First Inspection of the year!

I completed my first inspection of the year yesterday.  It seems late I know but there just really hasn't been a good enough weather window when I was around.  Anyway the fog lifted, the sun came out and I leapt at the opportunity.

I wasn't sure what I'd find; the bees have been quite active so far this year so I was hopeful to find things were all settled and in good shape.  And generally that's exactly what I found! Although I have to say they seemed further advanced than I was expecting for mid March.

We have 3 hives, all had mite treatment in December, all have been active, some more than others...

Hive 1:

This is the hive that is nearest the big house (on the left in the above photo) and I think this has been the most active over the winter; at least every time I have been to the apiary this hive has had the most bees flying.  When I arrived yesterday I found a great crush of bees trying to enter the hive, many laden with great piles of pollen.  

This hive comprises 1 deep and 2 supers.  We left the supers on over the winter with heather honey we couldn't extract. I found there was quite a bit of honey stored in the supers, together with significant quantities of brood (see the following photo)!  There was plenty of pollen in the supers near the brood as well, so apart from the fact the brood is in the wrong place the bees looked OK.  

The deep was empty of brood but did contain some honey so I decided to move the supers (and therefore the brood) under the deep.  I hope the supers will gradually empty and the deep will fill with brood. I'll pop on a Queen Excluder on soon.

Hive 2:

This hive has a single deep and 2 supers and is usually quieter than the first and sure enough there were fewer bees around the entrance. Inside the hive I found lots of stores in the both supers, but no brood.  In the deep (at the bottom of the hive) there was a tonne of brood - 5 or 6 frames worth in a lovely pattern, a nice oval with some space for laying in the middle, together with pollen and honey surrounding the capped cells.  This is looking really,  really, strong!

The thought occurred to me that perhaps the reason they were quieter was down to the fact they had more stores in the hive and so didn't need to venture out as much!

I popped a Queen Excluder under the supers and will keep a watch on the brood - certainly on a week by week basis.  I think this could be my main hive for splitting this season - We have the necessary equipment available but I have nevertheless made some enquiries about additional stands, OMF etc.

Hive 3:

Dave's Hive. This hive comprises 2 deeps and a single super.  One deep contained brood and stores, the other deep had no brood and was mostly empty of stores.  The super contained some stores. I left the deep with brood at the bottom of the hive, slipped a Queen Excluder over this then added the super and finally the deep (which is a 'new' one) on top.  I may well use this deep for the future split. Again this hive looks to be in good shape.

I removed all the entrance reducers, the mouse guards and the OMF screen boards; the latter to help improve ventilation within the hive.  I found in all hives a lot of condensation, in the frame rebates and particularly at the top in the roofs where there was some mold growth too.

So it was an excellent first inspection.  The hives look strong and more advanced than I expected for the time of year.  I will have to keep a close eye on them, most particularly the middle one as the brood chamber is filling quickly.  Opportunities therefore exist for making splits.  I need to get organized, get some existing equipment cleaned up and buy some new deep frames and foundation.

Winter Management (?)

I've been unable to find a dry, or warm enough, day to do some winter management on my bees; anytime I've been free it seems it's been either too cold and windy or just too wet.

At long last the weather was warm enough for me to take a trip out to the apiary today.  I've been fretting over the fact I have a queen excluder on top of a deep and under a couple of (heather honey) filled supers.  I was concerned I'd been separating the queen from a food source.  I wasn't so worried for right now, it is more a concern for the new year.  If the queen can't reach the honey she and/or the bees might starve.

Anyway, it was warm enough, and even though I say so myself, I was a bit of a ninja beekeeper today; in and out before they noticed!  However, I wasn't so quick that I didn't notice there were a lot of bees in the hive and some reasonably hefty boxes.  So I'm quite happy at this stage that there's sufficient stores in the hive for the winter.

All the hives in the apiary looked busy so there's reason to be cheerful.

Am I losing it?

First I was organised, then surprised, now I'm into a bit of self doubt!

I went through the old "combined" tall hive with the tower of boxes in the hope I'd be able to sort things out a bit.

Last time out I found the bee escapes hadn't worked and I also found I had a Queen above a bee escape in a super of brood. So I made up a hive from that super of brood, the "harvested" heather honey and the deep I was trying to clear.

This time out decided to just go through the tall hive and remove bee escapes and have a look to see what's been going on.

Nothing above the queen excluder - just capped and uncapped honey. There is one full super and three partially full ones on this hive. There is also a deep under a queen excluder - and in this deep/brood box?  I found brood!  So there I was trying to combine two hives each with a queen! D'oh!

I went through this hive a couple of weeks ago and had convinced myself there was no brood. I thought it needed help! Now I'm confused. Perhaps a couple of weeks ago there was a dearth of forage and she simply shut down for a rest? 

Anyway I just hope I did no lasting damage. I wasn't able to complete going through the tall hive - I'd really love to find the queen in order to satisfy myself there really is one and not some kind of skinny queen that could get across bee escapes and queen excluders! 

Maybe I need a break! I think I need a better, more effective, bee escape!

So much for being prepared

I was all set last week... Then reality hit!

We extracted about 7.5 kgs of honey from one of the supers we took off, last week; so far so good.  The other super was however stuffed full of heather honey so we couldn't extract any of it! Agghhhh!

We had planned to put the empty supers back on the hives for the bees to clean up. Now we're going to put the honey back as winter feed!

To compound the issues, the bee escapes didn't do their job.  So where we were originally planning to remove a cleared deep and super we now were fighting off a load of bees happily residing in the hive!

So after the surprise yesterday (and a hasty retreat given the gloomy weather) I went back this morning.  I put the heather honey immediately above the brood chamber, and the cleared frame above this. Then went on a bee escape (fingers crossed this time) and the supers I added from the combined hive last week (yes, that seemed to have worked ok) and finally the deep and super I had from the other hive that didn't clear. 

Outer cover

Inner cover

Deep

Super

Super

Super

Bee escape

Super - for cleaning

Super - full of heather honey

Queen excluder

Deep

Base board

This is now quite a tall hive that one way or another next week will be significantly smaller. If the supers clear we will extract them or leave on as feed!

It all seems a bit pointless planning ahead! We will see where we are next week.

Autumn Preparations...

Somehow I'm feeling organised!  I'm not sure why, but I think it's because I have started preparing for the Autum now!

Ok, so I will confess I probably was forced into it, but still, it's a start!

I nominally have 2 hives at the apiary, and Dave has 2.  We help each other out, but we kind of think we each have our own!  Anyway, one of my hives has been quite prodigious; I extracted 51 lbs of honey in July.  However, this hive became Queenless (I don't really know why) but continued to produce honey and as of last weekend I had 4 supers stacked on it. Two are pretty much capped and the other two are perhaps 50% full.

The other hive I have was 'sick' earlier in April but it pulled through and has left me with a crammed full super of capped honey. There is a queen in this one!

So back to Autumn management. What to do with the Queenless hive? Well, I decided it was better to not generate problems next spring by not having equipment available for new splits and swarm control, so I united the hives.

I removed two full supers and I will extract honey from these. The resulting combined hive now looks like this...

Outer cover

Inner cover

Deep

Super

Bee escape

Super

Super

Newspaper

Queen excluder

Deep

Base board

The idea is to keep the Queen way down in the hive, to clear and then remove the deep and a super from the top (for later use?) and to leave two supers of stores to the bees for the Autumn.  If all goes well (that's got to happen at some point, right?) I'll further reduce the hive for winter - but I'll move full stores from the 'removed' deep into the deep at the bottom!

I will then have lots of equipment and drawn frames for the coming spring!

The mite count I did last week showed some moderate number of mites.  I'll treat once things have settled down after the combination!  Depending on the count level then I will treat with MAQS or try oxalic acid for the first time!!!

It's a plan of sorts!

A Nice Surprise

I had planned, yesterday, to simply remove the "full" super I knew I had.  I had also some sketchy plans with Dave to do some inspections on the other hives and so we arranged to meet late morning.

To my surprise Dave had managed to find space and the equipment to extract the honey from the super, so while I removed frames he removed the cappings and extracted what I think is in the order of 8kgs (18lbs) of honey.

To my surprise the other two supers on the hive have also filled in the course of the last week.  I reckon there has been a nectar flow from local Lime trees so hopefully there's another fifteen kilos or more to come in; all very nice.  It will be interesting to see the difference between the two extracted honeys.  I think lime honey is quite light; yesterdays harvest was quite amber and strong in taste, but still very pleasant.

Apart form the extraction I took a look through 3 of the 4 hives.

Hive 1:  I found a frame of eggs in Hive 2 and donated this to Dave's hive.  Hopefully there will be some suitable eggs for the bees to make a new queen from.  If not, Dave said he might buy in a new queen. There is some honey in the supers, not as much as I would have hoped for, but with the Lime trees blooming there is hope these will fill as well.

Hive 2: We will remove the remaining two supers from this hive next week.  Otherwise, it appears to be in good shape.  I didn't go through it in great depth.

Hive 4: I didn't look at this hive.  It was recovering well from the poor state it was in about 6 weeks ago.  I'll take a closer look next weekend.

Hive 3: Dave told me this hive swarmed in the week.  But there were so may bees in it I'm not too sure this really can be the case. I nevertheless attempted to go through the supers to reorganize them; I had planned to put frames of honey in one super and brood in another and separate the two with a Queen Excluder.  But there was so much brood in the supers and so many agitated bees I left them alone.

I'm fairly sure they will swarm in the week (or by next weekend) as there were several capped Queen Cells present.  Either way, a reduction in bees might not be such a bad thing.  If they have swarmed by the weekend I may go through and try to remove some remaining Queen Cells to try and stop

further cast swarms.  One idea we had was to put the remaining QCs in Hive 1.  We shall see what happens and decide on a course of action next weekend.

Chaos! and some Shakespeare(ish)

I was expecting something to be "up" after last week's inspection but what Dave and I found was more than a little bit interesting.... Last week Dave's old hive looked as though it was getting swarmy, so I was expecting to see some action here.  I was also half expecting my own hive to be doing stuff as well, but I was not sure what...

Hive 1: Dave's old hive.  As I said, I was expecting this to be swarmy and I arrived prepared to do an Artificial Swarm on it - expecting to find open queen cells. However, Dave and I found just a single closed Queen Cell in the hive (and we looked hard for others).  We also looked everywhere but didn't see a queen.  There appeared to be a lot of bees around so had they swarmed?.

Action?  I consulted my old mentor Eugene in Missour.  He thought it odd that there was just one cell, but that could be a supersedure where the bees only found one larvae the right age. It could also signal problems with the queen or he thought that maybe it's an old cell and the pupa is dead. We decided to leave this alone, especially as there was larvae in the hive.  Do Nothing!!!

Hive 2:  The hive I combined a few weeks back.  As I said, I was half expecting to do something here but inevitably we found more than we expected; a couple of open Queen Cells.  Fortunately I came to the apiary prepared to do an Artificial Swarm (only on Hive 1) so when Dave and I found the uncapped queen cells we changed our plans and did it on this hive instead.  All very easy and straightforward - once we found the queen - twice!

So we put the old queen in a new box of foundation with some food, and added the old supers above a Queen Excluder.  So this is still Hive 2.  The old hive that has the brood and open queen cells in it, we will move this during the week in order to keep the swarming urge suppressed.  This is now Hive 4.

Hive 3:  The caught swarm - about 2 weeks old.  We found the queen and a capped queen cell in this hive (2 weeks after catching it!), as well as brood and larvae (at about the same stage of development) both in the supers above and in the deep below a Queen Excluder!  I was, and remain, mystified by this!  Dave and I both thought the Queen looked too big to have crossed the QE.  Action?  Contact Eugene!

Eugene had heard of people catching swarms containing more than one queen - this was a very large swarm if you remember - but in this case they were both virgins. Oops!  I quoted him on that when he didn't want to be!

Our original thought (and Eugene's) was just to leave this for a couple of weeks and see what happens.  It's all very curious and I think time will sort things out.  There's the potential bonus of having a 2-Queen hive and the additional honey that can produce!

---ooo---

I'm reminded of a quote from Tom Stoppard's "Shakespeare in Love"...  Seems appropriate... my apologies for the hack...

Mentor Beekeeper...allow me to explain about the beekeeping business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Me... So what do we do?

Mentor Beekeeper... Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Me... How?

Mentor Beekeeper...  I don't know. It's a mystery.

Swarms and Students

I had a really great day on Friday! I gave three very enthusiastic students from the Jamia Ahmadiyya in Haslemere a tour around the apiary. They were extremely keen to learn about beekeeping and I only hope I was able to answer all their questions fully!

I met up with them mid afternoon and gave them a quick briefing - about the bees, the equipment, the protection and most importantly to stay calm, don't worry and have fun!

Fortunately the bees for once were similarly briefed and cooperated beautifully!

We had quite a lot to cover as I now have 3 hives that are all at quite different stages of development. However, the first thing for us to notice was what was going on outside the hives.  There was a lot of activity!  It was a very warm spring day and from what I could tell there was a good nectar flow on; lots of bees flying in and out, not so much pollen being carried. So what did we find?

Hive 1:  This is the long established hive.  It needed no mite treatment a week or so ago but I went through the hive with the students, showed them brood, pollen, capped honey, eggs and larvae - it has everything you could want for a teaching hive!  We left it after adding a super of drawn comb - there's a flow on!

Hive 2:  This is the combined hive which had just had a course of MAQS mite treatment. I wasn't sure how this hive would have coped as my experience in the USA (where admittedly it was much hotter) was not good. But my fears were unfounded.

When I opened the hive I found the queen had been busy laying in the super!  Not too much brood, but enough!   But by way of compensation there was also a lot of honey and nectar in the super as well!  Anyway, I was sort of prepared for this as I had a super of undrawn foundation with me.  I checked that the queen wasn't in the in-situ super and then put the new super under it; the theory being that the queen won't cross the undrawn super, the brood will hatch and the bees will then fill the brood cells with honey - well, that's the theory!

Again we looked through the rest of this hive saw there were no queen cells but saw there was a lot of nectar in the cells.  So I felt quite good about putting a second super on.

I'll also do another mite count in a couple of weeks.

Hive 3:  The new Swarm Hive.  Last Wednesday evening Dave got a call from someone local who said she had swarm in her front garden.  And what a swarm!  It filled the skep.  Sadly there are no photos, but Dave reckons it's as big a swarm as he has ever caught.  He put the swarm into a new deep, added a queen excluder and a super.  Unfortunately he didn't have any new foundation available so the bees went into a box of old comb.

The good news however was that I have plenty of frames and so I planned, with the students, to relocate the swarm onto these new frames.  It was all ridiculously easy! 

Most of the frames were in a bad state so we just checked if the queen was there before we gently shook the bees into the hive.  We left just 3 original frames of decent half drawn comb; the rest was new foundation.  We also fed the bees some 1:1 syrup in order to stimulate some frame drawing.  But given the size of the hive and the activity in and out of it this may not really have been needed!

So the 3 students and I left the apiary happy and excited for pretty much the same reasons!  They had been through three hives, handled bees, seen the stages of growth and even tasted a bit of honey/nectar direct from the comb!  Very cool! I had seen the hives looking strong and calm!

I went back into the apiary today (Sunday) just to see the swarm hive again, but ended up looking at all 3, and I'm glad I did!  There wasn't much change to Hive 1, but the second super in Hive 2 was being drawn out, fast.  I didn't want the queen rushing back up too soon so I dashed home to get another super of undrawn foundation and popped that under the other 2.  

Three supers on - nectar flow - feeling happy!

I went this morning mainly to feed up the swarm and found they had taken about 1/3 of the feed from Friday.  So I topped it up.  I also found the queen and saw she had been laying - all very encouraging!  It would be nice to put some new super foundation on the hive soon.

All in all its been a brilliant weekend!  You just have to love spring!

Ladue Bees.

Yesterday I nervously set out to inspect the hives in Ladue! Nervous, why? Because last time I went to look at them they were very aggressive and unpleasant!

I have 3 hives in Ladue now, two nucs and this nasty existing hive. My plan was to go through the nucs first to see how they are performing and then to take the supers from the nasty hive and "store" them over the nucs prior to the harvest in a couple of weeks.  I thought that by working in this way it would make harvesting any honey from the nasty hive a bit easier.

The nucs look great! Both have good Queens laying in them. But I will need some additional deeps quite soon. However I now have to confess I am wondering if they should remain strong in single deeps for the winter, or maybe I should combine them with the nasty hive to create two strong hives going into the winter!!!  I might call Eugene for advice.

Anyway instead of closing up the nucs as I found them, I put on a queen excluder and added a new super of undrawn foundation. I then went to relocate the supers from the other hive...

I should say that before I worked the nucs (and also during) I smoked the nasty hive to try to calm them and keep them calm. I think this (and the fact it was a much nicer day than the last time I did an inspection) must have worked because they were really OK this time. A couple of bees did follow me back to my car but I wasn't stung like I have been.  

I smoked supers quite heavily before pulling them off and relocating them and I didn't have any major issues! Rather than just leave the deeps I added an empty super of drawn comb to the hive just to encourage the bees to keep on keeping on!

So this means that each of my nucs are now in single deeps with full(ish) supers of honey and an undrawn super over them and the nasty hive is down to two deeps and an empty super of drawn comb.

Next time out I will harvest the supers (or at least decide how many I will take) and then think about finding the queen in the nasty hive and executing her!

Next inspection June 30.