Robbing or reaping?

This morning I had a little time before I needed to go to work so I decided to walk out and take a peek at the hive and see how the bees were doing. I saw something that I thought was odd, but I'm not sure if I should be concerned.

First some background:
My hive is sitting on a palette which is sitting on cinderblocks which are on the ground.
What I noticed were:

1) Bees sort of walking around on the ground by the hive. I only saw three and they didn't seem to be hurt, they were just kind of walking around.

2) I saw a few yellowjackets zipping around the hive. I watched pretty closely and never saw a yellowjacket enter the hive (or even really come all that close).

3) I think I saw a yellow jacket take off carrying a dead bee that it had found on the ground. I say I think because as I'm sure many of you know, trying to follow an insect in flight with your eyes can be very difficult so I only got a glance.

At first I thought it could be robbing, but when I never saw a yellowjacket entering the hive I thought perhaps that the yellowjackets were just scavening dead bees for food.

I didn't have much time to observe before I needed to head to work so I decided to put on an entrance reducer and I quickly taped pieces of window screen over the vent holes in the boxes.

I posted to the bee board to see if anyone has seen anything like this, and to see if my conclusions sound reasonable.

I am eager to see what people say.

Third box empty?

8/13/07



I checked my hive yesterday and I was hoping to see a third box that was well drawn out with honeycomb. In fact I was hoping that there might have been one frame of honey that I could take and harvest but I was disappointed.


When I opened the hive and checked the top box I saw numerous bees walking around in there, but the frames in the top box looked totally untouched. If seemed like the bees had cleaned the frames up a little but I didn't see even the earliest signs of the foundation being drawn out.


The weather the last few weeks has been spotty and I live in a suburban neighborhood so perhaps there just hasn't been the resources available to draw out the top box.


I posted to the bee exchange board wondering if I should start feeding again. It doesn't really matter if I get a lot of honey this year, but it would be great if I could harvest at least a little to see what the honey in my hive tastest like.

According to the replies on the bee exchange board the empty third box is not unusual. Apparently in this area most of the major nectar flows are over so the bees don't really have the resources for stockpiling, thus the empty box.

One person suggested I remove the third box, so I'm thinking that the next time I check the bees I'll do that. Since I plan to move the hive in the winter anyway it would be much easier to move two boxes instead of three, so that at least is a plus.

I am disappointed that I might not get any honey this year, but I've read that isn't uncommon and hopefully good choices made this year will result in a really good harvest next year.

Oh, and so I don't forget one person recommended I medicate my bees with Fumigil in the fall. I haven't even thought of medications yet.

-Paul

The third box.

Hi Everyone,



Well I put the third box on a while back and I was worried about the queen excluder. Mostly I was worried that the excluder was too small to let the worker bees through. I have been watching my hive over the last couple of weeks, specifically noticing that no bees were using the top box vent hole as an entrance or exit (they use the vent holes for the lower two boxes as entrances/exits constantly).


I was worried that maybe the bees weren't moving into the top box, so I decided that since I had a little more syrup that I had made earlier, that I would put the last of the syrup into the feeder as a way to draw the bees into the top box.


When I checked the feeder I discovered that there were quite a few worker bees walking around in there, so I think that the bees have actually moved into the third box just fine.

I wish I had left more time to actually check the top box, but I had to go, so I just refilled the feeder and closed the hive. This weekend I should have plenty of time and good weather to check the bees again. I am eager to see how the top box is coming along.

I might even check the top two boxes since I am curious to see how the second box is filling out.

So stay tuned, hopefully an update and pictures on Monday.

Research on honey extraction.

Hi Everyone,

Perhaps I'm being too optimisitc, but I've been researching honey extraction techniques in the hope that my hive will produce at least a little surplus honey.

It looks like there are essentially two ways for me to extract honey:

1) The crush and strain method. This is pretty much what it sounds like. You take the honeycomb, crush it up, and put it in a strainer. I found a great video of the process at:

http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2007/06/honey-harvest-crush-and-strain.html

Pros - Minimal equipment needed, easy to do.

Cons- You have to destroy the honeycomb (some people consider this a pro, since you can use the wax for candles, also some people think that it's more hygienic to use new honeycomb each year).

2) Mechanical extraction. For this you get your hands on a spinning extractor.

Pros - Preserves the honeycomb for next year, very easy and efficient.

Cons - You have to build, buy or borrow an extractor.

I don't want to buy an extractor, not sure I have time to build one, and I've decided to not bother to rent one from my beekeeping club (I think it'll be more fun to have a method where I can do my harvesting whenever).

So that leaves the crush and strain method. Not much in the way of equipment to gather, just a matter of getting the surplus honey. The weather has been great and the bees have been busy, so we'll see how things go.

-Paul

Three Boxes Strong

7/8/07

Hi Everyone,

Well a quick check of the hive yesterday showed my top box to be pretty full of drawn comb. Following the 70% rule I decided to put on a queen excluder and my third box.

I've stopped feeding the bees as the weather has been great so I think they're doing fine on their own. If I don't see much activity in the third box I may put some feed in the top feeder as a way to draw the bees up into the third box.

I also did a quick check of my brood box, and things there are looking pretty good. My frames have larvae again, and I saw no sign of queen cells. My wife was able to get a great shot of one of the brood frames where you can see the white larvae really clearly:

So far so good. Since the weather is getting warmer I have put out a couple of bee watering sources. One is a bucket filled with water and styrofoam peanuts (the idea being that the bees can land on the peanuts and drink the water), the other is a board that I have under a dripping outdoor spigot. So far I haven't seen bees drinking but I'm hoping to see that happening soon.

I'll probably check the hive again in a couple of weeks to see how the top box is doing. Maybe I'll actually get to harvest honey in the next month or so.

No Eggs, and Clumsy Hiving

6/10/07



I checked my hive again yesterday. I wasn't extremely thorough as the weather was looking a little spotty (didn't want to get caught with an open hive in the rain again), but I at least got the chance to check several frames for eggs and larvae. I saw capped brood, but no eggs or larvae. So I'm really starting to think that my hive is queenless.

I think I'll leave it alone for a couple of weeks....hopefully by then a new queen will have hatched, mated and be laying eggs. I think I'll feel better once I see eggs and larvae again.

Also, I've been having some trouble with my hive frames, specifically I'm trying to improve my hive handling technique.

Currently my biggest problem is that the frames have these spacers on them that I'm having trouble with. By spacers I mean these lengths of wood about the size of a pencil. There are two on either end of the frame running from the top of the frame to the bottom. They are just there to make sure you can't take two frames and press them flush against each other (which would of course squish the bees).

The problem I run into is that when I am closing up the hive I have to of course put all of the frames back in. I can only fit all 10 frames in there if the frames are snugly in there (where the spacer for one frame is resting right up against the spacer on the next frame, which is of course the point of a spacer), and I've noticed that sometimes I'll be pushing two frames together and I'll hear this unpleasant ---Crunch-- sound as a bee gets caught between the spacers.

I try to move the frames together slowly, but it seems like the bees don't get the hint and move. Instead they just sit there until they are trapped between the two spacers. According to the advice on bee source if you smoke the bees or blow on them as you slowly press the frames together the bees will scamper out of the way. I'm going to try very hard the next time I open the hive to not squish any bees in the hive.

Maybe this is how my hive ended up queenless in the first place.

Are these queen cells?

June 3, 2007

A very eventful day. I suited up and my wife was standing by with the camera.

The first photo I had taken was of one of my frames. I was concerned by the pattern. Seemed like no eggs or larvae:

On another frame, I blew on the bees a bit to move the bees. Again, not a very good pattern and I saw THIS:

That appears to be a queen cell, front and center on the frame. That really concerned me.

Another frame looked kind of disorganized:

This picture is one of my older frames, it looks more like what I was expecting with a nice patch of capped brood in the center:

Another odd frame, note what might be another queen cell down in the corner:

Yet another queen cell:

A good frame again:

In general I saw lots of capped brood, a little capped honey, and I even saw a bee hatching. However I saw several queen cells and didn't see any eggs or larvae. The eggs are hard to see sometimes, but I would think larvae is usually really easy to spot.

Here are close ups of the queen cells:

I wasn't sure what to make of all this so I went to the exchange on www.beesource.com and asked for help.

The folks on the bee source exchange were (as always) incredibly insightful and generous with their help.

From the many responses I got I generally learned that my situation was one of:

1) My queen was dead, sick, or gone. Possible that she died of natural causes, or maybe my newbie hive handling skills squished her. This theory was supported by the fact that I didn't notice any eggs or larvae and that my younger frames didn't have a very good pattern.

2) The queen is fine but the bees were reacting to the imbalance of age groups in the new hive by creating new queen cells. Essentially the bees think that the queen as failing. According to "Beekeeping for Dummies" this sometimes happens at the six week point and that was exactly the age of my hive.

3) The bees for whatever reason wanted to swarm.

Based on all of this information I decided that if it was option 1, I could either buy a new queen and go through requeening procedures (tricky since I'm still not too good at spotting the queen) or I could let the supersedure go and hope I get a healthy new queen.

If it was option 2 then I could either cut out all of the queen cells or let the queens hatch and supersedure.

If it was option 3 then I could either let the swarm happen or take steps to prevent it.

I decided to wait, and let the bees sort it out. Hopefully I will have a return to normal in a couple of weeks. I'll probably check the hive again in a week and see how things look.

Stay tuned.