Swarms Happen

The date of June 24th, 2009 was a sad day for Lake Superior Apiary.  Our new Carniolan hive swarmed.  Half of the hive went with the queen and half stayed behind.  The swarm initially landed in our crab apple tree.  Our efforts to capture the swarm were unsuccessful and the swarm took off and has not been seen since.  Many thanks to Liz, Dave S, Greg T and Jane for their help.  The aftermath of the swarm has left me feeling a bit unsure of myself, but it has also been a good learning experience.   My understanding is that by the time the third deep was placed, on June 17th,  it was too late to stop the sequence of events that would ultimately lead to the hive’s swarming.  They had already decided that they did not have enough room and made plans to swarm.   The Carniolan species is known for it swarming characteristic and its rapid growth.  The hive has now begun generating new queen cells and as of today, June 29th, there are at least 5 queen cells with larvae in them.  That is great news.  We will watch the hive every few days and once the queen cells are capped, decide what to do.   I did remove the third deep box and have placed frame 5 from that box in the bottom deep, trading it out for frame 9 of the bottom deep which was covered in capped honey on both sides.  As I type, it is draining and filtering in my kitchen.   Can’t wait to try it.   2 other frames from the top box were about 50% drawn out and had a little uncapped honey and nectar on them and these frames were simply removed and stored.   There is plenty of capped brood which should be hatching out in the next week or two.  It will take 3 weeks or so before the hive’s new queen has mated and is laying eggs. I have placed a honey super on the Carnie hive also.   I am still hopeful for a good honey harvest in September.

The Italian hive was inspected on June 24th also and I did find the top box to have drone larvae, uncapped, in the drone frame.  There appeared to be a lot of brood in the form of eggs, capped and uncapped larvae on frames 3, 4, 5(drone frame), 6, and 7.  In the bottom deep, I found eggs, capped and uncapped larvae on just frames 3, 6 and 7.  The drone frame in this box, also frame 5, remains empty.  I switched the order of the bottom and top deeps in hopes of getting the queen to be more active in the top deep, which had been the bottom deep earlier in the day.  We will see.  I will be removing the drone comb when the majority of it is capped.  I plan to reinspect this hive on June 30th.  The feeder pail was removed from the Italian hive as it was from the Carniolan hive.  I did also place a queen excluder and one honey super on the Italian hive.

June 18 2009

Since  the last posting in late May, there has been a lot to update.  The Italian hive indeed has a varroa mite infestation. I trapped 180 bees in a jar and doused them with powdered sugar. I then counted 41 mites that had fallen off the bees due to the sugar.  Erik conferred with his friend and fellow bee keeper, Al, and we decided to try some drone frames for management at this time. One of these frames was installed in each of the two deep boxes of the Italian hive on June 11th.  I inspected the hive on June 18th and found a more encouraging picture.  The drone frame in the top deep was being drawn out on the foundation and the girls had already added significant comb to the bottom of the drone frame. See enclosed picture.  The drone frame in the bottom deep was untouched.  Brood was found on frames 3, 4 and 7 in the bottom deep and frames 3, 4, 6 and 7 in the top deep.  The remainder of the frames in both deeps contained pollen, honey, and nectar.  The queen was spotted in the top deep on frame 3.  The overall numbers of bees in the hive looked greater than in early June and their activity was much better probably due to the warmer temps.

The Carnies continue to astound.  In the bottom deep, frames 2-8 were brood.  Queen cells with larvae in them were found and destroyed on frames 3, 5, and 6 in the bottom deep.  I guess they were feeling a little space constricted.  Good thing a third deep was added.   The queen was seen on frame 8 of the bottom deep.  Frames 1 and 9 were laden with beautiful capped and uncapped honey. Nice.  The second deep had brood from frames 3-8 with frames 1, 2 and 9 having honey.  The third deep was added yesterday by Liz and has 8 naked foundation frames and one frame was taken from the second deep and placed in the center of the top deep. This frame, number 5, had nectar on it and was drawn out about 60% on one side and 40% on the other side.  There was already an awful lot of activity in the third deep, having just been placed there yesterday.  The overall numbers of bees in this hive is mind boggling.  It will be time to add supers in just a few weeks to this hive. 

Sugar syrup was replenished for both hives.  Tremendous amounts of spur comb were taken from the Carnie hive and placed in the solar wax melter.

Til next time.

May 23 2009

First entry of the new season. A quick summary since Fall 2008. The Italian hive wintered over successfully with a frame or two of honey left over.  Erik’s insulation design worked nicely though we may need to look at a little more ventilation for the hive as I did discover some mold in the bottom box this Spring.  I cleaned those frames with some water, lemon juice and vinegar.  Started to feed the girls with sugar water in March. Number of bees that made it to the Spring was probably 7 to 10 thousand. 

In early April, a new deck was built, designed by Erik, and it really looks great. What a wonderful surface to work with the hives in doing inspections and aesthetically pleasing from a landscaping standpoint as well. In early April, the same day as the deck was completed, our new Carniolan hive was installed complete with the Carniolan queen, who is as black as a January night in Minnesota.  Beautiful. The hive has accepted her and she is more prolific than her Italian queen counterpart by a long shot.

Both hives have received pollen patties in addition to sugar syrup starting in March for supplementation.  The Italian hive appears to have some evidence of mites, Varroa or tracheal, and these are being treated with Crisco and powdered sugar. So far, so good.

Inspection of the Italian hive on May 23, 2009 revealed the top deep to be laden with pollen. Looks like the old game Lite Brite, if any remember that one, especially frames 3 to 7. Our nomenclature is the same as last year for frame numbering. Frame 1 closest to the fence and frame 9, closest to the creek.  The bottom deep of the Italian hive is laden heavily with brood, especially frames 3, 4, 5, and 6. There is capped brood, larvae and eggs. The queen was spotted on frame 5.  Frames 1 and 2 have honey and this honey is left over from the winter and is now being used/consumed.  Frames 7,8 and 9 of the bottom deep have lots of pollen, with yellow, orange, red, and brown colors being present. Overall, the Italian hive looks like it is finally ramping up it’s production of brood and with two deeps of drawn out frames, these girls should be in great shape in the next 2 to 4 weeks pending good weather.

 

The Carniolan hive was a hub of activity.  We supplied them with 9 drawn out frames from the Italian girls for the new girls to use in the bottom deep.  Brood was found on frames 3 to 7 of the bottom deep with 4 queen cells discovered in the bottom deep and a tremendous amt of spur comb.  Queenie was seen on frame 6.  In the top deep of the Carniolan hive, 9 foundation only frames were placed about 3 wks ago and the progress in drawing these frames out has been nothing short of spectacular.  Frames 1, 8 and 9 remain naked.  Frames 3, 4 and 5 are 70% drawn out on both sides and have eggs and larvae on them already.  Frame 2 is 70% drawn out on one side and the other side is naked.  Frames 6 and 7 are 50% drawn out on both sides with pollen and nectar deposited on both sides of these frames. 

In summary, we now have two separate hives going. Carniolans appear to be behaving as predicted with rapid, exponential growth of the workforce and a prolific queen. The Italians survived one of the coldest Minnesota winters on record, appear to have some early signs of mild mite infestation and appear to be slowly ramping up their workforce with more and more brood being noted by this examiner with each inspection.

Til next time.

Upgrade

 

Elevated Deck for the Girls

august 10th inspection

A quick thanks to Erik and Liz for doing the inspection one week ago while I was in the Boundary Waters. The honey you collected has been delicious to sample and gives me excitement for the upcoming harvest. The walleye fishing was excellent on Marshall and Swan Lakes for your information.

the new electric fence

Today’s inspection was difficult. I have erected an electric fence since my last post and getting over it is a bit of a trick, but certainly possible.  I am glad to have the task of fencing behind me as the fall approaches and the bears begin their foraging for the winter. In any event, the hardest part of today’s inspection was the sheer weight of the deeps. I have trouble lifting them by myself at this point and even some of the frames laden with honey are really heavy.

The honey super is looking great. About 7 of the 10 frames have comb drawn out to 50 to 60% of their surface area and are already being filled with honey. Frames one and nine and ten had little to no comb drawn out and I moved these toward the middle, taking some of the middle frames and placing them on the outsides of the super. Hopefully this will result in more uniform honey deposition.

The top deep was almost exclusively capped honey with the exception of a few scattered drone cells on a couple of frames. Other than that, it appears the top deep is mostly devoted to honey storage as well.

The middle and bottom deeps have a varied collection of capped and uncapped honey, capped brood, uncapped brood and pollen. I did not see any eggs on today’s inspection and I did not see the queen. I found fewer queen cells as well. Maybe 2 in the middle deep and 3 in the bottom deep. I was greatly dismayed on the last frame, number 9, on the bottom as I completed my inspection. The frame slipped off the edge of the bottom box where I was inspecting it and as it slid, it gashed the capped honey on one side. This frame appeared to have only honey with no brood and I did not see the queen here, though many of the girls were knocked off into the grass and flowers and some were lost due to the trauma. The entire hive became quite agitated but by the time I closed everything up again, the hive seemed to have calmed down.  This is not something I want to repeat ever again.

honey!

I took a few pictures today of the new fence and a couple of some drones emerging from their cells. I will try to upload those later today.

Three deep, Super!

It was a quick run through the hive, mostly looking for Queen cells, brood, and hopefully honey supers getting full.  This is what happened.

 

To start, the bees were out fanning away, cooling the hive, there must have been 5 to 7 hundred on the side of the hive.

Liz Donley, bee keeping pro, dawned her painter jumper and used the smoker like we were trying to get rescued from a deserted Island, effective, but made us wonder about the fire trucks and planes overhead.  We did come up with the idea of putting some Pipe Tobacco in the smoker for that cherry wood smoke effect.  We will try it next time.

Took the top lid off and there were a few bees in the super, the frames were only put on a week ago, but there was minimal comb drawn out, so not too much attention was given to the super.

 

The top deep has and is the new super, more or less, there are 9 frames of capped honey, there are a few patches of Drone brood but that would consume about 2 % of all the frames, so not so much.  That is a heavy deep to move.

The middle deep was examined next, (duh) and there was a great mix of honey, pollen, and brood, capped and uncapped.  Some of the frames were just loaded with bees, like tons of them.

The bottom deep was the same as well, the brood nest was 5 to 6 frames worth, very large, again honey, pollen and brood, capped and not.  All in all, there were 6 queen cells scattered about, no eggs or larva in them.  We did not locate the queen, the masses of bees made her difficult to find.  Even though no new tiny eggs were observed, tiny pupa were noted so she must still be doing a great job.

Hopefully the honey supers will get drawn out and filled up in the next few weeks.  My thought is that some of the 3rd deep will be harvested, and that the hive will winter with only two deeps.  Time will tell.

Some honey spilled as the combs were being taken out, it was great.  Can’t wait for more!

July 18th inspection

Got back into the hive today on a hot sunny day here in Duluth. Lots of activity outside the hive as the girls were taking off and landing very frequently. Inside the hive, a few changes of note had occurred since the last inspection on Saturday, the 12th of July.  Foremost, in the top deep, on frames 2 and 4, I discovered what appears to be “grain of rice” eggs. I looked at these and all the frames from many angles and with the sun over my shoulder as well as in other orientations, I could not come to any other conclusion. The queen has been in the top deep and is laying eggs. I guess the top deep will not be a honey super after all. I did also see a lot more deposition of pollen diffusely throughout the entire top deep, making it look much more like it will be used for brood. All the comb is drawn out on all the frames of the top deep.

Inspection of the middle and bottom deep revealed about 3 new queen cells per deep, all very early in their development and none with larva. They were destroyed per usual. The queen was located on frame 8 of the bottom deep, looking glorious and regal per usual.

As I make this entry on July 23rd, I have subsequently added a metal queen excluder yesterday between the top deep and the first 10 frame honey super, which I added yesterday also. The feeder pail was removed. The top board with it’s slit opening was placed on top of the super box and the telescoping top cover was then put in place. So right now, we have our first honey super in place and I can’t wait to see what the girls do with it.

Over the weekend, our gardens were a part of our neighborhood/city garden tour. Nice job to my lovely wife for all her p.r. work and of course her skill in planting, weeding, and tending to the perennial gardens. It looked great. The hive was a source of great interest and curiosity for almost all of the tour participants. It was great fun talking about the positive experience thus far and most people seemed really attuned to the crisis of honeybees here in the US and worldwide.

Will plan to reinspect sometime the weekend of July 25th.

July 12th 2008 update

Saturday’s total inspection of the hive was a team effort. Erik and I performed the inspection and Liz  and Greta documented all of our findings. It was a very comprehensive look at the girls. They have been incredibly busy and productive since the last inspection about 10 days ago when the top deep had 10 frames added to it.  Before we get going, let’s establish some nomenclature for our frame numbering system. Frame 1 of each deep is nearest the neighbor’s yard and frame 9 or 10 depending on the deep is nearest the creek. With that out of the way, here’s what we found:

Top Deep: Frames 1 and 2 50% drawn out comb. Frame 3 100% drawn out comb with capped honey on one entire side. Frame 4 100% capped honey on both sides. Frame 5 almost 100% capped honey on both sides. Frame 6 100% drawn out comb and 50% capped honey on one side and 25% capped honey on the other. Frame 7 100% drawn out comb with 25% capped honey on one side and 10% capped honey on the other side. Frame 8 90% drawn out comb on both sides and one side has 10% capped honey. Frame 9 50% drawn out comb and Frame 10 no drawn out comb. Frames were rearranged in the top deep as follows: Frames 9 and 10 were moved to the middle positions and Frame 5 and 6 were moved to the creek side to encourage more drawing out of the comb on the empty frames. Wondering both by myself and Erik whether or not the hive is using the top deep as a honey super or if the queen will eventually start laying eggs/brood in the top box.  Just a little pollen was seen in a few of the frames and some nectar also seen, but no eggs or brood at this time.

Middle Deep: Frame 1 100% capped honey on both sides. Frame 2 some capped honey on both sides and capped brood. Frame 3 showed capped brood, uncapped brood and capped honey.  Frame 4 shows nearly 100% capped brood on both sides and one queen cell…destroyed. Frame 5 had 3 queen cells….destroyed, capped brood and small amt of capped honey. Lots of drone cells. Frame 6 weighed at least 10 lbs and had capped brood, capped honey and 2 queen cells. Frame 7 weighed much more than 10 lbs and had capped honey on both sides.  Frame 8 with 100% beautiful capped honey on both sides. Frame 9 with capped brood and lots of capped honey. Several clusters of bees feeding on honey. 

Bottom Deep: Frame 1 with capped honey, capped brood and pollen. Frame 2 with capped honey, pollen, capped brood and one queen cell…destroyed. Frame 3 was only 50% drawn out but had capped honey and pollen. Frame 4 with capped honey, capped brood and pollen. Frame 5 with a queen cell….destroyed, pollen, capped honey and capped brood.  Frame 6 with capped brood, uncapped brood and the glorious queen herself was spotted.  Frame 7 with capped honey, capped brood, uncapped brood and pollen. Frame 8 with capped brood, capped honey and pollen. Frame 9 with capped honey.

Summary: I estimate there are at least 40,000 bees at this time. The brood nest is very large, encompassing 5 frames in the middle deep and 7 frames in the bottom deep. WOW. None of us is sure what will happen with the top deep, but at this point we are all content to wait a bit longer and take another look in 5 to 7 days. Interestingly, neither Erik or myself were able to positively identify any “grain of rice” eggs in our inspection of the hive. Will continue to monitor for evidence of queen cells. Erik has some good pictures which I hope he will upload to the blog site in the near future.  No one was stung today and for the most part the girls were very docile and content.

July 2008 update

Having been away for nearly 3 weeks, I was anxious to return home to see how the girls were doing. Many thanks to Erik and Liz for their watchful care while our family was away.  On July 1st, late in the afternoon with temps in the high 80’s, I donned two layers of pants, two layers of shirts, heavy boots, bee jacket with headgear, and gloves, along with 10 new frames( in anticipation of needing to fill the third deep with frames), the smoker with plenty of fuel, the hive tool and a fresh batch of sugar syrup for the feeder pail.  The activity from the outside of the hive alone was impressive. I could hear the hive buzzing and was, to say the least, a bit anxious. A full inspection of the hive ensued over the next hour.

These Italian girls have been busy since I last saw them in early June. All of the frames in both the bottom and the second deep had drawn out comb, including the two frames on the creek side of the bottom deep which were lagging behind in this characteristic in early June. The center 5 to 6 frames of the two deep boxes were full of brood in various stages of development. Eggs, larvae, capped brood and nearly fully mature bees were seen throughout both deeps. Our queen has been continuing her prolific fecundity. Frames with lots of brood also had excellent supplies of honey, around the periphery of the brood, just as the textbooks describe. I also discovered at least 2 frames in both deeps with just honey, dry capped and wet capped honey. These frames were heavy and gorgeous.  In addition to lots of burr comb, I discovered the sticky phenomenon of propolis, especially around the dog ears of the frames and for the first time a bonafide queen cell which was not capped. I removed it and did find another two queen cells the next day, which were removed.

Needless to say, it was time to fill the third deep box with frames. Taking one of the frames from the second deep with drawn out comb, but no brood, I placed this in the center of the top deep and added 9 new, fresh frames. I then added the top board, filled the feeder pail and placed it on top of the top board and used two empty super boxes to place over and around the feeder pail, closing everything with the cover and it’s rock.  Happily, no stings occurred, though I did have one bee inside my headgear, thanks to not closing off one of the zippers very well. She did not return to join her sisters unfortunately.   I was not able to definitively identify the queen during my inspection of the hive, but she left obvious clues that she is alive and well. I can only speculate that the appearance of queen cells, indicates the hive was feeling a bit space constrained and hopefully with the addition of the top deep with  new frames this should not be a problem.

On July 2nd, I received a call at work from my wife with concern regarding the large number of bees congregating on the outside of the hive near the three entrances to the hive. She was worried about swarming (as I am) and after work that afternoon, I did reinspect the hive. The girls had already, in only 24 hrs, drawn out 30 to 50% of two of the virgin frames in the top box, which were just placed there yesterday. Unbelievable. These Italian girls are kicking ass. In any event, on the inspection that day, I discovered two more queen cells I had missed yesterday, but all else seemed fine. Again, no sighting of the queen, but I didn’t spend a lot of dedicated time looking for her. I later learned after talking with a fellow beekeeper at work that the bees were displaying a cooling behavior. The hive temperature gets very hot on warm days and the bees will gather by the hundreds around the entrances to cool themselves and to help reduce the temperature within the hive.  Thankfully, no swarming.

Well, that’s about it. Plans are to do a brief inspection of the top deep sometime in the next few days and fairly frequently over the next couple of weeks as I am sure it will fill soon given the logarithmic growth of the colony  and the abundant nectar flow presently. Then it will be time to add honey supers with frames and consider a rotation of the deeps. Still have to find time to build a fence as well. Overall, this has, thus far, been a really fun and enjoyable experience. Thanks to my wife and neighbors for being agreeable to the idea and special thanks to Erik for convincing me this would be a good project to take on.  I have appreciated your enthusiasm, input, knowledge and the shared experience.

June 20th

Basically did a rotation of the deeps.  Now the bottom deep is all drawn out, and the second one on the top has brood and still needs to have half of it’s frames drawn out.    

 

So here is the Bee update from up North.  1st of all I spotted a few of the bees on my mothers Tree Peonys and attached a few pictures.  Nice to see they are working their way over to her house.

So busy as usual, nice day here, open the top of two deeps, plenty of activity.  There was brood, capped and very young eggs, in 4 to 5 frames, nectar and pollen on the same frames, could not find the queen, outside frames not drawn out either, so Queen was obviously there, but hive still needed to draw much of the comb out.

Down to the second deep, capped honey, on one outside frame, the far side still had two frames that were not drawn out.  Brood in middle frames, also found the queen laying eggs down there.

So what I did, was take the frame the queen was laying on ( with her on it) and carefully placed her and frame in upper deep, in the middle of 4 other brood laden frames, so 5 total, then took full frames of honey / pollen and placed 2 on each side of brood nest.  Then placed that deep on the bottom.

Then with the other deep and brood, I put the nest together in the middle ( 3 to 4  frames ), with partially drawn out comb on either side, so now there about 5 ( out of 10 ) frames than need to be drawn out on the top deep, and the bottom deep is all drawn out, except 1/2 of one frame.

How does that sound?  I am guessing in a week to 10 days I could add the third deep straight away.

Normal for a young hive / queen to rotate up and down to fill out her nest?  Everything seemed pretty good, Burr comb here and there, capped honey, very clear, so many plants in bloom right now, for the next 3 weeks, my mom’s peonys will be blooming, good stuff, not sure how much comb they will be able to drawn out this year.  This is a great place for bees!