Back after the winter

Interestingly, I was writing a post this morning and even had it saved as a draft when the kids came in all excited that "the bees are swarming!". So, here's the text of this post as it was this afternoon:

Well, everything survived the winter, which given NC weather isn't too extreme. We luckily didn't suffer an Easter freeze and so everything seems set. I have yet to go and check them thoroughly and reverse the boxes, but the weather is turning nice now after a week of grey and rain so should be able to soon. I have checked on them a couple of times briefly in the winter and everything looked good and all the signs are we should be building up nicely.

So apparently the bees had their own idea of when I should be paying attention to them. There's been a lot of discussion on the Chatham Beekeepers mailing list about swarms in the area and so it was a definite possibility, but looking out of the window on the way down there was certainly a lot of bees on the front but not that many. So, just in case, I dug out my nuc, grabbed my stuff and headed down. Even before I got there things had calmed down so I assumed it was the warm day (we hit mid 70's here) and the fact that the last week had been cold, wet and overcast.

So I decided to take the plunge and go through the hive and give it a good check. I had on my usual hat and shirtsleeves but the tone of the hive soon had me decide that perhaps a veil was a better idea. There was a lot of angry flying about, in the end nothing too aggressive but better safe than stung. I took away the top feeder which is clearly not necessary now as all the three boxes on there were nicely in use. I rotated the boxes, the top two were well stuck together with burr comb which I removed the best I could. The bottom box was clearly less used but certainly not empty and I noticed new healthy looking brood on a number of frames.

My smoker played up again, so the whole thing took longer than I would have liked and so I didn't go through each frame (would have been good to check for swarm signs just in case) but maybe next time.

Was nice to be back among them, even on their more "busy" days it's still fun to be surrounded by them.

Inspected

Well, I've had a few of the boxes off lately, just to eyeball the colony and make sure nothing was obviously amiss (making sure, for example, the wax moths hadn't migrated over). Last week though I had the advantage of professional help in the form of Don Hopkins, Plant Apiary Inspection Supervisor (web site). Don went through the colony systematically and luckily I was pretty lucky, no nasty surprises and a reasonably healthy looking colony considering the weather this year.

We did find Varroa mites, but that's not only expected but at this time of the year they are at their peak and so no surprise there. With the heat last week (still over 100 some days) the Api Life VAR (Brushy Mtn link) I had bought earlier in the year was not going to work as it requires daily temperature below 95. Luckily the forecast this week is not only for cooler temperatures but also some rain at last, so maybe we'll get some autumn blooms - right now some of the autumn flowers are coming out early and weak due to the heat and lack of water. Hopefully if it isn't stormy this afternoon I'll start the Api Life treatment.

Back to the colony though the lack of water and the damage to the Poplar flow earlier in the year means that while the colony looks strong and there is good brood and a lot of pollen there is unfortunately a decided lack of honey and still some frames not drawn out. So, the plan is to keep feeding a 1:1 sugar syrup for the time being and see if I can stimulate the rest of the frames to get drawn out and keep the brood production up as well.

Finally Don commented on the light color of the girls, not something I'd paid that much attention to other than to note how pretty they are especially when young. They are still incredibly docile, notably as we went through the whole colony on a really warm mid-afternoon.

Smoker fuel - any favourites?

An interesting question -- what do you use in your smoker? When I bought mine I got a stick of fuel which I've rarely used as it's pretty hard to actually get lit. Most folks around here use pine straw and dry leaves which are OK but the problem there is that I have a lot of trouble keeping it lit. So, having read someone say they used baling twine/burlap as a fuel I cut off a strip from some burlap we had in the garage for the garden. I have found that a mix of the burlap (a square about 4"x6") and the pine straw seems to be pretty good and will keep lit for me for a good while.

So anyone out there with favourite fuels, hints, tips?

Update on the bees and the pool

Well, the dog waterer may not work for everyone but it has sure worked for us. We moved the watered (standing on a concrete block) away from the pool over about two weeks and it now stands about 2 feet outside the fence and we rarely see any bees by the pool or trying to drink from it even though they are flying in right by it. We did consider moving it further but it's nice to sit and watch them sometimes and as they are no longer a nuisance everyone is happy.

Again, one large concrete block (about $4 from Lowes), one large pet waterer ($21.99 from Petsmart), water and a dash of honey-b-healthy.

Not so successful adventure

Well, a few weeks back now I went out one evening with some local beekeepers to remove a colony from an old house nearby. This was a real adventure, I am used to relatively docile bees not the anger of a big colony being ripped out of their nest with circular saws and wrecking bars! Luckily I made it through the evening with only a few relatively minor stings but the prize came when we managed to lift up the floor in the room upstairs and between the joists were row upon row of comb thick with honey and brood.

After the cleaning out of the colony we shared out honey comb between the four of us and also made up some frames to hold the brood comb in the hopes of starting a new hive. I had taken a nuc with me and with some help managed to prepare a number of combs and bring back. The result is shown below.

The trick now was to get them installed in the spare hive and get building the colony. So first thing the next morning I had put together the hive about 20-25 feet from the first and added the frame and bees from the nuc above. This went reasonably well though the bees were still far from happy and a veil and long sleeves were definitely required. Anyway, I added a feeder (aluminium foil tray, sugar water and pine straw) in an empty box above the brood and left them to it.

In all of this it was interesting to note that the bees themselves looked quite different to the first hive in the yard; they were considerably darker with more pronounced bands on them; unfortunately I haven't a really good picture of this, but you get some idea from this one.

The next thing I noticed was a lot of activity from the original hive, and before long the new one was covered (well maybe not covered, but there were a lot) with bees from the first hive. I did see some of the new bees protecting the entrance to their hive (I had the entrance reduced in with the smallest opening) but I think they were quickly overwhelmed. I picked up a queen the next day but when I opened the hive even in such a short time there were a lot fewer of the dark bees than I know I put in. I topped up the feed and left them for a few days with the queen.

3 days later and when I open the hive, nothing, the queen is still in her cage and I counted a total of 4 dark bees walking over the four brood frames (2 blank frames either side to fill the box) and already a few opportunistic ants. It was clear this adventure didn't end well and despondent I closed the hive and decided to come back in a day or so and clean up. Well with work and some other distractions a day or so became over a week and finally last weekend I went down to collect up all the boxes clean them and store them away.

To my dismay the body was full of nesting ants, beetles and worst of all wax moths; so all of the frames I had to toss and had to spend a long time cleaning out the ants and scrubbing the boxes clean before I could put them away. Lesson learned there.

A shame things didn't work out, and also couldn't make this months Chatham beekeppers meeting so don't know how the others did getting their bees home and started - well I guess I'll find out next month.

Stung

Well, the first sting for me was this weekend. The colony has been incredibly docile, and I've taken to just a hat, no veil or gloves and now usually just shorts and a tshirt when I go down to do any work. But, I wanted to get a few pictures this time, and of course was paying a lot less attention to what I was doing and put the frames back in the box roughly, upset the bees and paid the price. So, I'll post the pictures but please remember the cost :-)

Bees and the pool

I know it's been a while since I posted anything but work and the garden have kept me busy. I am going to echo here a thread that's been discussed recently on the local beekeeper mailing lists, with a personal angle. How to keep the bees away from our pool.

It seems bees like a water source that has a strong odor and Chlorine is one of those odors and so a pool becomes a great attraction. At first this was cool, we could watch the bees drinking from the edge, or from the string holding up the thermometer or drinking off the mat where people get in and out (which of course gets nice and wet). But, some days there's a lot of bees and sooner or later ....

So we experimented, we moved the mat so as not to have a really big and easy drinking source, we moved a waterer I had already made closer to the pool and we removed everything from the pool that could be a "float" for the bees to drink from.

The waterer itself was pretty simple, one of those large dog water dispensers (works like a water cooler) and with a little added honey-b-healthy it was pretty strong smelling.

At first we put it next to the area where the bees had been drinking before and after a few false starts it worked. I had tried a simple plastic float to keep the bees from drowning in it but that seemed not to work so well so we fell back on the local do-everything tool of pine straw.

Now it seems very popular and while a few bees do fly around the pool on the way in and out it's the waterer they head for. So, day by day we've been inching it away from the pool and again it seems to be working.

While I don't claim this will work for everyone, and you never know it may not work for us for long, it's been an interesting exercise and certainly easier than trying to create a more permanent water source closer to the bees themselves.