Hive update - sad news yet again

 Well, inspected the hives today. They died off. damn it

 

Some notes/observations:

Swarm hive:

• 2 mediums, closed bottom board
• put on winter cover back in nov?
  
• inside was wet, dripping honey from non sealed cells
• bees dead, soft and turning moldy.
• lots of partially filled in comb and open cells
• bees mostly on bottom board, not enough to keep hive warm i expect
  

 

Package hive:

• deep on bottom, 2 mediums on  top
  
• put on winter cover back in nov?
• open board bottom
• hive drier, not as much moisture
• deep was mostly empty, very little drawn comb
• medium box had brood come and some honey
• top box had some full frames and partial frames since I do 1/2 comb guide and half (on the sides) of empty space
• bees all clumped together on 3 frames (one side, both sides, one side) in top box
• no honey nearby, but honey was at end of frame, so they starved
• lots of bees head first in cells
  

Hive swarmed

Hive #1 swarmed, I caught swarm and put it into hive #2

A beekeeper again

I bought a nuk from The bee lady near Roy, Wa. $225 for a nuk, 5 frames, about 75% drawn, lots of bees, Queen is marked with white paint. 

Bees picked up 5/11/21, hives 5/12/21.

 When I hived it, they were calm and mellow, so that's good. She has good bees.

I'll do a check tomorrow and see how they are doing.

Added swarm lure to bait hives

I have 2 bait hives out, ants moved into 1 so I need to clean it up.
I just added a swarm lure to the other one, it has good reviews on Amazon.

Swarm lure on Amazon

We'll see how it works..

Yellowjackets

I've just refreshed my 4 wasp/yellow jacket traps. I wanted to start early to get the queens as they emerge from hibernation and hopefully reduce the population around the house.
We'll see how successful I am..

Damn yellow jackets!

Damn yellow jackets! The murderous bastards!

2 weeks ago I went thru the hive, checking how things were and I removed 3 frames of honey. The bottom 2 mediums were completely empty, but since the bees were getting antsy I closed up the hive with a ToDo to remove the bottom boxes.

Sunday I went into the hive to remove the boxes, the hive had a lot of yellow jacks in it and no bees. All the honey was gone and the yellow jackets were removing the brood that was still left. They killed off the nest!

I saw what looked like bearding last week due to the high temps, it was probably in response to the # of yellow jackets invading. I expect the bees absconded and left the nest to the damn yellow jackets.

Next year I am hanging up yellow jackets traps all over when the queens hatch out so I can kill as many of the damn queens as I can. L has become really allergic to them and is afraid to get stung by them.

A lesson learned. No more Mr Nice Guy to the yellow jackets.

Hive and honey

Well, added yet another box, but removed the spacer and crushed/strained the honey out. Gave crushings back to the bees to clean out. I saw honey bees, yellow jackets (the bastards), and a few black/yellow striped bumblebees feasting away.

Looks to be about 7 lbs of honey. I'll update when I know for sure.

Hive is getting larger

I just added another medium super to the hive. #4 from the bottom, so the queen has room to lay.
The hive is now 6 boxes high with a feed spacer full of drawn comb. I'll have to harvest that shortly.
I expect they will swarm, I'll setup a swarm box where the swarm went last year just in case.

Hive status

Well, lost the small hive over winter. They did not survive, the mouse moved back in each time I evicted it and that probably was the main cause.

The other hive is going great. I just added another medium on it (5 now), I think I added the last one a month ago.

And I forgot the sugar feeder spacer and now it is almost full of drawn comb. I'll leave it on since it has brood in there.

Time to feed the bees

I crushed/strained the honey frames that I pulled from the swarm hive.
I just added pollen patties to the hives, 1 to each.
The mouse moved back into the swarm hive, I need to get a mouse stopper.

Critter status update

The status of the assorted critters around the place.

• Chickens
• Down to 8 chickens
• 2 older roosters, 1 newer rooster
• 1 older hen
• 1 mid hen
• 3 new hens
• Bees
• Still have 2 active hives. I thought I had lost the swarm hive, I popped the top and a mouse had moved in. But I removed the top medium and saw a mass of bees, so I put the spacer on the 2nd box and put the sugar block back above the bees. I evicted the mouse and put an entrance reduce on the hive. I have 6 frames of capped honey to extract now.
• Salmon eggs 
• On day 5, total TU's so far is 672. The eggs need 725 TU's to hatch. Water temp has been around 46, so if the water temperature stays the same, they should hatch around day 9, Feb 1st.

The hive swarmed

Well, L caught the hive swarming so I went out and caught it, 4 times... It was about 15' up an apple tree, so I had to stand on the top of 6' the ladder to get to it. I was trying to put them into a waxed cardboard nuk.
And the swarm went back to the tree.
So I got a bucket, shook the bees into the bucket and put them into the nuk.
And they went back to the tree.
So I tried again, climbing to the very top to try to pull the =m down.
And they went back.
So I got L to hold the ladder while I sawed off the branch they were on and then shook them into a medium hive body/bottom with the sugar feeder on top. That worked. They stayed in the medium.
I'll leave them there for a week then move the hive to the hive compound.

I added a medium last weekend, moved a few frames to the new box, I looked for queen cells, but did not see any in the lower boxes. Guess I should have pulled all the frames out. I should have split it then. oh well. At least I caught them.

Assorted notes

Some assorted updates:

• The broody moran is trying it again. She got so close. We'll see if she can pull it off now. 
• We are not going to not replace hens as they pass on since right now L cannot eat the eggs. I'll get new feed and see if that helps with L's egg problem.
• Allergies have started up hard. Cottonwood is fuzzing out.
• Fleas have risen in population, I setup the flea lights to trap and starve the little suckers.
• Bees:
• Ed's hive: added 3rd and 4th box, queen excluder between 3&4. He has: 1 deep, 2 mediums, exclude, 1 medium.
• Our hive: added 3rd medium, need to deal with the damn ants that are putting eggs under the covers.
• Looks like all the trees/bushes we bought are budding. The mulberry bush was the latest, we thought it was dead, but it finally started.

Hive check, 1 down

Check the hives the other day.

The swarm hive survived, small but survived. It has insulation on 3 sides and inside the top cover. 1 medium for bees, 1 medium with 3 frames on each side and a sugar block on top of the frames.

The Calif package died, looks like they starved. I had 3 mediums with a spacer and sugar block on top.  The sugar block was hardly eaten, it was probably too far away from the ball of bees. It had insulation on 4 sides and the cover.

I will not order any more California packages, they cannot survive the winters here.

Damn it.

Hive check

Well, the package hive is doing great, almost all of the frames in the 2nd medium mare full, so I put a new box on there with full and half frames. I see lots of brood comb, so the half frames with help with that.

The swarm hive has brood, but not many workers left alive. Maybe a frame. I added a frame of brood (w/o the bees) from the other hive and added several frames of drawn out comb, we'll see if that gives them a shot in the arm. They still have sugar water so they can draw out comb easier. We'll see how they do. They were a small swarm in the fist place. I noticed the bees are larger, so it was probably a feral colony they came from.

Caught a swarm.....

Neighbours wife came by today at noon, her husband called her to ask her to come over and tell me there was a swarm of bees near his office in town. So I geared up, went to town, and the swarm was sitting on the bottom of a Japanese maple bush. Easy capture, lay on my back, lift up the box, and push them in.
I've hived them and we'll see how they do.

2 packages hived

I picked up 2 packages of Carnoilans yesterday from BeeLine apiary and hived them, 1 at home, 1 at Ed's in Vancouver. He has an apple orchard and the bees should like that a lot.

Ed paid for the hive and package. He wants to collect pollen, but once the hive gets established I'll get a pollen trap for him. I don’t want to start off taking the pollen from the bees.

I have a swarm trap out at home and will be putting one down at Ed's, I want to add several new colonies this summer.

2nd hive starved. damn it.

The 2nd hive starved also. Things were looking good in the last post, but the cold snap we got a week later got them. I'm learning that there are few early nectar sources within a few miles of the place. I'm looking into what to buy/plant in fall.

I ordered 2 packages of bees, they are scheduled to be here on 4/21/2016. I'm taking the day off from work to hive them here and at Ed's in Vancouver.

Hive status

Checked the hives 2 weekends ago, we lost 1, the larger hive, looks like they starved out and came down with dysentery. The sugar patty I put up there just prolonged their agony.
But the other hive is strong and going. The sugar patty is really helping them.
I've setup nuk swarm trap over on the tree house.
I've also setup a new hive at Ed's in Vancouver. I've ordered 2 packages, 1 for me, one for Ed. I'll put a swarm trap at Ed's since the neighbour has bees and I'm always willing to get a swarm.

Feeding the bees and status

I made some bee candy following the instructions from The Miller Family Compounds recipe. I just learned not to use a teflon pan, apple cider vinegar strips the teflon. I made these changes to the recipe to make it smaller:

5 lbs of sugar
6.3 fl oz of apple cider vinegar
1/8 tsp of electrolytes
skipped the citric acid.. could not find mine


 I noticed this a few days after I put the sugar candy on the hives. I've not noticed any averse reactions to this. Whew.

I put the candy on around Jan 10th. I just walked by the hives now (Jan 22), and can hear buzzing at the top of both hives. So they really like the candy.
I'll have to make up more to put up there in Feb.