May Bee

The long holiday weekend finds me posting my first blog post for the month of May.

Left:  A worker bee collecting pollen and nectar from our peach tree.

For some reason we have experienced a 90% loss of our over wintered hives this season.

Two hive have died in the month of April alone. Not usual once they make it through March

The longer than average, and cooler, spring has not helped us much. We experienced cool rainy wet weather for almost two weeks in the middle of May, not conducive for brood rearing by already weakened hives.

Last week however, the cold wet weather broke, and we are now experiencing warmer days. That means happy days for the bees who are now able to fly and collect the much needed nectar and pollen for the spring buildup.

Today I started rearing a small number of queens.

Right.  Newly grafted plastic cell cups.  These cells were wet grafted using royal jelly saved from queenrearing in 2010.

It takes 16 days for a queen to grow under the proper conditions. I took newly hatched eggs from three of my hives and wet grafted them into artificial cell cups. Wet grafting is the process of placing a small drop of royal jelly in the bottom of each artificial cell cup, and floating a young larva onto it. (a 50 / 50 mix of plain yogurt and water will do as well for a priming medium)

Eggs from the different hives were grafted into different color cell cups. Red, yellow, and black cups were used. This will allow me to tell which hive the larva was grafted from later on.

The cells were placed into a cell bar and installed in a cell starter hive.

I create my cell starter hives by taking a 5 frame nuc box with a division board feeder half full of sugar syrup, add a frame of nectar and a frame of pollen.

I have modified the nuc box so it has a screened bottom. The entrance is closed so the bees will not be able to leave.

Before I graft the artificial cells, I shake nurse bees (from frames of open brood) into the 5 frame nuc box. I use at least three frames of nurse bees, and two frames of bees from adjoining frames. Of course before I do all this I find the queen, in the contributing hive, and make sure she is not shaken into the cell starter hive!

I took my grafted cell bar frame and installed it in between the pollen and nectar frames.

The trapped nurse bees will have nothing to do but feed the young larva. Because the cell starter is queenless they will build queen cells out of the young larva.

I will wait 24 hours and check to see how many of the grafts were accepted.

Our package bees were delayed from the supplier down south. Many orders were canceled. They must have been having a difficult time there as well.

Last week we finally received our new bees. They had a long trip from Florida, traveling by night, the truck would stop for the day to allow the bees to fly. It took several days to make the trip, and the trailer of bees arrived late one night. About 20 volunteers enjoyed unloading them off the trailer.

We must have been quite the site to the neighbors….. a mass of beekeepers with flashlights (and head lamps) scurrying round a dirt road, walking to and forth, unloading over 200 packages of bees. I know I received at least one strange look from passer buy on the main road. What are you doing walking at the side of the road in a full bee suite? They must have said!

That being said I brought my bees home and installed them the next morning. They were not happy to see me….. I guess they were grumpy from they’re long trip. Several met me with the message I should leave them alone. But…. Then… You have to show them who’s boss! (bees don’t listen well)

Left:  A cell starter colony mad up of a division board feeder, a frame of pollen, grafted cells, a frame of open nectar, an undrawn frame, and nurse bees.

The first nucleus of bees was installed without event. Five full frames of bees, honey, and brood were installed on previously drawn out comb. They were very active, fliying the next day in the warm sun.

I noticed that the second nucleus of bees had a recently emerged queen cell, capped brood, but no eggs or larva…. I did see a queen though.

Right:  A well feed queen larva.  The nurse bees have added royal jelly to the cell.  The larva floats on the royal jelly and eats it as it grows.  It will take 16 days for the queen to grow from an egg to a fully developed virgin queen.

She must have emerged during the long trip from Florida… But had she mated? Or was she still a virgin, unable to lay worker eggs? I would have to wait to see.

Two days later I checked the hive…. No eggs or brood…. But the queen was still there. Perhaps I would have to replace her with a laying queen…. If one could be found this time of year…..

Two days after that I checked the hive again…. Yes, there were new eggs laid in many cells. I guess this queen might just be fine. Perhaps she had mated during the trip north, while the truck was stopped in another state, and had managed to find her way back to the truck before it continued on.

Perhaps she has a little Pennsylvania or Georgia influence in her now! If you know what I mean!

Maybe she will be just fine…..

Maybee

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.

Queen Season

Father’s Day. A holiday to commemorate all the hard working fathers. The perfect time of year to raise queens.

Generally, on Cape Cod, at this time of year, a colony will have built itself up to about 30,000 or 40,000 bees. Over the next month they will continue to increase in numbers to about 60,000. As the bees start to get crowded they start thinking about swarming.

Above:  Queen cup frame just pulled from my cell starter hive. 

After 36 hours the bees have started building queen cells. 

You can tell the accepted cells by the wax that has been added to the cell.

24 cells have been accepted out of 28 grafted cells

Swarming involves building queen cells. A beekeeper can use this natural tendency of the bees to raise his own queens.

It is always easier to work with the bees rather than against them.

Above:  Close up of the started cells

Here’s what I have been doing.

Step one.

Create a cell starter hive. Take a strong colony and locate the queen. Place her and the frame she is on aside. Now take all the frames that have open larva and shake the bees into a 5 frame nuc (at least 5 frames worth of nurse bees). What you are doing is shaking nurse bees into this nuc since they would be found on the frames with open larva. There can be no queen or they will reject the cells you put in the nuc later. That is why we located her and put her aside. To this nuc add one frame of pollen, one frame of nectar, and a wet sponge. The bottom of the nuc should be screened so the bees will not over heat. The entrance must be closed so the bees cannot return to their original colony. Put the cover on the nuc for now.

Above:  A well fed queen cell which is 36 hours old

You can see how the larva has grown in a day and a half!

Step Two

Choose the hive (queen mother) you plan to raise queens from. You will need her eggs! Of course you will select the strongest, best behaved, active, honey collecting colony you have to pick from. Locate the queen and put her aside. Also locate a frame of eggs and young larva (newly hatched) and brush all the bees off of it back into the colony you are taking it from. If you shake the frame you will also move the larva from the center of the cell it is in.

Step Three

Graft newly hatched larva, 3 days old, into primed plastic queen cell cups. I prime the cells with royal jelly I saved (froze) from the previous year. You will also have success if you prime the cells with a mixture of 50% plain yogurt and 50% water. Just a small drop in the center of each plastic cell will help you float the larva off the grafting tool. The larva should look like a comma. If it looks like a full C shape the larva is too old. Use the youngest larva you can find. Use a damp hand towel to cover the grafted cells so they do not dry out. Graft two bars of 14 cells each, that will be 28 cells all together.

Step Four

Place the queen cup frame into the cell starter hive you created earlier. Place the grafts between the two frames, pollen frame to one side, open nectar frame to the other. Now leave them alone for 24 to 48 hours. Place the frame of larva you took the grafts from, back into the hive you stole it from.

Above:  Same cell with wax removed.  See all the white

royal jelley in the cell?  I will harvest this and freeze it

for use next queen season

Step 5

Prepare a queen right cell builder hive. Open the hive and find the queen. Place her in the bottom hive super with all the empty and capped frames of brood. Place a queen excluder over the box with the queen and put all the open larva, pollen, and nectar in the box. Leave an open space between open larva and a frame of pollen to place your started cells. Leave this colony over night while your cells are in the cell starter hive. This will allow time for all the nurse bees in that colony to move to the upper box. It will be 3 days before any eggs the queen lays in the lower box to hatch and require nurse bees.

Step 6

After 24 to 48 hours open the cell starter hive and remove your grafts. You will be able to tell which cells have been accepted by the bees by the work they have started on the cell. Excepted cells will have wax being added to them. This year the bees started 24 cells out of 28 grafts. Not bad. Take the queen cell frame and place it into the cell builder hive you prepared the day before. This hive will feed and build the cells.

Above:  Just a side note.  I was pleased with the very

large crop of peas we produced in the garden this year.

Thanks polinators!

Step 7

Wait and count. It takes 16 days for a queen bee to be created. Remember that the larva you grafted is already 3 or 4 days old. The queens will hatch at 16 days old, only twelve days after you graft them. Before that happens you will need to move the individual cells into queen-less mating nucs, or a queen-banking hive.


More on that next time.......

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!

The Queen has returned

After introducing the queen cells into mating nucs 10 days ago, I finally got to the mating yard to look at the results of my grafting attempt of July 1st.
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Left: The mating yard offered to me by two fellow beekeepers, Paul and Claire.
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With much anticipation I opened the first mating nuc, and pulled out the queen cell and queen cell protector. It had emerged!

My next step was to inspected the two frames of bees in the mating nuc to see if the queen had successfully bee accepted as part of the hive.

In order for her to have been successful she would have to have completed the following.
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Right: Opening the first two frame nuc to see if the queen had emerged from her cell. You can see the plastic cell protector resting between the two frames of bees.
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1. Successfully emerge from the queen cell.
2. Be accepted by the bees as leader of the hive
3. Conduct two to three mating flights where she would have to successfully mate with up to 15 male bees (drones)
4. Finder her way back to the hive without being lost or eaten by a bird
5. Start to lay fertilized (female) eggs.

Sure enough I found her on the first frame I checked. Could she have begun to lay eggs? Sure enough she was on a frame containing eggs and very young larva. Success!
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Right: An unmarked mated queen was found in the first mating nuc. 6 mated queens were produced from my second grafting attempt.
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Needless to say I was pleased.

I had brought yellow paint (the marking color for 2007) so I could mark any queens I found, but as I attempted to pick her up to mark her back (Thorax) with the paint, she flew away onto a bush. I rushed over and tried to pick her up, but she flew out of my hand into the grass. I quickly went to grasp her but she flew into the dirt, I went over and picked her up, and she flew away into the cranberry bog.

I was not pleased.

Would she return? Was she lost forever?

Sure enough after a few minutes she returned, and I was able to mark her. I guess she was not about to go through all that work only to have me mess it up.
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Right: A marked queen. The newly produced queens are marked in yellow. Yellow is the standard queen marking color for 2007.
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I continued to check the other mating nucs. Out of 9 queen cells 6 hatched and mated successfully. One of the mating nucs had an empty queen cell, but no bees or queen were found inside.

Perhaps they did not like their new home and decided to find a new place to live.

Of the 7 queens, 6 are large healthy looking queens. One however is on the smaller size.
Here is the summery of the July 1, 2007 grafting attempt
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Left: A closeup of the marked mated queen.
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July 1: >90 grafts are made into plastic queen cups.
The queen cups are placed in a queen cup frame and placed into a cell builder
hive

July 3: >Queen cups are inspected. 10 cells have been started from the grafts.

July 15: >8 cells are introduced into two frame mating nucs containing bees. Two cells are
destroyed. One accidentally when removing it from the cell cup frame, the other
is dissected to see if the queens are developing

July 22: >7 queens successfully emerge, mate, and start producing.

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Right: Activity outside the mating nucs. Four, two frame mating nucs are contained in one standard deep super. Each two frame nuc has a seporate entrance.

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Now we will watch and evaluate them. Over the next two months they will show their true colors.

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I will be looking for a nice brood pattern (laying pattern), and a quiet disposition from her offspring.

Looking for genetic diversity

To continue documenting my progress with raising queens let me first say this….


It ain’t been easy.

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Left: A queen cell frame containg 7 queen cells. Out of 90 grafts 10 queen cells were made by the bees.

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Out of 90 grafts I made two weeks ago, 10 were accepted by the bees and made into queen cells. The cells that were produced by the bees were smaller than the two cells I got from the 30 grafts made on my first grafting attempt.

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Right: A close up of two of the queen cells from my second grafting attempt.

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Grafting is the process by which a small 3 or 4 day old worker bee larva is transferred into a larger artificial cell. This cell containing the grafted larva is then placed into a queenless hive. The bees, being queenless, will attempt to raise a queen bee in these artificial cells by adding wax to the artificial cell, and feed the larva royal jelly. If all goes according to plan, 12 days after grafting the cell a mature virgin queen will emerge from each cell.

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Left: A grafted cell 48 hours after the graft. You can see that the bees have already started adding wax to some of the cells.

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As I stated earlier, out of 90 grafted cells, only 10 were accepted. On my two attempts I am averaging about a 10% acceptance rate. This could partially be due to the dry days I have grafted on. It is said that there is a better acceptance rate when the relative humidity is around 70%.

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Left: A queen cell in a plastic cell protector. The cell will be removed from the frame and placed in a small nuc hive containing two frames of bees and brood, but no queen. If all goes well, a virgin queen will emerge from the cell and be accepted by the bees.

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Yesterday I harvested the cells and placed them into small nuc hives containing two deep frames of bees. The queen cells should be emerging today. We will see in a few days if it has been successful.

So far this is where my attempts have failed. My two original grafted cells failed to emerge. Looking back this was probably due to the fact that I transferred the cells into small nuc hives on the 8th day after grafting when the cells were just capped. We had two cold nights after that. The small amount of bees in the nuc hive may not have been able to keep the cell warm. Now that the temperatures are consistently in the 80’s, that problem should go away.

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Right: A frame of bees. This frame has young bees emerging from the cells. A 2007 queen laid eggs on this frame. It was a solid beautiful pattern of brood. You can still see some of the original solid pattern of brood in the left part of the frame. Every cell is filled with brood.

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As part of this queen rearing exercise I have introduced a new queen into one of my hives. She is a northern queen from a survivor stock of bees. A survivor queen means just that. The bees have survived for a number of years with out medications or any special help. Next year her genetics will be added to the gene pool in the area. Any queens mating with here offspring may inherit some or all of her ability to survive.

I was offered a mating yard across town by two local beekeepers. The area has a large number of managed hives so there should be plenty of male bees for the virgin queens to mate with. In addition there is a good amount of genetic diversity, something I am looking for in this experiment.

It is my hope that increasing the amount of genetic diversity will allow a greater combination of matting possibilities.

Who knows, perhaps we will get a spectacular queen.

The "mother queen's" daughter

This weekend I checked the nucs to see if the queens had mated. Neither of the two miller frame queen cells were accepted by the nucs. At least the queens were no where to be found.

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One of the two queen cells produced from my first attempt at grafting. 2 out of 30 cells were accepted.

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It was obvious that the queens had emerged from the queen cells, but the queens did not return from their mating flights. I did find one emergency queen cell in one of the mating nucs. These bees must have rejected the queen in favor of one that they are raising themselves.

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My first mated and laying queen. She is the only daughter from my best queen who went missing a few weeks ago. This daughter will be introduced into her mothers hive.

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Of the 30 grafted queen cups placed in the cell builder hive, only two queen cells were produced. That is less than a 10% acceptance rate. This is not as good as I expected, even for a first try at grafting. Since the queen cells were capped I placed them in cell protectors and introduced them into mating nucs consisting of two deep frames of bees each. These grafted queen cells are scheduled to emerge on July 4th or 5th.

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A frame of eggs and larva. Newly hatched larva was taken from this frame and grafted into queen cell cups.

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One happy discovery was to find a mated queen in the third mating nuc. This queen was raised by the bees from an egg from the mother queen which has since gone missing. Since she is the only daughter produced by my favorite queen, I am introducing her into her mothers hive (which is still queenless, and now broodless). With in a few days she should be accepted by the hive and be laying. To introduce her I placed the frames of bees from the nuc into a deep hive body. The hive body was then placed over two sheets of news paper above the queenless colony. The bees will chew a hole in the newspaper within a day or so. By that time the new queens scent will be distributed in the hive and with any luck the bees will accept her as their new queen.

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90 grafted queen cups

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Since the cell builder hive is now without any queen cells, I added two frames of brood an bees, as well as two grafted frames holding 90 grafted cell cups. If I only have a 10% acceptance rate I should end up with at least 9 queen cells if not more.

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A closeup of the grafted cells. You can see the very young larva floating on a drop of royal jelly

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48 hours will tell.

The Mother Of All Queens Is MIA

Todays activities included grafting queen cells for the first time. I had intended to use eggs form the Mother Queen of my best hive. Upon opening the hive I could not find any eggs or larva. This is the hive I tipped over on June 8th when removing the miller frame from the hive. I thought that she was ok, Perhaps she was injured and died. There were no queen cells found in the hive. Perhaps I destroyed them during an inspection, not knowing that the queen was gone. On June 21 I examined the miller frame to find one large queen cell still intact. I moved this frame along with a frame of bees and brood to a queen mating nuc. The queen should emerge from the cell in a day or two. It will then take up to two weeks for the virgin queen to mate and start laying eggs.
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Grafted plastic cell cups which have been pressed into the cell bar prior to grafting. Each bar holds 15 plastic cups.
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I took a frame of eggs and larva from my next best hive. The hive has proven to be strong, but the bees are average in temperament and not as gentle as the mother queen I had hoped to use.
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Cell bars with attached grafted plastic cell cups place in the cell bar frame. The frame is upside down, and will hang opposite in the cell builder hive.
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See the frame of larva in the background?
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Grafting is an interesting process.

The best queens are raised from larva that is newly hatched so I wanted to graft the smallest larva on the frame. The frame I selected from had everything from capped brood to eggs. With my reading glasses on it was easy to compare the sizes of the larva to make sure the youngest larva was selected. I used warm moist towels to keep the grafts warm and to keep them from drying out prior to transferring them into the cell building hive. After about 10 failures I was able to transfer the larva into the plastic cell cups. Since I created the cell building hive on June 1st it now contains, a few emerging brood, no eggs, no larva, and of course no queen. The only larva in the hive will be the young larva I grafted. If the bees accept the grafts they will begin to build queen cells from them. In 36 hours I should be able to see the results of the grafts.
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The cell bar frame inserted into the queen cell builder hive. This hive has no queen, larva, or eggs other than what has been added with the cell cups.
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I am hoping I will have more control of the process with the grafted cells verses the miller frame method used in prior weeks. There will be no question about the age of the larva and the expected emergence date of the queens. With the miller frame. eggs and larva of various ages could have been used by the bees to rear queens. Since the bees select which lava to turn into queens, there is less control. With the grafting method, since I was the one to select the larva, there should only be, at the most, 24 hours difference in the age of the queen cells.
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From left to right. 10 frame cell builder hive, 4 section mating nuc, 4 section mating nuc. You can see the sugar syrup feeders. Only one of the mating nuc sections is in use. It contains a queen cell from the miller frame use peviously
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36 hours will tell.