seeing a good bit of clover blooming and that makes up a large portion of our flow.  The clover isn't nearly as abundant as last year.  It's been a drier year than last; I hope this doesn't translate into another drought.  The spiderwort in the front yard is winding down, but the clover is still hanging on.  We have had a few rainy days lately, so maybe that will prompt a little resurgence in the clover and a last minute bump in production.  Something is blooming because I'm seeing a little bit of pollen coming in.  I'm kind of glad that I decided to order a new feeder instead of a new honey super to fill out my Mann Lake order.  Speaking of, I think that I put together the last of this years frames.  Have I mentioned that I hate wiring frames?

Waiting on the crosswires. 

I checked on the queen in the green nuc today.  I thought it would be a quick check, so I geared up all the way and didn't light up the smoker.  They weren't happy to see me, but weren't able to get through the suit of armor (jeans + Carhartt pants + jacket/veil).  This was the one that had dropped on the ground.  I was afraid that because she had been isolated for awhile and then out of the hive overnight that they would reject her.  I found her walking around, so she seems to have been accepted.  I noticed that almost all the capped brood had emerged, with the exception of a few very small patches of drone comb.  I think I will treat with oxalic acid on Wednesday evening.  Any eggs laid yesterday or today won't be capped yet and it will give the last bits of capped brood a little more time to emerge.  The hive itself has a LOT of nectar and capped honey and almost a full frame of pollen of all colors.  I tried to take a picture, but accidentally left my camera in the house.  I've gotta do better about that.

I believe that I have a mite problem in the light green hive.  I've seen some DWV in the hive and I'm still seeing a lot of crawling bees.  I think that the colonies that didn't get a broodbreak (orange, light green, Auburn nuc, and outyard new stand) will get treated with a series of OAV treatments.  Unfortunately, it is rare for our bees to go completely broodless here, so the series method is often used in summer to get healthy bees going into fall and winter.  I'm hoping to expand the isolated queen method to full sized hives eventually.  I just need to work out the correct timing so that the dip in population corresponds to the summer dearth.

Rescued!

So, I did drop the queen on Wednesday when I tried to release her.  I didn't find her Wednesday night, but as I was walking by the next day I noticed that there were a lot of bees hanging out in an area that bees really shouldn't be hanging out.  Sure enough, the queen was hanging from a plant near the hive.  I scooped her up and put her back in the hive.  I hope that they won't reject her.  If they do then I'm in no worse position than I was Wednesday and can give them a ripe queen cell.  It won't tell me anything about my isolation+OAV experiment, but they'll be queenright.

In other queen news, the white hive in the back yard FINALLY has a queen!  So far, I'm only seeing eggs, so she hasn't been laying long, but I saw her with her back end stuck into an empty cell.  These eggs will be ready for foraging in early to middle July, so that should give them a decent foraging force for goldenrod in the fall.  I would expect their mite numbers to be pretty low, but that's yet to be seen.

That....Did not go as planned

The plan for today was to go in and uncage the queen in the green nuc.  For the last 18 days, she's been confined to a push in cage.  The idea was that confining her to a small section of comb would induce a period of broodlessness and make an OAV treatment more effective.  As you can see from the pictures, I didn't wait until the colony was completely broodless to release her.  The capped brood not under the cage is, at least, 18 days old.  Therefore, I expect that in 6 days it will all be emerged and that's when I'll treat.  Sounds easy, right?

Queen Jail

First of all, when I opened the hive up, the girls were in a really, really bad mood.  The weather was changing and rain was coming.  Because I thought this was going to be a quick operation, I only put on my jacket and veil.  I also only put about 30 minutes worth of smoker fuel in.  I would come to regret both of these actions.

So, as soon as I opened the hive, they let me know that they weren't happy to see me.  Of course, you'd be unhappy too if someone pulled the roof off your house and started moving the furniture around.  Almost immediately I took a sting through my jeans.  Now I'm regretting not putting on my Carharts.

I pull the frame with the queen on it and she's still in there.  There's a queen cell hanging out of the side of the cage.  It looks like she was able to get an egg close enough to the workers for them to build a new cell.  I knock that off and try to take the cage off the frame.  Uh-oh.  It's stuck.  No amount of wiggling and twisting will get it to come free.  I end up tearing a whole chunk of comb out the size of the cage.  Now I've got the cage, with the queen still in it.  I carefully peel a corner back to let her out.  And about that time I realize that a bee has made it into my jeans.  Crap.  There's sting number two.  I set the cage down over the hive box and scrape the stinger out of my leg.  Now I'm regretting not putting on my boots.

A Closer Look

I go back to the cage and she's out.  I quickly look over the frames that the cage was sitting on, but I don't see her.  The girls are getting more agitated so I close it up and call it a day for them.  They were a little honeybound, so I took one frame of nectar and gave them a frame of drawn comb.  That will at least give the queen somewhere to lay for the next week or so, assuming she's in there.  I looked around and didn't see any clumps of bees on the ground that would indicate that there's a queen there.  I'll check them again in a few days to see if there's any eggs.  If there is then I'll go ahead and do the OAV as planned.  If not, the Auburn nuc had queen cups on three different frames so I might be able to take one of those.

So, what's the verdict on this method of mite control?  I still believe it has possibilities.  The cage did keep the queen contained for the requisite number of days.  Did having her in there keep some sort of order in the hive?  Yes and no.  They did create queen cells so caging her in that small of a cage didn't produce enough queen pheromones to suppress the emergency response.  But, up until today they had been fairly docile and didn't really "act" queenless.  I think once I figure out how to remove the cage without tearing the comb out then it can work.

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

Today's work was really about correcting issues discovered yesterday.  I started in the outyard.  I compressed the hive in the old stand (I really gotta come up with a better name) down to one story.  I don't love doing it that way because I had to handle the frame with the queen cells and move them from the top story to the bottom story and given my luck with queens this year I'm not confident about that.  Also, all of the frames in the bottom story are now drawn out which would normally signal the need for a second box.  They can't swarm without a queen, but I left two queen cells in it, an heir and a spare you might say.  There is still some capped brood there, so there will be some empty cells in the coming weeks.  I ended up taking off 7 frames of untouched foundation and 2 frames that had started to be drawn out with a little nectar and 1 frame that was drawn out, but empty.  The population of the hive is smaller than I'd like, so I think that the smaller area to defend is a good thing.  I haven't seen much in the way of SHB this season, but I did see about 6 in that hive today.  I think that next week (hopefully) when the new equipment comes in that I'll give them their second story back, but will give them a frame of brood to boost their numbers.

The point of pulling those frames was to give the Auburn nuc in the backyard room to expand.  They were boiling over with bees yesterday and were just days from swarming.  I found three queen cells.  One had an egg and another is on it's way to being sealed.  I separated the queen cells from what I hoped was a frame with a queen on it.  I didn't see the queen, but guessed based on their behavior.  I went back and checked today and finally found the queen.  Marked queens make life easier, but yellow isn't the easiest mark to find.  Anyway, I had guessed right yesterday and the queen was in the old half and the queen cells were in the new half.  As I'm sitting here typing this out, I'm wondering if I should have switched the sides in order to give the queenless half the foragers.  Oh well.  It happens.  Dogs' gonna bark, birds' gonna fly, I'm going to make stupid beekeeping mistakes.  It might be for the best anyway since that will probably be the hive that I rob a frame of brood from for the outyard Hive 2.  Anyway, I gave each half a second story and four frames of foundation.  The queenless half did get the frames that were drawn out with nectar since it will be a few days before the foragers start flying.  I'm saving the empty drawn comb for Nuc 1 when I release the queen on Wednesday.