Bees And Snow

It is the middle of winter here on Cape Cod. In fact we are getting another snow storm as I write this blog post.

Left:  Icickles hanging from the cover of  the hives.



















Already the cold winter has claimed the life of one of our hives. It seems that they starved only inches away from stores of honey and pollen. The weather must have turned cold for too long of a time. The cluster of bees could not move to a new location.

I cleaned out the dead bees and placed the hive bodies in storage. There are 8 frames of honey left in the dead hive along with frames full of pollen. A new package of bees in the spring will take advantage of the hard work done by the deceased hive.

Right:  Bees were flying and still gathering pollen in the middle of November.  They needed all the food they could gather after the bad summer season we had last year.

As I mentioned earlier we are experiencing an unusually snowy and icy winter this year. The snow from one storm turns to ice just before another one hits. Of course we have been fortunate compared to other towns further inland where they have received much more snow. Our deepest accumulation has only been 6 inches or so, compared with feet of snow inland.

The bees have been consuming much bee candy this winter due to the colder temperatures. It was nice to see them flying in December, on the two days temperatures climbed into the 40’s.

I have one nuc hive I am trying to over winter in one hive body that seems to be struggling. It contains one of the queens I raised last summer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will make it.

Left:  A cluster of bees feeding on bee candy places on the tops of the frames of comb.  This candy will last them about one month.

This time of year I start to get a little stir crazy. I find myself sitting and dreaming about the bees and spring. There is not much beekeeping activities to do other than wait for the new catalogs and the bee journals to come in the mail. Well...  a glass of mead while reading a bee journal isn't all that bad..

What new products will we find and be trying out this season?

There it is again…. As the snow falls….. I’m dreaming of summer!

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.

Hawaiian Queens

Update:  We are now on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112000928841858&v=app_2373072738#!/group.php?gid=112000928841858&v=wall

Come Visit!



Last night I was informed that a fellow beekeeper had just received a shipment of queens from Hawaii.

With a quick call, and short driver over to the next town, I had two beautiful Kona Queens.

Above:  Two Kona Queens From Hawaii.  The blue mark indicates they are 2010 queens

Since they did not have any attendant workers in the cages with them I needed to get them into colonies as soon as possible. From what I have heard from fellow beekeepers the Kona queens have done well here on Cape Cod.

Last week’s inspections revealed that one of the hives was queen-less, while another had dwindled down to about one hundred bees.

Right:  a few of our colonies.  You can see the two white 5 frame nucs, just created, in the center bottom of the photo.  One of these nucs contains the old queen discovered during the hive inspection.  The other contains bees, eggs, and larva.  They will have to raise their own queen.







As you may remember the queen-less hive is our "nasty" hive, and being queen-less did not help their attitude much. As I opened the colony I had flashbacks of the previous week’s events, and wondered if that nasty little worker bee was still waiting for me inside.

As I looked over the frames I could see that they were attempting to build queen cells, but had nothing to put in them since the hive had no queen, larva, brood or eggs. I found three empty queen cell starts.

Left:  The hives are still working the dandilions.










As soon as I placed the queen and her cage on top of the frames the worker bees were all over her. I plan on letting them get to know her for a few days before I remove the cork protecting the candy in the cage. Once I remove the cork the workers will eat through the candy in a day or two and release her. I want to revisit this hive to verify that there is no laying worker before I take the chance and allow them to release her. This will provide a few additional days to help in acceptance.

Perhaps, with a new queen, this hive will settle down a bit. If the workers accept the queen she will begin to lay eggs, and the entire genetics of the colony will change over the course of two months making this hive more gentile.

I opened up the dwindling hive to look at them. Sure enough they had killed the failing queen, and in her place built five queen cells!

Right:  Workers gather water for the colonies.










I destroyed the queen cells and place one of the new queens on the top bars in the colony. I will check again in about 5 days to make sure the workers have released her.

While I was out in the apiary I thought I should look in on the hive that superseded the queen from 2007. I opened the hive to find it full of eggs and young larva! The new queen is doing fine.

Guess what else I found! Sure enough, there in the top box, was the old queen, with her faded yellow marking and all!. I put her aside in a nuc box with an additional frame of bees and brood, and continued to look for the new queen. I found her in the bottom box with eggs and young larva! She has filled out since mating and is a good size.

This is the first time I have seen this. Mother and daughter queens existing in the same hive.

They have been coexisting for at least two weeks if not longer.

What a surprise!

I never know what I am going to find next!

A Happy Beekeeping New Year

Well as you can tell, I have not been a consistent blogger in 2008, only one entry. Well I’ll use the excuse that I was too busy keeping my bees! Or should I say… building them.

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Left: A wild swarm of bees we removed from a picknic table at the local conservation area. As you can see, this swarm was very small.

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As you can see from previous entries, I started 2008 with only 3 surviving hives, out of 10 strong wintered over hives from the previous fall. With much effort I built those three hives into 8, while harvesting 60 lbs of honey, and rearing about 20 queens. Some of those queens failed, some are now reining in my hives, and some of the better queens were sold to fellow local beekeepers here on the cape. We had a great time with the bees this year.

Right: A swam of bees we removed from a storage shed at the Otis Air Force Base.

The bees are sure amazing architects!

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Some of our adventures included gathering two wild swarms. One was found in the middle of a local conservation area, attached to the corner of a metal picnic table. The site was right against one of the capes largest ponds in the middle of nowhere. The swarm was probably two miles from the nearest beehive. I think the swarm was from a wild hive.

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Left: A close up of the swarm, now acutaly an established colony. Where is the queen? We did find her (by luck) and put her into the new hive. Click on the photo for an enlarged view

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The other swarm was gathered from a storage shed at the Otis Air Force Station, right next to the airstrip. The swarm had established itself inside the storage shed, accessing their new home through rusted holes in the siding. Comb had been built attached to various packs and boxes which contained who knows what. We spent a good part of a day removing items to access the bees. They had built beautiful curved comb attached to the metal siding of the shed, and everything else. In a way, it was a shame to remove them. It took us a while to cut out the comb and attached bees and install them into a hive. What a challenge. Bees were flying and honey was dripping everywhere. We neglected to bring a bucket to put the extra honeycomb in, so we used an empty rifle locker. Bees were stuck to everything!

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Right: My first attempt a queen rearing this spring. See how small the cells are. I destroyed all these cells and started over. These cells were dry grafted. On my next attempt I primed the cups and got a 85% acceptance rate.
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The biggest challenge I had this year was keeping the bees in the mating nucs. I had about a 60 percent success rate with keeping the bees in a nuc. Some would abscond, or return to the parent colony, or migrate to a neighboring nuc. I had two nice queens, and established colonies abscond due to small hive beetle infestation. As we discussed at the bee association, this pest is increasingly becoming a problem. I believe my beetle problem came with the packages of bees I received from Georgia two years ago. They have increased unchecked for two years, and I saw many of them in my hives.

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Left: Removed queen pupa. These queens are all the same age. You can see how the cell size effects the development of the queen. Larger queen cells mean larger queens. Larger queens mean more overies and better laying.

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I was just thinking today that the 2009 beekeeping season has already started. The work we do in preparing the hives for winter will have a great effect on the condition of the bees this spring. This year some of the hives have been wrapped in black building paper. It is my understanding that the wrapped hives will be about 5 degrees warmer than the unwapped hives. We will see how this works out.

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Right: This is what it is all about.... The beekeepers reward.... Honey right from the extractor. We harvested 60 lbs this year.

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My new years resolution is to maintain this blog. If you read this, post a message. Let me know what you think.

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Right: My friend, and fellow beekeeper, Gene and I on extraction day!

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And have a happy new year!

May Be Spring? Maybe

It has been a cool wet week here in the Northeast. The bees have been flying when possible. The coolness is expected to give way to warm weather this week.

A Queen mating box under construction. You can see the three removable divider making four seporate compartments. Click on the picture for a larger image.

The damp weekend gave me time to work on my queen mating boxes. These are standard deep hive bodies (boxes) which have been divided into four, Two frame sections. This mating box will sit on a special bottom board giving each section its own separate entrance.

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(left) Looking down inside a compartment to the screened bottom below.

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(Below) The special screened bottom board. See how each section will have it's own entrance?

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The plan is, that once queen cells have been raise to the point where the queen is ready to

emerge, each one of these sections will receive a queen cell, with two full frames

of bees and capped brood. Once the queen emerges from her cell she will take two to three mating flights where she will mate with multiple males, 12 to 15. Upon completing her mating process she will return to her compartment and start to lay fertilized eggs. She can then be evaluated, marked, and introduce into a colony who’s queen is failing.

The forsythia has begun to bloom, as well as the peach trees, and early dandelions.

Forsythia Blossom

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The forsythia is an important pollen producer for the honey bee in spring. The bees will collect the abundant pollen to use as food for the young.

The peach tree in our yard is always the first fruit tree to bloom. It’s pink flowers are pretty contrast against the yellow flowering forsythia.

Peach Blossom

The blooming of the dandelions are a traditional signal to the northern beekeeper to switch the two deep hive bodies. During the winter months the cluster of bees will work its way around the stores of honey in the hive. They group themselves together into a tight ball, and by moving there wing muscles without moving their wings, they generate enough heat to keep the center of the cluster at 90 degrees. This “ball” of bees will move as a group around the hive and slowly consume the 50 pounds or so of honey that has been stored in the combs. By spring they are almost always in the upper of the two boxes. This is convenient for the beekeeper, because if extra food is required, a sugar candy mixture can be added on top of the frames of bees to sustain them until they can collect food in the spring. Once the dandelions show up, it is warm enough to place the top box with most of the bees, and the queen, on the bottom, and place the mostly empty box of comb on top of the box with the queen.

An overwinterd collony being fed sugar candy. See how all the bees are clustered in one area?

Since the queen likes to move upward in a hive, she will be able to lay eggs below, and when the lower box is depleted of space, she can move upward to the empty combs, which are now being filled with pollen and nectar from the spring flowers. This allows a more rapid buildup of bees in preparation to the main honey flow (nectar flow) which starts here on Cape Cod around the last week of May. Now is buildup time. The more bees we have, the more honey will be produce, but also the greater chance of swarming.

But more about that next time……