What follows is a continuation of the previous post, Exclude the Queen, or Not?
I’ve been reading more about queen excluders (QEs). Here’s some online info from people who I trust more than me: Honey Bee Suite; Beesource; Long Lane and David Burns (or Long Lane again).
All the tips from the previous post for keeping the queen out of the honey supers are mentioned in the above, along with some other suggestions. More than a few articles on QEs are available at Beesource. The consensus? There is none. Many beekeepers say throw away the excluders because they’re more trouble than they’re worth and dealing with some brood in the honey isn’t the end of the world. The brood will hatch, the cells will be refilled with honey and that’s it. Nothing to it.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE IT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED.
Here’s a video of what we did yesterday. We didn’t record the entire hive wrapping process (stapling the felt to the hives) because it would have made for an even longer and boring video. However, this Long Lane Honey Bee Farms video demonstrates what’s involved in the actual wrapping. (He uses a spacer to cut down on condensation. We use upper insulation instead.) In our video you’ll see me pointing out everything we’ve done to prepare the hives for winter. It’s not the most exciting video, but actually seeing how something works or doesn’t work is usually more instructive than photos or descriptions. So here it is:
Resistance is futile.
Drone bees are kicked out of the hive before winter because they’re not essential to the winter survival of the colony. I was told not to be alarmed to find piles of dead drones outside the hive any time during the fall season. Plenty of drone pupae were discarded from the hive in September, but no large numbers of dead drones until today.
I take this to mean the bees are getting serious about winter now — and I better hurry up and wrap the hives before winter sets in. We have nothing but rain, wind and snow in the forecast for the next few days.
But I’ll get the wraps on as soon as we get a break in the weather.
(Yeah, I know, it’s not the most earth shaking news, but how exciting can beekeeping get this time of year?)
This may be the last video I post of our hives this year before we wrap them in tar paper for the winter. It’s not much, about a minute long, just a few quick clips from the last time the bees were active. The first few clips show Hive #2 with a small inverted jar of syrup over the inner cover hole, the inner cover having already been flipped to the winter position. The last couple clips show Hive #1 with a larger-than-normal number of drones pouring out the mouse-proof winter entrance reducer. I thought all the drones would have been booted out of the hive long before now, but I guess not.
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE IT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED.
I picked a drone honey bee off the top a hive this morning. It rained last night and the drone was stuck upside-down in a blob of water. So I brought him inside to dry off. Then I took him back out to hive where he’ll probably die before the end of the day. It’s not the best time of the year to be a drone.
So, kids, can you tell me what makes the drone bee different from other bees in the hive?
UPDATE (Dec. 22/10): I recently learned through a comment that our bees are a hybrid of Italians, Russians and Carniolans. Carniolans produce large drones with all-black abdomens, which is apparent in our drones.
UPDATE: (Oct. 3/10): So it turns out the queen may not be dead after all. The absence of larvae usually means the absence of a queen. But not always. (Deep sigh.) I’ll tell you about it in the next post. Man oh man.
Well, Hive #1 is done for. The queen is dead. We did a full inspection of the hive today and didn’t find any signs of a queen. This is what we found:
— Lots of honey (we originally thought the queen may have been honey bound).
— Plenty of empty cells, the equivalent of at least 5 empty frames.
— Some capped brood but not much, maybe a frame or two in total.
— No drone cells, though plenty of empty drone cells (on the foundationless frames).
— No three or four-day old larvae. No little white grubs in any of the cells.
And that, more than anything, tells us the hive is queenless. A queen lays up to 2000 eggs a day, so if a queen is around, there should be plenty of larvae. There were none. For the past two and a half months, we saw curled up larvae like this every time we inspected the hive:
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The absence of larvae is the absence of a queen. So now what do we do?
[Note: What follows is a bit of a rant.]
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON DEC. 23, 2010.
This is a follow-up to the previous post.
I just checked the hives to see how well they’re taking up the syrup from the frame feeders. I was able to add another 2 litres of syrup to the feeder in Hive #2 (that’s 2 litres since yesterday afternoon). It’s massive with bees. They still have about 3 empty frames left and they’re going nuts with building and taking up syrup. Nothing wrong with that.
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| Hive #1 bees in their glory days (August 2010). |
The bees in Hive #1, on the other hand, haven’t touched the syrup in their frame feeder, and they’re showing no interest in the frames I installed in the first honey super yesterday. So whatever is going on in Hive #1, it’s got them disinterested in taking feed or building comb.
Read on . . . »
I added a medium super to both of our hives today (for a total of two on each hive) and installed double frame feeders in each. The frame feeders are designed for deep supers, but two mediums will also do the trick.
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I added the 7-litre double frame feeder to Hive #2 (on the left) above the inner cover because the bees were sucking the syrup from the Boardman feeders faster than I could refill them. (The Boardman feeders were sheltered inside a medium super to keep wasps away.) We did a full inspection of the hive yesterday and noticed three or four empty frames, meaning those bees need to build a lot of honeycombs fast to have them filled for the winter. Adding the frame feeder is the quickest way to feed them, so that’s that.
But Hive #1 is a different story…
Read on . . . »
I saw the first frost of the season on the ground this morning. I also saw the bees stretching their wings outside the hives, but when I went out and checked, what I thought were bees were actually wasps — at least ten of them swooping around the entrances of both hives. I lifted off one outer cover, too, and noticed the inside of it was full of condensation.
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I couldn’t do much about the wasps, but I put a screen in place of the outer cover for twenty minutes while the cover dried in the sun. I’ve seen the condensation build up over the past week. I take it as a sign that I need to prepare the hives for winter soon.
September is an eventful month for beekeeping in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Let me list the reasons why:
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON JAN. 24, 2011.
I’m not so worried about all the dead drone larvae pupae I found outside one of our hives for the past two days. It was spooky and gross and unnerving, but it’s much less alarming now that I know what’s most likely going on.
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We introduced some foundationless frames to our hives when we added the second brood box. The results were fantastic. Fully-drawn comb full of honey. Beautiful. What we didn’t know is that bees that haven’t drawn natural comb before, will start off building drone comb, as shown in the above photo taken earlier today during a full hive inspection. We found two foundationless frames with large clusters of drone cells, and on at least one frame, most of the drone cells appeared to be recently emptied.
Read on . . . »
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