Bee Vlog - November 4, 2012

Hive weigh-in: Both hives weigh 117 lbs. It's interesting that they are at the same weight now when, previously, Queen Anne was significantly out weighing Queen Beatrice.

It's been nearly a month since I've been able to observe the bees on a nice, sunny, warm day. Today it was 63 F when I paid them a visit. Activity levels between the hives have seemed to switch patterns. Queen Anne was relatively quiet while Queen Beatrice was the busy one.

Queen Anne has been fighting a bad case of varoa mites. I've been seeing dead larva that have been pulled from their cells and deposited outside the hive. They've had dead mites attached to them. I suspect (or hope) that this is actually a good thing: that the bees are dealing with the infestation by removing the larva and thus breaking the mites' brood cycle. In the process though, they are also seeing a drop in population as the summer bees die off and new winter bees are fewer due to their culling methods. It should be interesting to see how well they do over winter.

I have no inclination to apply any kind of mite treatments. I don't believe it to be a beneficial long-term solution. I'll be very saddened to lose them of course, but I'd rather have good genetic stock that can handle mites themselves than start treating. It's better, not only for my bees, but the other bees in the area. If this colony can survive the infestation then they have superior genes and they will pass on these traits to other neighboring colonies. Otherwise their weaker genetics will die off. It's harsh, but that's really the way of nature. If I treat the mites then I encourage the survival of weaker genetics, and also breed stronger mites. Both results are contrary to the goal.


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Photos featured in the video:

A dead larva with 2 dead mites attached, and half of a dead bee.

A view of the larva where the mites are visible.

Queen Anne's bottom board: lots of dead bees and larva. Looks to me like the workers aren't able to keep up with the cleaning work, either because of all the rain or the death rate...or both.

Queen Beatrice's bottom board, just to show the contrast between the 2 hives.

Bee Vlog - September 29, 2012

I built a portable hive scale from the design over at beehacker.com, but had not used the originally intended L-brackets of the design and had used some narrower ones instead. This didn't work well at all, so I upgraded my build to use the correct, stronger L-brackets, which works much better.


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I've had a lot more practice and experience lighting up the smoker now. I had several failures early on and was quite frustrated with it. You'd think it to be a simple and easy thing to do. Well, it is if you do it right and I was doing it wrong. After some more YouTube research and advice from a comment on one of my other videos I finally got a much better technique. Now the smoker lasts me a good hour or more. I could also extend that time if I filled it even more. Sometimes if I leave the smoker for 10-15 minutes it can look dead, but I just give it a couple puffs and it comes right back to life.


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Hive weigh-in -
Queen Anne: 130.4 lbs (probably a more reliable weight after fixing the scale)

This is the final "open hive" inspection for Queen Anne this year. I went through the lower 2 boxes, but didn't go through every frame. I still got to see the queen though, which is very surprising and lucky. Everything looked good. I have no concerns about them surviving the winter. But I also don't really know what to expect.

I installed an entrance reducer. The hive entrance is only 1/2 inch tall, so I'm not worried about mice getting in, but the yellow jackets are getting really aggressive right now. I'm just giving them a smaller entrance to guard.

It's going to be tough not getting to open the hive up for the next few months. I'll still be doing external inspections and taking hive weights, which don't require opening the hive.


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I signed up for a free hive tracking website (HiveTracks.com) that has some cool features for mobile, on-site, record keeping. In this video I do a quick overview of some of the mobile features and demonstrate creating a hive inspection record.

It's a pretty cool site with many convenient features. However, I would like it if there was a mobile app available that would work offline and sync with the online database. This would make it possible to do onsite records without a data plan or if you're in an area that did not have data service.

I didn't cover it in the video, but I also like the map feature on the website. You can have the option to publicly share your location with other users. It doesn't share any details publicly, just a pin on the map. The nice thing about this is you can see how many other sites are in the vicinity. Although, it would be nice if there was an of indicator of how many hives are at each site. Having 20 neighbors with 1 or 2 hives is very different from having one neighbor with 500 hives.


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Hive weigh-in -
Queen Beatrice: 104 lbs (probably a more reliable weight after fixing the scale)

This is the final "open hive" inspection for Queen Beatrice this year. I lucked out here too and got to see the queen. Their population is smaller than Queen Anne, but they still seem strong and capable. It should be interesting to see how well they do through winter.


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(This post added to Beeline Buzz Hop #1. Check it out to see what other beekeepers are up to.)