#apiary2017

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Summer bee scenes

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That’s some good shit right there

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Hive inspections 6/18

P: Harvested 6 frames out of hive 1, and two frames out of hive 4. Easy calm stealing. Bottom empty box moved to top on 1, turned out to have active capped brood in it. Woops. This hive may well be queenless. Call Bailey’s on Monday for this and GF 4. Hive 4 not yet using the box I have them last time much, but they do have eggs in box 3. Maybe get down lower next time.

GF: Harvested 5 frames out of the top box of hive 1. Beautiful, fully capped frames. They were super chill. It has just rained for about 10 minutes, it’s like 85 Degrees - no, it’s gone down to 80 - and it was about 5:30 p.m. That may be the perfect harvesting conditions. I did not inspect that hive any further than to steal from them and I did not open up any of the other hives. I should be back later this week to deal with the hive 4 queenlessness situation.

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Hive inspections 4/30

Gonna catch up on these again!

GF: Beekeeping demos today for the baby goat festival. Hive one is doing well, lots of nectar in their third box and they’re just starting to cap it. So I gave them a fourth box of at least half foundation and moved two frames of honey - well, nectar - up into it and put two foundation frames into box 3. There is brood in both boxes 1 and 2. Was talking to folks, so I didn’t actually see eggs, but I did see all other stages of brood. Good population. Harvest next week?

All three other hives are doing well also. They have functional queens, they’re making honey, they’re capping some. I gave hive 4 a new box. I did not do so for 2 or 3, therefore they probably need them next time. Not great notes here because I was talking to people while I did it, but everything is looking fine.

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Freya is an apprentice beekeeper. She keeps an eye on my lighter.

Good dog, good hives.

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Hive inspections 3/2

GF: 4 was definitely doomed. Definitely a laying worker/lost queen situation. Population was even smaller than before and ultimately I decided that it wasn’t worth combining with another hive, so I shook out all the bees in front of the other hives. They’ll join their workforce.

I did learn a cool thing about open brood pheromone (not any actual queen pheromones) being what suppresses workers reproductive systems. So that’s another way to fix a laying worker situation if you’ve got the time - take a frame of open brood from a stronger hive and put it into the laying worker hive once a week for about 3 weeks, and then they’ll usually make a new queen, having given up laying themselves and realized they don’t actually have one. Other options I considered were variations on a newspaper combine (esp. if you have a double screened board to let those pheromones really mingle over time). Generally, combine slowly, weak queenless to strong queenright (or you could lose your good hive), then once the problem is solved go ahead and split back into two hives to stay at the same number. Shakeout method doesn’t work.

GF2 still pretty small in population, but they didn’t even eat the food I gave them last time so I didn’t feed them again. They are small but feisty - feisty is the wrong word, they’re very calm but they would rather get the good nectar that is already abundant around here. 3 remains very very good. I put a deep back on top. We are in for some colder weather this weekend so I didn’t want to checkerboard it with the bottom deep. There’s that medium in between because it would break up their brood nest too much for their population to deal with to move. But if I come back next week I probably can do some checkerboarding there. GF1 is also doing pretty well. They had a smaller population, but today I was only able to checkerboard in one frame from the outside because they’re using almost all of the frames. They’re in one deep, similar to 2. I put a deep of empty frames on top but did not move them up into it because of the weather. I’m sad about hive 4 and the loss of that genetic opportunity, but her drones are out there so all in all I’m optimistic. I just hope to can get the population in 2 up - they may be about the size of a package right now, but also its way earlier or at least somewhat earlier than I could get a package so if I can build up their population of the next few weeks I still have a head-start with them.

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Hive inspections 2/23

At the plantation - brought Freya with me today. 

Hive 1 still doing good. Checkerboarded two frames in each of the top two boxes. Hive 3 is still not as strong as 1 but they are looking good and I did see the queen. Both showed evidence of laying queens, so I’m not worried there. Really neither has the strongest or most consistent brood pattern, though. I did not feed 3 again. 1 still has capped honey and both have significant nectar. In 3 I did a bit of checkerboarding, but not as much as I would have because the queen was close to where I was working. Did switch the bottom box to the top on 3. I am taking one empty medium home and I want to make a medium nuc maker. I need to make deep ones too but if I want to split these hives then I need a medium size one as well.

To do: two-compartment nuc boxes in medium and deep.

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Hive inspections 2/22

GBF1 has so far survived my ineptitude; I spilled a lot of sugar on them last time and also left the spacer box on top with an open top entrance (while feeding! in February!) but they were not robbed and are still doing great. Booming, really. “Empty” bottom box is not empty - they are filling it with nectar and even brood, so I checkerboarded a little bit down there and will want to come back next week with a third deep and checkerboard that into the top box. I did not do a full inspection of the top because what I saw below convinced me that the hive is doing well.

To do: Bring a deep here next Weds.