A longer look at doing some hive manipulations. In this BubbaTube, we open up a hive with all intention of swapping brood supers, but get a surprise in the process. We also replace some hardware that has come to the end of its life.
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Today I’ll be swapping around supers at the Brooks and Woolsey beeyards. This is a swarming control technique that supposedly keeps the colony from feeling crowded. The idea is that bees constantly move up in the colony through the winter as they consumes their winter stores. By the spring, the bottom of the colony is basically empty. By swapping the top and the bottom supers, we open up another super of space above for the colony to move into.
I’ll also be putting honey supers on these hives. It takes a while for the bees to “get” that their hive has changed sizes and move up into the super. We’ve already got a light nectar flow going, which will quickly pick up in the next few weeks, so I want them up in there drawing comb ahead of the game.
My supers have top entrances too. I’m a big fan of top entrances for two reasons. They provide additional ventilation, but the air isn’t pulled up directly through the broodnest, and it gives the foragers a direct route to the honey stores – meaning they don’t have to walk all the way up the inside of the colony to get where they’re going.
Here’s a combined write up for the PTC and Woolsey hives and what the findings were when we conducted our quickie spring inspection. This is not the full spring inspection. I conducted the inspections very quickly to avoid chilling the brood. The idea was just to get a general idea on how the hive was doing and to identify any obvious problems as early as possible.
PTC Hive
This hive is in awesome shape. It had been a month since I last visited this hive and the bees had hardly touched the Megabee patty or the sugar syrup. This is good because it tells me that they have a viable food source. Indeed they were storing honey on both sides of the brood nest. The only thing blooming right now is Red Maple, so I’m assuming that there is ample forage available.
The brood nest was good sized spanning 6 frames with brood in all stages of development. Brood pattern was pretty solid as well. Forager traffic was high considering the temperature (low 50s).
I removed one of the division board feeders and changed the syrup in the other one. I also added another megabee patty.
Woolsey Hive
This hive is also in great shape. Both feeders were empty, and the megabee patty was completely consumed. Broodnest was a good size (spanning 5 frames to the depth of the super) with numerous eggs and larve in solid patterns across both sides of three frames. There were also new honey stores over the brood nest, indicating that this hive had also found early forage.
I removed one of the feeders and added another megabee patty.
Spotted 8 small hive beetles in this one. I’ll be adding a beetle trap on the next visit.
Note: Many beekeepers would question the approach of adding pollen and syrup while the bees have available forage, but it is not unusual (especially during the spring build up) for a hive to completely consume its stores over a few days of bad weather trying to feed the expanding brood nest. We still have nights in the 20s so I look at taking these steps as insurance. If they don’t need it, they’ll just leave it alone in favor of available forage. But if they do need it and it’s not there, the hive could suffer.
Here’s a short video that shows you a quick spring inspection of the Woolsey hive. This is not a full springtime inspection, but rather just a quick peek under the hood so to speak to check on food stores, brood production, etc. A full spring inspection is much more comprehensive and would be done in warmer weather. The video is crappy. I shot it with the video camera on my blackberry kind of as a spur of the moment – hey this might be cool – sort of thing. Enjoy!
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It’s been a little over a month since it was last warm enough to pop in and see how the girls are doing. Today when it broke 52 degrees, I conducted a brief spring inspection at the Brooks yard.
Brooks 1 – Bit the dust. The pollin patty was about 90% intact, and there was still syrup in the feeder. The (now dead) cluster was down to the size of a fist so I can only imagine that they never warmed up enough to break cluster and get some grub. Pisser.
Brooks 2 – Looks really good. Patty was completely consumed and feeders were empty. Cluster spanned 5 frames and was the depth of the super (bees were active all the way to the bottom of the frame). Brood pattern was very good, with larve in all stages of development. Added 2nd deep using drawn comb from the now deceased Brooks 1. Put 2 patties between hive bodies and topped off feeders with 2:1 syrup.
Brooks 3 – In good shape. Patty was completely consumed. Both feeders were empty. Cluster was large – spanning 6 frames. Brood pattern looked good with brood in all stages of development.
Maintenence Needed: The top deep super is rotting out on the left side and needs to be replaced.
Brooks 4 – Still Dead.
Brooks 5 – Similar to Brooks 3. Patty was consumed and both feeders were empty. Topped off both feeders with 2:1 syrup. Cluster was large and busy spanning 6 frames. Lots of brood. Added another patty on top bars.
Maintenence Needed:Screened bottom board and bottom deep need to be replaced.
I’ve read over on Linda’s Beekeeping blog that the Red Maple is already blooming. We have some red maples and I can’t report that, but they look darn close. Time to get the honey supers ready – fingers crossed.
Cold as hell today, but it’s only going to get colder the rest of the week so it was either today or wait till next week to get pollen patties on the hives. I made a few yesterday from 2:1 syrup and megabee. Each of the hives got one except for the one in PTC. That one got two since it’s more of a drive for me, but also it’s still looking pretty strong as well. I also got the last two hives wrapped in 30# felt paper as well – so that’s all good.
All in all the hives looked pretty healthy. The cluster was a pretty good size and they seemed pretty defensive when I opened the top ( I guess I would be too!). But that’s a good sign. I didn’t want to linger with it being so cold out, but it looked like all the hives still had what looked like plenty of capped stores. It’s too early to say of course, but I’m hoping that I can come out in the spring without any losses. (fingers, toes, and elbows crossed!)
Honey Run Apiaries has some good reading on how to make pollen patties in case you’re curious.
till next time…
The first log of the year and it couldn’t bee (wink) better timing. Today is pollin patty day. It’s supposed to be be seriously cold over the next few days. I swapped out the bee-koozies for 30lb roofing paper and the hive temp seems to get higher during the sunny times of the day. Syrup consumption seems higher as well. Today I used the last of my megabee pollen substitute to make up some pollin patties which I’m going to get on the hives this afternoon. Megabee is far and away the best pollen substitute on the market in my opinion. I have some family coming over for dinner so I probably won’t be able to get over to the other hives this afternoon, but that’s on the list for tomorrow.
Vegetable Garden
Here’s a pic of the vetable garden starting to grow in. The Brooks beehives can be seen in the far background.
One of the perks of keeping bees is that your plants get heavily pollinated. Here’s a blackberry bush that sits about 100 feet from 7 hives in my back yard. It never had a chance. We’ve already picked pounds of berries off this plant, and it looks like it’s not giving up anytime soon.
I’m thinking blackberry jam! Yummy!
Synopsys
I continue to have numerous problems with hives going queenless causing me to have to pull brood frames from other healthy hives to allow them to raise a new one. This practice is not sustainable. I don’t know why all these queens are failing – hives look completely healthy otherwise. I’ve setup 2 Nucs at the Brooks yard – split from two of the better hives to suplement the queen rearing needs. PTC and Woolsey yards seem to be most affected by this phenominon – which is funny because they are in very rural locations and have abudant forage.
I’ll be running a bucket of sugar syrup & mega-bee out to PTC and Woolsey tomorrow to supplement the forage and hopefully encourage the queenless hives to do a better job replacing their queen.
PTC 1
Looks good. 4 Frames of bees – lots of brood. No SHB. Treated with powdered sugar.
PTC 2
Not so good. 2 Frames of bees. No Brood or eggs. More queen problems. Pulled a frame of brood from PTC 1.
PTC 3
Again – no brood. Pulled brood frame from #4 Not Cool.
PTC 4
Looks ok. Not going gangbusters, but there were brood and eggs.
PTC 5
Looks ok. Brood and eggs, but spotty pattern.
Fayetteville 1
Doing great. Lots of brood and eggs. Treated with powdered sugar. No SHB.
Fayetteville 2
Good eggs and brood. 3 frames of bees. No SHB. Treated with powdered sugar.
Fayetteville 3
Good eggs and brood.
Brooks 1
Most of the brood that was in the honey super has since hatched out. Looks like I lucked out and the queen was in the bottom deep when I put the excluder on last week. The bees are moving into the honey super and reusing the old brood cells for honey storage. So far 4 frames are drawn out, but none capped over yet.
Brooks 2
Ready for 2nd deep. Pulled 2 frames brood and honey and split off Nuc. Replaced frames with foundation.
Brooks 3
Looks good. Bees have moved up into the 2nd deep and have begun to draw out comb.
Brooks 4
No real change. Some activity in honey super, but no comb drawn out. Bottom deep is full of bees.
Brooks 5
This is probably the most enthusiastic queen I’ve ever seen. Pulled 2 frames and started Nuc. Replaced frames with foundation.
Brooks 6
New nuc colony for purposes of queen raising. Split from Brooks 2
Brooks 7
New nuc colony for purposes of queen raising. Split from Brooks 5.