Sunny Days

A bee in flight while the sun beams down.

There has been a lot of sun, and a lot of moisture up to this point, for the year. So how many wildflowers are needed for an apiary to be successful? There is an overabundance of wildflowers and flowering landscaping around our queens. Bees forage for miles. Within a couple miles there is residential neighborhoods with elaborate floral gardens. The local HOA's gratuitously plant plots of flowers in common areas. Many common garden flowers are good for honey bees, like the butterfly bushes and the marigolds. There are miles upon miles of rural county roads that are lined with sunflowers, goldenrod, thistle, and dozens of other flowering weeds. 

Right here in the bee yard, the monkshood and the vetches are dying back like many of the other little white and purple flowers that have been blanketing the field. 

These flowers are just making way for the fall blooms to come in just like the dandelions and clover did a few months ago.

These tiny yellow flowers coming in now are too small to be obvious from the road as you drive by. There are millions of them across the field just like the vetches were in June. We definitely have plenty of flowers to support many colonies in this area.

Last weekend, I checked the queen-less hive to check the progress of the queen cells. They were all destroyed. I checked very carefully to find out if a new queen had taken over. I found brand new eggs. I found Larvae in all stages. And I found Doris.

Back from vacation and ready to go back to work, she is laying again and making her presence known. I saw her again today when I was checking up. I am not quite sure what made her take a hiatus.  

So ten days is not enough time for a new queen to take over operations. Further research revealed it should take approximately 23 days. Although, a new queen can emerge in about thirteen days. That is about how long it has been since I started over in the nucleus hive to create queens.

Allow me to introduce the un-mated daughter of Ethyl. Name to be determined once she is laying eggs. She was moved to a shallow hive box with some extra bees to take care of her until she mates naturally.

She is now occupying the apartment just above Doris, since Doris isn't using it. Doris is laying eggs and the workers are foraging but she is simply not productive. Lucy is filling her super with honey. She has not laid any eggs in the upper frames yet so she is still without a queen excluder. And Ethyl, well, she is doing what any beekeeper would expect.

Doris, although one of our first queens, is not considered to be productive. There is plenty of forage, although, she does not seem to build enough numbers at the right time of year to produce the surplus we are all looking for. Additionally, her bees tend to be a great deal more aggressive than the newer colonies in the yard. Doris' hive may need to be re-queened. It may be a little late in the season for this, but I am still learning about queen rearing and what makes a good queen. Perhaps we will look into it for next season if I can breed them. It is apparent that it takes a good queen to be successful.

Shuffling all the bees around today created quite a stir. The air was full of lost bees figuring out where they are supposed to go now.

By the end of it all, everyone is settled back in to their jobs, working in the bright sunshine.

Queens

I recently picked up some books on rearing queens. I wanted to know more about how queens are bread, separated, collected, and so on. I was convinced by authors Doolittle and Pellet of the importance of rearing queens in the role of a beekeeper. I went right to work with Ethyl, collecting a few frames and placing them in a nuc box. In no time, I had a frame full of queen cells.

About a week after I collected the frames from Ethyl, I was performing a routine inspection when I noticed Doris was not doing well at all. I could not locate her anywhere in the hive. There were no new eggs being laid. The youngest larvae I could find were about two days hatched.

I found this frame nearly completely empty. It had what looks like a poor attempt at queen replacement. The next frame was quickly running out of capped brood, too.

Back in the nuc hive, I was trying to isolate the queen cells to hopefully collect more than one queen. The workers were much better at digging them out, than I was at caging them. With this sudden queen disappearance, we had to act fast. I took the frame of queens and added them to the now queen-less hive.

 You can see scars in the comb where I had put queen isolating cages. The bees dug through the comb and dislodged the cages. I will write more about what I have learned later on when I have more to talk about.

Between both sides of the frame, there was a total of eleven queen cells. 48 hours later, the colony narrowed it down to just three. The workers not only discarded the queens, but virtually erased the cells. I wasn't sure what was going on. Could one of the cells have already hatched, mated and began laying eggs in that short amount of time? Oh yeah, I found brand new eggs when I rechecked two days after installing the frame of queen cells. Still, there is a clear age difference between the fresh eggs and the now week old larvae.

I checked the entire hive as thoroughly as possible, then went back and rechecked all the frames. I could not find any queens. I still have no idea who is in charge of this colony, or what I am doing wrong with the queen rearing. I will be going back to the books, but I did swap out another frame of brood from Ethyl to put in my queen box. Properly, there is already new cells started there. Ethyl is by far our best producing queen. It is astonishing to compare the two Italian queens that came from different breeders, and the the Carniolan. We definitely have three very different hives.

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Some New Pics

We checked to see how Doris and the Gang were doing. Doris was two frames short of a full box of brood. She is definitely ready for a super. Surprisingly, I found no signs of mites. There was such a battle last year, I expected to have some number to count but there was none.

Ethyl got a super that had frames without foundation. She has done an excellent job, so far, building out these frames. There are larvae and eggs in this pearl white comb. 

If you look close, you might find Ethyl here. She got a marking today, some blue paint to match Doris. This is a frame with foundation that has also been built out and is full of eggs and larvae. This super is only about twenty percent built but these Carniolan bees have definitely lived up to the stereotype of rapid reproduction and comb production.

Ethyl also showed no signs of mites. I witnessed in previous inspections, workers removing larvae from cells in the brood comb. This is characteristic of a hygienic breed of bees.

While there were not many votes, the name that got got the most clicks in our survey was Lucy. So here we introduce our unexpected queen, Lucy. Lucy received a frame without foundation. Here she can be seen inspecting the pure white comb. If there were eggs laid here, they were too difficult to make out because of the lack of contrast between eggs and comb.

Lucy also got a marking, but hers did not turn out as well. I accidentally marked her wings and she ran too fast for me to correct it. We will check on her next week and try again if we get a chance.

Lucy is also ready to get a super. These bees are moving so quickly this year we should have no problems harvesting honey.

With the nectar flow nearing full swing, I have removed all of the feeders from the hives. There is plenty of honey being stored now and supers are being prepared for expanding these hives. Ethyl and Lucy both seem as though they prefer frames without foundation. I am planning on mixing frames in the supers so we can get comb honey and extracted honey from these hives. These deep brood boxes are full of bees right now and summer has not yet begun.

Full House(s)

Wednesday evening, we found an extra package of bees available. This package of Italians fills out the bee yard. I had hoped to eventually have three hives.


Because this was a leftover package, I got a deep discount. I decided to try shaking this package Wednesday night. I was hurried.

This queen is going to need a name. I am at a loss currently, but I am sure everyone will have some suggestions to offer.

If you recognize the box, I stole it from Doris. I consolidated her bees into the bottom box and split the drawn comb between the Ethel and the new Italians. I have a new bottom board made and I am working on a proper lid for this new hive.
 
Now we can officially call this an apiary. Since the bee yard is full, we will need to name a queen, but mostly we can look forward to big success this year.

The End of the Beginning

To round out the first year, we installed a new package of bees today. We received a package of Carniolans to compare against the Italians we have been working with. Doris is doing well but the cluster has become quite smaller than it was in March. We have experienced several consecutive weeks of cold and damp weather. Deep snow and harsh winds have defined April this year.

Fortunately, the Carniolans arrived trailing the last of the really bad weather. They have lots of warm weather and flowers ahead of them to build a good strong colony.

Allow me to introduce, her majesty, Queen Ethel. 

Some of my winter reading included the book Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper by Bill Turnbull. In his stories he references an imaginary conversation between some foraging bees. One he called Doris, who spoke of another named Ethel. Hopefully Doris and Ethel will have lots to share in our yard.

Doris generously shared two frames of drawn comb with a little honey and some pollen as a house warming present. This should allow Ethel to get right to it with the brood rearing. Carniolans are known for fast expansion in the spring.

This is a great looking package of bees. There is almost no dead bees on the bottom of the box. That should also help Ethel get off to a good start.

Some of Ethel's nurses were chatting up one of the drones that ended up in the package. Just like a male to flirt with the nurses.

Ethel is getting a marshmallow to keep her protected until everyone can calm down. We did this with Doris and Delores last year. A more experienced beek I met today asked me what the marshmallows were for. He said he had been just dumping out the queens for the last ten years. I guess that works for him. Ethel's workers will free her when she is ready.

Here are the bees from the top view. The box gets placed inside the hive the same as last year. They get a jar of syrup and a pollen patty. I will go back in and remove the box once the bees have all transitioned into the frames.

Ethel didn't get her new brood box decorated. We will have to fix her up when she is ready to expand.

There was some cold wind while we were installing the bees today. You can see there is still snow on the ground. We had to use the tractor to carry everything out to the yard because there was so much mud in the fields. The water is great for the flowers, which is good for the bees. Let the nectar flow.

Spring Stings

The first winter is over. The blog was forgotten but the bees were not. For the winter I placed an empty super with a few small sugar cakes inside. I wrapped the hive in black plastic to keep out the wind and provide some solar heat during the days. It seems to have been helpful except the reduced ventilation may have caused nosema. I am getting some medication for them so they can get to feeling better.

For Spring time, I removed the wrap and placed sugar syrup in the empty super. It seems to prevent freezing when the syrup is inside the hive. It has definitely been cold enough this week. The blizzard winds and feet of snow were short lived. Fortunately, I was able to shuffle around some frames to put their leftover stores closer to their cluster. While I was shuffling the frames around, Doris made an appearance to let me know she was in good spirits. There were fresh eggs in the frame I found her on.

Today, since it was sunny and warm, I thought I would stroll by to see how they made it through the blizzard. I didn't account for the winds and clouds coming in. I saw no bees outside so I decided to stick my head in and say hi. The second I lifted the lid, I was effectively bounced from the club with the precision of an Apache attack helicopter. She got me right in the jugular. I will not forget again, that bees like to be left alone when the weather is changing.

I will continue to feed the syrup to Doris' colony for a few weeks in order to administer the medication for nosema. Once we get the new colony, they will get all the same attention Doris did last season in order to get the new queen off to a good start. Doris made it through the first winter and her second spring is looking very optimistic. I will leave her alone mostly to forage and make honey all summer.

The new colony we ordered is of the Carniolan line. Hopefully they will be more tolerant of my terrible timing. They are delayed a few weeks because of an abnormally wet season in Washington. Their colonies are not increasing at the rate they should be. Last year we received Doris on April 24th. This year, the new bees should be closer to the first week of may. Hopefully they arrive before May begins so they can get off to a good start.

Right now, Doris' cluster is roughly the size of a large cantaloupe. She is laying eggs and has plenty of comb to get the spring brood started. This colony will be back to normal size in to time. Hopefully May and June will be much more mild this year than it was the last. I will try to get more pictures for the next post. We all love the pics.