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.

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.

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!

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.

Inspection Time

I slacked on making these notes, so I'm going to remember as much as I can.

In the backyard, the green nuc's queen is still caged, but they are chewing around the outside of the cage.  I pushed the cage in a little more, but I'm afraid that they will end up chewing a big enough hole to release the queen which will defeat the purpose of confining her.  If she can stay in for another 11 days then we'll be in good shape.  There were two capped queen cells on the frame that the cage was located on, but I didn't see any others.  I wasn't necessarily surprised to see queen cells, but I wasn't expecting to see them on the frame that the queen was located on.  I would have thought that her pheromones would have maintained order in the hive, especially that close to where she is located.

I didn't open the Auburn nuc or the light green hive.  I was trying to beat out a rainstorm and think that they're probably okay.

In the white hive, I found what appears to be a virgin queen.  I expect that she should be laying by 5/20 or 5/21.  They aren't really doing much with the super but still have some room in the brood chamber (i.e. are no longer as honey bound as they had been, though they have more nectar in the brood chamber than I'm happy with.

The orange hive is starting to draw out their super.  Some cells are even being filled.  They probably won't need another this season, but I'll keep an eye on them.


In the outyard, the hive in the old stand is troubling.  I saw capped brood, but no eggs or larvae, no queen of any variety, and no queen cells (though there was what looks like a torn down queen cell but I'm unsure of it's age).  Population also seems lower than it should.  I gave them a test frame from Hive 2, and will check on it in a week.  They had a laying queen a week ago.  I'm always afraid that I crushed her, but even if I did that then they should have raised an emergency queen from an egg.  Another possibility is that they immediately superseded her.  But in that case, there should be a sealed queen cell somewhere.  The population is still lower than I'd like.  Once I see what they are doing with the test frame, I'll make a decision about giving them a donor.

The hive in the new stand is booming.  The top brood box had 6-7 frames drawn out.  I went ahead and gave them the unfinished super from last year.  It hadn't thawed as much as I would have liked, but it is what it is.  They were heavily bearding on the front of the hive and I thought they might need more room.  We'll see how it turns out.  I'm considering giving them an empty super in a week and letting them go for the season.

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.

Coming Together

About half of my equipment came in.  I love it when I come home to find a big box from Mann Lake before the shipping notice has even made it to my email inbox!  I have three deep boxes, plus frames and foundation to go in them.  I'll admit here that putting together frames is probably my very least favorite part of beekeeping.  I can't wait until my kiddo is old enough that I can pay him to do it.  I'm still waiting on the resource hive from Brushy Mt., but I've got what I need for right now.

The queen that was in the queenless half of the green hive has been released.  I didn't find her, but I found 5 sealed queen cells.  I'm not sure if they are trying to supercede her or if they thought they had gone queenless.  I cut them out and I'll check them in a week to see if there is uncapped brood.  If there is then we're all good.  Otherwise I'll give them a frame with eggs on it.  I gave them a second deep of foundation to work with.

The other new queen was uncaged and walking around.  For the record, marked queens are freaking awesome!  I much prefer raising my own queens, but I may have to learn how to mark my queens.  Their population is a little lower than I'd like, so I think the plan of transferring them into the nuc hive when it gets here is the right thing to do.  I'm sure that they will not be pleased about being moved twice in two weeks, but it is what it is.  

I think I'll end up shuffling some of this equipment around when everything gets here.  The colony with the marked queen is going to go into the resource hive when it gets here and the orange box that they are in now will be used as the second deep for the other orange box.

The two hives on the left have new queens and the white hive is raising a queen.

Release the Queens

The new queens have been in their respective hives for two days.  I initially left the cork in to buy her an extra day or so of protection.  I went in and pulled the cork today.  I left the candy and will let the workers release them on their own.  Hopefully that will give them enough time to be accepted.

Queen cells!

I went back in and checked the now-queenless white hive in the backyard.  You guys, I cut out at least 30 queen cells.  They weren't playing around.  I left them two to raise a new queen with and will check on them in a couple of weeks.