Rain Rain Go Away

The weather continues to be unseasonably cold here on the Cape. We just got through four days of cold rainy weather. Not good for bee flight.

A hive top feeder with hardened sugar syrup
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A quick inspection before the poor weather showed that one of my hives started in 2006 is extremely weak. It is probably down to two frames of bees. They came through the winter nicely, but have dwindled the past three weeks. I ordered a new queen from Pennsylvania. The bee breeders comment to me was “It has been a very strange spring” I don’t know what that means from their end, but I will agree it has been strange here as well.



I found a small hive beetle. They like to feed from the sugar syrup.


One of my desires is to produce comb honey this year. I’m planning to use the new queen I ordered to create an “artificial swarm” with one of my strong hives. This hive I will use to produce the Ross Round Comb Honey. I will expand on comb honey production in next weeks post. The old queen and some of the bees from the hive will be used to strengthen the week colony. The weak colony queen will “go missing” to put it nicely. She is only a year old, but showed a poor pattern of laying. Perhaps she did not mate well, or perhaps she has been injured some how. This particular hive was slow to increase last year and did not produce any honey.
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A honey bee collecting water from my bird bath
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I have been disappointed with the queens I have been receiving from Georgia the past few years. They seem to be lasting only a year or so. One of my strongest hives has a northern queen I received in 2005. She has produced for two whole seasons, and again this year is one of my strongest and most gentle hives. All the rest of my queens are one year or younger.

This is one of the reasons I hope to raise my own queens this year. With any luck I will be able to reproduce the gentle queen from Pennsylvania.

I opened one hive to find a dead hive beetle on the outside of the hive-top feeder. Not something I wanted to see. I’ve been seeing more of them than I have in previous years. I will have to do some research on how to deal with them if they become a problem. I’ve never had to deal with them in the past.


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Bees collecting water .
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With the end of the rain there is an abundance of activity around the hives. There has been a lot of water collection. The bees will use water to liquefy crystallized honey, or any hardened sugar candy left in the hives. It is good to provide water for the bees. They are going to find it someplace.


Better for them to collect water in my yard than at my neighbors pool!