Spring Has Sprung

The first day of spring has arrived! And it has arrived in beautiful fashion!

Temperatures rose into the low 70’s this weekend, allowing for a quick inspection of the hives.

The crocus flowers are blooming, allowing the bees to collect much needed spring pollen. The pollen they collect will be used to boost brood production as they “build up” in size in preparation for the spring honey flow.

 

Right:  The first Crocus to emerge on our property, and a week early too!

The warm temperatures over the past few days have been a wonderful reminder of days to come.

Several times I found myself sitting out near the hives just watching them fly in and out, heavily burdened with yellow packages of pollen on their back legs. Some bees were busy dragging out the dead from winter loses, while others just seemed happy to get out and into the sun shine.

I have been keeping a written record of the progress of the hives over the past years, and I am happy to report that the crocus bloom is running about a week ahead of schedule…. An early spring.

I guess the Ground Hog was wrong!

Left:  A worker bee returning to the hive with some of the first spring pollen.









As I mentioned the rise in temperature allowed a quick inspection of some of the hives. Sure enough, young brood, and capped larva were observed on two if not three frames of bees. The queens probably started laying eggs sometime in February.

Some cells and already emerged, perhaps these were the bees I watched taking their first orientation flights in the sun.

Pollen patties were once again added to the hives. I have been surprised how quickly they have been consumed. Each colony has been through a patty a week since the beginning of March. In a few more weeks we will begin providing sugar syrup to the hives to imitate the collection of nectar. This will stimulate the queens to lay even more eggs, and cause the hives to build up faster.

Above:  With the cover and inner cover removed you can see the new small hive beetle trap installed.  The trap is baited with an attactant oil.  The bees will chase the beetles, and the beetles should enter the trap to hide, where they will meet there demise.  You can also see a new pollen patty just added to the colony along with the remains of the white bee candy.  The yellow "frame" to the far right is a division board feeder which will be used to feed the bees sugar syrup next month.




Now is our buildup time. The more bees in the colonies come May. The more honey will be on the hives in August.

Some dead hive beetles were found on the sticky boards below the screened bottom boards. This indicates that some hive beetles are continuing to survive, with the bees, through the winter. I purchased two different types of beetle traps to use in addition to the bottom board traps I have been using. These new traps fit between the frames in the upper hive body. They are baited with an attractant oil. I have not used these before. I hope they work. The next inspection will show if this trap works.

Left:  Progress of the mead I started in February.  You can see how much it has cleared over the past month.  To the right is a photo taken at the height of fermentation. 

I plan on drinking this mead while we are extracting honey this Septermber!

The bee candy was once again added where needed, even though there is still abundant honey still in the combs. The bees have now been “trained” to feed off of this candy, although with so much honey left in the comb these hives will have to be watched carefully for swarming in the months to come.

I had quite the feeling of accomplishment this weekend. It is nice that all of the hives survived this winter. Perhaps, after 31 years, I have finally figured out how to prepare them for winter.

Or perhaps, I was just lucky.

 

Flight at last!

Winters on Cape Cod offer little to brighten the spirit of a beekeeper. It is much too cold to look in on them and see how they are doing. We wait and wait until warmer days, days where the temperature edges above 40, to see any activity outside the colony.

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Left: Hive open on a 45 degree February Day. You can see that much of the candy feed has been consumed by the bees over the last month.
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Will my bees survive the winter cold? Has it been cold for too long? Are the bees starving in place because it has not been warm enough for them to relocate to fresh stores of honey?

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Right: Another open colony. Not as much candy feed has been consumed.
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After weeks of cold, the temperature finally pushed its way above 40 degrees, the bees broke cluster and commenced their cleansing flights. This gave me the opportunity to peak in under the cover to see how the bees were doing and whether or not candy needed to be added to help them survive the winter.


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Left: Bees take to the air for a cleansing flight. Winter bees do not get out much!
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Upon opening the hives it became apparent that the bees had consumed about half the candy I had placed in the hives in January. I was please to see that all of the hives were doing well. Most had 5 frames of bees, not bad for February. The queen should start laying eggs sometime within the next few weeks to start replenishing the workers lost over the winter.


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Right: Close up of bees feeding on sugar candy. This candy supplements their stores of honey to help stretch their food for the long winter.
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With this inspection I am hopeful that all the hives will survive this winter. Of course it is not the end of March yet. March is the month where the greatest bee loses occur. If their number s dwindle to low, the bees will not be able to keep themselves warm enough to survive. Many colonies die only a few weeks away from the bloom of first spring flowers.



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Left: A bee and a hive beetle on a removed sticky board. The dead hive beetle was not there on the last inspection in January. Evidence that there are small hive beetles surviving the winter within the cluster of bees.
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The bees in the hive now, are the bees which emerged last September, five months ago! They have not seen much other than the inside of the colony. They have spent much of their life keeping the colony warm, feeding on the stores of honey and pollen left there by their many sisters the summer before they were born.



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Right: A worker bee rests on the edge of a brick, warming itself in the sun before flying back to the colony
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Now begins the buildup of the colony in preparation for the honey flow in June and July. Starting in March we will begin feeding the colonies pollen, and sugar syrup to further stimulate their increase in numbers. We want the colonies strong in numbers for the honey flow. The more bees collecting pollen and nectar, the more honey will be produced.

March will tell…. March will tell…

Escaping Bees and Counting Mites

Well it’s now the end of August here on Cape Cod. It has been a great summer, weather wise, but the worst honey production year I have seen since I started keeping bees in 1978.
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Left: The dreaded Varroa mite. The mite population increases through the summer months and can reach damaging numbers.
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We are averaging about 10 lbs of honey per producing hive, and only 3 out of 7 hives are producing any honey. Last years yield was 60 lbs of honey per hive. This honey season has been a disappointing one. As a beekeeper, at this point, I can not see what could have been done better to produce more honey. The biggest factor was the spring weather. It was cold too long for the bees to build up in numbers and to take advantage of the spring honey flow. Then when the spring honey flow finally started, three weeks late, it was over too fast.
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Right: A screened bottom board with a sticky board installed. The screened bottom board allows Varroa mites to fall out of a colony and not climb back in. The sticky board is installed to collect the fallen mites in order to observe their numbers.
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August is when the Varroa mites show up in their greatest numbers. Detected in Kentucky in 1991 they have quickly spread throughout the country. A few years ago the cape lost about 80% of its bee colonies because of the Varroa Mites. The mites attach themselves to the bees, feeding off of them, weakening them, and spreading disease.
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Right: A sticky board being removed from the screened bottom board after a 24 hour period. The mite levels found on the board will reveal if there is a mite population problem inside the hive.
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A week ago I conducted a 24 hour mite drop count on all the colonies. Since I maintain a screened bottom board on most of the colonies, a slide in sticky board was used to collect falling mites over a 24 hour period. The sticky board is then removed and the mites counted. If only a few are found then it is an indication that the mite population is low within the colony. My mite count was in the hundreds in two of the colonies, with high counts in a third, and low counts in the others. I have never experienced mites in these numbers before. The trend was that the over-wintered colonies had a much higher mite count than the colonies started in 2007.
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Right: Enlarged area of the sticky board. Among the debris are great numbers of varroa mites. Not good news.
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Before the hives can receive any type of medications or treatments the Honey must be removed from the hive. I installed escape boards which allow the bees to exit the honey supers, and not return. Within two to three days almost all the bees will have exited the honey supers into the brood chambers below where the queen is. After removing all of the honey, I was able to start formic acid treatments. Formic acid is found naturally in the colony. Adding formic acid pads inside the colony raises the formic acid level within the colony. This increased level does not hurt the bees, but kills both Varroa and Trachea mites. The treatment lasts 3 weeks after which the hives will be tested again for Varroa mites to insure their numbers are under control. Once the formic acid pads are removed, the acid levels return to normal.
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Left: Closeup of the sticky board. Oil spray (like pam) is used on the board to keep the mites in place once they fall onto the board.
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Since honey production was so low this year, the hives do not contain much honey for the bees to live on through the winter. We have started feeding the bees with a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water. The supplemental feeding has started early this year so the bees will have enough time to store it in the brood chamber.
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Left: The bottom of a bee escape board. The bees can come down through the round hole, and out the small openings, but are to dumb to find there way back. Once placed between the honey supers and the brood chamber this board will evacuate the bees from the honey super in three days.
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I am hoping that there will be an abundance of Goldenrod bloom this fall. The Goldenrod is the last major producer of nectar and pollen for the bees before the frost and cold weather set in.
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Right: Installed bee escape board.
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We will be extracting what honey we can this weekend!

That’s always fun!
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Left: Bees feeding on pollen patty supplements. This stimulates brood production.
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