Sunday, May 27, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 26, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 79.4 lbs (+4.4 lbs from last week)

The swarm I caught has been dying off very quickly. So quickly that the mortician bees can't keep up with it. The frame of brood I gave them last week has been hatching, but since their population is so small they can't even properly care for a full frame and some of it won't be hatching.

The queen is still in the hive, but I didn't see any eggs. Since she's not laying eggs and her wings are very torn up, I'm thinking she's just a really old queen and can't do her job anymore. If there were more bees in the hive and they weren't dying so fast I could give them some grafted queen cells, or even a frame with eggs so they could raise a new queen, but I think they're too far gone for even that. The only options left that I know of are either let them die or combine the hives.


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But in the other hive, Queen Anne has been doing very well. The hive is very strong and has been making really good progress in comb building and raising brood. I'm very happy with how well this hive is doing.


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The upper brood chamber is getting very heavy. I'm glad I chose to go with all medium boxes (or "westerns" as I hear many people call them). I don't think my back could take lifting a full deep.


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I finally decided that instead of just letting the weaker colony die off completely I would just go ahead and combine it with the stronger one. Of course, this involves adding a new box about a week earlier than I had really intended. I also had to capture the queen and kill her. I did NOT like doing this, but I really didn't see any other option. Unfortunately, the camera's memory filled up and I didn't get the whole thing on video.

One concern I have with the newspaper barrier is that the rain will damage it and make the introduction between the hives go too quickly. I'm going to take a quick peek on it tomorrow and see how things are going.


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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 19, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 75 lbs (+6.6 lbs from last week)

The swarm I caught is very low on numbers. The flightless queen that got stuck outside is still alive in the bait hive, but the main hive body is queenless. So I moved the queen into the hive and will give it a frame of brood from my other hive to give it a boost in population as well as comb that is ready for the queen to start using (after the brood emerges).

There are still many unknowns here that could spell the demise of this colony:
1) Is the queen mated?
2) Will they even accept the queen back after being out of the hive for so long?
3) Will they accept and raise the brood I gave them?


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Queen Anne (from my first hive) is doing very well. The entire colony is going gangbusters. After "pyramiding up" the brood nest they are making excellent progress building up the comb in the empty frames. Queen Anne has already laid eggs in some of the new comb. We also find her in the upper chamber and get some good video of her. I pick a frame of mature worker brood from the lower chamber to move over to the Queen Beatrice (swarm) hive to give them a boost of new bees and help ease their dying population.


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Monday, May 14, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 13, 2012

I paid a visit to the hives today, just to look things over and see how the bees were doing. I opened them up yesterday so today was just observation. I was looking over the secondary swarm living in the bait hive and I saw the queen come outside. This was surprising to me, but I guess she's got nothing better to do at the moment. Plus, it was a hot day, she was probably coming out to cool off. I got some really good video of her walking around outside. Does that make me part of the paparazzi?


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Bee Vlog - May 12, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 68.4 lbs (+7.3 lbs from last week, not counting weight of additional box)

Today I learned more about "balling" behavior. I'm not sure if what I saw was balling or just a secondary swarm from the swarm I caught. We're about 90% sure that the queen we saw in this pile was not the queen we originally saw when we caught the swarm. So it looks like we may have picked up 2 queens and this pile of bees was looking for a new home and protecting the queen when we discovered it.

Unfortunately this queen's wings are very chewed up and she can't fly, which explains why they're clustering on the ground. I retrieved a bait hive and they actually moved into it. But the colony is so small I don't think they have any chance of survival. This is really more of a chance for me to observe some interesting bee behavior and just watch to see what happens. I'm not hoping to get a 3rd hive out of this. If anything I'm hoping to preserve the queen just in case she is the only one and the primary swarm is queenless.


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I'm adding a second brood box and using the "pyramid up" method of encouraging the bees to move up into and use the second box. This is part of unlimited broodnest management. More information is available here:
BushFarms.com - Unlimited Broodnest
HoneyBeeSuite.com - Unlimited Broodnest


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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 11, 2012

We were at the garden hauling dirt when I visited the hives and found something very strange going on. At first I thought a fight or attack had broken out. Then we discovered a queen in the big pile on the ground. I had read and seen videos about "balling" where the bees will surround the queen in a big ball, usually to kill them by over-heating. I was very suspicious of this behavior just 2 days after catching and moving a swarm in and I really didn't know what to make of it.

The next day I read up some more about this behavior and learned some other helpful things which I'll share in the next video. Stay tuned...


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Friday, May 11, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 9, 2012

I posted an ad on Craigslist a few weeks ago and finally had a swarm call today. I actually got 2 calls, each only 10 minutes apart. I took just the first one though as it was easier to get to and looked like a good size. The 2nd caller ended up finding someone else though.

This was my first experience capturing a swarm. I overestimated the gentle nature of a swarm and ended up paying the painful price. I got stung once in each hand, at exactly the same moment. It seemed like a coordinated attack! Things went much better after I put my gloves on.


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I couldn't get all the bees down off the branches and trellis, so I gave them some time to see if they'd move down into the hive.


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A small cluster started forming on the ground, around on the opposite side of our hive. I got as much as I could, waited around for about another 30 minutes, then closed everything up to take it away. I would guess only about 100 bees got left behind. I probably could have waited around until nightfall, but I really didn't want to wait that long. We were able to confirm that we had the queen in the hive, which was very reassuring.


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I got the swarm relocated next to my other colony and let them sit for a couple hours. While letting them sit and calm down I fixed some holes and gaps in the hive bodies with wood filler. Then I opened the entrance for the swarm and gave them a top bucket feeder with 1:1 sugar syrup.


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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 5, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 49.6 lbs (+1.1 lbs from last week)

Just checking on the progress of the brood and seeing if any "newbees" have hatched. We got a good look at some drones, which seem to be new. We also saw drones emerging from their cells. We didn't notice it at the time, but part of the video also captured worker bees emerging.


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