So much to learn... bees

Well, since the observation hive was so full, I figured I could take 2 of the 4 frames and the queen and start a nuc.   Sounds easy enough, right?  Everything sounds easy when you're sitting in front of your computer.  

Here's how it went (for posterity):

Early Thursday, I put in the metal thing to keep all the bees in the OH.  Of course, it was cloudy and chilly so I had to wait till nearly 11 before it was 60 degrees and starting to clear.  The hubs carried the hive outside (heavy!) while I covered the hole so bees wouldn't fly in the house.  I also (thanks to Michael Bush) covered the outside entrance to the hive so there wouldn't be a crowd waiting when we put the hive back.  (this was very smart - there were tons of bees waiting by the door by the time we were done.)

Outside, we leaned the hive against the house near their entrance.  I unscrewed the side of the glass away from the queen cells.   (These were on the top 2 frames.)  I brushed the bees on the glass into the nuc box.  (Have I mentioned how many bees were in this hive?)   Then I put the bottom 2 frames into the nuc.  At this point, there are too many bees for me to be able to see the queen.  So I started hoping.  (Hubs cleaned the glass while I was doing all this.)  Then I brushed a TON of bees from the hive into a bucket and then into the nuc.  It looked like I was getting a whole lot.  

I decided to put the OH back together and just hope that I got the queen...  After we installed it back in the house, I saw the queen of course.  sigh.  But, I didn't want to mess with the frames that had queen cells on them.  At least that's the best excuse I have for not trying harder to find her.

Next I put the nuc over in a new location only a 150 ft (ish) away.  Shortly there after a zillion bees came out and were circling around.  Now I know that all the forager aged bees will come back to the parent hive, but this was looking like ALL the bees.  Sigh again.   So, the OH hive has tons of bees still and they've already started drawing out one of the empty frames I put in.  (Note to self: next time just seal the whole box for a day or three, and get the queen.)    I suppose I could have tried this again, but moving the OH outside is labor intensive for both of us.  But, the OH is still fine, it's just "wasting" a perfectly good queen because there's not much room for her to lay and I'd really like to be using her to her full potential now to make up for all the winter losses.

On to the next day:   The sun finally came out in the early afternoon, so I check on the nuc.  Sadly, there were only a handful of bees, the brood in the frames appeared to have gotten chilled and the one queen cell on that frame was empty. So this is a pretty hopeless situation for a bee.  I'm shocked that 90% of the bees I put in there could fly back home.... where they sit and do nothing.

Checked the queenright outside hive:  They're still small, but picking up steam.  After much deliberation about whether to just combing the sad little nuc with them or give the nuc some resources, or even the queen...  I decided to give them a frame of brood with nurse bees.  I also notched some of the cells with young larva in hopes of helping them make a queen.  They still have very few bees, but they only need to make one queen cell.  If this doesn't work, I'll combine them next check.  (Note: bring a sheet of newspaper to do the combine.)

Our neighbor's bees are robbers.  Fortunately, (or unfortunately) I've gotten really good at recognizing robbing.  So I completely sealed up the nuc (with lots of the robbers inside!)  If I leave it sealed long enough, the robbers will join the hive.   As soon as the sun comes out again, I'll see if they've managed to start queen cells.  If not, I should probably stop risking resources and just combine them with the good hive.

One good hive is better than 2 weak ones.  

My very humble goal is to have at least 2 strong outside hives going into the coming winter... I'd rather have more of course.  It is only April, so I should have plenty of time unless the weather is icky like last year.

Found the queen!

This is from the far west hive (the remaining one besides the observation hive) and it's growing!  It had about 3 full frames of brood, lots of pollen and honey.  In the pictures below you can see the queen, drones, emerging drones.  The queen was a bit harder to find since her abdomen is dark.  The queen in the observation hive is light colored.

 

 

 

 

 

bees, blooms and the weather

This week we've gotten about 2.5 inches of rain.  The pond is now only a couple feet low.  The pear and oaks are blooming and buzzing with bees.  Redbuds are blooming.  The remaining hives seem happy.  Spring is springing.

Bees

Good news:  The observation hive is booming.

Bad news: 3 of the 4 outside hives are dead.  Starved within inches of honey.  The neighbors bees have been cleaning out the remaining honey.   My current theory is that they didn't get a good round of broodrearing done in the fall (thanks to it being so hot and dry) so they didn't have a big enough cluster.  Then with the warm winter, they raised some brood and then starved with we had the cold spell.

The westernmost hive is still alive, but weak.  1.5 frames of brood.  I gave them extra honey from the dead-outs and reduced their entrances to the minimum.  Hope they can grow quickly.  Might end up making splits of the OH!

The above bees are dead!  But they look pretty healthy other than that. No deformed wings.

The observation hive doing great.  Drawing out new comb, queen laying in every cell possible.  Still expanding the broodnest which now covers the 2 middle frames nearly completely.

OH queen on new comb: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/421770_3560396127302_1194765696_33699441_274490565_n.jpg

sand plums blooming

Sand plums have just begun to bloom.  Henbit/deadnettle has been blooming forever. Must check bees again soon to see when will be the time to raise some queens.

early spring bee check

2012 has been unusually warm and we've even had some rain.  The pond looks like an oval again instead of 2 ponds.

I check the 3 west hives.  2 are doing fine, 1 seemed to be dwindling, they had honey so I moved frames of it closer to where the bees were clustered.  I didn't see a queen or brood in this one.  The other 2 had brood.

This week the highs are only in the 50's, so not much flying for a while.

bees

Checked 3 of the big hives since we had some rain lately and the temp was down to 76.  (Although the 72 percent humidity didn't help.)  All had brood and stores.  Not sure yet if we'll get to harvest any for ourselves.  Hope for more rain and lots of nectar producing flowers.  The swarm hive had left after the comb collapse which killed their queen.  So I took some of their old comb and put it into one of the big hives for safe keeping.