Bee activity is slowing; did I choose the best spot in the garden for my hives?

Are the two related? I’m not sure, but now that the sun is getting lower in the sky, there is only a limited window of opportunity for my hives get to be warmed by it! They are unfortunately being screened by the shadow cast by the house and also a large tree trunk. It was strangely noticeable that one hive (the eastern one, and coincidently the ‘weaker’ single storey hive) gets more direct sunlight and it was this hive that showed more activity at the weekend!

Basic physics: direct sunlight = heat gain by radiation = warm happy bees!

That said neither hive was particularly active, so I thought that might mean my girls are eating the syrup I added, instead of foraging outside. Nope! The syrup remains pretty much un-touched. Maybe now perhaps it is time to give up the syrup feeding, remove the feeder and put on the insulated top cover and shut up for winter. I’ll let nature do its thing, and with luck, both hives will survive the winter and will look strong going into 2011! Shutting them up does not of course exclude some winter feeding with Pollen Patties or “Ted’s Mush” (if it gets warm enough to open the hive), but I reckon I won’t start looking into that until Late January at the earliest!

Better get thinking about some more equipment….

Queen of the Sun!

Susan and I went on a beekeeper outing last night to see a new documentary about CCD; “Queen of the Sun”. Overall it was beautifully shot, interesting, thought provoking and quite inspiring - a bit of a reaffirmation of why I started beekeeping in the first place.

My gripes with it were that it was a little disjointed and there didn’t seem to be a progressive flow through the film, but that is only a minor gripe. My main problem was that it tended to marginalize and stereotype beekeepers – I bet you didn’t think that was possible! Yes, I know we all like “interesting characters” in our films, but looking at most of the participants you'd be forgiven for thinking that in general beekeepers were slightly weird hippies who believed in biodynamics, and probably astrology too! The only ‘normal’ beekeepers that were depicted (with one notable exception, and I’ll come to that later) were those “money grabbing, evil, factory intensive” beekeepers (that’s me demonizing them), who transport thousands of hives across the country in order to pollinate the monoculture of almonds in California. Well fortunately, most of us really are normal, honest! If only they had filmed at a few local beekeeping association meetings!

The film could also have made a lot more of the urban beekeeping movement, and how anybody can get involved i.e. broaden the appeal. Sadly, I left feeling that either you had to be a slightly odd biodynamic farmer (thankfully located away from any centres of population) or a dredlocked gay hippy living in a deprived city neighbourhood. There wasn't enough time given to the middle ground. Hey, but least the most normal beekeeper appeared to be the English (of course) city beekeeper and his step son!

Marks out of 5? Well on balance 3.5. It’s a worthwhile, enthusiastic film that presented a very serious issue in an engaging way and which left people feeling that there is real hope our pollinators can be saved, so long as we get involved, and stem our current thirst for industrial agriculture.

Winter's coming!

It was cold the past two mornings. And now that the clocks have gone back winter feels like it has finally arrived.  That said it is forecast to be warm this week.  So that might mean there is still a chance that some sugar syrup may be consumed.

I took a look today to see what syrup was consumed over the past week - well not much as it turns out!  I think this might have something to do with the fact that I fed the syrup in zip-loc bags with holes pierced through the top to help the syrup ooze out, but this didn't seem to work well as little syrup has been taken by either hive.  So I cut a cross in the top of each bag and folded the flaps of plastic down into the syrup.  Perhaps this will make it easier for the bees to get to the syrup.

I'll check their progress next weekend, if it is warm enough. I'll also probably put a 2" thick insulating board on top of the inner cover as well, just to make sure as much warmth as possible is retained in the hive. This board has a channel cut in it to give the bees access to the top of the hive as well as the bottom.

They may not read books, but they can solve complex Maths!

Some research has just come to light, that despite only having a brain the size of a grass seed bees are able to solve complex mathematical problems computers have problems with!

The problem in question is the "traveling salesman" problem. The one where the salesman would love to know the shortest most efficient route between stops.  Well bees have been found to do this! 

All we have to do now is ask them to write out how they do it!

Bees don't read the books!

Why don't bees read (any of) the text books?

I went through the Daughter hive this morning.  The super that was at the bottom of the stack of boxes has not been emptied - well perhaps a bit, but not as much as I would have liked and certainly not enough to warrant removing it!  There is however a nice brood cluster on 3 frames of the lower hive body and lots of stored honey also. So I did some equalisation in the hive. The top hive body is pretty empty, but there were some signs of some stores being put away. At least there is plenty of drawn out comb available for them to fill. 

So what do I do to prepare my girls for winter? Well, as part of the preparations I want to feed them some Fumigelin-B to treat against tracheal mites, but I'll need them to take a couple of gallons for that.  The answer (for me at least) was to put the heavy box of brood and honey on the bottom, the partially full super on top of that and then the other (empty-ish) hive body on top of the stack. I put a division board feeder in this last hive body and added 1 gallon (3.75 litres) of 2:1 syrup with a heaped teaspoon of Fumigelin-B mixed in.  

This means I will at least be able to feed and feed the bees from the top.  I hope there will be another couple of weeks window for feeding. We will see.

Treatment Over

It's been 4 weeks since I started the Apiguard treatment.  I came home tonight and removed the foil tray and the inverted feeder. I also opened up the access hole in the front of the top hive body.  I noticed a few SHBs on the top cover, but only a few.  I will wait for the weekend before I do a more thorough inspection.

I want to assess the overall strength of the hive and whether I need to think about combining it with the other hive. I will also try to equalize the hive and if I need to I will move the brood frames to the bottom hive body.  Finally I'll check the stores and see what feeing may be necessary and I'll decide if I need to add some Fumagellin.  So a busy weekend ahead!

I also took the opportunity to feed the Parent hive again.  They took the best part of 2 litres of syrup. So that's about 7 litres in the last 2 weeks.  As with the Daughter hive I didn't take a thorough look, but I hope the bees have been building up their stores.

I will have to take care when undertaking the inspection. I do not want to have the hive open too long and do encourage any robbing by other bees in the neighbourhood!  By all accounts this has been a problem this Fall.

Parent Update!

I thought it was about time I looked through the Parent Hive. The weather has been lovely and warm and it just seemed a good idea! While I did the inspection I took the opportunity to replace the existing hive box with another one that had a hole drilled in it as an alternative access.  Anyway, I also shuffled about some of the frames (equalized the hive) so that the empty frames are now on the outside and the cluster is in the middle.  I reckon there are:

   2 empty frames
   2 to 3 frames of brood
   4 to 5 frames (or thereabouts) of honey and pollen.

I also topped up the syrup.  The bees had taken some and I added approximately 1 litre more. I would have added even more but I had not made up any syrup. I planned to top up the syrup today.

This morning I was watching the bees with Matthew and they seem to have found a very yellow source of pollen - good news.  But this afternoon (about 4pm) there was a lot of activity outside the front of the hive.  The new opening was available and I wonder if there was some robbing going on.  I put the stopper in the new hole and within a couple of minutes the activity around the outside had subsided.  I later filled up the syrup inside the hive - I added another 2.5 litres.  Was there any robbing?  Did I stop it by replacing the stopper?  I don't know, but I think I'm happy some syrup is finally being taken in a reasonable quantity.