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.

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 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.

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.