A New Beekeeper’s Journal

 

By Michael Steinkampf

 

 

 

February 7, 2010 – Midwinter cutout.

 

I attended the 15th Annual Auburn University Beekeeping Symposium yesterday. There were many knowledgeable beeks there, include my mentor, who was kind enough to introduce me around.

 

Dr. Hurst at the beekeeping symposium.

 

Given my previous stingful experience with cutting a bee hive out of my neighbor’s house, I was interested in attending a breakout session on how to do a proper cutout. The presenter was pessimistic about getting a cutout to survive in a new hive, but it became apparent that in the audience there was someone with a considerable amount of experience at doing this – David Kelton.

 

Mr. Kelton is a retired electrical engineer who is also a Master Beekeeper (yes, such a certification really exists) and president of the Etowah County Beekeepers Association. I introduced myself after the lecture, and he invited me to observe a cutout he had scheduled for the next day in Albertville, Alabama, a small town about 60 miles northeast of Birmingham.

 

This house was undergoing remodeling when a bee hive was discovered in an exterior wall.

 

Mr. Kelton and his assistant collecting bees with a “bee vac”, a ventilated box hooked to a small shop vacuum.

 

 

 

 

 

The bees are remarkably docile, possibly because it’s so cold (about 30 degrees F). A bee veil would still be a good idea, though.

 

The combs are exposed as the rotten siding is pulled away.

 

I learned that one of the secrets of keeping bees alive during the cutout is to use a vacuum just strong enough to get the bees off the comb – a stronger vacuum kills the bees as they pass through the vacuum hose.

 

Mr. Kelton has several hive boxes in his pickup to use as needed.

 

Judicious use of a reciprocating saw further exposes the hive.

 

The bees are slowly removed while searching for the queen.

Mr. Kelton points to honey comb just above some brood .

 

The brood comb is suctioned and removed, but still no queen. She is found in the very last piece of comb removed.

Close-up of the brood comb with capped and uncapped larvae – a typical pattern for early January.

 

Mrs. Kelton mounts the brood comb into a frame. Installing this frame into the new hive will greatly increase the chance that these bees will survive.

The suctioned bees are removed from the bee vac. Looks like about two pounds worth.

 

The honey combs have all been removed and set aside. A portable heater keeps hands warm.

 

Mr. Kelton mounts honey combs into frames with twist ties.

 

Mrs. Kelton keeps the bees warm in the cab of the truck. She is holding the queen in a small cage. The bees will be installed into a hive using the combs obtained during the cutout.

 

Here is a video on YouTube of this cutout. A nice job by the Keltons, and a good learning experience for me.

 

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Beekeeping update 12/25/09 – The bee in winter.

 

Winter is quiet time for bees and their keepers.  The thymol mite treatment is done, and as you can see below, the mite drop has tapered off dramatically.  Not much more to do now but make some boxes in preparation for next year’s honey crop.

 

 

 

Although there is a general impression that bees hibernate through the winter, that is not so. Actually, bee metabolism speeds up as temperatures fall below 50 degrees F, and the queen begins to lay eggs again (albeit at a low rate) just after the winter solstice (December 21st).

 

Bees begin to ball up into a cluster within the hive when the ambient temperature falls below 64 degrees F, and the cluster compacts further to conserve heat as the temperature drops.  If brood larvae are present, the colony will try to maintain the center of the cluster at about 93 degrees.  The cluster consists of a tightly packed “crust” of bees with their heads pointed inward, surrounding a more loosely packed core of bees that generate heat by constricting their flight muscles. Basically, they survive by huddling together and shivering.


(A) Infrared thermogram of the bees on the central comb of a broodless winter cluster (3.5 s after cage opening was started, FLIR ThermaCam SC2000). Note the warm thorax (yellow and white spots) of the endothermic bees with shivering thermogenesis. Two additional measurements in the same cluster confirmed this finding (not shown). The arrow points to the queen. Bees that visited the surface are visible at the lower left end of the cluster. (B) Temperature profile along the line marked in A; arrows mark the thoraces of endothermic bees hit by the line. (C) Infrared thermogram of the bees on the flat side of an outer comb (same cluster as in A); one (periphery) to four (centre) bee layers. Ambient temperature was 5.5°C 3 cm beneath the cluster and 3.7°C 1 m outside the open cluster cage.  (Taken from Stabentheimer A et al. Endothermic heat production in honeybee winter clusters. Journal of Experimental Biology 2003 Jan;206(Pt 2):353-8.)

On the occasional warm winter day, bees will emerge to scout for food sources and to relieve themselves (a colony with thousands of members must have strict bathroom rules to prosper.)  This might occur at ambient temperatures lower than 64 degrees for a hive in a sunny location.  The more bees, the bigger the cluster and the easier it is to conserve heat.  Small hives in northern climates can’t survive the cold, and northern beekeepers have been known to wrap their hives with insulation (or even store them in cellars) to help them make it through the winter.  No such preparations are needed in Alabama, although a windbreak and some extra ventilation to prevent moisture buildup in the hive are prudent measures. 

 

I removed the spacers from the hives to facilitate their forming a cluster, and I installed a top feeder on hive #1, which continues to eject an occasional dead bee with deformed wings.  If they take the syrup, I might add one to the other hive, too.  Feeders won’t help if it gets really cold, though - colonies can starve to death with honey stores as little as two inches from the cluster if it gets cold enough.  The cluster has to be able to congregate directly over stored supplies in very cold weather, and it will move slowly sideways or upward (but never downward) to try to access more food as needed.  The best preparation for winter is to have a populous hive with an adequate amount of stored honey (perhaps 30 pounds in South, three times that much in Canada) and pollen.

 

 

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December 9, 2009 – Man versus mite

 

How do you kill 10,000 mites living amidst 30,000 bees?  There are two general classes of miticides: synthetic (sometimes called “hard” chemicals), and naturally occurring (“soft”) chemicals.  “Hard” chemicals are basically variations of pesticides (pyrethroids, organophosphates) used in the agriculture industry to kill ticks on livestock.  They can be highly effective, but mites quickly develop resistance to them, and they can accumulate in hive wax, possibly weakening bees over time.  “Soft” chemicals are organic acids (formic acid, oxalic acid) or aromatic chemicals derived from the oils of plants.  Soft chemicals don’t accumulate in hive wax, and mites don’t seem to be able to develop resistance to these chemicals, but they probably more toxic to bees than the synthetic miticides in the short term.  After looking over the choices, I ordered some formic acid from a nearby apiary supply house.  Formic acid has been used to kill varroa mites for many years in Europe with reasonable success, and it works well in cool weather – good for me since I was late in battling these beasts.  Unfortunately, the product wasn’t available, and they offered me Apiguard instead.  Rather than look for another supplier, I accepted their offer.

 

Apiguard is thymol suspended in an inert gel. Thymol is an aromatic chemical obtained from the thyme plant.  It has been used as an antiseptic since the time of the pharaohs (it was one of the ingredients used to prepare mummies).  Thymol has a very characteristic odor which you probably know – it is one of the active ingredients in Listerine.  Apiguard is fairly easy to apply and relatively nontoxic, but the directions say its effectiveness is reduced when the maximum daytime temperature is less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Since this is mid-November, time is of the essence.

 

 

Apiguard gel pack. Simply peel and serve.

 

 

Getting set up for Apiguard treatment. Spacers are inserted over the brood box to give the bees adequate access to the gel container. The bees spread the gel throughout the hive.

 

Apiguard installed above brood box.  (The spacer is not yet in place.)

 

Sticky boards three days after Apiguard installation.  The boards are approximately 15 inches wide by 22 inches long.

 

Close-up view of a sticky board three days after Apiguard installation. There were more than 1,000 mites on the board.

 

There was little doubt that Apiguard was knocking out the mites – here are the mite counts for two weeks after the installation (done on November 21st).

The manufacturer of Apiguard recommends a second application two weeks after the initial treatment.  By the second application (on December 9th), I estimated that almost 6,000 mites had fallen out of hive #1, and 2,700 mites had dropped out of hive #2.

 

I’ve been asked a couple of questions about varroa mites:

 

Q: How big are they?

 

A: About 1.5 by 2 mm. Here’s a picture that gives you an idea of their size.

 

 

 

Q: How did they make it to America?

 

A: No one knows. Although the mites were thought originate on the island of Java, more recent evidence suggests the strains in the US probably came from Japan or Korea.  They were first recognized in the United States in 1987.  As of late 2009, Australia is the only region of the world thought to still be free of the varroa mite.

 

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November 21, 2009 – Return of the destructor

 

Things seem to have been developing reasonably well with these hives. The top hive boxes weigh over 40 pounds, indicating the bees have laid up an adequate supply of honey for the winter. Even at the late date, some pollen continues to be brought in to the hive by foragers. But 10 days ago I saw a sign that all may not be right with these hives – this bee was slowly crawling on the landing board of hive #1:

 

Worker bee with shriveled wings.

 

 

It’s normal to have a few dead bees in front of the hive, especially at this time of the year, when drones continue to be evicted. However, most foraging bees end their careers by not returning from a final flight, and this bee is a worker, not a drone; and actually, it was still alive.  It is suffering from deformed wing virus (DWV), an infection known to be transmitted by varroa mites. DWV has been implicated as one possible cause of colony collapse disorder (see here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deformed_wing_virus).

 

When I asked around for advice about this, opinions on what to do ranged from “just ignore it” to “burn your hives, they’re goners”.  I decided to take a middle course – I determined the severity of mite infestation in the hives. 

 

There are several ways to assess the number of mites in a bee hive. I chose the easiest and least intrusive – a mite drop survey.  Each day, about 1% of the varroa mites in a colony fall to the floor of the hive (the exact number varies with the season).  One simply installs a board under the hive to collect mites that drop from the colony.  Fortunately, the bottom boards that I had built for these hives had been designed for this sort of monitoring, although I had never gotten around to doing it.

Sticky boards installed.

 

I made the boards from sheets of cardboard covered with freezer wrap attached by spray adhesive.  It is generally recommended that the boards be covered with spray cooking oil (Pam) or petroleum jelly (Vasoline).  I tried the cooking oil spray, but it didn’t seem sticky to me, so I sprayed the tops with the same adhesive (3M Super 77) that I had used to attached the paper to the cardboard. It seemed to work quite well.

 

Examining a sticky board is a little like sorting through a beehive’s garbage pile. There are bits of pollen, bee legs and other debris, an occasional hive beetle, as well as varroa mites.  If more than a few mites are seen, then treatment should be considered. The recommended threshold varies, but more than 20 mites dropped per day in November is a sign that the hive may be headed for collapse.

 

(By the way, for more information about this and other topics related to varroa mites, the best Web sources of info I have found are at Scientific Beekeeping: http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com//index.php, and a United Kingdom government site: https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/pdfs/varroa.pdf.  If you are a hobbyist beekeeper and not very familiar with the management of varroa mites, you should probably be considering some other hobby, as your hives will soon be dead.)

 

Sticky board 24 hours after installation.

 

Close-up view of sticky board.  Numerous mites are apparent.

 

 

Here are the results of my initial mite drop survey (no data was collected from hive #1 on November 12th because an ant infestation obscured the sticky board on that day):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Looks like these hives (especially #1) might be in trouble.

 

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Beekeeping update 10-21-09: Eviction notice.

 

Here are a couple of photos from October 18th.  The foragers are still bringing in pollen, mostly goldenrod (bright orange-yellow), but some pale pollen, too.

 

Pollen packets, probably goldenrod.

 

Pale pollen packet, unknown source.

 

Today (October 21st) we returned from a trip to Atlanta to find considerable activity at the hive entrances. It looked like a bee wrestling match, with numerous bees locked together in pairs or groups, often falling off the landing board onto the ground.  It took a moment to realize what was going on - the drones were being evicted.

 

Drones (arrows) being evicted from the hive.

 

Worker bees piled onto a drone (not visible) at the hive entrance.

 

 

 

Discarded drones at the hive entrance.

 

A closer view of the discarded drones.  Note the goldenrod pollen packets.

 

Drones (the male honeybees) are easily distinguished in a hive.  They are larger and appear “chunky”, with a blunt or rounded abdomen and large eyes. Drone larvae hatch from eggs which the queen bee does not fertilize; thus they have only half the chromosome count of worker (and queen) bees (16 chromosomes for drones, 32 for the others).  Of course, drones serve a valuable role by mating with queens from other hives.  A queen will typically mate with 10 to 20 drones during her mating flights, and drones die after mating. 

 

Drones comprise up to 15% of the total hive population, but they are normally expelled from the hive in the Fall, or whenever there is nectar or pollen supplies become scarce.  During this time, worker bees stop feeding the drones, weakening them, and then they are ejected from the hive.  Since plenty of pollen was still coming in, it is likely that these hives recognized (perhaps by the changes in day/night lengths or weather) that it was just time for the drones to go.  There was a cold snap a few days ago; my guess is that was the trigger for the event.  Drone eviction is a sign that the hive is getting ready for winter.

 

Discarded drone and pollen packets. I don’t why so much pollen wound up being lost, but my guess is the traffic congestion caused by evicting the drones bumped off some of the pollen loads being brought in by incoming foragers.

A windbreak for hives made of tarpaper.  Bee hives need ventilation during the winter to prevent moisture buildup, but protection from wind is beneficial.

 

 

 

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Beekeeping update 10-2-09

 

Inspection day.  It is said that a hive inspection should always have a specific aim.  In this case, we were looking for either queen cells (“swarm cells”), indicating a recent swarm, or signs of disease in the frames.  It didn’t take long to discover the problem.

 

The top of the honey super on the parent hive. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

 

One of the frames from the honey super.  The frame had previously consisted of capped-off honey, but now it was mostly larval cells, most empty, some capped).

 

The mystery is solved – there are numerous queen cells (arrows) in the honey super.

 

Another view of the queen cells.

 

An interesting photo from the parent hive showing how the hive had converted a frame previously filled with honey (on left) to raise more bees (with capped larvae on right).  The ex-swarm hive was doing this to a lesser extent.

 

A frame taken from the honey super of the ex-swarm hive. No brood here, only capped honey.  This what the super should look like, with honey stored for the winter.

 

Frames from the ex-swarm honey super showing more capped honey.

 

We ended the inspection without examining the brood boxes themselves, as it was clear what had happened to the missing bees in the parent hive – they had flown away with the queen.  Hopefully, the hive will generate yet another queen.

 

I had been feeding the hives to build them up for the winter, both to establish an adequate store of honey and a sizeable number of bees.  This advice had been widely advanced at local beekeeping meetings and in the state bee society newsletter, but in my case the bees took the opportunity to try to reproduce one more time.

 

I don’t know what happened to the afterswarm. I haven’t gotten any calls from my neighbors (whew!). I am sorry to report that swarms which leave the hive this late in the year usually do not survive.

 

No more feeding the bees for now.

 

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Beekeeping update 9-23-09

 

Take a look at these photos, taken three days apart:

 

 

 

It’s pretty clear that the number of bees in the parent hive (on the left) have dwindled dramatically, while the ex-swarm hive (on the right) has continued to build. The feeder box showed a similar picture. Compare the photo below with the one from the previous post, taken a week earlier:

Top feeder box on parent hive, 9-23-09.

 

Although it’s possible for bees to drift from one hive to the other, my understanding is that this doesn’t occur to the extent seen here.  Either the parent hive is dwindling from disease, or it has swarmed again.  “Afterswarms” are known to occur after a primary swarm, and frankly I would prefer this to some hideous disease that might require drastic measures (American foul brood, a bacterial infection, is generally dealt with by burning and burying the hive and all its boxes.  It is the main reason why state hive inspection programs were set up, as it is highly contagious once established in a hive).  While chemical/antibiotic treatments to prevent or treat nosema, foulbrood, mites, and hive beetles are commonly used in this area, I have done none of these, being concerned with the long-term effects of these treatments.  Some of chemicals are incorporated into the comb wax and may weaken the bees over time, and the pests tend to become resistant to the treatments.  Instead, I have used physical pest-control methods (drone frame swaps, screen bottom boards, and beetle traps). Now I was beginning to wonder how wise this decision was.  I called my mentor for help, but it will be a couple of weeks until we can get together for an inspection.  During this time, I will continue to feed them and hope for the best. 

 

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Beekeeping update 9-17-09

 

Not much excitement in the backyard apiary this week.  I continue to feed the bees to help them recover from their swarming, and bee populations in both hives seem to be increasing.  Pollen continues to be brought into the hives by the bees.  Beehives are supposed to benefit from the variety of flowering plants and irrigation found more frequently in suburbia than in the forest, and one can confirm this from the varying colors of pollen brought back by foragers.

 

I was reading in a beekeeping book the other day about what kind of clothing to wear to avoid getting stung by bees.  The author strongly recommended against wearing gloves, saying bare hands allow better control when manipulating the hive frames, bees seldom sting the hands, and bee stings on the hand don’t hurt very much anyway.  But take a look at the empty feeder jar below – I just can’t bring myself to remove this without gloves.

 

 

Empty feeder jar – any volunteers for barehanded removal?

 

Since a bee dies after stinging, it would be nice to minimize how many bees sting during hive manipulations, even if protective clothing is adequate. Now, smoke has long been used to calm bees, but I have overheard local beekeepers remark that they rarely use bee smokers.  Smoke is thought to mask the alarm pheromones that arouse bees; also, bees exposed to smoke begin to ingest honey (perhaps as preparation for leaving a burning hive), and honey-filled bees are less aggressive. With all the bees flying around during a hive manipulation, it’s hard to tell if the smoke is having any effect, so I decided to perform a simple experiment: remove the empty feeder jar with or without smoking the top of the hive first.

Picture in the tomb of Rekhmire, Governor of Thebes, about 1450 BC.  Note the horizontal clay hives in use, with a smoker held above the worker who is harvesting honey combs.  The earliest records of beekeeping (also from Egypt) date to 2400 BC.

 

My home-made smoker.

 

The jars were removed on different days with comparable weather conditions (bees are said to be more irritable when skies are cloudy).  Here are the results:

 

 

Removal of feeder jar without using the smoker. Each white dot is a stinger (there were 12 in all).

 

No stings when the top of the hive was smoked before removal.

 

Conclusion: bee smoker good.

 

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Beekeeping update 8-3-09

 

It’s been 13 days since I installed the new queen. I took a peak at the cage three days after the install and the queen was still there; three days later it was gone, so it could be up in the hive doing its thing for a maximum of nine days. 

 

Queen cage six days after installation Only some curious workers remain, probably attracted by the pheromones of the now-departed queen.

 

Future worker-bee larvae are capped about nine days after the eggs are laid (drone cells are capped at day 10).  If we look inside today, we should see some eggs and larvae, but probably not many capped cells, and no capped cells on the drone frame.

 

Larval development of the worker bee (and the varroa mite).

 

 

 

 

 

One of the brood frames. Plenty of larvae here.

 

 

A close-up of the brood frame; most of the larvae are capped.

 

The drone frame. Plenty of capped brood here, too; almost 1,000 larvae, from as many eggs as a good queen can lay in a day.

 

Looks like I wasted my money buying a new queen – there was already one at work in the hive.  Perhaps I should have taken one last look in the hive before installing the queen.  If I had found eggs, I could have transferred a couple of frames and the purchased queen to a “nuc box” (short for nucleus box; it’s pronounced “nuke box”), a small box often used to establish a new hive.  I even have one of those boxes lying around, made from scrap lumber on a rainy day.

 

My nuc box (on right).

 

In case you are wondering, I never did find the queen in this hive.  Once I start manipulating the brood box, the bees come boiling out, mostly looking for a place to sting (my office staff seems to enjoy counting sting marks on my arms).  It’s a bit of a challenge to concentrate when your head is surrounded by a cloud of angry bees.  Applying smoke to a hive is an ancient technique to subdue bees, but it has minimal effect on this hive once I start pulling out the brood frames.  I will leave that adventure to another day, but my guess is that the queen we find will not have a green dot.

 

Just after the inspection of the brood box.

 

The hive 10 minutes after the inspection, still in a defensive posture.

 

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July 21, 2009 – To queen or not to queen?

 

By July 17th, it had been 26 days since the hive swarmed.  Doctor Hurst came over last week to see if the hive had generated a new queen – no luck.  I decided to take another look, and if there were no eggs, I would order another queen.  Here are some shots of the brood frames.

 

No eggs seen.

 

 

 

Lots of pollen, but no eggs.

The queen arrived five days later from an apiary in Georgia (two-day shipping requested, but it arrived in one day – nice job UPS).  The office staff was amused by the package. 

 

 

This queen is marked with a dark green dot. The bees (queen plus her retinue) looked quite frisky.

 

I made a hole in the candy plug with a nail to facilitate release of the queen.

 

Here is the queen cage about to be inserted into the hive. As shown here, the cage was immediately surrounded by workers. Welcoming committee or lynch mob?  I thought about taking one last look for a queen or eggs, but at this point, I figured I would just let the queens fight it out.

 

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July 5, 2009 – One week after cut-out

 

Bees are coming and going from both hives. It would appear that the things are going as planned.

 

 

Still plenty of bees in the new hive. I have removed the queen excluder/includer.

 

 

The bees are starting to “draw out” the comb, depositing their own wax, most apparent in the upper right of the frame.

 

 

Arrows point to small white rods in the bottom of cells.  These are newly laid eggs.  It is possible for workers to lay eggs (which invariably result in drones, since the workers have no sperm to fertilize the eggs), but worker’s eggs are usually scattered among the frame and often adherent to the sides of the cell, unlike these eggs.

 

Here is the (marked) queen in the new hive – proof that it was from my original hive.  Swarms generally set up a new hive at least 100 meters from the old hive, but once they are captured, they can be installed right next to the original hive without problems.

 

The bees are ignoring their own combs – no point in leaving these.

 

A frame from the original hive.  Arrows point to queen cells that are now empty, a sign that the hive has probably generated a new queen. We didn’t see a queen or eggs in this hive, but Dr. Hurst says it can take three weeks for new queens to start laying.  We will check again in a week or two.

 

 

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June 29, 2009 – The good neighbor.


The day after my swarm absconded, we went back to where I had caught them.  There was a small cluster of bees under my neighbor’s bay window, but no queen.  My original hive seemed to be doing OK despite the recent swarming.  The syrup consumption has dropped way off, but there were still a plenty of bees in the hive.  Hopefully, this hive will make a new queen.

 

A few days later, my neighbor noticed bees were continuing to fly around his window, and they were starting to show up in his basement. I could see that bees were coming and going through small cracks in the caulking around his window frame.  He has a son who is interested in bees, and he was kind enough to let me take off some boards below his window to see if the swarm had returned.

 

Looking for a hive. (Photo courtesy of Eric Nelson)

 

Here is what I found under the window:

 

 

Now, you would think a swarm wouldn’t return to their original location after being hauled off, but perhaps I hadn’t captured the queen the first time, or maybe the bees really liked this spot – it is perfect for honeybees: Southern exposure with a cavity appropriately sized for a hive, several easily defended entrances, and a small pipe beneath the main entrance that drips condensation water from the air conditioner. 

 

Leaving the new hive alone for a few days might be a good strategy, as this would give the queen time to lay eggs; placing combs with larvae in the hive box would probably increase the likelihood of the hive sticking around.  However, in the end I thought it best to get them out of my neighbor’s house as soon as possible.  The beekeeping term for this is a “cut-out”.  Generally, a cutout involves the removal of bees that have set up residence in a house wall for months or years - some homeowners don’t realize that bees have taken up residence until honey starts to drip out of the walls.

 

This time, I would put some of the comb into empty frames and insert them into the hive box, and I would try to keep the queen in the box by using a queen excluder as a “queen includer”.  Queen excluders are carefully machined screens that allow just enough room (about 4 mm) for worker bees to pass, but not enough for the queen (or drones) to make it through.  They are typically used between a brood box and a honey super to keep the queen from laying eggs in frames meant for honey extraction, but I had read of excluders being used under these circumstances to encourage a swarm to stay in a hive.

 

A welded wire queen excluder.  The interwire space measured 0.163 inch (4.14 mm) using my micrometer.  My other excluder has spaces of 0.150 inch (3.81 mm).

 

 In this case, I installed the screen below the brood box and removed the upper entrance.  Thus, workers could come and go, but the hive (or at least the queen) couldn’t abscond again like last time.  At least, that’s the theory.

 

There wasn’t anything subtle about this job - I just smoked the hive and started gently removing the combs by hand, loading them into empty frames wrapped with string and rubber bands, and then scooping bees directly into the hive box.  (There didn’t seem to be any eggs or honey in the combs, but I thought the bees might still prefer their own combs.) Bees were everywhere, but most of them actually stayed in the box.  Although swarming bees are said to be docile, that wasn’t the case with these bees, who had just established a new hive – I probably took a dozen stings.  No way to tell if I got the queen (there must have been 20,000 bees under the window), but here is how things looked under the window just after the ordeal was over:

 

 

 

I kept the hive box near the cut-out overnight to collect the stragglers.  Here’s how it looked the next morning – most of the stragglers had departed, hopefully for my hive box.

 

The former beehive the morning after the cut-out.

Hive box on my neighbor’s front steps the next morning – encouraging.

 

The hive box about 24 hours after the cut-out. The bees are ignoring their own combs to congregate around other frames – OK by me, at least they are still there.

 

My plan is to remove the queen excluder after one week and look for the queen at that time.

Hand edema after bee stings.  The stings were on the wrists, but the swelling spread to the hands over the next 24 hours and resolved two days later.

 

 

 

 

 

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June 22, 2009: Man vs bee.

 

“A new colony start in the spring is not likely to swarm during that first season.  A novice beekeeper should not be overly concerned about swarming…”  Beekeeping – A Practical Guide, by Richard E. Bonney.

 

“There certainly are a lot of bees out in the yard,” my wife remarked on Sunday afternoon.  I put on my bee jacket and went out to take a look.  It was a veritable tornado of bees up in the sky.

 

 

The bee tornado.

 

The cloud of bees seemed to be moving toward a nearby tree in our yard. Sure enough, within a few minutes, the swarm had coalesced onto a branch high in the tree.

The backyard swarm, which contains the queen and about half of the worker bees from the hive.

 

It is certainly possible to collect a swarm and install it into another hive, but this swarm is just too high for an easy retrieval - about 25 feet, on a branch too big to easily cut.  My mentor suggests we set up a bait hive to lure the swarm into a box.

 

 

A brood frame makes a good lure for a swarm, but not this one – it has queen cells, which are needed by the original hive to generate a new queen..

 

A close-up of the queen cells, which are much larger than worker or drone cells. There are larvae evident inside. These cells were constructed well before the swarm left.  Both queen larvae and worker larvae are fed royal jelly initially, but larvae continued on this diet past the first few days will develop into queens. It will take a little more than a week after the swarm leaves for this hive to produce a new queen.

 

 

 

The bait box being lifted up to the swarm.  It is loaded with a brood frame, two old frames with drawn-out combs, and a pheromone lure.

 

Like I said, it’s way up there. 

 

 

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June 23, 2009 - Unfortunately, at 8 o’clock the next morning, the swarm took off for parts unknown, ignoring the bait box. Bees generally have new hive locations scouted out several days before swarming, and these bees had already decided they were going to set up a new hive …

 

 

… at my next-door neighbor’s house! My neighbor noticed them late that afternoon.

 

The swarm is centered on an empty electrical outlet box under a bay window; this will allow them to set up shop inside the wall of the house.  At this point, the bees are remarkably docile and can be collected fairly easily, but once the queen enters the wall it will be very difficult to remove the swarm (then technically a new hive) intact.  I scoop them into a large cardboard box and close the lid. 

 

 

My plan is to transfer them to an empty hive stocked with a few of the frames we used in the bait box.

 

Most of the swarm is in the new hive at this point, with a small opening left to allow the stragglers to enter. By the next morning (6 am), most all the bees were in the hive …

 

… only to fly off an hour later (shown here is the inside of the hive, with only a few dead bees remaining). I wish I had closed up the entrance completely when I first checked them that morning. We hoped they would fly back to my neighbor if the queen had remained ensconced within the wall, but they didn’t return.

 

Why did this hive swarm? Swarming is the mechanism for propagation of bees in the wild, but it generally does not occur until the second season of a hive’s existence.  In this case, I had continued to feed the hive syrup, building up the population dramatically, and I had been slow to install additional boxes to store honey, which crowded them.  The recent bout of hot weather was probably the final trigger for the bees to leave.  Here is a photo the hive just after dark about one week before the swarming.

 

This “bearding” phenomenon is said to be common in hot weather, but it is also a sign of a crowded hive.  The queen cells (also called “swarm cells”) were already being constructed, and swarming was probably inevitable by this point.

 

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5-27-09: Solo inspection. The Destructor appears.

 

After recovery from the last inspection, this hive seemed to prosper, and I thought it was probably time to add a “super”, a hive body above the brood box which the hive uses to store honey. Typically, the first box is retained on the hive as a food supply for the bees during the winter; any additional supers could be used for harvesting honey, although that is not usually done the first year of the hive. This would be my first inspection without my mentor; I figured it was probably time for this. First a few preparations:

 

New frames for the super – some assembly required.

 

 

 

 

The equipment assembled (on top of an extra hive stand). I decided to swap out the drone frame since I was already going to be manipulating the hive, even though it’s best to leave it for a full four weeks before changing. The spout has fallen off my homemade bee smoker (it was only a temporary attachment); it seems to work about as well without it and will not be replaced.

 

And of course, my new bee jacket and gloves (from Dadant). Shrimp boots previously obtained from WalMart.

 

And bee-sting supplies.  The aluminum foil is used to protect the medicines from light. My office staff is probably giving me an Epi-Pen for my birthday – my health (and their job security) is always their prime concern.

 

 

 

 

The bees are still avidly taking sugar water, requiring daily refills. I am going to add another bottle like this one.

 

Lots of bees at the top of the brood box; they seem to be working on the drone frame.

 

 

 

 

Although I carefully inspected the drone frame (to look for the queen) as it was being removed, I should have done a more thorough job of brushing bees off the frame. As you can see here, the bees have moved from the frame to the stand; they slowly moved under the hive bottom board, where they spent the night.

 

A view of the drone frame, partially filled in with larvae. Note the small brown spot off the end of the arrow; it’s probably a female Varroa destructor mite, the scourge of American beekeepers (The males are white and smaller). The Varroa mite lays its eggs in the larval cells just before the cell is capped. Developing mites feed on the bee larvae. Males and females copulate in the cell; the male dies, but pregnant females emerge from the cell along with their bee host and ultimately seek another cell to repeat the cycle.

 

 

I picked off the mite, fixed it in alcohol, and mounted it on a slide for a microscopic view.

 

 

The new drone frame has been inserted after sliding frames over; the bees seemed to tolerate this better than at the last inspection.

 

The old drone frame goes in the freezer, to be reinserted next month.

 

 

 

 

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May 17, 2009: A routine inspection that becomes not so routine.

 

Time for another inspection to see how the frames are filling out, and to check the hive beetle trap.

 

There are a lot more bees on the top of the frames than when we last looked …

 

… but the outer frame remains untouched; not yet time to add a super (a hive box with additional frames placed above the brood box).

 

 

The bees are drawing out comb on the drone frame, but no eggs or larvae are evident. We decide to move both these frames to the center of the brood box to encourage the bees to fill them out. The bees come boiling out of the hive, and before I know it there are bees flying around inside of my bee veil.  I run around the yard trying to escape the attackers while my mentor patiently waits at the hive (in his very nice bee suit). I’m stung about a half a dozen times - I guess it’s time to upgrade my protective gear.

 

The bees are still stirred up 15 minutes later – this inspection was not appreciated by the hive.

 

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May 6, 2009. Twenty days have passed since the bees were installed in the hive, and 13 days since the queen’s release was observed. It’s time to open the hive to see if the queen is laying eggs. The bee population has been steadily declining since the bee package was installed, and it is critical for the hive to starting making new bees. Once an egg is laid, it takes three days to become a larva and six more to form a pupa, which will hatch in another 12 days. (These numbers are for worker bees; queens develop more quickly, drones are slower.) Queens typically take two to four days to start laying eggs after release, so we should see larvae in the cells today, and hopefully some cells that are capped to form pupae.

 

Another reason to open the hive is to inspect for parasites. Beepkeeping was simple and easy before global trade – many European households in the 18th and 19th centuries had a few hives in the back yard (or even within the house itself). Now beekeepers have to deal with Varroa destructor mites (originally from Indonesia), small hive beetles (from Africa), nosema (a protozoan probably introduced from China) - the list is extensive (see here if you want the gruesome details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honeybee). Now, there are chemical treatments for most of these parasites, but they tend to become resistant over time. These parasites also stress the hive, which in turn makes it susceptible to viral infections for which there is no treatment. The best one can do is to keep a hive strong, minimize parasite infestation (the so-called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach), and accept that occasionally a hive will be wiped out. Today we are going to install a combo screened bottom board (SBB – built by me), a drone frame (purchased), and a small hive beetle trap that Dr. Hurst got from a beekeeper in Florida.

 

Drone frame and screened bottom board.

 

The drone frame has cells that are bigger than worker-bee cells, and Varroa mites prefer to lay their eggs in drone cells. The hive wants to make a few drone cells anyway, and this frame will direct the queen to localize them. Swap out the drone frame every month, freeze it for a couple of days, and you control your Varroa mite population. Put the frozen/thawed frame back in, and the bees will reclaim most of the energy they expended to make the drones by eating the now-dead larvae (yes, shades of Soylent Green). I purchased several of these frames so I can open the hive only once a month (this act also stresses the hive). The frame is green to differentiate it from the other frames.

 

The SBB has a bottom that allows hive beetles and mites to fall through, but keeps bees in (and out). Some people think SBBs improve hive health by lowering humidity, and it does allow more flexibility for IPM-type treatments (more on that another day), but  others say keeping a hive hot diminishes nosema infection, and a SBB probably drops the interior hive temperature a bit. The SBB I built allows for the bottom to be closed up if desired; if you look carefully at the picture you can see a Plexiglass sheet lying over the screen. This sheet will be removed before installation.

 

 

Two types of small hive beetle traps. They both have openings small enough to keep out the bees, but allow the beetles to enter and eat the beetle attractant (typically Crisco shortening) which has been laced with a non-volatile poison (probably boric acid). We are going to slide the black one through the bottom entrance under the brood frames – this technique worked nicely for queen release, and it allows inspection and replacement without opening the hive. (The white trap is mounted in an empty frame; we won’t use it today.)

 

This is the ventilation hole in the inner cover. The syrup feeding jar has just been removed – it’s clear that this feeding station has been popular with the bees. Note that some honeycomb is visible; any space bigger than 3/8 of an inch will tend to be filled in with comb.

 

 

The inner cover has been removed and placed in front of the hive entrance to encourage the adherent bees to return to the hive. Bees are on congregating among the center frames, where egg laying typically begins. We smoked the hive just before doing this to calm the bees, but they still got aggressive when we start pulling up the frames.

 

 

A frame just off the center of the hive. Many larvae are evident. We could stop right here, since we know that the queen is present and laying eggs, but we decide a more thorough inspection would be worthwhile (and educational for me).

 

 

A center frame. The lower left of the frame has capped brood larvae, the upper right capped honey.

A frame almost completely filled with capped brood larvae – the sign of a successful hive. Dr. Hurst says this is the strongest new hive he has ever seen (probably due to a good queen, favorable weather, and his mentoring skills).

 

Here is the queen laying eggs on another frame. The hive seems to be working its way west among the frames, perhaps because it is a little warmer on that side. The paint is starting to flake off her thorax. At this point, even if she flew off or were killed, the hive could generate a new queen by modifying worker cells and feeding existing larvae more royal jelly, but this would set back bee production substantially – best to be careful with this frame.

 

 

 

We removed an outer frame that had not yet been worked, slid the frames over, and inserted the drone frame as shown. Later in the day, no bees were visible at the lower entrance, but they were back as usual the next morning, apparently having recovered from the stress of the hive inspection. I’ll be back on June 3rd to swap out the drone frame.

 

 

"Festooning". Within minutes of removing a frame, the bees are forming living chains to span the space in preparation for bridging the frames with honeycomb. The presence of any space more than about 3/8", the height of a honeybee, triggers this behavior. Modern beehives (popularized in 1851 by LL Langstroth, a Massachusetts clergyman and beekeeper who is considered the "Father of American Beekeeping") maintain this "beespace" throughout the hive, allowing hive frames to be removed without destroying the hive.

 

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Three honeybees, one laden with pollen. Taken 5-2-09, Birmingham, Alabama.

 

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Beekeeping update 4-21-09

 

My friend and colleague Dr. John Hurst got me thinking about being a beekeeper, so I read a few books about beekeeping, bought a hive kit, joined the local beekeeping society, and ordered a package of bees. Here is my hive. I made the two upper boxes from scrap lumber (southern yellow pine), the rest is cypress, from Rossman’s apiary. The main bee entrance is the slot below the boxes.

 

 

Next, a trip to my mentor’s apiary. Dr. Hurst has been keeping bees for almost 30 years.

 

 

 

 

With all those bees buzzing around and moving all over the hive frame, I had to suppress the urge to run.

 

 

My package of bees arrived from south Alabama last Thursday. I kept them in the basement until Friday afternoon. Jars of syrup and my home-made bee smoker flank the box.

 

 

 

 

A close-up of the bee box. About 10,000 bees, and one queen in a small box inside. I paid an extra dollar to get a queen marked with dot of paint (money well-spent, as I found out later). There were only two dozen dead bees in the box, pretty impressive survival. The bees are clustered around the queen box and the can of syrup, neither of which are visible here.

 

Firing up the bee smokers. Chris is not sure what to make of this operation.

 

 

Time to load the bees in the hive. Dr. Hurst was kind enough to loan me a veil (which I am wearing backwards)

 

We poured the bees in the hive and put the queen box on a stick, sliding it under the brood box through the entrance. This allows for inspection of the queen without opening the hive (none of the bee books showed this, but it is an excellent technique). We put the bee box in front of the hive entrance, hoping the rest of the bees would eventually enter the hive. The next morning, a few bees remain in the box and ants are entering the hive, no doubt attracted by the sugar water needed to feed the bees.

 

 

 

Some permethrin granules sprinkled on the ground and watered in took care of the ants. One must be careful about exposing bees to pesticides, as they are very sensitive.

 

Two days later, the queen has not yet escaped from her box. On the left is the “queen candy”, an white edible plug which the bees eat away to let the queen escape. The workers surround the queen (not visible on this photo), hopefully to welcome her into the hive. This process needs to occur over a period of a few days, or the workers will reject the queen and kill her.

 

 

Sugar water inside the upper box of the hive, suspended over the ventilation hole. The bees are draining both bottles of syrup through small perforations in the caps.

 

One week after setting up the hive, the queen is no longer in her box.

 

 

It is apparent the plug has been eaten through. Next step is to open the hive to see if the queen has begun laying eggs. It takes about three weeks before the new workers hatch, and the hive population will continue to dwindle until then, so it is important to confirm that the queen has survived (otherwise one must order a new queen and begin the acclimation process over again.) I’ll do this next week.