Archive | Hive Maintenance RSS feed for this section

There’s a Virgin Queen in My Pocket: A Photo Essay

25 May

The queen bee’s gone missing. And all the tell-tale signs are there: no brood, a restless wings-spread stance, and an anxious hum when you open the colony. I’ve got to give this otherwise strong hive a new brood mare, pronto.

Last night, I scored a virgin queen from Zia Queen Bee Co but night’s no time to install a queen. So Queen Elizabeth and I spent the night together chastely waiting for sunlight and attempting to stay warm.

Keeping the queen warm in my pocket til I can take her home

The queen spent the night in a sock on a shelf 6 inches above my head

This morning before my 9 a.m. meeting, I installed Good Queen Bess in the lonely hive. And now my job is to wait 3-4 weeks for her to:

  1. Engage in a productive sky orgy
  2. Return safely and start laying
  3. Be deemed acceptable by the colony

In the meantime, nature doesn’t need any meddling from me.

Anatomy of a queen cage

The chicken wire keeps our chickens away from the hive

I hope to see something like this: Fresh bee eggs on black foundation with spring pollen nearby

The Silent Bee Hive

30 Apr

7 months later, it’s time to clean the hive of doom, utterly devastated by wax moths last September. Like the unbearable pain of losing your sweetest love, sometimes denial works best. Denial and the slow plod of time’s anesthesia.

But eventually, one must don a pair of work gloves and dig in. This weekend, I finally lifted the lid of my devastated hive and began the slow and disgusting work of cleaning her out.

Cleaning up a hive destroyed by wax moths

Fortunately, the chill of winter had killed all remaining wax moths, and robber bees had removed all remaining drops of honey. So, you see, avoidance seems to have worked in my favor after all.

Cleaning up a hive destroyed by wax moths Cleaning up a hive destroyed by wax moths

What would have been a sticky slime-filled mess, was now simply dessicated and devoid of life.

Cleaning up a hive destroyed by wax moths

And so, I’ll clean off the cocoons and webbing. I’ll freeze the frames to kill any remaining moth eggs. And I’ll pick up my heavy heart and start over.

Spring Hive Check: What to look for + how to prevent swarms

25 Mar

‘Tis no time for inaction. The dandelions are blooming and neighborhood fruit trees are covered with frizzy flowers, all of which means SWARM SEASON is upon us!

So giddy up, it’s time to dig into my hives and see how they fared the winter.

First hive check of the year

Spring is unpredictable in Albuquerque with great swings from night to day, so I try not to open my hives AT ALL until late March when temperatures stabilize. This restraint prevents me from destroying clustering bees or chilling brood but it’s also a fine line — how late is too late? If I delay too long, will the colony swarm?

What the landing board can tell you…

To slake my curiosity, I watch the landing board for weeks before opening the hive. I’m looking for 2 things:

  • Pollen on the legs of bees entering the hive: If worker bees are carrying pollen inside the hive, this likely means a) there are fresh larvae inside needing pollen and b) those workers aren’t robber bees.
  • Lots of orienting bees in the afternoon: When temps warm up each afternoon I should see the familiar arc of new bees orienting themselves near the hive entrance. If I don’t see this but there’s pollen entering the hive, something is keeping the queen from laying aggressively.

First… a health check.

Once it’s consistently warm enough (above 60° F), I’m ready for my first hive check of the season. Here’s what I look for to determine the overall health of the hive:

  • Bees: Are the brood boxes full of bees? If so, this means a strong hive with enough bodies to possibly split the hive.
  • Pollen: Are the bees finding and storing pollen in the hive? Pollen = protein for new larvae, so it’s  a critical component in building colony numbers.
  • Capped Brood: Is the queen laying? The ultimate goal of the first Spring check is to determine whether the queen is solidly laying worker brood. A solid brood pattern looks like the image below, with worker brood as far as the eye can see with only a few holes for heater bees.

A gorgeous brood pattern -- solid worker brood as far as the eye can see.

Then… a swarm check.

While we’re in there, let’s gauge the colony’s likelihood of swarming. Here are the indicators I look for:

  • Drones or capped drone brood cells: If there are drones walking around, consider making a hive split. If there are capped drone cells (but no live drones), start preparing for a split, maybe 1 or 2 weeks out.
  • Swarm cells: If the hive contains swarm cells, split ASAP. In fact, some experts say that the presence of swarm cells means it may already be too late as the hive is determined to swarm regardless of your interventions.

In the case of my hive check this weekend, I found drone cells (but no live drones) and queen cups (but no swarm cells). In about a week, I’ll go in and split this hive in two. More on that technique below…

Problem solving.

With a strong disease-free hive, the main goals for Spring maintenance are to provide room for brood & honey and prevent swarming. Here’s how I manage both:

Provide room

If the hive doesn’t have enough empty frames in the brood chamber, the queen can’t lay eggs. And if the super (assuming you’ve overwintered with 3 boxes) doesn’t have empty frames, there’s nowhere to store honey.  In my case, I had both problems. Nowhere to lay eggs and nowhere to store new honey. My hive was totally honeybound.

So, I decided to “checkerboard” the hive by alternating empty and full frames in the super and upper brood box (but keeping existing frames with brood next to each other for warmth. It still gets chilly at night in Albuquerque).

How to checkerboard a hive:

Split hives

If your hive is burgeoning with bees, drone brood, and swarm cells, make a split ASAP. Otherwise, start preparing for a split in 1 or 2 weeks.

How to make a split:

Requeen

If your brood pattern is spotty or the hive is aggressive (in urban areas, it’s important to promote docile bee genetics), make a call to your favorite queen breeder and order new royalty for your hive.

Bees in Winter: Scenes of Hibernation by Ella, Nina, and Sasha

28 Nov

What do bees do all winter anyway? According to my elementary school nieces, here’s what goes down inside a hive full of girl bees waiting all winter for a sip of spring nectar…

In Ella’s words:

If I we’re a bee I would sleep all winter and I would decorate my house with flowers also I would decorate it with snowmen pictures in the summer I will collect pollin from flowers!

Winter Bees by Ella, age 6

According to Nina:

If I we’re a bee I would paint my house with gold and black paint my bed would be lime green and my job would be to pollinate I would do anything to become a bee for just one hour all I would like to do is to soar I just hope they have cherrys to eat if not  I would eat honey bees are fassanating creatures.

Winter Bees by Nina, age 8

Sasha’s thoughts on bees:

Have you ever thought what it would be like to be a bee?  I have and I think it would be awesome to be a bee for even 1 second!  If I were a bee, in the winter, I would chatter with my friends all night as we snuggled up in our honeycomb, trying to stay warm.   My friends and I would drink warm honey all day long.  It would be HEAVEN for me!  I would have a smokey fire in my room to keep me warm all winter.  I would probably get loney, though.  I would miss my parents and my sister bees.  I would especially miss my baby brother bee, Luka!!!  After the cold winter, I would get up and smell the fresh Spring air. I’d spread my wings, leap into the air, and gather pollen for the queen to make honey.  PERFECT!!

Winter Bees by Sasha, age 8

How I winterize my bee hives

21 Nov

Propolising the hive for winter

It’s quite simple really. My winterizing philosophy is a three-pronged approach; the holy trinity of hive survival, if you will, and it goes like this:

  1. Go into winter strong: If a hive is weak, I’ll combine it with another before November using the newspaper method. If I only have one hive, I’ll combine with another bee friend. If none of the above work, then I’ll feed sugar syrup for October and November. And I DEFINITELY overwinter with 3 deeps. See my earlier post for details on overwintering with 3 deep boxes.
  2. Reduce the entrance: Using one of those wooden entrance reducers, I’ll close up the front door a bit so that the girls can better defend themselves from opportunists.
  3. Allow for ventilation: I’m of the mind that the bees best regulate their hive themselves and so my job is to allow them this ability. In other words, I leave a crack in the cover that sits on top of the screened top board and otherwise don’t insulate or tape the hive. This enables the girls to add or remove propolis depending on how much ventilation they want throughout the winter. In Albuquerque, as our temperatures vary greatly from November to March, this gives the bees the chance to decide what they need at any given time.

And that’s it. No fancy heating pads or blankets over here, because I want to support bee genetics that don’t rely on human intervention to survive the winter. It’s a bit of tough love perhaps, but my hope (for the bees) is that this non-interventionist approach builds local bee genetics that are gentle with humans but tough when it comes to surviving mites and winter.

Good luck, girls! May the strongest hives survive.

Utter Hive Destruction: Signs of a Dead Beehive

5 Sep

More gross than a thousand creepy ex-boyfriends is this: A wax moth-infested beehive.

Hive overtaken by wax moths

Two months ago, this hive was booming. But when it exuberantly swarmed in July during one of the hottest and driest summers on record in Albuquerque, we already knew the end of the story.

It goes a little something like this…

  1. First, the girls can’t/won’t/don’t raise a new queen.
  2. Next, their numbers dwindle.
  3. Then, the delicate balance of nature tips in favor of wax moths and ants and robber bees.

And thusly skin-crawling putrefaction occurs in the hive as moths build tunnels through wax comb and ants pilfer the remaining honey. It’s a race to the bottom and the few remaining worker bees struggle hopelessly like violinists on the sinking Titanic. They scurry and gather and clean but are destined for death.

Opening such a hive is a visceral endeavor for you’re not sure whether to cry or wretch. If it weren’t for a stiff drink afterwards, I’d probably do both.

A dirty landing board means the end is near.

Wax moth webbing shows they've moved in.

The few remaining bees can't keep up.

Wax moth larva crawl everywhere.

At this point, we’re focusing on our strong remaining hives and will let this one sadly languish until winter’s hard freeze. Both bees and moths will have perished then and we’ll clean and freeze for a fresh start next year.

And so the tale of this hive ends. Except that I happen to know there’s a little Lebowski on the way and that the early spring split from this hive is going strong, strong enough to survive the winter and promise new birth next year.

Entering the Hive of Doom

5 Sep

Today, I enter the infested realm, the web of neglect. Today, I open the hive of doom.

Neglect rules at the hive of doom

It’s the hive that swarmed massively and inexplicably in July like rioters late to the rave. We attempted to requeen but activity on the landing board remains dismal. By now, it’s surely failed and certainly overrun by wax moths and ants, opportunists feasting on the colony’s remains.

This afternoon, I’m donning the hazmat gear and going in… And I promise to take photos of the gory scene.

UPDATE: Gory indeed. Hold your breath and dive in!

What is the White Bee Disease?

22 May

Like ghosts, a few drones such as this one limped eerily through our hive last week. It’s a hive hosted at City of Albuquerque Open Space near the Rio Grande and we suspect deformed wing virus transmitted by varroa but aren’t quite sure.

White Drone: Symptom of Deformed Wing Virus?

White Drone: Symptom of Deformed Wing Virus?

  • Yes, there’s a deformed wing.
  • Yes, we saw a few varroa on drones in the hives.
  • But I can’t find a description in our bee books of the “whitening” of live bees.
Can anyone offer further insight?

Albuquerque Journal, eaten by bees

10 May

One way I like to bolster a hive throughout the season is to combine it with a small swarm or other weak hive. It’s the lazy girl’s guide to solving common problems like uniting a queenless hive with a queenright hive or combining a couple small swarms into one strong colony.

Day 1: Combine hives separated by 1 layer of newspaper

Day 1: Combine hives separated by 1 layer of newspaper

Day 3: Hives have chewed through the paper and combined, hopefully painlessly.

Day 3: Hives have chewed through the paper and combined, hopefully painlessly.

Newspaper Method of Combining Bees

  1. Take a small hive and remove the hive cover and inner cover.
  2. Place a piece or two of newspaper atop the frames in the top box. Cut a slit or two in the paper (optional).
  3. On top of this, add a box with your new colony or swarm.
  4. Close ‘er up and wait a couple days.
  5. OPTIONAL: Sometimes I leave a top entrance for the top box. Othertimes I don’t. Depends on the strength of that hive and how hot temperatures are projected to be.
Read other descriptions of the process at:

Hive splitting = Lazy girl’s swarm prevention

17 Apr

The Great Split of 2011

Last year, one of our hives swarmed 6 times. Each swarm involves dropping everything to capture and rehouse the wayward dames, none of which is easy to do with a full-time job.

So this year, we split our hives the minute the nectar started flowing and they began to look crowded. This year, we hope to be sipping wine after work instead of chasing swarms all over Albuquerque’s SE Heights.

Hives are ready to be split when:

  • The hive is strong.
  • Nectar is flowing.
  • You see drones in the hive (not capped, but actually walking around).
  • And definitely if you see swarm cells. But splitting before you see swarm cells is OK too if you’re a risky sort of beekeeper.

How to make a split:

About two weeks ago, we followed the Bush Bees process for a walk-away split which involves far more wine-sipping then it does bee-checking, so I’m a hopeful believer.  Only time will tell though, and we’re still a couple weeks away from knowing whether there’s a laying queen in both hives.
UPDATE 5/20/2011: So it looks like 2 of our 3 “walkaway splits” were a success this year! Score one for lazy beekeeping.
← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 182 other followers