Today's mite count

26

It seems within "acceptable " limits compared to other people's reports.

September 5

It has been sunny and warm w/o rain for the last week.
Found 31 varroa mites on the bottom board of the langstroth hive today after 10 away on vacation.Traffic is very good.
The top bar hive has very little activity. It seems they are dwindling away to nothing without a queen.

Morning Traffic on a hot August day.

August 15 Visit

I looked in on the hives briefly yesterday, the top bar hive still seems to have very few bees in it, while the langstroth hive has very many bees in it and a lot of brood soon to emerge.
There are two supers in place, and both have some nectar stored up but nothing finished, that is to say no capped honey yet. The bottom deep box seemed so full of bees and brood I decided to put on another brood box with two good looking frames of mostly drawn-out comb and the rest clean looking frames with plastic foundation. I have not used the queen excluder because it seemed from last year the bees didn't like to go through it unless there was absolutely no place else to go, so I am hoping the bees will continue using the supers for storage w/o trying to fill up the second deep box.
I only took one picture, I got a glob of wax on the camera and decided I didn't want to wax  the whole thing up. Seems once you get a bit of sticky wax on your hand it goes everywhere yet you can't get rid of it.

I want to remind myself to check back on them next week because we are leaving on a big trip on the 26th.

August 2

Looked briefly in both hives today. In the Langstroth hive there were lots of bees and plenty of brood. Observed young bees emerging from their cells.

Very few bees in the top bar hive. 

Today's Brief Visit

I looked in on both hives today. Sunny and very warm. Both groups have made good progress with good looking storage areas and lots of brood in the Langstroth box. They still have room to expand so I am hoping through August they will be able to pack it in for a good winter. I feel optimistic about their well-being, but don't know how much honey there will be to share.

July 21st check

Two hives are better than one

Top Bar Inspection, Natural Comb

 

 

 

 

 

Purple Poppy Pollen

 

Today's Inspection

It was sunny and warm today so I suited up and lit the smoker to visit the langstroth hive. I haven't seen much activity compared to the top bar hive and felt a little worried about them. when I first opened the hive it the amount of bees seemed about the same as the last time we peeked in, definitely not more. About half of the syrup is gone from the feeder.

I pulled out every frame and looked at both sides pretty carefully, but there wasn't much to see. there was a lot of empty space, not much honey and no fresh pollen that I could see. I found 4 or 5 drone cells and saw one drone emerging. I opened 1 cell and before I could see more than a fat white shape the workers crowded around and blocked my view. I decided to leave well enough alone. I looked very carefully for worker brood or any sign of the queen but could not find any.

I know the last time we thought the queen might be dead/missing she was just slow to get going. Reviewing the blog shows that we found uncapped brood on April 21.  It seems like a bad sign that a few drones would be there and one emerging without a much larger number of worker brood in evidence, -but I'm not experienced enough to know if that's significant or what.

I dont know what else to do but look in on them again in a few days to see if anything has changed.
If a new queen is needed, we might check out these people in tsawassen
http://www.urbanbeesupplies.ca/packaged%20bees%20and%20nucs.html
I will email them to see what  they say.

Fed The Lang Girls Today

The sun came out today and the bees did too. I didnt know how quickly they might go through their stores with all the cool and rainy days forecast, so I decided to take the opportunity to quickly swap a frame out for the feeder. I put in a bunch of chopped up styrofoam egg carton pieces for them to stand on because I thought it would be more hygienic than wood chips. However when I poured in the syrup all the little rafts gathered at one end leaving a dangerous open lake at the other, so I grabbed some little birch twigs and broke 'em up and threw 'em in there. So much for hygiene, but at least there is less danger of anyone falling in and drowning.

I gave them about 3 liters of 1:1 syrup so if they have to stay inside for the next week or so I am certain their pantry won't go empty. It will be interesting to see how quickly they go through that much syrup.
After I closed up the hive they all went back inside as a cloud went in front of the sun.


The barn bees were flying with a good bit of traffic at the door, I saw a few baskets full of bright orange pollen (I'm pretty sure it is crocus).

Spring Inspection March 2012

Opened both hives yesterday, March 24, 2012.

 Here is the natural comb of the Bee Barn:

Here is the bottom floor of the Barn:

In the Langstroth hive there was a very large grapefruit sized cluster of bees in the top box. I didnt see the queen, and I didnt actually see or recognize any brood, but I am going to assume She is there and despite losses they will come back if given a chance. Looking through the frames on the top box I saw one patch of capped honey that was maybe a third of a frame, and elsewhere there were some cells full of nectar, and possibly a quarter frames' worth of pollen. To my inexperienced eye it looked like very little in the way of pantry stores.

There was also green mold growing on some pollen stored in an outside frame of plastic foundation. I tried to scrape some out but when I touched it a fine cloud of spores exploded out of it, and it was tough removing it.

Because of this I want to feed them some sugar syrup in the division board feeder, just to give them a little insurance.



In the bottom box I found horror:

There was some capped honey 

but the other side of this frame had a lot of white filled cells. I don't know what it is, is it good or bad? I poked a few with a stick and I thought one of them had a small amount of pollen, but couldnt be sure.

In the middle frames there were many dead drones and lots of fluffy mold.

Why were there dead drones inside?

Look at this frame.

Sorry its not a great picture but notice the size of cells at the top compared to the size further down. This is a frame (of two) I put a "starter strip" of  wax foundation at the top and let the bees fill in the rest. You can see they began making bigger sized cells. this may have something to do with last year's the very large drone population.

So my plan for the langstroth hive is to feed them some syrup, and try to get another clean unbroken deep box from the stuff in the shed, with clean frames and fresh foundation. While they are filling up two deep boxes with brood and honey, then the situation of the supers can be worked out.

Bringing back March Pollen

 

Death of the new hive... a guilty post-mortem

I am terribly sad to say that I'm not a bee-keeper, but a bee-killer. Opened the new hive up today, clearly far too late this spring for such a young hive, such a warm winter, and it is tragic to report but they have all died, starved to death it seems. There is a large pile of bodies and many were head-down, trying to scrape out the last of the honey at the bottom of the comb when they died. Clearly, my ignorance and lack of experience is the cause, I should have realized that they didn't have enough stores to go so long, but it is sheer stupidity that I now bitterly regret that I didn't open up the new hive earlier.... I had checked in on the "mother" hive in early February and they seemed to be doing well with lots of honey left, but this new one didn't have the same back-ups, and I should have been feeding them probably back as early as January. I am so sorry to everyone concerned.

Foraging in February

Bees observed flying and returning to the hive with baskets full of yellow pollen.

"Winter" hive related reading ...

from @katherineharmon 's twitter: Zombie fly parasites are killing honeybees http://bit.ly/z4P3kLA new colony collapse disorder suspect?

[This is a link to a Scientific American article, with a fascinating alternative theory from California, on the cause of the collapse, different from either mites or fungus or a virus or cell phone tower disorientation: a creepy weird fly that is somehow getting its eggs inside field bee foragers, and then they go back to the hive, turn into a zombie, fly out randomly at night, up into any light, fall to the ground and die, as the larvae hatch into maggots that eat out their bodies, decapitating them from inside, whereupon as many as 13 flies emerge from the dead bee body cavity. sad but true weirdness. thanks Amanda Mcneill for the link.]