Dry sugar feeding. Bees clustering extra high again. Possibly some dead drone pupae.
The bees were gathering pollen at a steady pace for a couple weeks in April. But then the weather turned into cold, wet snow and the forecast ain’t the greatest. Always the paranoid beekeeper, I decided to sprinkle some dry sugar around the inner cover holes today just in case the bees were running low on honey. (I’ll probably give them some pollen patties once the weather warms up a bit.) This is what I found under the hood of Hive #3:
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They bees are clustering above the inner cover hole, attached to the top cover as if they’re trying to build comb upwards. It’s the same colony that built some big time burr comb under the insulated inner cover a few weeks ago. I don’t know it if it means they’re just trying to stay warm or if the queen wants to expand the brood nest upwards. Either way, I think the safest bet to reduce the chances of swarming is to reverse the brood boxes ASAP. That’s our plan the next time the sun comes out.
Read on . . . »
Check out the tongues darting out as the bees in our foundationless hive suck up water from the corrugated plastic floor of our combo bottom board.
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From what I can tell, morning dew forms naturally inside the corrugated plastic (which might not make it a great floor for the hive). The water doesn’t pool inside the plastic. The hive is slightly tilted downwards to the front entrance where the water drains out slowly — and the bees drink it up.
Read on . . . »
I noticed our bees drinking dirty water last May. They seem to love the minerals from the dark composted soil in our raised garden beds. They’ve been at it again for the past few days.
I recently read Beekeeping For All (8mb PDF), by Abbé Warré. He’s the guy who designed the “People’s Hive,” also known as the Warré hive. To condense what I said in a previous post, it’s a top bar and therefore foundationless hive with small, square shaped hive boxes, no top entrance and a quilt box on top to absorb moisture. Boxes are added to the bottom of the hive, not the top — the bees build comb downwards as they would in nature. Honey is harvested from back-filled brood comb at the top of the hive. Warré called it the People’s Hive because it’s cheap and easy to build and maintain. The beekeeper need only add boxes to the bottom to prevent swarming, which is done without opening the hive or disturbing the brood nest. The Warré hive, perhaps more than any other hive, emulates the conditions of a natural honey bee hive. Photo by David Heaf from warre.biobees.com
(used with permission).
Another key feature is the small square sided hive boxes. The height of each box is slightly less than a typical Langstroth, but the sides are each 30cm long (about 12 inches). The square shape allows for more even heat distribution and requires less work from the bees. Warré also claims that bees in a smaller, more natural sized brood chamber consume less honey over winter and are therefore less likely to starve before spring.
I’m not yet convinced that any kind of foundationless hive will do well in the exceptionally wet climate of St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’ve only been at this for, what, 611 days, so I still have more than a lot to learn. But some aspects of the Warré design, such as the small brood nest area, seem to make more sense than the conventional Langstroth design, and I’m tempted to integrate them into some of my own hives.
I don’t agree with all of Warré’s claims. In some cases that’s because I don’t have the experience to know what’s what either way. In other cases I can confidently disagree because I know his observations are based on his local climate in France that has no correlation to my local climate where the bees do different things at different times of the year. Nevertheless, I think he came up with a thoughtful design and method that might appeal to beekeepers who aren’t so intent on the consistent hive manipulation that’s synonymous with many beekeeping practices today.
Note: This is an unusually long post, probably not much interest to general readers. I promise I won’t do this kind of thing on a regular basis. But I’ve been out of commission with a weird, rotten flu and I don’t have anything better to do. So without further adieu, here are some notes I wrote while I read the book on my Kindle:
Read on . . . »
I keep hearing from beekeepers online about their bees bringing in pollen. None of those beekeepers live in Newfoundland. We didn’t see our bees bring in any pollen until April 13th last year, so we probably have a while to wait yet. The most exciting thing I can report is that our bees were flying around the yard today like gang busters. At 12°C (possibly the warmest day we’ve had this year), how could they resist?
At least we don’t have varroa mites in Newfoundland.
Jeff Harris, from Clarenville, Newfoundland, dropped off some photos and video of one of his swarms from July 18th, 2011. I plan to do everything I can to avoid swarms where I live. Even though the bees are their most docile in this state, I got a feeling most people in my urban ‘hood would not react well to seeing my bees swarm like this. I’ll leave it to Jeff to tell us about it in the comments.
Note to urban beekeepers: Don’t call them swarms. You want to keep your neighbours’ freak-out factor to a minimum. Call them splinter colonies instead.
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON FEB. 16, 2012.
More dead bees are showing up on the bottom of the foundationless hive, enough to nearly clog the entire bottom entrance. (I first noticed the dead bees on December 22nd.) Most of the them appear to be drones.
Are drones fed like the queen, or can they access and eat honey on their own? I don’t remember. If they rely on the workers to be fed, then my guess is they’re deliberately being starved out of the hive. I’m surprised so many are still around.
I’ve also noticed that the bees in the foundationless hive are clustering heavily in the bottom box. This is what the edge of the cluster looked like a few days ago during the Dry Sugar Feeding (I fed them even though I don’t think they’re running low on honey):
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I’m not sure if it has something to do with today’s date (the winter solstice), a recent snowfall or just business as usual, but a pile of dead bees suddenly appeared at the bottom entrance of our foundationless hive today. I wouldn’t have noticed them if we were using a solid mouse-proof entrance reducer instead of the open mouse-proofing mesh. The dead bees would have stayed piled up inside the hive all winter.
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I could still see the cluster poking up through the middle of the top bars in the upper brood chamber. All three of the conventional hives look the same as they did last week, clustering high in the top brood chamber and hardly any dead bees on the bottom board.
I wonder what it all means. Probably nothing.
UPDATE (Dec. 23/11): I just took a closer look at the dead bees. About 90% of them are drones. The foundationless hive always had a large number of drones and not all of them were booted outside in the fall. This must be the last of them.
Continued in Dead Bees and High & Low Clusters.
(It’s a slow news day here at Mud Songs.) I know everyone has been on edge waiting for the results of the Cloudy Honey taste test. Does clarifying a jar of cloudy honey in a bowl of hot water destroy the floral flavours and aromas? Does it make the honey taste like grocery store goo? I don’t know. I haven’t done the taste test yet. But stay glued to your computer. We hope to have the results in this weekend. In the meantime, I’ll answer another question I’m sure has been on everyone’s mind: “Phillip, what are your bees up to these days?” I don’t know. But let’s find out… Okay, I just got back from taking a few pictures of the bees. Check it out:
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| Top entrance from a first-year hive (Dec. 16/11). |
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