50% Hive Loss So Far This Winter

It's been a tremendously busy time for me, and I've not been able to regularly monitor and manage the hives as much as I should have. The result was predictable: I had half my hives crash. The reasons weren't readily apparent.

In one case it looks like they were chased out by a massive invasion of red ants. (Ants, both red and black, are probably my biggest problem in this locale; they cause me more work than even the varroa mites).

A couple other hives simply look like they petered out. That may have been due to mites, or a failing queen that didn't get replaced, or even an ill-timed swarm. As I said, I was not able to keep a close eye on the hives since the honey harvest.

I did selectively treat with Apiguard this fall, and it appears I only lost one hive that received treatment. That seems to be a pretty good argument for total treatment next year, to try and keep a handle on the lovely varroa (see below).



At this writing I have 4 strong hives, one fairly healthy hive, and one I just can't get a good read on. Due to our cold weather lately I've waited until mid-day, when the sun is on the hives, to inspect--- and that means the maximum number of foragers are away, so the population within the hives may appear deceptively low.

At any rate, we had a pretty good fall flow of eucaplyptus, lavender, rosemary, and various wildflowers, so I haven't fed any hives yet, and their stores look good. That said, we've been getting some rain, so they'll eat those stores up pretty quickly. I'm planning on feeding all hives in January, to get them geared up for the ceonothus flow in late winter.

If I can hit March with all 6 hives intact, I should have another excellent harvest. Plus, I will no doubt add at least another half-dozen hives through swarm captures, and if I get some March calls those swarmers could easily build up some harvestable reserves by August.

My First Anaphylatic Reaction

While doing some bush and tree trimming today, I was suddenly hit on the forearm and stung by a bee. Weird, but I figured I must have startled it off of some trimmed lavender or pepper tree blossoms, and it just reacted.

No sooner do I brush away that stinger than another blasts into me, taking no prisoners, and stings my shoulder. I hoof it away from the area, head up to the house to fetch my bee-jacket, and go back down to finish up.

But after bending down a couple times I felt my face getting tingly, and I felt a little dizzy. Not good. I hustled back up to the house and looked in the mirror. Sure enough, my face was bright red, and my lips were swelling. My scalp and ears were itching like mad, too.

I took two Benadryl capsules, shot a couple blasts of albuterol to make sure I kept breathing, and threw an ice pack on my shoulder. My scalp continued to get hot and itchy, so I took a cool shower. By this point my lower lip was looking like a sausage.

It was a scary hour or so, and I came close to hitting the Epi Pen at one point, but things started calming down. I went back outside to do some chores, and eventually the reaction receded to localized swelling (as I write, the one from my shoulder has migrated to the side of my pec, and is itching quite insistently).

Lesson learned here: I have only one Epi Pen, in my swarm toolbox I keep in the car. I'm going to get some more, and put at least one down by the main beeyard, another in my house, and another in the Gator (my ranch utility vehicle). I've never reacted like that before, but they say a bad reaction can happen at any time, and I already swell up so badly from any sting, I don't want to push my luck.

I'll Take Pad Thai and Bees to Go, Please

Got a call from Steve over at the Ventura County Fired Dept in Camarillo, about a swarm that had taken up residence next to a Thai restaurant. The owner followed up with a call to me too, begging me to come get the bees. She told me she'd make me lunch, so we settled on some chicken & shrimp pad thai in exchange for driving out there to get the swarm.

Here's what it looked like from a distance:



Talk about easy! Right there at about chest level... piece of cake. I took a closer look...



Gotta love it when they're this easy. I stuck a box underneath, shook the branch, closed it up and put it in the truck to go home. Ann, the owner, came out with my Pad Thai (unfortunately she hadn't held the peanuts as I asked, and I'm allergic, but oh well) and I was on my way.

It was such a small swarm I put them in a 5-frame nuc. A check today seems to indicate all's well; I won't actually open them up for two weeks, to give them a chance to settle in.

Home is Wherever You Find It

The adaptability of bees never ceases to amaze me. A recent swarm had gathered on a brick planter, and evidently someone swept it off--- because when I showed up, there was an abandoned broom on the sidewalk, and a load of bees here...

I figured the swarm was doomed at that point, so I didn't do a capture. that's my friend John's trailer, and he reported later that they actually started building comb inside the wheel chocks!

Meanwhile, I got a call from Kate out in Thousand Oaks about a hive in a fence. She didn't want to kill the hive, and it sounded like a fairly straightforward extraction (no ladder involved!), so I took my new bee-vac and decided to give it a try (I just bought one; prior to this I used a homemade version--- plans on Beesource.

I took a wrecking bar and pried a few fence boards off the middle 2x4 rail, and here's what I found:



Here's a closer look...



The new bee-vac worked quite well, although I think next time I'll damp down the suction a bit more--- I clobbered a fair number of bees, unfortunately. Still, I was able to rubber band the comb into medium frames, and I installed the crew in a medium with no entrance reducer for the time being, so they can all find their way in.

Noteworthy about this hive: lots of brood, capped and otherwise. But very little food stores, and literally no capped honey in spite of the huge flow going on right now. Leads me to believe this hive is a reasonably recent (within 21 days) swarm who took up residence in the fence and has literally been living hand-to-mouth, without enough resources to build up any reserves yet. Tomorrow I'll probably steal a frame or two of honey from one of my strong hives to help this one along.

All in all a fairly easy extraction, took about an hour total, so I only charged the show-up rate of $50. I do swarm captures at no cost, but I charge for hive extractions primarily because only 50% (at best) actually stay where I relocate them, and those that do stay--- well, it's not a sure thing that I was able to get the queen, while with swarm captures I nearly always get her.

Tremendous Honey Flow On

I haven't posted in awhile, mostly because this is fire clearance time and I have very little spare time to check on the hives. When I do, it's mostly to throw on supers, because thanks to a long rainy season and mild temperatures this spring, we've had a huge sage, yucca, salvia, hollyleaf cherry, and lemonadeberry bloom. And now, the buckwheat is coming out in full force. I'm out of frames; I'll be making a run into L.A. on Tuesday to pick up 40 medium frames, as I've still got 4 spare supers I can use.

One of the hives filled up a shallow super in 10 days! That was a swarm I caught in a swarm trap last year. The other hive that's going super strong is the one that used to be in the community garden; I've got three supers on them right now, and they'll need another soon.

Of the three swarms I've caught this season, two are doing quite well. In fact, I had to throw another deep onto one of them, making them a double-deep hive. The other is kind of stagnating as a small hive; we'll have to see how they do.

Swarm Could've Used Mapquest

So, you're a fresh swarm of bees newly thrown off a crowded hive, and you're out trying to find a nice location to rest while your scouts seek out a new home. You pass parks with nice tall trees, you pass houses and barns with inviting eaves, and instead... your fearless leader (whomever that might be) decides that this is the perfect place to hang out...



Easy enough swarm to catch. I just held the chair over an open cardboard box, did a quick downward snap, and they all fell into the box. Tape up the box, head home, dump them in a hive body (with bottom board, inner and outer cover, and done.

I put them in one of my remote yards, at a nearby ranch. I'll check in a week to see if they decided to stay or if they took off, which sometimes happens with newly hived swarms.

Thanks to Patty in Moorpark for the call, and for her desire to keep the bees alive after they decided to use her patio furniture for a temporary home.

Swarms and Supers

A very bee-zy day today, starting early by taking a look at a swarm that I was called on the night before in Moorpark. the Fire Dept said a swarm was hanging out next to a Walgreen's, and they taped the area off. I decided to swing by early in the morning to see if I could get them before my day got started, but the sun had already hit them and they were too active... not to mention, there was no way to get them into a box, as you can see:



They were literally wrapped around the trunk of this immature little tree, so I wouldn't be able to sweep them all at once or shake them into a box.



I figured I could come back in the late afternoon and vacuum them. In the meantime, I spent the morning supering 8 out of my 10 hives, because the sage flow has started, the hollyleaf cherry is starting to bloom, and the hive populations are VERY high.

In fact, they're so highly populated that one of them swarmed right before my eyes, and headed into an inextricable location high in a scrub oak on a slope. To make it even more challenging, they mimicked the Moorpark swarm, clinging to a thick bough instead of hanging cooperatively where I could shake them into a box.



Interestingly, this swarm didn't stick around for more than a few hours. I checked later in the day as I was brush clearing, and they were already gone. I put a phone call in to the Walgreen's, and that swarm had taken off as well. So... no free bees today.

Splits and Supers

Back in February I decided to do some early splits of three very strong hives. The results: 1 hive perished almost immediately, while three survived the unusual spate of cold snaps we suffered and, as of April 10 when I checked, seem to be going strong.

All of these splits were "walk-away" splits; meaning I went through the strong hives, picked out at least three frames of brood (all ages, most importantly some eggs or larva less than 3 days old), another three or four frames of food, the remainder in foundation frames, loaded them all into a new deep, and shook a mess of nurse bees in. It appears I got lucky and the surviving hives each raised a queen by feeding royal jelly to the eggs all the way through the larval stage (instead of stopping after three days, as they would with worker brood). And my luck held, it seems, as each of the queens successfully completed a mating flight and returned to the hive to start laying eggs.

The sage just started to bloom this past weekend, so this Friday I'm going to super all the hives for honey flow. Woo hooo!

I'm also starting to get swarm calls, although the bulk have been out of my area so far. I'm sure I will soon be collecting some swarms and adding to my second beeyard, one I established (which now only has two hives) at a neighboring ranch.

Finally, I had to remove both of the hives I had in the Community Garden. When I split one of the hives the original bees became very ornery and defensive, and caused a lot of problems for the gardeners. I moved them, but was prevented by bad weather and other issues from moving the second hive for a few weeks. Evidently one of the gardeners ran a roto-tiller near the hive for an extended period, and they eventually got fed up and came after him. So, I went out last Saturday night and moved that hive back to my home yard as well. Both of these hives seem to have adjusted well, and the bigger garden hive (the one I split) has a tremendous supply of garden honey going into the flow, so they've got a great head start.

With all the rain, I'm hoping for a really strong flow this spring and lots of production from all the hives.

First Swarm of 2011--- Early and Weird!

Had President's Day off from work, and a good thing--- because lo and behold, I got my first swarm call of the year! Very early, and in the midst of a cold, rainy spate of weather. We get a clear day and this hive was pouring out of a hole in the ground (next to one of those water company meter/access compartments; I suspect they were tired of being wet with all this rain) and attaching to... well, take a look:



I decided the best way to handle this swarm would be to vacuum them with my homemade bee-vac,



but for some reason I wasn't able to get enough suction with it. No idea why, it worked fine last time I used it. At any rate, I ended up sticking a small box down by the tire (fortunately I'd stopped to buy a box just in case) and swept the mass down into the box.



The challenge, as always, was to get the box closed up before too many could escape.




Now, here's what I don't know. I don't know if this group had a queen, because there wasn't the customary ball that most swarms form around their queen. I'm concerned the hive was in the midst of absconding, and the queen hadn't left yet... but time will tell. Here's what was left on the car once I did my sweep...



I put the captured swarm in a deep hive body with ten new frames/foundation, and placed an entrance reducer in front so they can more easily defend their new turf (if they decide to stay, and IF they have a queen).

We'll see...

Using Deadout Leftovers to Feed Hives

I had another deadout last week--- unfortunately one of my best honey producers, too--- and if was kind of a mysterious one. The queen was on the comb, barely alive, as were a handful of bees on a couple frames. But there were no OLD bees; just young ones. Very typical of CCD; Colony Collapse Disorder, the unexplained malady that has caused such a high rate of hive loss over the past few years in the beekeeping industry.

Also typical of CCD--- there was still capped honey in the hive. So, I thought I'd give my surviving hives a treat, and hung them on this frame hanger I've got in one of the beeyards.


It didn't take long for the gals to find this, and within 30 minutes after I took this picture these frames were absolutely covered.

I also put a couple of other capped frames into one of my weaker hives, to hopefully give them a boost.

It's been a little disheartening this winter--- I've lost quite a few hives in the unusually wet and cold winter--- but I think we're turning a corner. This past week the weather heated up and the white ceonothus just exploded into bloom all over the hillsides, and today I watched a number of bees hit their hive entrances heavily laden with yellow pollen. Good sign--- hopefully the brood build-up for spring has begun!

September Swarm Capture; Deadout and More

Been getting a number of calls over the past couple weeks about swarms or newly formed hives. The odds are stacked against a hive swarming right now; food sources are drying up, especially in the hills where there's virtually a total dearth. Obviously, suburban neighborhoods offer more options for bees, but still--- not much blooms in SoCal in September. It'll be a few more weeks until some of the eucalpytus kicks in, and I have seen some rosemary and red sage showing some early fall blooms... but it may be too little to sustain a newly established hive from a swarm.

That said, I got a call from Britney in Camarillo, a very nice woman who had an eye-hight swarm in her tree. I decided to go get it since I've had some deadouts recently (more on that later) and it sounded simple enough.

It was, thanks to Britney and her husband supplying a few random tools I neglected to bring along. I've noticed that my swarms do better if I immediately get them into a hive box, as opposed to bringing them home in a cardboard box and then shaking them into a hive box. So that's what I decided to do this time.

Here are a couple pix of the swarm:





Interestingly, they were gathered on the crotch of the trunk and a fairly thick branch on what I think is either a young sycamore or a liquid amber tree, so the first time I tried shaking them into a box not much happened, I didn't really budge them. I decided to get enthusiastic, and gave a really good pull--- and busted the branch right off! Which simplified things a bit--- I just carried the entire branch over to the waiting hive body and shook the bees onto the frames. I did a couple more passes at the glumps that kept reforming on the original swarm spot, brushing them into a box and then dumping that into the hive body. I waited until I saw plenty of fanning behavior, (the Nasonov pheremone I've discussed before), screened off the entrance with hardware cloth, strapped the hive into a single unit (bottom board, hive body, inner cover, telescoping cover), stuck the entire thing in the back of my Honda Element and headed for one of my beeyards.

DEADOUTS

When I got to the beeyard, I saw that one of the nucs which held a previous swarm had failed--- either they bailed out, or they died out. Which makes it nearly a hundred percent failure rate for this locale in terms of going from nuc to hive--- six total nucs, and only one has survived to become a regular hive, and they're going strong. Don't know if the high failure rate is because of yellow jackets, (there was a nest nearby, which I recently eliminated) or they just didn't have enough food stores to prepare for the dearth.

Later, back at one of my two beeyards at home, a rudimentary check showed suspicious activity outside one hive. Looked like robbing, instead of normal hive activity. When I noticed yellow jackets entering without opposition, I figured the hive was a deadout. I opened it up, and I was right. In fact, the wax moths had gone to work. Wax moths infest weak or dead hives, laying eggs in the comb (where there's honey and brood) and the larva tunnel their way through the comb, leaving a kind of webbing behind. Here are several pix of the affected comb. You can clearly see the "trails" caused by the larvae burrowing eating a burrow through the comb...






The hive that died was the one I got from the compost bin (you can see the story and pix on this blog). I had noticed what seemed to be a vastly disproportionate number of drones at that hive a few months ago; so I have a feeling the queen died and a worker became a drone layer. It happens sometimes; and once it happens a hive is doomed, because drones are useless to a hive. They do no work, they don't forage, they don't contribute in any way other than to go out and try to mate with a queen. Whereupon, they inject their sperm and die. What a way to go.

Finally... ALL my honey sold out! I've got nothing for my two wholesale accounts until next harvest, and my goal is to double my output next year by splitting my hives and catching lots of swarms.

One Hive Leaves; Another Served Up On (or Under) a Table

After harvesting a full super of sage honey from my strongest (of only two) Carniolan hives, I placed the empty super back on the hive for them to clean up. Bad news is, this resulted in two things; an invasion of ants, and evidently some serious robbing by the other bees in the yard. The unfortunate result was that the Carni's absconded, leaving an empty hive. I broke it down and stored the frames, only to get a call from a trailer-park manager that a swarm had set up on their premises and they needed it removed.

The location was in Ventura, which is too much of a drive to do a free swarm removal. As it happens I was heading in that general direction for another reason today, so I told him I'd stop by and get the swarm, but I'd have to charge $100. Still way more affordable than an exterminator, and he was fine with that.

When I got there, here's what I found:



I suspected that this swarm had started to set up shop and create a hive, as they'd been there for 4 days and seemed to be behaving like a hive. Lots of waggle dancing going on, and when I looked underneath, just a boatload of bees.



I put a cardboard box underneath and slowly pushed a paint scraper along the underside of the table, causing a good portion of the bees to fall into the box. I closed that box up; obtained another box from the park manager, and repeated the exercise with as much of the remaining cluster as I could. I sealed them up, took them home, and dumped both into the previously abandoned deep hive body. To give them a running start, since we're closing in on a dearth here, I alternated frames; using four of the drawn-out comb frames from the Carni hive, and six fresh foundation frames. (I didn't like the looks of some of the other Carni frames, and in fact found wax moths and/or wax moth larva on three of them, which I set out for foragers to clean up).

As of tonight it seems the relocated bees have settled, so I'm fairly confident I got the queen. Time will tell.

Bottled and Awaiting Labels

So I filled a variety of bottles with this honey, which this time around is what I call, "Amarillo." The Spanish sounds so much better than "yellow," doesn't it...

Taste-wise, it's amazing. Very subtle and buttery, with an understated sweet after-taste. Really good.

From the four hives, even with the extractor difficulties I described earlier which rent a few combs asunder, we pulled about 86 lbs. Here's the haul, all bottled and waiting for labels:



One additional note: Saturday I did a short "bee seminar" for the Los Flores Community Garden where I have two hives, and I brought the last of my April honey harvest to sell. They snapped them all up; I LOVE gardeners!

A Honey Extracting Party

I decided to celebrate Independence Day this year by liberating some honey from several of my hives. In all, I took nearly five full supers from four hives. Other hives weren't quite ready; whether they had lots of uncapped honey or were too young (swarms; hive cutouts) to have excess honey.

My longtime friends (a million years ago from high school, for cryin' out loud!) Rob and Catherine came over to lend a hand. Both were very interested in the process, and I was more than happy to get the help! Here's they are, learning to uncap the honey frames:



And here's a shot of one of the frames. We had approximately 40 or so that looked like this:



Notice the dark patch? We actually had a surprising mix of honey; ranging from very dark (I'm guessing California buckwheat, Hollyleaf Cherry and wildflowers/domestic flowers like red apple and lavender) to nearly clear (we had an awesome sage bloom this year, with at least three different sage types). Can't wait to sample what that eclectic blend tastes like!

We ran into some delay when the extractor started "binding," meaning the gears weren't properly meshing and it was nearly impossible to spin. Fortunately, Rob is the next best thing to McGyver, and he had it disassembled, cleaned, lubed and up and running again in no time.

We left a heap of cappings in the extractor to drain through the filter when we were done, and it looks like we just about filled the holding tank under the extractor--- meaning we got about 100 lbs; which is about what I estimated. Remember, I took honey from some of these same hives on April 10 of this year, so in just under three months they replenished their reserves quite nicely. Depending on how the summer/fall flow looks, I hope to do another extraction right around this date in October.

An Easy Hive Cutout

I got a call a couple weeks ago from a very nice lady named Kim, who said a newly formed hive over her garage was becoming quite the tourist attraction in her neighborhood. She felt the hive needed to be removed, but was quite adamant about keeping the bees alive in the process. I assured her I could and would. I've started to shy away from cutouts, as I'm finding only about a 50% success rate in terms of the bees staying in their relocated home, but Kim's hive was very accessible and I was so impressed with her concern for the bees, I decided to do this one.

Here's what the hive looked like:



I set up a ladder and a makeshift platform to hold my homemade bee vacuum:



Then, I started vacuuming bees from the comb:



As I removed a majority of bees from each comb, I'd slice them from the stucco using my hive tool. Then I vacuumed off any leftover bees on each comb, and put the comb into a covered bucket.



The activity drew quite a crowd in the neighborhood, so I took the opportunity to give a little bee education to the kids, and let them taste some honey fresh from the comb. Note the amount of capped brood on the comb; I was actually able to show the kids all stages of larva and even some emerging bees.



Once I got all the comb cut away, I had to chase after the holdouts inside the light fixture that was hidden under the hive. I didn't want to miss the queen, and I was worried she might have skedaddled up into a hiding place in the fixture.



It was nearly dark by the time I finished, so I left the vacuum box filled with bees in my truck until morning. Bright and early I rubber-banded most of the comb into frames, loaded the frames into a nuc, and took the nuc and bees over to the Las Flores Community Garden in Thousand Oaks where I have another hive. That's where I opened up the vacuum box and shook them into the nuc. Here's their new home:



Notice the tin pie pans under each leg of the hive stand? I had to put those there because the very first night this poor hive was inundated with ants. So, I put oil (it's an organic garden, so I used corn oil, although at home I often use old motor oil) into the pans, and the ants can't access the hive. All's well; it appears I definitely got the queen, because they're doing fine, bringing in pollen and doing all the regular bee stuff.

I'll end this post with a look at an absolutely humongous hive that I declined to remove. I would have needed three of the vacuums I have at least, and the comb was gigantic. Weird to see it completely exposed in a tree about 15 feet off the ground, but that's where it was. Here's a look; hope the size translates in these photos...

Winter's Honey Extraction and More

First, I'll follow up on the hive that I placed at the Community Garden (see below post). It's doing very well. I opened it up and took a look; a solid two frames of bees, and they immediately started drawing out the foundation-only frames I'd put in there. They're going to do just fine. I'll give 'em a couple more weeks, and then I'll move them into a full-size 10-frame hive.

Now, on to the subject of this post: honey extraction. One of the best things about beekeeping in the SoCal climate is that we actually can get an "end-of-winter" harvest. We had some nice rains in Feb., and the combination of Ceonothus, Eucalyptus, various Rosemary strains, and Lavenders led to some excellent build-ups in a couple of my hives.

Here's a shot of one of the frames from a 10-frame super; every frame on the super looked roughly like this. You're looking at capped honey, and along the sides some uncapped but perfectly extractable honey.



Here's another frame, this time immediately after I uncapped. I just use a serrated knife, which I dip frequently into very hot water, and slide it along the bottom bar of the frame to slice as thin a layer of cappings wax as I can.



When I pulled the frames from the hives, I use Fisher Bee-Quick, a natural repellant which I spray on a special "fume board." Here's the video I did last year, showing how that's done:



Which all looks and sounds great in theory. Unfortunately, sometimes you run across supers that have some brood in the frames, and the bees are very reluctant to leave. That's what happened in the case of one of the hives, so I had to use a "bee brush" (a soft paintbrush works well too) to brush bees off the honey frames prior to putting them into a tupperware container. You don't want to leave the honey frames out in the open, or you start a robbing frenzy when the other bees in the yard get a whiff of the honey.

All that brushing makes them mad, and I learned something: if you wash leather glvoes enough, they eventually lose that sting-proof quality that made them so desireable in the beginning. I got nailed THROUGH the glove; which meant the poison sac was actually outside the glove, and the doggone stinger was puncturing my hand again and again as I moved around inside the glove. I had my hands full, so couldn't remove it.

So here's my regular, unstung hand:


And here's the other one, about twelve hours after I finished pulling the frames:



Finally... I got a call today from a guy that has a beehive in a kind of soffit under some gables--- they're entering through an opening in the roof. He's going to build be a platform I can stand on while I pull this hive out tomorrow. I'll post some pix--- wish me luck! :-)

PS- By the way, the honey is friggin' delicious! I extracted a total of 16 frames from two hives, (ten from the hive I did a split on just a few weeks ago!) and I'll weigh all that to see what it comes to, pound-wise. The purple sage flow is starting, so I wanted to clear all the supers in preparation.

Placed the Swarm Hive in a Community Garden

A few months ago I got the idea of contacting some local community gardens and asking if they'd like me to place a hive or two on their grounds. After all, if anyone appreciates the hard work honeybees do, it's gardeners.

It took awhile to get the okay from the Thousand Oaks Park and Rec, but finally I got a call from the president of the Las Flores Community Garden, telling me that everyone was very enthusiastic about getting their very own "community garden beehive."

So, after work on Friday, right around dusk (so all the foragers would be back in the hive) I grabbed the nuc which had just functioned as a swarm trap, stuffed a little hardware cloth into the entrance to keep all the gals inside, grabbed a spare stand and headed over to the garden. I set up the hive in a low-traffic area, off to the side of a storage shed and within easy access of a nearby gate. Here we are on moving day:



Yes, I remembered to remove the hardware cloth before I left :-)

Tomorrow I'll stop by and see if they adjusted okay. I'll probably open the box and take a peek, just to get some idea of the population size, too.

I think this may be a great way to educate people about bees, and to help beehives gain acceptance into suburban areas--- many of which have rules that severely limit or curtail beekeeping.

And what a great environment for the bees! All kinds of blooming veggies, herbs, decor plants, even citrus... they should have a great time!

Making a Split

We've had such a robust early bloom here that the hives are building up quickly. In the case of this hive, I felt the time was right to make a split; especially since another one of my hives is slowly but surely dying off.

In a split, you look for a combination of capped brood, open brood with eggs, and food. You also want plenty of "nurse bees;" the ones who are young enough that their job is to feed brood. They haven't flown out of the hive and foraged, so they have no point of reference--- meaning they can be moved and they'll stay with the new hive. Most of the foragers you unavoidably take with you on a split will go back to their original hive, unless your move is more than a couple miles away.

Anyway, here's a shot of the targeted hive, after having removed the two top supers. I found the queen in this medium hive body, and tons of capped brood. Once I removed it, I took four frames out of the Deep hive body (the bottom one). I hope I got enough eggs; I didn't actually see eggs, but I saw lots of very young, open brood, so I'm reasonably confident there are some eggs there too.


Here's the "nuc"--- short for "nucleus hive"--- loaded with four frames and plenty of bees. I stuck another foundation-filled frame in with them, closed them up, and moved them a few hundred yards away to my other beeyard.


The idea is that this nuc hive will grow a new queen, by feeding royal jelly to several of the eggs (or really young larvae). That queen, once she hatches, will take a mating flight, mate with several drones, and come back and start laying eggs. that entire process, if all goes right, will take about four weeks... so I'll let 'em be 'til this time in April.

Also checked on the hive that's been beleaguered by mites, and found the queen... but not much increase in numbers, if any. This hive may be doomed; but I'm gonna go ahead and hit 'em with Apiguard again. I'm not gonna harvest any honey from them, at least not early in the year, so it's safe to treat.

I'm also going to set a "swarm trap" tomorrow. More on that in a later post.

Warm Weather and Busy Bees

We're having a warm spell here in SoCal, and the bees appear to be reacting by bringing in a bunch of pollen--- which may mean the queens have all started to step up the pace of egg-laying. As spring approaches bees start building up their population, which they allowed to kind of stabilize through the winter so they wouldn't use up their food stores.

I'm guessing one source of pollen is California Pepper trees (bright orange pollen); but there's a white pollen coming in too; don't know what that is.

My concern is that they're misreading the weather a bit, and the "build-up" may be a bit premature. We're supposed to have another week of nice weather, and then some rains... and typically we still get some sub-freezing nights/mornings in January, followed by February, our wettest month. If it gets too cold for too long there may be a problem keeping all the new brood warm (not enough bees to cover all of it, possibly). We'll just have to see.

I'm optimistic that this will be a strong honey season, though, because so far the hives have stayed well-populated and healthy. I need to remember to do a mite check this next week on the two Carniolan hives in particular, to see if the powdered sugar treatment I gave 'em last week had any impact.

ON ANOTHER NOTE-

I visited a local Farmer's Market today, and once again found that no one is selling any local honey. Seems like a great place to target for my harvest this year. I've also got two retail stores who have indicated they'd like to carry my honey, so I'll have plenty of outlets for this year's crop.

Pre-Winter Check: Everything Looking Good

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in SoCal, as today's temps hit the low 70's or so... just as I'm reading that New York is getting 15 inches of snow.

Anyway, I took advantage of the beautiful day to open up a few of the hives I haven't seen in awhile. Specifically, I was looking for food stores--- have they socked enough in to survive a prolonged El Nino (predicted, which usually means tons of rain in Jan/Feb)?

I particularly wanted to check the two feral hives I got this year--- the one from the garage cut-out, and the swarm pictured behind the title of this blog. I'm glad to say both are doing great; lots of bees and lots of food stores. The garage hive was typically docile and cooperative. the swarm hive was just the opposite; they were not appreciative at all of my intrusion. Nonetheless I gave both hives a pretty good inspection, and they've got small amounts of brood (to be expected at this time of year) and lots of capped honey.

I meant to get pix of the natural comb the garage hive has appended to the bottom of the frames in their hive. When I hived them, I did it on "medium" frames, and they're in a large hive body. So, they feel compelled to fill the space with comb, and they have. I'll get some photos next time.

I also checked out the hive of Carniolans that were mite-infested, to see how their population was holding up. Again, it looks good. The only caveat to that is there's very little brood that I could see, although it was impossible to get a good look through the carpet of bees on the frames. Just the fact that the population is strong has me hopeful that we'll get through the winter, and in the spring I'll probably split the hive to break the brood cycle and mitigate mite impact.

one additional note: All the hives I looked at had some beautiful, capped, dark honey--- no doubt from the local eucalyptus blooms. I've noticed a few more of the local eucs are getting ready to bloom, so I'm hoping that in early Feb I can pull some frames from all the hives and harvest some dark, delicious eucalyptus honey, just before the March/April sage bloom hits.