It was warm enough today (1°C / 34°F) to take a peek inside our four hives and add some pollen patties. I didn’t have to top up the dry sugar that was added 46 days ago. The bees in the foundationless hive are low on honey, as I suspected, and have eaten through the most sugar, but they have enough to keep them going for a while. The bees in the conventional hives have eaten some of their sugar, but I still think they would have been fine without it. I could see several frames full of honey in each of the hives. The bees in the conventional hives were clustering above the top bars by the end of December, but a lack of honey doesn’t seem to be the reason. Okay, then, here’s how it played out in video form. First, a short version in HD that cuts to the chase.
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
Note to self: Smoke the bees before stealing a few frames from the bottom honey super. The bees are protective of their honey this time of year (if not all the time).
The bees in Hive #1 are smoking hot these days, ploughing through their honey supers at an impressive rate. Instead of adding a third honey super to the hive (which the bees might not be able to fill), I decided to pull three frames of honey from the bottom honey super and replace them with empty frames.
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Two of the frames are foundationless. We’ll crush and strain them like we did with our first frame of honey. The other one will have to be extracted. I’m not sure how we’ll managed that yet. At any rate, this is my last post for the next couple weeks. By the time I post anything new, we’ll have harvested and probably bottled all our honey — possibly up to 30 frames of honey. I’ll record videos and take photos of it all. See you later.
UPDATE (Sept. 06/11): The bees have become extremely defensive since I took the honey from the hive — without using smoke. Within minutes of going in the backyard, I’ve got two or three bees buzzing around my head. I’ve never seem them this bad before. We’re managing it for now, but our backyard is too small for keeping bees. When the bees get defensive, it’s not good at all. I think I may have seen my next door neighbour swatting at some bees in his backyard. I hope they weren’t bees, but it’s possible. This could be very bad. I have to remember for now on to use smoke when pulling honey so the the bees don’t associate my scent, or human scent, with danger. This isn’t a good day. See What makes bees aggressive? from Honey Bee Suite for more info.
We moved Hive #1 to its final location today. Here’s a photo of all our hives in a row shortly after the move.
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We did a full inspection of the hive too. Most of the top box was full of honey with a few frames of brood in the middle. We pulled one frame of honey and replaced it with a frame of foundation. The bees will draw out the comb on the foundation and use it either for brood or honey, whichever they need most, I suppose. The bottom box was full of brood frames at various stages, and it’s all looking good. We pulled the last foundationless frame (with drone comb on it, of course) up into the top box so we can conveniently migrate it to the designated foundationless hive, Hive #1, as soon as we have a chance. We’ll probably extract the honey from the pulled frame, because, well, it’s likely to be the only honey we get this year, so we’re going for it, honey super be damned. I’ll post a video soon that shows exactly what’s involved in moving a hive. It’s a wacky bunch of fun. You’ll love it.
I inspected Hive #1 today and was glad to see that the honey super is starting to fill up with honey. Nine frames spread out in a ten frame super, alternating plastic with foundationless frames. I didn’t take any photos or videos. Snapping off photos during an inspection, especially when I’m alone, only complicates things (but I’ll do what I can for more instructive posts). My main concern was to make sure the queen wasn’t honey bound. I found three frames in the middle of the top box that looked like this…
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…worker brood in the middle surrounded by pollen and honey, only this time everything looked dirtier and darker because the comb isn’t fresh like it was when the photo was taken last year. Still, it’s more or less what I wanted to see. Honey and pollen, new worker brood and enough space for the queen to continue laying.
The foundationless frames in the top box of Hive #1 were migrated to Hive #2 a while back, so it’s a mostly conventional hive now with perhaps three or four foundationless frames left over in the bottom brood box. The minimized number of foundationless frames — which perhaps knocks back drone production — might have something to do with the honey super filling with honey now. (Pure speculation.) The bees in Hive #2, a hive that is about 80% foundationless, show no signs of building in their honey super yet. So go figure. Okay then, let’s move on to even more boringer details.
Read on . . . »
UPDATE (July 12/11): FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO KNOW EXACTLY WHY AND HOW TO REQUEEN, I OFFER LESSON 19 FROM MY PERSONAL HERO, DAVID BURNS, AND QUEEN INTRODUCTION FROM STRACHAN APIARIES.
We installed a new queen today (in Hive #1). Here’s the video:
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Read on . . . »
I had time to inspect our hives today for the first time in about three or four weeks. It’s the first time in June we’ve had some half decent weather on the weekend. Anyway…
There is no chance of either of our colonies swarming, or building into a honey super any time soon. Not by a long shot. I inspected our hives today and both are weak. The combination of about 40 days of drizzle and cold and thousands of drones from the foundationless frames eating up all the hives’ resources has weakened the colonies.
One hive is overloaded with drones and drone comb, a little bit of worker brood, some pollen and virtually zero honey stores.
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The other hive has more worker brood and more honey, but we found several frames with waxed foundation that have barely been touched.
These bees are starving.
Read on . . . »
Well, we inspected Hive #1 today because we were concerned about swarming. We found a few queen cells cups, but also plenty of empty cells for the queen to keep laying. I don’t think the colony is at risk of swarming. It does, however, seem to be overrun by drones. This frame containing both capped worker brood and drone brood was one of the better looking frames — because it wasn’t filled entirely with drones:
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CLICK THIS LINK FOR A CLOSER LOOK ON A SEPARATE PAGE.
Read on . . . »
I inspected both of our hives today, but didn’t have my regular cracker jack film crew along. No video. No photos. But you can pretend I saw something similar to this:
Here’s a 60-second clip of the bees scenting after I inspected and slightly moved their hive yesterday (First Hive Inspection of the Year). They’re also bringing in loads of colourful pollen.
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See my other video about the Nasonov gland for more info.
It was warm enough in our backyard to inspect Hive #2 today, the first inspection for that hive this year. I had to do it alone again, so it looks a lot like the last inspection (maybe not a whole lot to see here). I pulled the frames from the brood boxes and moved them into new boxes, and I moved the hive about six inches to the left (enough to slightly disorient many of the foragers, which I’ll show in the next post). I also found some mould on the last frame in the bottom box thinking it was wax moth, but it was probably just mould from water seeping into the hive over the winter. The bees were not at all defensive. They were crawling all over me, but I didn’t see any trying to sting me. I misted the bees with sugar water at one point only to make sure they stayed put, though I think I would have been fine without it.
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Read on . . . »
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