Pieces Of April

It is the last week of April and the flowers are just starting to bloom!

Three weeks ago we had our first Crocus pop its head out of the ground and open up so the bees could collect some fresh pollen.

 Right:  Worker bee brings white pollen back to the hive

We have had a lot of rainy weather, which is typical for this time of year, but the temperatures have been cooler as well. My year to year records show that we are running about three weeks behind last year, and about a week behind “normal” with the spring foliage.

On warm days the bees are flying, bringing back small bundles of yellow and white pollen on their hind legs. This could only mean that there is brood rearing taking place inside the hive.

Left:  Warm days finally allow the bees to fly and gather nectar and pollen.

This is the time of year that the bees need to quickly build up in number s in order to take advantage of the spring honey flow we have here on the cape.

Starting mid May to around the end of July is our only real honey producing time here on Cape Cod.

This year the cooler temperatures have hindered the buildup. At least in my hives!

Right:  A worker bee collects pollen from a white Crocus flower










This weekend I will begin to feed them sugar syrup, which will help stimulate brood rearing as well.

I guess when the queen sees supplies being brought into the hive she feels comfortable enough to begin laying and laying eggs.

Left: Another worker bee collects nectar

Our scheduled delivery of packaged bees from down south have bee delayed for a second time this season. I have not heard the reason why, but perhaps they are having as much trouble with their bees as we are here in the North East.

Temperatures reached the high 60’s yesterday and today allowing an increase in the bees activities.

With the forsythia in full bloom there is much pollen to be gathered. My peach tree is just starting to bloom and I know the Red Maple is not far behind.

Right:  Pollen patties and sugar candy placed in the hives allow the workers to feed even on cold wet days when they cannot forrage.

My battle with the mice in the shed continues.

Each time I pick up a box, or a bucket I find the evidence of mice damage. Chewed gloves, newspaper, and table cloths litter the corners of the space.

I found one dead family inside the garden tool box.

How they managed to get in will remain a mystery forever.

But these things too will pass. And for now I am anticipating a good honey season.

After the last two bad ones, it is the least that mother nature can do,

Hot and humid days

It has been over a month since my last post.

During the last week of June I placed 13 queen cells into queen-less nuc hives. These queens, once emerged, would mate naturally and start to lay eggs in about 14 days and build new colonies.

Above:  Four mating nucs ready for queen cell introduction.

The jars will be filled with sugar syrup to feed the nucs.

Unfortunately this year’s early spring lead to early hot and humid weather.

The main honey flow stopped a month early, and because we were feeding sugar syrup to the nuc colonies, robbing ensued. Many of the mating nucs and new queens were destroyed by strong colonies that came and killed bees while robbed them of their honey and syrup.

Only 3 mated queens survived.

Left:  Virgin queens in queen cages.  These queens are being taken care of by nurse bees.  They have been placed in a queenbank colony.

As part of an experiment I had taken eight of the queen cells and arranged them so the virgin queens would emerge into queen cages. These cages were placed into a queen-less, brood-less hive. The queens emerged into the cages and were taken care of by the surrounding nurse bees. Because the virgin queens would be in the cages, they would not be able to mate.

Right:  A closer view of the banked queens.  A special frame with wire guides hold the cages in place.  The plastic cell cup seals the top of the cage.







I have had some success over the past two years rising queens. One of my strongest hives this year is lead by a queen I produced last summer. She is the daughter of the queen from my strongest hive the previous year. I have noticed that the most uncontrollable part of queen rearing is the mating process.

Above:  You can see the open queen cell inside the cage

as well as the queen.  Nurse bees surround the queen and

feed here through the cage openings.  I'm sure they are trying

to find a way to get her out!

You can pick the best stock to breed from, graft the youngest larva, place them into the strongest cell starter colony, then place them into the largest cell builder, move the cells at the right time into mating nucs, have the cells emerge successfully….. Only to see your beautiful large, genetically selected queens fly off to mate with…. Well, any drone that comes along!

It is all left to chance at that point.

Above Left:  A screw lid jar is used to put the queen to sleep with carbon dioxcide.  It only takes a few minutes       
                                                     
Above Right: CO2 is dispensed through water so the flow can be seen and regulated.

It is apparent that the week link, the place where you loose control, in the process is mating. So I started looking into the process of instrumental insemination of honey bees. With II the breeder can control the mating process and select the specific genetic material to mix with the genetics of the virgin queen.

Above:  Insemination device I have been working on.  CO2

is fed through a hose to keep the queen asleep.

My intent was to take the caged virgin queens and use them to learn about the instrumental insemination process.

Above:  Working out the "bugs" in the system

Need smaller hooks and glass tips.

For several months I have been learning, designing, and building the equipment I believed to be required. I read books, blogs, web pages, and watched videos.

Left:  This queen was put to sleep, placed in the instrument, manipulated, but not inseminated.  She woke up about 15 minutes later.










Needless to say my first attempts have had some successes and many failors….

Right:  Second queen was put to sleep, manipulated, and woke up.  She was not inseminated.






But I have learned a lot.

I will share more in future posts.

.

Queen Cells and Counting

In my previous post I described the steps I am taking this year with my queen rearing project.

As of my last post I had managed to get queen cells into cell builder colonies.

Above:  18 queen cells being removed from a queen-right cell builder colony. 

Some of these cells will be placed into queen-less mating nucs

Sunday afternoon I moved the queen cells from the cell builder hives into individual queen-less mating nucs. Usually I move the queen cells on day 14 (10 days after grafting, and two days before emergence on day 16) to the individual nucs.

Above:  As an experiment I kept 3 of the cells in the queen-less cell starter colony. 

As you can see I ended up with larger cells.

I moved them a day early (day 13) this year, because, last year I had 16 cells destroyed when one of the cells emerged early.

Step 7 Continued:

Ok, So at this point I had 21 cells, 18 in a queen right cell builder colony, as I described last week. On the 14th day (10 days from grafting, and two days before the queens emerge) the cells should be individually placed each into its own queen-less mating nuc.

Left:  By adding a frame of brood to the queen-less cell starter colony, I converted it into a queen-less cell builder colony that built larger cells.







Most of my mating nucs are regular deep hive bodies that I have divided into four compartments, each with its own separate entrance. Each compartment will hold two frames. Each compartment has a cover and a sugar syrup feeder.

To make up the nucs I take frames of bees and open larva from my hives and place them into the nucs. The nurse bees will stay with the brood to take care of it.

Above Left:  Cells from the queen-right cell builder.  Right: Cells from the queen-less cell starter.


\I place one frame of bees and brood, and one undrawn frame into each compartment. I then introduce a queen cell (with cell protectors) into each nuc.

You can see that it takes a lot of bees to raise queens. If you have 10 queen cells you need 10 mating nucs. If you have 50 queen cells you will need 50 mating nucs.

Above: One of the cells from the queen-less cell starter, converted to a cell bulder. 

You can see that there is still alot of royal jelly in the cell.

Step 8: Wait and allow the queens to emerge. Each queen will emerge on day 16 (10 days from grafting) into a nuc.

This nuc will become a little colony.

The bees will take care of the new virgin queen. In about a week she will take mating flights and mate with up to 35 drones (male bees). She will fly back to the hive, and if successful will start laying eggs in about another 7 days.

Above:  Cells from the queen-right cell builder

You can see there is no royal jelly in the cell.

Did the workers rob the royal jelly to feed to worker larva in the queen-right colony?

All the cells came from the same cell starter.  All the cells were over filled with royal jelly before they were placed in the cell builder colonies.  There is a difference!

This year I did not move all the cells into the queen-right cell builder. I left three cells in the queen-less cell starter colony. By adding a frame of emerging brood (no eggs or larva) to the cell starter I converted it into a cell builder colony. It was interesting to see that the queen-less cell starter colony built much larger cells than the queen-right cell builder colony.

It is obvious that the large number of nurse bees in the queen-less cell starter colony made a big difference in the quality of the cells. I expect I will get larger queens from the larger cells. In the future I plan to abandon the use of the queen-right cell builder in favor of a queen-less cell builder assembled specifically to build cells.

Right:  Red plastic cells and yellow plastic cells each contain larva grafted from different queens.  The cell color tells me which queen mother the cell is from.

Additionally I took eight of the cells and arranged them so the virgin queens will emerge into queen cages. These cages have been placed into a queen-less, brood-less hive. It is my hope that the workers will care for the emerged virgin queens.

I have plans for these eight virgins I may share with you at a later date.

Tomorrow 21 queens will be emerging. This weekend I will look in on them to see how the new queens are doing.

I’ll let you know.

Eggs In Your Honey

The weather did not allow me to start queen rearing this week, But there was a short window of opportunity to look in on the bees.

Above:  Worker bee collecting pollen in my garden

The weather was damp and humid, not the best conditions for opening up a hive.

Bees make great barometers you know. It can be a clear, warm, sunny day, (perfect weather for opening a hive), but if rain is coming in the late evening, the bees will let you know by their attitude.

Right:  As I clean out the shed of old bee packages, old comb, and old frames, my debris pile slowly grows.

If you are going to keep bees on Cape Cod you will have to get use to working with them in all types of weather. One minute it will be clear, then, in a minute the weather will change. I don’t know how many times I have started the smoker with blue sunny skies, only to have dark cloudy weather by the time I pull out my first frame of bees.

Left:  Another worker collecting nectar and pollen

Saturday, between the rain, the bees were flying, obviously collecting nectar an pollen from something that is in bloom.

Above:  A solid brood pattern layed by one of the queens I raised last season.

I opened up the hives to find that the bees were storing honey in the honey supers.

I made a choice this season to not use queen excluders when supering for honey. A queen excluder is a grid of wire that when placed between boxes of comb prohibits the queen from passing between the boxes. The spacing in the grid allows worker bees to move through, but not the queen.

Left:  An over productive queen was not able to resist the temptation to lay eggs in my honey super.  Look closely and you will see the small egg at the bottom of the cell.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

In past years I felt that the queen excluders discouraged the worker bees from moving up into the honey supers, acting as more of a honey excluder than anything else.

Of course you also take the chance that the queen will move up into the honey supers and lay eggs. Not something you want to see, that is, eggs mixed on a comb with your honey.

Right:  Opening up the hive to find ripe honey being capped over is what a beekeeper loves to see.

I have one hive that has a queen that is laying so many eggs that she has run out of room in the brood chamber. Sure enough when I inspected the honey super, there she was sitting on six frames of eggs where honey was to be. I took her and placed her in a lower box, then added a queen excluder. In about a month those eggs will hatch out into worker bees and the bees can store honey in the empty comb.

It is nice to see the bees storing honey in comb that I will take as my own in a couple of months. Honey comb is beautiful. The bees collect nectar from the plants and store it in their honey stomachs. Once back in the hive they place the nectar in the comb.

Nectar from flowers contains about 1% sugar. The bees evaporate the water and concentrate the sugar to turn it into honey. Once the honey is “ripe” they cap over the cell with wonderful white wax. The wax seals the honey and keeps it from absorbing moisture from the air.

It is estimated that it takes about 10,000 miles of flying to make a table spoon of honey.

It is exciting to see.

Above:  Ripe honey being capped by the workers.  You can see the white capping wax.

In a couple of months we will taste that honey.

What honey tastes the best to me?

The honey that’s in my mouth at that particular moment of course!

You Thought You Could Stop Us

It has been 19 days since I destroyed queen cells in one of our hives. I believe the old queen was failing and the bees decided that, what was best for the hive, would be to replace her.

Right:  Emerged queen cell.  A new queen has emerged from this cell within the past week.  Worker bees are in the process of demolishing the cell.  A new queen cell can be seen to the left of the emerged cell.  A worker in inside the cell tending to the queen larva.

Last week I found that the bees had built more queen cells and I decided to let them replace the old queen.

I have been concerned that it is too early in the spring for mature drones to be available for mating.

Left:  The new queen.  Can you find her?  I expected to find a virgin queen since it usually takes two weeks for a queen to mate and start to lay eggs.  I found new eggs everywhere in the hive.  I beleive she is laying

Sure enough, upon inspection, I found that one of the queen cells had emerged. The empty cell was in the process of being destroyed by the workers. I estimate that the new queen emerged a few days earlier.

I searched to find the virgin queen. Sure enough I found her, but I also found eggs…. Lots and lots of eggs. I guess she is not a virgin any more.

Right:  Enlarged area of photo above showing closeup of the new queen.  I am concerned that she is small.  Queen ususally enlongate after mating.  I will check her in a week to see how she is doing.

Could this queen have mated and started laying in less than a week? My experience has been that a queen will take up to two weeks after emergence to mate and start to lay. This queen seems to have done it in less than a week.

I am concerned that she seems a little on the small side. If the bees are happy with her I will let her stay until a better queen is available later this spring.

I am now kicking myself for destroying the beautiful large queen cell that was built at the beginning of the month. Sometimes I need to just let the bees be bees. They know their business better than I do.

Left:  A worker bee bringing pollen into the hive with the new queen.  With new eggs there will be young larva to feed in a few days.

On the other hand however, I have been watching one of my hives dwindle down in size. There is no sign of disease. The queen was very successful last season and the hive was strong all winter. Now they will not survive another week. Why… I don’t know.

The question for a beekeeper always is, When to I let nature take its course, and when do I intervene.