Small Hive Beetles? Ugh!

So, I think that my bees have been fighting off some small hive beetles. My hive top feeder has two holes that have been chewed out of an area that would be covered by the telescoping outer cover. Small hive beetles are known to eat wood and because it's on the outside portion, my guess, is that they started eating there to hide from the bees that would chase them out. So I ordered as Small Hive Beetle trap (Beetle Jail) we'll see how it works once I get and install it. Small hive beetles can cause tons of damage to a hive, especially if the bees are unable to keep them under control. I haven't noticed any problems within the frames yet, so I'm hoping that means that my bees aren't letting them get a foothold.

The queen has started to lay eggs in the drone comb frame. Means that possibly by next inspection I may be able to remove it to freeze the larvae. I'll have to see.

I found way to many dead bees in my hive top feeder. It was on the left side. This is the side that fermented first (or the only side that fermented). So either the bees died and drowned from drinking fermented syrup, or a bunch just decided they'd had enough of bee life. So, I removed the feeder. They've got some honey and nectar stores. My hope is that they'll make do without me feeding them. I also purchased a bucket top feeder (that drips upside down--hopefully, this will work better).

The weather today was crazy hot. Good for the garden and the bees (not wet! Hooray!) Hopefully my tomatoes will decide that they can start to grow now.

Stinky Sugar Syrup: Moonshine Bees?

This last week's inspection was less eventful; however, I learned a lesson regarding feeding sugar syrup. My sugar syrup had fermented. It was cloudy and smelled bad. At first I wasn't sure if it had fermented, my nose must have gotten used to the smell, but upon showing the top feeder to a friend of mine, he and I were convinced that the syrup was bad. So, even though it was close to 8 or 8:30 p.m. I dumped the sugar syrup (just sprayed the bees with sugar syrup and didn't bother smoking them). I then replaced a new gallon of sugar syrup. I did learn several things regarding feeding sugar syrup on the www.beemaster.com forums. 1) Feeding after May 1st is generally a bad idea (unless the weather has been bad--which it has been very rainy). 2) Feed smaller amounts and try to use a feeding system that causes less drowned bees. (I may need to switch to an upside down bucket feeder.) I should have cleaned out the hive top feeder better before I added the new syrup though. Essentially, I'm not going to be adding any more syrup now. Either they'll finish off the syrup that I've added or it will end up fermenting as well and I'll have to toss it as well. That would be a bummer/waste of sugar syrup. Oh well, I'm learning.

Here's the pictures I took during the inspection. It's been uncannily easy to find the queen. 

 Above: You can see the longer abdomen on the queen here. Queens take 16 days to develop and actually develop faster than any of the other castes of bees (worker, drone, queen). Part of what determines whether a female egg becomes a queen is her diet. Worker bees after 3 days get switched to a less nutritious diet, queen's are raised entirely on royal jelly (secreted from glands on the worker bees). Here the queen is busy laying eggs.

Note the queen's abdomen in the cell where she is in the act of laying an egg. A queen bee can lay her weight in eggs in a day (that can be up to 3,000 eggs a day!)

This bee is exposing it's Nasonov gland (at the tip of the abdomen) and fanning with its wings. This pheromone is used to help bees that are lost (perhaps during moving around the deeps during the inspection) to find the hive.

In this picture you notice that there are quite a few bees with their heads buried in the cells. I was wondering why this was the case, then someone on the forums reminded me that when you first smoke the hive, this induces the bees to go in and start eating honey/nectar. This is because they think they are going to have to abandon the hive soon. A bee with a full stomach is a gentle, happy bee. So these bees are likely chowing down on nectar because of the smoke. The other cool thing about this picture, is that if you look in the bottom right quadrant you'll see a bee that is in the process of emerging from it's cell. It is starting to chew through the capping wax. Definitely cool!

In this picture, the bullet looking capped cell that bulges out more than the others is a drone cell. This is a male honey bee. Male honey bees have no stingers. Their eyes are huge! This is because the sole purpose of the drone is to impregnate queens and its eyes are optimized to be able to spot queen bees on mating flights. Drones congregate in what are called Drone Congregation Areas usually in meadows 30 ft. or so in the air. Virgin queens somehow are able to seek these out based on pheromones that the drones emit. When the drones spot a queen they quickly chase and try to mate with the queen. The queen will mate with up to 12 or so drones. After each drone mates, it's male member remains in the queen and is ripped off and the drone dies and plunges to the earth. It's easy to note drone bees. They are much less common, but they are larger than worker bees and their eyes wrap up around their head and meet on the top of the head.

A frame full of capped brood. Beautiful.

 That sticky orange stuff on the side of the frame is propolis. Bees use it to seal up the hive.

An odd looking protrusion of drawn out comb. I don't think this is a queen cell (that would be a bad sign--a sign that the bees think that my queen is doing poorly).

The Heights Honey Apiary! It's coming along! Hopefully that syrup will help them, it will get used before it ferments, and that they'll finish drawing out the frames in deep 1 and deep 2 (won't happen this week, but I'm excited for it!)

DIY Bee Package Toolbox

Ever since I saw the Merril Tool box, I decided that I needed to either get one or make my own. I didn't want to throw down the $45 nor did I want to modify the nuc box that I currently have. I felt that if I modified my nuc box, then it would become my toolbox and I wouldn't be able/willing to use it for bees. So, in looking around I noticed my bee package. You know, the small package that your 3 lbs. of bees came in. So, based off this picture I made my own out of the package. It cost me $5 (the cost of the hinges and latch). Everything else I had laying around.

So, here it is:

It's got a place for my smoker, frame perch, and frame grip.

The frame grip here is hiding the latch. The lid lifts up and hinges at the end where the smoker is.

 Inside, I've got my jar for propolis and for burr comb.

I think it would also work as a swarm box, for a smaller swarm maybe?

Bees Flying in to the Hive

I took this video using my point-n-shoot camera. I also zoomed in and out during recording (bad move). I like watching the bees come in with pollen on their hind legs. I like to see what colors of pollen they are bringing in. At least three bees in this video come in with a pale yellow pollen packed on their pollen baskets.

Increasing Capacity & DIY Honey B Healthy

This last inspection was exciting. I knew based on the last inspection that I had done, that there could be a good probability that I'd be adding a second deep for the bees this time. Last time, the bees had around 5 or 6 frames that had been fully or partially drawn out. Also, during the week I had made a homemade version of the essential oil feeding and immune system booster Honey B Healthy. I was eager to try it out on my bees.

Here's the recipe that I used. I found it on www.beemaster.com in the forums, search for Honey B Healthy.
1 c. water (bring it to near boiling)
1 c. sugar (add to water)
Blend sugar and water.
Add 6 heaping tbsp. of lecithin granules
Blend for a few seconds.
Add 1/4 tsp. spearmint oil
Add 1/4 tsp. lemongrass oil
Blend on low for 1 minute. Store. Use in a 1 tsp. Honey B Healthy to every 1 quart sugar syrup.

I bought my essential oils and lecithin granules from Whole Foods.

I lit my smoker, and this time I put on my entire bee suit. I don't like the veil as much on the suit, but I knew that I'd be doing a longer inspection and didn't want to risk it. A bit wussy perhaps, maybe, but better un-stung than otherwise.

The bees had built some burr comb in-between the entrance of the hive top feeder.

You can also see some bees that have drowned in the syrup on the left. The bees have pretty much drunk all the syrup on the right. The bars are thin slats of wood that float in the syrup. The concept is that it gives the bees something to land on so that less of them drown. It's always sad when I clean out my syrup of drowned bees. This time I was actually able to save a couple that had fallen in recently or while I had been inspecting.

A zoomed out view of my hive top feeder, prior to adding the new gallon of syrup. Notice the green Pierco drone frame in my waiting second super in the top left.

A frame of bees drawing out comb. You can see that the right side of the comb is not yet drawn out.

A side of a frame of bees still in the hive. The frame in the bottom of the picture is the frame from the previous picture.

This portion of this frame sticks out quite a bit, or at least it appeared that way to me. A mound of bees sticking out the side of the frame. It may actually be because only this portion of the frame is getting drawn out.

An angled view of the bees, typically you see them perpendicularly.

These bees are either drawing out comb or they may be storing nectar, hence the shine in some of the cells.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy it was to find the queen. Here she is in this picture (the one with the white dot on her). When you get your queen marked, there are queen marking color codes. For years ending in 1, the color is white. This makes it easier to find the queen and also lets you know if the queen in your hive is the same queen and not one that has been superseded. You can actually see that a portion of her abdomen is down in the cell. She's in the act of laying an egg!

I switched the camera from full auto to close up flower mode. It helped. Again, the queen, surrounded by her retinue of bees. This retinue has the job of feeding the queen, grooming her, and passing her pheromones throughout the hive. You see the queen is so busy just laying eggs, she gets food brought to her. However, from what I've read, it seems that the nurse bees are the bees with the most power over what happens in the hive, even over that of the queen. In some ways, the queen is used just as a reproduction tool, and pheromone (Febreze-like plug-in).

A zoomed in view of a drawn out frame, notice the beautiful white, new wax! If you look close, you can see quite a few eggs.

I took this picture because I really liked the red pollen or propolis that is on the pollen baskets (hind legs) of one of the bees in the picture. You can also see some of this red pollen in one of the pollen cells on the right.

Again, a picture of the cool, red, pollen/propolis on the hind legs of a bee. You can also see a bunch of sealed brood comb. All of these bees will be worker female bees once they emerge from the cells.

After nearly finishing with the inspection, this bee landed on my fingers. It looks like it had been swimming in either nectar or some of the sugar syrup.

A picture of the same bee, different angle. It is super cool that these insects that are so industrious, and have a bad reputation amongst most people, can be so gentle.  It kind of reminds me of Cleveland. Cleveland seems to have a bad reputation. Yet, after living here, I don't seem to understand why. It's not super crowded, and traffic isn't bad. The neighborhoods and homes are beautiful. There are 4 different beautiful seasons. There are so many fun things to do nearby. The food and restaurants are a foodies dream! Why is it known as the mistake on the lake? Bad city PR guys? I actually really like the newspaper here to, The Plain Dealer. This place is a jewel, and not very many people know about it. I mean, we've got freshwater beaches! It's got to be ignorance. Ignorance, why bees are known for just stinging people, and why Cleveland is only known as a rust-belt has been that happens to have the Rock Hall.

I'll admit that I was somewhat nervous that this bee would sting me on the palm or in the soft webbings between my fingers. The worst part about a bee sting is the mosquito bite like feeling that lasts for about a week. It doesn't get mosquito bite like, though, until about a day or two later.

The burr comb, that I removed from the entrance to the hive feeder. I save this burr comb. It will be good wax for making candles, soaps, lip balms, hand creams, or lotions.

The booger looking thing on the top of this jar is propolis. It comes from plants. It has antifungal, antiviral, and antibiotic properties. Evidently, I need to start bringing out a second bottle for propolis. This stuff is sticky. If you don't clear it out, the bees will use the propolis to fasten down the frames. This will make it hard to remove them. Then when you do remove them, there will be large cracks and vibrations which will just make the bees mad. Propolis tincture is often used for sore throats. Apparently it works well too.

So, the moral of the story for this last inspection: added more room to prevent swarming. Added a drone frame (an Integrated Pest Management practice for fighting varroa mites without hard chemicals). Varroa mites prefer drone larvae (it takes longer for drone larvae to mature-- this gives the mites longer to feed and lay eggs). If you remove the drone frame once the brood has been capped and then freeze it, any varroa within are killed. This helps to control the numbers of varroa.

I also found the queen and she is busy laying. Good news. I removed a drone larvae to check for varroa mites (the bane and major killer of bees) and he was clean. I found no other signs of pests or disease. I added another gallon of sugar syrup, this time with an essential oil additive to make the syrup more appealing.

Some Pics

Here are some pictures of my first inspection. The background of the blog is a great picture of a bee on my daughter's index finger. It just landed there and she was brave enough and slow enough to just let it be. I was able to get a nice picture of it. Bees are gentle!

Smokers, Eggs, and Syrup

So the title of this post sounds like a breakfast dive off I-80 in either Wyoming or Nebraska. No hard feelings toward Wyoming or Nebraska, but the I-80 country of those two states should be driven through at high speed at night.

Today was the second time that I've lit my smoker. I've got a Dadant smoker. It's a pretty nice one, cost me about $45. It's a bit larger so I've found it much easier to stay lit than the one that my dad has. This time, instead of packing the smoker full and then lighting it, I put a couple things in, lit it and then packed it up with smoker fuel. I've just been using sticks, those long bean-like pods that fall from some trees out here, and pine cones and needles. Apparently sumac bobs are good smoker fuel. I've got to find a spot where some sumac grows out here so I can collect bobs for smoker fuel.

Today, my wife and I took the kids to the Children's Festival at Playhouse Square. That took up most of the day, that and cleaning the fridge for the Mrs. So, even though the weather was nice, I didn't get out to the bees until around 6:30. Normally, this is pushing it as far as the best time to work your bees. I've read that from 10 to 4 is generally the best as this is the warmest time and many of the foragers are out foraging so you're disturbing less bees. So, I put on my veil, grabbed my hive tool, my burr comb jar, my propolis jar, frame perch, and frame grabber and headed out to the bees. Oh, and I grabbed a gallon of sugar syrup that I'd made on Friday. I'd kept the syrup in the fridge, and then let it sit out today so that it'd be room temperature by the time I put it in the hive. I've got to make a handy carrier for all this stuff. I know I could buy something similar like this from Mann Lake or Brushy Mountain for $40, but I'm nearly certain I could customize one for myself for less money. It would take more time, but I might even be able to make it perfect for my things. This is something I want to do, but who knows if it will be something that I'll make time to do. I still want to take more time to just sit down and watch the bees.

I've taken a few minutes here and there to see what the bees are bringing in. I've noticed that the majority of pollen packers (I'm assuming it's pollen and not propolis) that the bees are bringing in is a waxy light yellow-green. Propolis is a antifungal, antimicrobial waxy substance that is eluted by the buds and wounds on plants and trees. The bees collect this material to block out small gaps that are smaller than the size of a bee. This helps to protect the hive from parasites and other critters/insects that like to prey on bees. When warm propolis is very sticky. Beekeepers need to be diligent in scraping the propolis from the tops/bottoms/sides of the frames so that when removing them there isn't a load of suction-like propolis glueing the frame to the hive.

I gave the hive a couple puffs of smoke. There are several theories as to why smoke seems to calm bees. Most likely, ages ago someone noticed that having a burning torch while robbing bees of honey kept the bees from attacking as much. I guess the knowledge got passed down. Anyway, the theory is that the smoke alarms the bees and they think that perhaps there is a forest fire and they'll have to move from their home soon, so they quickly go into the hive and fill their stomachs with honey. A bee with a full stomach is a happy, friendly bee. The full stomach gives the bees a more, "Hakuna matata" outlook on life and the current-situation. (I'm not a smoker, and don't ever plan on becoming one, but it makes me wonder if human smokers undergo a similar attitude shift when they smoke. Anyway, back to bees. . . .) I then removed the outer cover and removed the hive top feeder. Unfortunately, there were some bees on the bottom of the hive top feeder that got squished when I set the hive top feeder down on the ground. I felt bad about that. I quickly smoked the bees (so as to disguise the alarm pheromone. This reminds me, that the second theory as to why smoke seems to calm bees is that it disguises the communication routes/signals that run the hive. In a beehive, it's pitch dark. Bees don't see each other because there's no light. So, they use touch, hearing, and smell. Pheromones are the main communication tool in the hive. When bees sting or are threatened, they'll release an alarm pheromone that alerts the rest of the hive that something is wrong, there's danger, or an intruder. The smoke tends to disrupt/block out temporarily some of this communication and keeps the alarm pheromone from spreading throughout the hive and recruiting more angry bees.

I took a look at how the frames are going, as far as being drawn out with wax is concerned. The central 3-5 frames are mostly drawn out. Most likely 4 frames both sides are drawn out. Maybe 2 with only one side drawn out. Once I've got 7 frames with both sides drawn out and being used, then it's time to add an upper deep. But that's not for a while yet, I think. I did remove the removable insert on my screened bottom board.

In my inspection, without gloves and in short sleeves (not nearly as hot that way), I was able to see larvae and eggs. The black pierco plastic foundation is nice. The white eggs tend to just pop out and say, "Here I am!" I was somewhat surprised, though, in that it seemed like the larvae weren't floating in much royal jelly. Perhaps the bees are being stingy with the royal jelly? Royal jelly is the highly nutritious diet that all larvae get for the first 3 days or so. A larvae that is being raised to become a queen will always get royal jelly, while an egg that will become a drone or a worker will have their diet changed to a less nutritious diet of bee-bread (pollen and honey). I also was able to spot the queen. I watched her for 30 seconds or so to see if I could see her lay any eggs. I didn't, but she's obviously laying. It does make it much easier to spot the queen if she's marked. Though, with her larger abdomen, she is hard to miss. The times when it is difficult, is when she's covered with her retinue of bees grooming her. The colony will groom the queen and pick up the pheromones that the queen releases. The queen pheromone is what prevents the other worker bees (all female) from having their ovaries develop to lay eggs. It also is what unites the hive and lets the hive know that they have a working, laying queen. A hive can know that it is missing it's queen in about 1-2 hours. This is because the queen's pheromone is passed from bee to bee and is absorbed in the wax and everything else.

I then closed up the hive and put back the hive top feeder. I cleaned out the bees that had drown in the syrup (another sad occurrence.) Bees never seem to stop drowning, even when there are nice floater boards in the hive top feeder that are supposed to give the bees something to stand on while licking up the sugar syrup. The only method I know of that avoids bees drowning is the cut ziplock bag feeding method. However, this sounds like a wasteful method that would require many bags and many more trips to replace bags. The bees had happened to drink up one side of the top feeder, so they've obviously been using the syrup during some of these rainy days.

If anyone has some bee questions, feel free to ask, and I'll see if I can't answer them as best I can (also with the occasional glance at my bee books/magazines.) Thanks for reading! Don't worry, BEE happy!

Waiting for the Weather to Change

So these last couple days have been rain, rain--(go away come again some other day). With it being cooler and wet, rainy I decided not to risk angering the bees. I've been needing to get in to check the sugar syrup level. You see, when you first install a package of bees, it's a good idea to feed your bees. This helps them to build up the hive faster. They've got a lot of work to do in drawing out the comb on the foundation in the movable frames. I tried to give them a head start or at least to encourage them to draw out the frames faster by coating extra beeswax on my plastic foundation. A beekeeper can use wax foundation, where wires run through the wax to help hold up the wax. Bees like this the best, it's more natural. However, the foundation doesn't last as long, and the foundation can start to sag. Plastic foundation will last a long time and is more rugged. A small (and I mean miniscule, small) amount of wax is coated on plastic foundation by the companies that make them. By coating the frames with more beeswax, it's easier for the bees to add their own wax to the foundation. This is because bees add wax to the existing wax in order to draw out the foundation. If there's no wax there to start with, it takes more wax and work to draw out that comb.

Back to feeding bees: I feed them 5 lbs. of sugar dissolved in 2.5 quarts of water. This sugar syrup solution helps stimulate their wax glands. This has also helped them during the rainy weather when they've been unable to leave the hive to go collect nectar. You do have to be careful, though, because if you constantly give sugar syrup, the bees will start to store it just like they will nectar. This means your bees are storing just sugar water and not nectar that leads to honey. The beekeeping association here recommends that you feed your bees throughout the first year. We'll see what I do. My dad fed his bees just during the spring, early part of summer last year. He had one hive that took off like gang-busters, while the other was so-so. This is interesting, to be able to see the difference between an incredibly active queen and a complacent one, apparently. I sure hope I've got a gang-buster one!

Today the weather looks workable. Either way, I need to crack the lid to see how the syrup level is going. I originally put in 5 quarts of syrup (so just over a gallon). Bees could go through 1 gallon of syrup in 3 days (I remember reading somewhere). It's been over a week. So I'll be putting in another 2.5 quarts this afternoon at least. Maybe another 2.5 quarts if the other side of my hive top feeder is also low. I can see how an Arduino with some sort of a sensor for detecting the level of the syrup in the hive top feeder would be pretty sweet and convenient.