Today, just for fun, I stuck the camera underneath our foundationless hive while it temporarily had only a screened bottom board. We’re concerned about our foundationless hive because we don’t see nearly as many bees coming and going from it as we do from our other three hives. Perhaps the two-year-old queen is failing. Perhaps it’s normal behaviour for a foundationless hive. Whatever the case may be, our foundationless hive will be the first hive we inspect once we have a good day for it. Here’s what the camera saw (it’s a 51-second video):
It’s 2pm and 20°C (70°F) in our backyard as I write this. A cool breeze but sunny. Three of our four hives are active and looking good. Hey, let’s go take a look:
Hives 3 and 4 were started from nucs last year and are doing well. Hive #1 is one of our original hives from 2010. It’s our most fully established hive. It was overflowing with so many bees that we had to add a second brood box to it a couple days ago. It shows no signs of slowing down.
Hive #2 — our foundationless hive — has also been around since 2010 and it still has its original queen. Some beekeepers say queens hit their stride when they’re two years old. Others say to requeen every year no matter what because young queens lay better and have the strongest pheromones (less chance of swarming). The reduced activity in the foundationless hive could mean the queen is failing: Her pheromones could be weak; she may not be laying well. It could mean a lot of things. I won’t know until I can do a full inspection, which probably won’t be until next week. I wonder what I’ll find…? Probably nothing.
It’s 21.5°C. It probably won’t be this warm again until July.
Read on . . . »
I don’t usually post videos that aren’t my own, but this video from Fat Bee Man works well as a follow-up to yesterday’s long winded post about our first checkerboarded hive. Fat Bee Man says, “When the bees get full [i.e., when the hive gets full], they do what’s natural. They’re going to multiply, so they subdivide.” That is, the crowded colony produces queen cells in preparation for swarming. And then they swarm. Adding empty frames between every other frame gives them something else to do.
Fat Bee Man’s version of checkerboarding completely splits up the brood nest. He can get away with that in a warm place like Georgia. Cold-climate beekeepers may want to stick to checkerboarding only honey frames.
The video is also full of excellent hive inspection tips for beginners. How to smoke the bees gently, how to spot real queen cells — all kinds of good stuff. Note that Fat Bee Man doesn’t wear any protective clothing. Do not try that at home. He’s apparently bred a strain of stingless bee. That’s almost too good to be true.
I performed the first full hive inspection of the year yesterday. I also reversed the brood boxes while I was at it. Next year I plan to reverse the boxes shortly after the bees start hauling in pollen from the crocuses (instead of waiting until the dandelions bloom). Whether from dandelions or crocuses, if the bees bring in pollen at a steady pace for about a week, that’s my cue to reverse the brood boxes. Had I reversed them a few weeks ago, I might have been able to avoid the disgusting mess of scraping off drone comb between the frames of the top and bottom boxes. I could have avoided splitting up the brood nest too. Check out Honey Bee Suite for more info on reversing boxes.
BEST VIEWED IN FULL SCREEN MODE AT 720p FOR HD MONITORS OR 480p IN STANDARD DEF.
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This is one way to paint hive boxes (or supers). Hang them between two saw horses (like Rusty does at Honey Bee Suite) and paint them:
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We don’t have any saw horses, but we managed to improvise something like this:
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Here’s the video:
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I set up our camera close a hive entrance a couple days ago with the intention of playing back the video and counting how many bees entered and exited the hive in 60 seconds. Futility is the word for that. But here’s some of the footage I used, some of it in slow-motion and cropped in close (so it’s not the highest resolution). It’s just a video test, only for purists.
I’m trying to find a file type that doesn’t produce the ghostly after-image of the bees flying. It may look kind of cool, but it looks better in the original HD without the after-image. If anyone has any tips on how to encode a video file for upload so it doesn’t do that, I’m listening. Thanks.
It may have been too early to remove the mouse-proofing mesh from our hives, but I did it anyway because the entrance of one hive was clogged with dead winter bees and I couldn’t clear the entrance without removing the mesh. I also noticed the bees — at the 3:33 mark of the video — bringing in the first pollen of the year.
It went up to 11°C today. Is it safe to say winter is over yet? I don’t know.
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The colony in the above photo was slow to wake up from winter. The foundationless hive that went into winter with a small cluster has been the most active in the past few weeks. That colony may have more Carniolan genes helping its population bounce back early. The slower-to-wake-up colony my have a greater Italian lineage, high on honey production but slow to build up in the spring. But who really knows? Either way, all four colonies seem to be doing well now. They went mad with orientation and cleansing flights today.
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.
We gave our four hives some dry sugar 62 days ago. Here’s some riveting footage that shows how that’s working out for us (so far so good).
The only thing we’ll do differently next year is lay sugar over either the front or back half of the frames. That way the bees can access the sugar without any trouble and there’s still plenty of room to add a full-sized pollen patty. As seen in the video, adding pollen patties is tricky with all that sugar in the way. And we won’t spray the newspaper next time either.
Previous posts in this continuing saga: Dry Sugar Feeding, Dry Sugar Feeding Update and Dry Sugar Check Up and Pollen Patties.
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