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.  

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.

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.

I Had a Helper Today!

My son put on his bee suit and gloves and came out to look at the bees with me.  He didn't stay long, but he got to see his first queen.

He's not quite sure he trusts the veil.

Seeing Her Majesty

In the backyard, I found signs that the white hive successfully created a queen.  To of the three queen cells are torn open from the side, indicating that a rival queen killed them off.  I'm hoping that will mean no afterswarms.  The bees have also cleared out an area for the new queen to lay.  If you recall, this hive was terribly honeybound after the last requeening attempt, so I think this might be a good sign.  I did give them a donor frame from the green nuc to help boost their numbers until the new queen starts laying.  

The light green hive is doing what it is that they do.  Three frames of foundation have been drawn out up top.  I'd like to see a little more activity out of them, but we'll give them another week or so before I make a decision about a donor frame.  

The orange hive is going nuts.  I didn't go all the way to the bottom box, but I saw at least 5 frames of brood in the top box and all but two of the frames in the top box has been drawn out.  I ran out of frames and the top box only has 9 frames in it.  I'll remedy that ASAP, but I hope it doesn't cause too many problems until then.  I gave them a super to start filling out.  We may get some honey yet this year.  

The Auburn nuc is starting to draw out foundation.  They've pulled in a LOT of pollen.  They've still got 3 frames of foundation to work with, so I think they'll be okay for a couple of weeks.  

The green nuc has 5 frames (out of 8) of brood in all stages.  I took one of those frames as a donor frame for hive two and gave them new foundation to work on.  After I was finished I started noticing a lot of bees crawling around, unable to fly.  I had seen this a couple of weeks ago, but it had cleared up after the white hive was treated with OAV.  But, this time some of them have DWV and K-wing.  So, I've got a mite problem to deal with.  I suspect that it's coming from the green nuc because they came from the white hive and haven't had a brood break.  I did an alcohol wash, but something went very wrong and I only found two mites.

The only good thing about this is that I finally get to test out a theory that I've been working on.  I picked up these plastic push-in cages a few months back.  They are like 2.5" x 3" and the spaces between the bars are big enough for workers to get in, but not for the queen to get out.  It's a queen jail.  So, I'll use that to isolate the queen for 18 days and the release her and treat with OAV six days after that.  (18 days + 6 days = the 24 days that it will take for most brood to hatch out and new brood not be capped yet).  I lucked out and found the queen on a frame full of honey and jailed her there.  If this works then I'll figure out the best time to apply this idea to other hives.  My initial thoughts are right after I pull honey, which usually happens around the 4th of July.  

In the outyard, it's a lot of business as usual.  The hive in the new stand is bearding outside a good bit.  I thought that might mean that they would need a super, but upon opening it up, I found that only about 6 frames were drawn out in the top box so I think the super needs to wait for another week or two.  I didn't go into the bottom box, but found open brood in the top box so the queen is there.  The hive in the old stand has successfully raised a queen.  I saw her and some capped and uncapped brood.  The top box only had 2-3 frames of foundation drawn out.  It might be worth giving them a donor frame when I have one available.  

I'm starting to see lots of clover on the side of the road, thought it doesn't seem to be blooming at the house yet.  The bees are still hitting the spiderwort pretty hard in the mornings before moving on to other things.  I'm seeing lots of activity, but less pollen than a few weeks ago.  So far, the flow seems less intense than it was last year, but we've gotten more rain so hopefully we'll have a longer flow than last year.

Happy Tax Day!

Well, almost.  It's always nice when you get a few extra days to pay Uncle Sam. 

Since I last checked in, all of the equipment I ordered has come in and has been painted.  In the backyard, there are two resource hives, a green one and an orange and blue one.  The orange and blue one will henceforth be known as the Auburn hive (War Eagle!).  There are also three full-sized hives, a light green, a white, and an orange.  I ended up switching a few boxes around just to make the boxes match (green with green, orange with orange, etc).  What can I say?  I'm weird like that.

So, lets get to it, eh?  First, the green nuc (resource hive).  You might remember that this was the hive that got the queen and another frame of brood from the white hive earlier in the year.  They have drawn out the two frames of foundation that they were given.  I saw the queen and an entire frame of eggs/young larvae.  I added the second story with 4 frames of foundation.  If these get drawn and filled before the summer solstice then I'll use them as brood bombs for other hives.  

The Auburn nuc contains the smaller of the two colonies with a new queen.  They have 4 frames of drawn out comb with 4 frames of foundation up top.  Interestingly enough, when I changed out the bottom boards I found what appears to be the bottom of two queen cells, torn open from the side.  The marked queen is still present and the number of bees is not consistent with a hive that has recently swarmed.  Perhaps the queen took out some of her rivals upon being uncaged.  I'm starting to see foragers coming and going from that hive, so it looks like the population is starting to sort itself out.  That's what I love about bees.  They will do what they do and can correct a lot of my mistakes. 

The light green hive, which contains one of the new queens, are starting to draw out foundation in the top box.  There is open brood, so the new queen seems to have been accepted.  Foragers have started flying.  I've still got the entrance reduced to the smallest opening until they build up their population.

I didn't open the white hive today.  They should be very close to being broodless in the next few days, so I think I'll take that opportunity to treat them with oxalic acid vapor.  

The orange hive, which contains the queen from the old green hive (which is really the hive that started the year as a nuc, confused yet?) almost look like they are in early swarm prep mode.  I saw a few queen cups.  They are dry with no eggs, so they could be practice cups, but the hive does look like it's getting a little crowded though.  I opened the broodnest up by giving them some frames that are half empty (deep frames with shallow foundation).  I also gave them a second box of foundation.  A couple of those frames are also half frames (I'm out of deep foundation).   I'll keep an eye on this hive to make sure that they aren't planning to swarm and may open up the broodnest again using these frames depending on what I see.

A few other things to note.  The cinnamon stick thing seems to have worked on the Auburn nuc, so I'm going to try it on the white hive as well since they are being harassed by 

Most concerning, I've noticed bees crawling outside the hive.  It's not exactly the right time of year for tracheal mites and I'm not seeing K-wing.  It's not a concerning number yet.  Usually less than a dozen a day.  If it doesn't clear up after the OAV next week then I'll reassess the situation.

Can We Talk About Ants?

Ants are the bane of my beekeeping existence.  It's bad enough when they go after my hive-top feeders.  But last year I lost a nuc to ants.  They started out going after the nectar and honey.  Then they moved onto the brood.  They were literally chewing through the caps to get to the brood.  I moved that hive onto a cinder block in the middle of a kiddie pool full of water.  That kept the ants out, but I lost too many bees to drowning.  I tried diatomaceous earth and the ants laughed at me and kept on crawling.

One thing that did help a little was bait bottles.  Take a plastic soda bottle and put a couple of tablespoons of borax and sugar, with just enough water to make a paste.  Then poke holes that are big enough for ants, but too small for bees to have access.  In theory, the ants will take the bait back to the nest, kill the queen, and voila...no more ants.  In reality, it helped, but didn't stop the carnage.

What finally worked was a specialized stand that my husband built out of PVC pipes and the rack out of an oven.  Each leg has a little cup on it that holds water.  The ants can't cross it and the bees aren't likely to drown in it.  That stopped the ants, but by that time the only thing I could do was combine the two halves of the resource hive into a single 4 over 4 nuc for the winter.  That became the nuc that we started out with this season.

This year, I'm trying something different.  I've been reading how ants hate cinnamon.  So, I've propped up all of my hives on cinnamon sticks.  It forms a physical barrier between the stand and the hive.  I suspect that I'll have to replace the sticks every couple of weeks depending on how often it rains, but hopefully this will prevent problems this year.