Second Inspection Late Winter 2011

Great day to take a look at the home hives. Noon time temps were in the mid 60s today. Honey from from the dead-out hive is almost all gone the bees have been very good at taking it. Looks like the strategy worked.  Removed one frame from the middle of the bottom brood box of hive 1 and it was full of capped brood on both sides of the frame. Laying pattern of the queen in this hive is excellent. Top super still has plenty of capped and new uncapped honey stored. Population of this hive is great with lots of bees in both boxes. Added a empty medium super so the bees will have room when the brood hatches out. Will add a few jars of 1:1 sugar water when the weather warms back up in the next day or two. This should stimulate the bees to draw out the comb in the top super. High hopes for this hive. I will need to watch for signs of swarming and make sure they have plenty of room to expand. This hive might be a split candidate.

I had reversered the brood and super boxes on hive two a couple of weeks age. Still not much action taking place in the brood box. Still a lot of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Pulled one frame from the bottom box and there was a good pattern of capped brood on the frame. Pulled another frame and tapped off the bees due to the high number of SHB. Tapped all of the SHBs out of the cells as well. Installed a beetle blaster trap in the top outside edges of both boxes. Moving this hive into the sun should help but need to control the beetles before they ruin the comb.

Hive three looks just as good as hive one. Took the half  full honey super from hive four and placed it on this hive. Did this because they looked like they needed the room. Bees all through this hive so I decided not to pull any frames. Just pulled the top super and had a look at the brood box it too was chocked full of bees. Hope that they will move into the top super as they need more room. Will monitor this hive for signs of swarming and split it if I can.

Hive four is still very weak with very few bees in the upper two supers. Removed the newspaper from between the brood box and full honey super. Only three frames had bees on them in the brood box. Saw capped drone cells and a few supersedure queen cells being constructed. My guess is the queen is weak and she is being replaced. Going to let this hive and and nature run its course. This was the hive that was re-queened last fall. Like Bill Hansen's hive at the Brown yard it looks like the queens we got last fall  may not have been very viable and or well bred.

Bee Update

Bees from all four hives have almost taken all of the honey from the Brown hive. Video Link. Weather has been great. Saw bees bringing in pollen another good sign as they do this to feed the brood. Will need to remove the newspaper and inspect hive four sometime this week.

Winter 2011 Hive Inspections

Inspected the 4 hives in the home yard today. The Brown Hive had died and I had brought that hive back to house 3 weeks ago. I opened this hive and the bees from the home yard hives have been taking the honey. Still have 5-6 frames of honey in top super.

Bees are not interested in pollen patty. More than likely they are getting all the protein they need from the honey.

Had also moved hive one to the other side of hive 2 so that they could get more sun. Hives one, two and three all appear to be doing good coming out of winter. Plenty of stored honey and some capped and open brood. Not much yet but some none the less. A good sign of things to come. Found the queen in hive three, she looked good. Reversed the brood box and medium super on hive one as most of the bees were in the top medium super. Also took top super that is full of honey from hive 3 and placed in on hive 4 the weakest of the hives. Did  a newspaper combine on this hive.
Surprised to see so many small hive beetles. Need to set some traps for them.

Bee Inspection 11-14-10

Looked at the hives one last time for this year. #1hive is the one on the left in the picture below.

Hive #1  is still a hot hive. Not happy to have me looking at them. Lots of honey stores and bees. Need to move it into the sun this winter as there were loads of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Inner cover had close to 50 of them. Tapped off the bees and tried to snuff out as many SHBs as I could.

Hive#2 decide to leave them alone. Previously  looked at them at the end of October and they were doing fine. They are still a bit on the weak side. They have a full medium super of honey. Just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope they make it till spring.

Hive#3 is the strongest hive in the yard. They have two full honey supers above them. I decided to leave an extra super on for emergency feeding in the spring.

Hive #4 is doing good. I had thought of combining this one with the #2 hive but decided against this after looking at them yesterday. Both hives 2 and 4 have a new well mated queen in them. Previous inspections revealed good brood patterns being laid. These are the queens from Wayne's stock.

Brown Yard Hive is doing good. Currently feeding this hive some more 2:1 sugar water. They have plenty of room for more. They are still taking it and hope they get it all in the next week or so before it turns too cold.

Hive Inspections

Removed the queen excluders and several boxes in preparation for the winter. Hive two is still small and weak. Will need to combine them with another hive. All of the other hives are very strong and full of honey. Will do a mite count shortly to see if they need to be treated. Due to lack of a flow right now all of the strong hives were a bit aggressive. Considering this normal for this time of the year.

Honey Harvest

Bill and I harvested some honey from our hives. Hives one and three yielded up about four gallons.

Bee Inspection 7-20-2010

Inspected all the hives today. Added back the top feeder to the Brown hive and filled it to the top with three gallons of 1:1.5 sugar water. Cleared the tall grass from in front of mine and Bill's hive with Clarence’s weed whacker. Smoked my hive before doing so and should have smoked Bill's as well as I got stung from one of his bees. Also added a medium super to the Brown hive.
Added a super to hive one at my place because the top supper was full of capped honey and they have been bearding the front of the hive so they need the room. Added more sugar water to hives two and four. Hive four goes through 2 quarts in a 24 hour period. I am going to put the top feeders back on as we are leaving for Idaho on Wednesday. Hive three still has not drawn out the top super but I elected to leave it on for a while, at least till we get back.
I have also been feeding the bees sugar water on top of the compost bin lid, there are 100s of bees taking the feed and it goes very fast. I make a simple home made solar wax melter, it works very well in the hot summer sun. The bees also enjoy cleaning the honey from last winter harvested comb.

Bernie and Doug's Excellant Adventure

Terry's dad and I made a trip to the bee yard yesterday. Bernie had a great time. I was able to show him quite a bit about beekeeping. My main objective was to add two quarts of feed to hives two and four.
I even showed him how the bees sting but could not talk him into experiencing it for himself. It has been good to have him with us for a while.

Hive Inspections

Inspected hives two and four today. Hive two is still the weakest one of all of them. Added a gallon of feed for them. Hive four's queen is laying a nice brood pattern added a super to this hive and one gallon of feed. Just to keep my experiment going I made two bees sting me today. This time I squeezed all the venom into the sting sites.  I am starting to believe that my resistance to bee venom is increasing each time I get stung.

5th and Final Hive for this Year

Started another colony of bees. Bought a complete hive from Wally on Monday of this past week. I placed this hive next to a hive that Bill Hansen has at Clarence Brown's house. We inspected the hive yesterday and found they are strong. This is a two deep hive with the bottom box full of honey. Added two gallons of feed.
Bill and I requeened one of his hives today.  I would estimate we had 10-12,000 bees flying or on the ground during this process. We both managed to not get stung.

New Hive

Quickly checked the new hive today. Queen was released. Will check again in 7 days to verify queen is laying eggs.

Fourth Hive

Installed a new package yesterday. Placed a frame of honey from hive one and a frame of brood and  honey into the new hive. Hive 3 is producing a lot of honey so added a second medium super on it. Will check for queen release on Wednesday.

Great Weekend

Busy weekend. Picked up two packages of bees for the Warrens yesterday morning. Harold Marshall helped me install one yesterday. I installed the other today. Was going to wait till tomorrow to install them with Kelly Warren but the bees were under a lot of stress due to the hot weather. Hive inspections on Friday revealed 3 strong hives with lots of brood. Added supers to the first and third hives. Might even be able to harvest some honey off these two hives.

Yesterday was Lily’s first birthday. She is already walking and is such a sweet child. Anytime I get too spent with Abby and Lily is time well spent. Laura and Chris finished most of their move to the new house.

Hive Inspection Results

Decided to look at all three hives today. Rain is forecasted for the next few days. Hive #1 is doing fine, medium super that was added last week is being worked. Still have 4 open frames with little activity taking place. This hive has no sugar water on it.

Second hive is not doing as well as I had hoped one frame had a capped supersedure cell on it. I did find the queen, she is easy to find because see is marked. Did see some developing larva so for now will just watch this hive. Did not remove the queen cell. I am thinking the workers may have built this cell when the queen was delayed in her release.

The third hive is growing fast which is to be expected for a nuc. Added a medium super with nine frames of drawn comb. Also need to add more sugar water tonight to hives #2 and 3.

Third Hive and Chicks

Got a third hive started yesterday. Hope is if I can get four hives strong this season then there is hope of getting a couple of hives through the winter. But as I learned in a recent real life experience you can't count your chickens till they hatch.
Four of the six eggs hatched out. One egg had been pushed out of the nest by the hen. More than likely this was an accident on her part as she was turning them. The other did not survive the hatching out process. Think the hen smashed her.

Beekeeping vs. Beehaving

Bill and I had a very instructional day yesterday. His blog explains it very well.
After the class we inspected the second hive to see if the queen had been released, she had not. Only about 10% of the candy plug was remaining so I released her manually. She is a marked queen with a blue dot. Also added a medium hive to the first super. Both of these hives are very gentle. Not one sting from either of them yet.

Second Hive

Bill and I installed a second hive yesterday. Picked up this package of bees from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. By late yesterday they had cleared the package box and several hundred bees were doing orientation flights.
We also looked at the first hive and the queen was laying good solid brood patterns on several frames.


First hive should to hatch out later this coming week. Will need to add another super soon.

First Hive

Checked the first hive again today due to the very warm days we have been having. Saw lots of larvae on the frame from the middle of the brood box.

Decided that I did not need to look any further. I expect these new bees to hatch out in 16-17 more days at which time the hive should explode with activity, at least that is what is hoped for. The female bees take 21 days to develop,whcih is what a queen will normally lay in the middle of the frames. Seven of the ten frames were being worked and appeared to be covered with bees so I will need to keep any eye open for signs of swarming.

Bill's Bees

My beekeeping buddy Bill is on vacation in Florida this week. We have been having some very warm weather this week so I told him I would look in his two hives and feed them. When we last looked at the hive at his house they where in very poor shape. Upon inspecting them today found they had dwindled to less that a few hundred bees. Oddly enough I found the queen. She had not laid any eggs.
I took the remaining bees to his second hive which is at a friend’s house next to our church building. Upon inspecting this hive found it was doing better though not as populous as we had hoped it would be. Found the queen right away and saw good signs of brood and developing larva. Killed the old queen from his house hive and combined the two hives using a sheet of newspaper between the two boxes.
Put some medicated sugar water in the top feeder. Bill and I should try to inspect this hive again in ten days time. Hoping for the best and a lot more bees.

Hive Taking Feed

New hive has almost drained out 2 quarts of 1:1 sugar water in two days time. Hundreds of bees were around the jars. Will check for queen release on Sunday if it is warm enough.