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.

Second Swarm- Weirder Still, Dazed and Confused

Got a call about a swarm very near my Community Garden hives, at a condo complex in Thousand Oaks. I took a look, and immediately decided against catching it. It was located about 20 feet up, on the corner of a roof...



The next day, I was called again. Seems the swarm did something very unusual in my experience--- they moved, not as a new-forming hive, but still as a swarm, into an orange tree just below their previous perch.



I shook them into a box, took them home and installed just as it was getting dark and starting to rain. It all went smoothly, so I expected things to go well... but the next sunny day (about two days later) I saw all kinds of strange activity around the hive, and went up to take a look. Turns out the majority of the bees had left the hive and gone into a swarm ball on the ground...





As you can see, others were randomly sitting on the hive. Meanwhile, I was watching bees drop out of the sky and onto my driveway, where they'd spin around in circles, evidently unable to take back off. Something neurologica?

The ball of bees died on the ground, as did all the bees scattered on the hive. I checked the frames, and it appears they had originally started to draw out some comb on the plastic/wax foundation I'd given them. I wonder if there was something wrong with the plastic? I'd temporarily stored some frames in a shed along with some gas cans for awhile--- maybe the fumes had leeched into the wax on the frames?

At any rate, very, very weird.

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!

Another Round of Feed; Another Deadout

After the November feeding--- where I put roughly 4 gallons of sugar/water syrup onto each of my hives--- we had a number of cold, blustery days where the bees weren't foraging much, plus I've been seeing an unusual number of dead bees outside one of my stronger hives. So, I figured it couldn't hurt to throw on another couple gallons per hive, which I just did this weekend.

In the meantime... a few months ago I removed a hive from a friend's house. I did it the easy way--- it was in a birdhouse, and my friend let me simply take the entire birdhouse. Unfortunately, I had removed a portion of the roof and never repaired it, and when we got some unseasonable rains I think the poor hive got too cold and didn't make it. Also, per my concerns regarding foragers, it looks like those that didn't succumb to the cold just plain starved to death.
Here's what it looked like when I opened the roof:



And here's how I can tell some of the hive starved. If you look closely, you can see the little bee butts sticking up. That's indicative of starvation; they're literally licking the bottom of the cells as they perish. Obviously, this provided the impetus I needed to feed the other hives right away.

One Hive Starves; Sugar Feeding Commences

Well, I was trying to get by this year without artificially feeding the bees; that is, mixing up some one-to-one sugar syrup and feeding each hive to help them get through the dearth, as I did last year.

Backfired on me, unfortunately, as one of my hives (the one I cut out of that garage in Venice, CA, see archives) simply starved to death. I opened up their hive to find a pile of dead bees, and a number of bees with their butts sticking out of the cells--- a sure sign they were scraping the cells for food when they perished. Here's a somewhat blurry photo, but you get the idea...



So, I mixed up some syrup (1 lb (pint) water; 1 lb sugar) by boiling the water, then mixing in the sugar. I use hivetop feeders, which I pour the sugar into.

The downside is that this attracts ants. I set the legs of my hives stands into tin pans, and pour either motor oil or vegetable oil into the pans to prevent the ants from overwhelming the hive.

So, I fed them once on Oct. 30, and again on Nov 6. Every hive had thoroughly cleaned out the sugar-water, so they're hungry all right. Good news is that some trees are blooming right now, including some California Pepper and at least one species of eucalyptus.

Meanwhile, I should note that the hives at the Community Garden are loaded with honey and bringing in pollen, no need to feed them at all. I'm not going to remove any honey from them until after the winter, so they'll have plenty to live on.

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.