Extracted honey frames from SJ hive

I spent a few hours last Saturday night extracting honey from the frames in the medium supers that I saved from being robbed out at the SJ hive. Ended up with about 30 lbs.

Honey from SJ

Fuzzy/I removed the 2 supers that were temporarily put on Fuzzys hive (next to mine that was robbed out). One super is full of capped honey, the other has only about 5% capped. I'll be extracting these shortly. Fuzzy/I used a leaf blower to get the bees out of the supers, worked quite well and the bees were not upset about it

I talked with Fuzzy about the wax moths and he suggested using BT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honey_bee#Wax_moths). I purchased 2 oz of BT from him and followed directions to make it up and spray the extracted brood frames (only). Shall see how that works. I also think I saw a small hive beetle in the frames so I am going to cycle the frames thru the freezer to kill anything left alive.

SJ hive checkout

Well, brought home the SJ hive. All frames are devoid of honey. No brood (eggs or larva). There are cells with pollen. There are about 6 empty queen cells. Looks like it swarmed then was robbed away. Darn! I'll post pictures of what I found in the next day or two.
Now I need to freeze the frames to kill off the wax moth larva that seems to be starting.

Hive status: SJ and MH

Inspected the hives yesterday/today.

The MH hive is strong, lots of bees. I removed 4 super frames and consolidated the 2 supers into 1 super with the remaining partially drawn frames. The 2nd deep has lots of bees in it and capped brood cells in the middle of the deep with 2 frames of honey on each side. Looks good.

The SJ hive is kaputt. I checked it yesterday, the supers were only partially drawn/capped. The top deep was full of honey and there were very few bees in the top deep/supers. Looks like they had a late season swarm. The population seemed to be very low from what I saw going in/oiut and in the top deep/supers. The frames in the top deep were attached to the sides/bottom deep with lots of bur comb. In removing the frames for inspection, I tore open quite a bit of honeycomb. That was a mistake in robbing season.

Today when I came back to the hive to remove the supers, Fuzzy and I saw a cloud of bees all around my hive. They were at the seams between the supers trying to get in, they were bombarding the entrance, the hive was being robbed.

I decided to put the partially drawn supers on Fuzzy's hive next to mine to see if his bees cap off the honey. I removed the top deep and put it in a box to extract it tonight. I put an entrance reducer in the hive to try to help any of my bees who might be left (slim chance).

Fuzzy just sent me this email:
About 6:30pm, (sunset), I suited up and went over and popped the top and innercover on your hive. I figured that most of the raiders would happily head for their respective homes. Sure enough there was an immediate cloud of bees exiting.

Went back (suitless) at 8pm in the dark with a flashlight. It appears that there are now fewer than 100 bees left inside the hive. So I put the cover(s) back on and sealed it up.

Looks like I helped kill my hive. Darn!
The picture above is of the robbers.

Triple Hive check

Was out of town last week/weekend so checked the hives the weekend of Aug 14-15th.
MH is going like gang busters. I might need to pull out capped frames to give the stingers room to work.

SJ is going well. Most of the new super frames are partially drawn out and middle frames are capped.

I added a deep with drawn frames to Toyon to give them a hand. I was afraid of them filling out the top super and having a late season swarm. That would be bad on the hive since winter seems to be approaching early this year.

2nd super on SJ

I put a 2nd super on the SJ hive this evening. I was amazed that the top super frames I did not remove are almost all capped and the un-drawn frames I swapped in were almost all drawn and partially filled with nectar. Boy they are working fast.

SJ Update - more honey!

Just checked the SJ hive, was around 7pm and most of the bees were home and not very happy to see me. In 1 minute I was stung thru my jeans when I went to light the smoker. Ouch. I switched from the bee jacket to the full bee suit and got to work. I removed 4 full frames of capped honey, the other frames ranged from half capped to all drawn with nectar. I'll have to scramble and get a new super to keep them in space so they won't swarm again this season.

Picture of a small beard of bees.

Hive work

Checked out the hives. Lots of busy bees!
Here's what I did:

Toyon: my co-beek added a super as the 2nd deep. I know, should have used a deep but I forgot to get one and the bees needed room. I want to minimize swarms!

SJ: Hive looked busy, they have about half the frames in the super drawn out and have started to fill the cells with nectar. They even have some capped cells already. I slid the queen excluder in under the super to keep her majesty out. I did not see any brood or her so I figured it was safe.

MH: Wow! Super is drawn out and only the 2 outside frames are not capped! I was amazed. I checked all frames, no brood. So I slid in the excluder and a 2nd super under the first super. Lots and lots of honey!

Links to pictures.

SJ bees are doing.....

... good. Still there, just barely started pulling out the super. I've got to prevent the swarms next year or I'll never get any honey in decent quantities.

Swapping in SJ

Fuzzy and I moved around the frames in the SJ hive. Swapped the deeps, pulled 4 partially drawn frames out to put in empty frames. Encourage them to make more bees and stop swarming. Put a super on top w/o an excluder, they dont seem to like the excluder at all.

I need to check MH and see how they are doing.

Swarm #2! Darn It!

I got a call from Fuzzy Sat AM around 1045. The SJ hive was swarming! Dang it! I rushed home, grabbed up my gear, grabbed up a few options for a temp holder for the bees, and rushed over. The bees were gathered in a peach tree buzzing away. Fuzzy held the plastic tote underneath the bees and I started scraping/knocking them in. You really get an adrenalin rush doing that. After I scraped/brushed the majority into the tote, we set it down on the ground with the cover partially on then used BeeQuick to spray the tree. The bees left the tree and buzzed around. They started to form on the front of the tote so we raised it up off the ground with a box. The collected on the box, so we brushed them off and sprayed BeeQuick on the box and tote sides and front. After letting them settle for 10 minutes I put the top on fully, taped it down. And took it to Eastside SJ. Once there it was an easy enough task to remove 4 frames, knock the bees in, and close the hive up.

Click for pics.

Bee-Quick info

Hive Status

Well, looks like both hives don't like the queen excluders. So last Sunday (3/21/10) I removed both of them. Let's see if the bees start pulling out comb in the supers. Fuzzy checked the SJ hive the weekend of 3/27 and said they had not started drawing out comb yet...

Hive work and Honey!

Fuzzy and I reversed 2 of his hives and my San Jose hive Monday morning. Reversing involves moving the upper deep to the bottom and moving all brood comb to the new bottom deep. All of the honey frames are removed except the outside ones. The upper deep is populated with empty or partially filled frames. The idea is that the brood hatches on the bottom and the queen stays down there. The bees see they have plenty of room and start filling the empty frames. And I was able to take out 3 frames of honey. My first 3 frames! Woohoo!

I want to do this on the Morgan Hill hive tomorrow. I'll try to take pictures, but the bees were not happy and all over the place. A good way to get them off of a frame of honey is to smack it smartly on something hard and knock them off. To say that gets them irritated is an understatement.

This should be the last big work on the hives until I start adding on a queen excluder and honey supers.

Hive status

Last Saturday I visited both hives. I hoped to take out some extra honey frames so I could give the queen some room (and get my first batch of honey). But no go, the weather here has been wet and cold and they have been eating the honey. I also found that the frames I thought were fully drawn out were not.
I did give Fuzzy a frame with brood and nurse bees to help his hive that is next to my SJ hive. He told me last night at the BeeGuild Mtg (see links on the right) that the hive has lots of activity now.


Link to Pictures

Bee update

I've not been into the hives much in the last month, the weather is cold and wet and opening the hives under those conditions are bad for the bees and bad for me.

I did inspect them a few weeks ago, the SJ hive looks like it's doing well, lots of bees.

The MH hive is still having problems, not many bees and no brood in the upper deep. I hope they survive the winter. I inspected them as a 'field trip' for some family friends who are in 4H and interested in being beekeepers. I inspected the hive with only my gloves, no veil at all. I was only 'bounced' in the face once and I backed off.

Susan update

Did a quick update on Susan on Wednesday. Looking good, lots of frames with honey. Moved some of the honey frames to the outside so the bees can work on the few frames that are not drawn out yet. My daughter and I watched a new worker bee start to emerge from a cell. We saw a hole in the top of the cell, saw the bee moving around, then her antenna poke out. Then she was back to chewing at the wax. I'll have to remove a glove next time and take a few snapshots.

Quick check

I checked the hives last Sunday. Both are looking good, they both have 3-4 frame they need to draw out still. I moved the frames around on Sally to give the Queen room for brood. Don't want her getting crowded.

Hive status

I checked the hives last weekend.

Checked Susan hive, they have brood in the upper frames Fuzzy and I moved around. And are building honey comb in the upper frame. So looking good. Fuzzy mentioned it's time to stop feeding them sugar water.

Checked Sally hive, sort of. When I went out to check on them, it was 7:30 pm and the sun was going down so the hive was in shade. I opened up the inner cover a bit and was greeted by 10 bees in my face. They were not happy. I eventually only took enough time to put a honey super on top and put the inner cover with the smooshed on pollen patty. No more food for them, they are strong enough.

I need to order a few spare deep frames, I want to harvest a frame or two from each hive just so I can say I have honey from them.

Hives Updates

Checked on both hives yesterday (8/16). Here's a quick update:

Sally Hive:
I have brood! Half the brood cells are capped so the queen creation by the bees is a success! Yeah! And the bees are stronger than I expected, I guesstimate there are 5 frames of bees in the upper deep and 8 in the lower deep. I threw on a pollen patty just to give them a little extra food since the privet trees have dried up. I'm rather happy about this. They are starting to fill in the empty frames that I moved around on top. I might put a honey super back on.

Susan Hive:
I put another gallon bag of sugar water on them, they are quite busy and I did not want to disturb them. Fuzzy checked them earlier and they are drawing comb on the frames that we moved around. good..

I seem to have 2 hives doing better.

SJ Hive status (Susan)

It has been hot here this week, about 95. I went out yesterday and check on the SJ hive (Susan). Fuzzy went with me, it is next to one of Fuzzy's hive. Both hives were bearding:
Fuzzy's Hive, has 2 deep hive bodies and 2 medium honey supers:


click picture for full view.


My hive, has 2 deep hive bodies:

click picture for full view.

Fuzzy was concerned about this since the top deep has barely anything in it outside of some new honey comb in the middle. He was worried that they workers have built a band of honey around the lower brood area and since the queen will not cross honey comb, they might consider themselves overcrowded and be preparing to swarm. We took apart the bodies and found that there was a larger band of honey on the top of the lower deep and honey comb in the middle of the top deep. So we moved 3 of the brood combs from the lower deep to the upper deep, interspersing them with empty frames. We also scored the honey above the brood area so the workers will hopefully remove the honey so the queen can lay there.

We'll see how it goes.