The Virgin Queen, Part 1

Today I set up a mating nuc.  Our association is making queen cells and virgin queens for the membership this year and my name has come up to get one of the virgin queens.  My nuc is in an 8 frame box because I didn't have any more 5 frame equipment laying around and not enough time to make any.  So it is a box with a couple frames of honey and pollen, a frame of brood (nothing younger than 3 days they might decided to turn into a queen of their own), a frame of drawn comb for when the queen is mated and starts laying, and some frames of foundation for them to have something to do when not taking care of brood or the queen.  This should be an interesting adventure.  More tomorrow when I get the queen.

Can't Keep a Girl Around

I am a little behind on the on-going story.  Looks like either I killed the queen during the March inspection or she just ran out of juice because the next time I was out there, a couple weeks later, I couldn't find a queen or any signs of one; no eggs, no larva, only some old, capped brood.  Bummer.  It was still too early in the year to get a decent local queen so I figured I would have to get a southern queen and then requeen that hive again in the summer.  I ended up not being able to find a queen quickly but found a guy close buy that was getting some packages so I ended up getting a couple of packages so I could also get my in-laws hive going again.  I installed the package and everything seemed ok.  The next day I went  the in-law's house to do theirs and as I am pulling the cork out of the queen cage I notice a bee gets out.  Oh no, this is a slightly different cage than the other packages I have gotten.  As I am there looking at it I wondered if the queen had gotten out.  Oh crap! Yes, there she goes flying right in front of me!  How stupid was that?  I try grabbing it out of the air as she slowly circled by but by the second time around she was out of reach.  What could I do?  I closed up the hive and headed home.

On the way home I start thinking, "did I do it the wrong way on the other hive also?"  The next weekend I went out and yep, no queen.  Darn it!  Well, at least there were more bees to get them through until I could find another queen. This year is getting expensive and no further along. After another couple of weeks I find a guy that was local that was supposedly raising queens but he didn't call me back.  Then I found out that my old mentor had some nucs for sale so I got a couple of them.  One I installed into the hive at the mountain.  That install seemed to go ok and just checking them recently they seem to be doing ok now.  When I looked in the  in-law's hive before installing the nuc I found the queen had actually come back to the hive and was laying.  Who would have thought?  So that nuc ended up in my back yard.  It is still in 5 frame equipment and will probably stay that way all summer.  With a little luck things are now on track.  I don't know that I will get any honey this year but at least if things go well from there out I should be in ok shape going into the winter.

Second Winter Surviver

Woo-hoo! The colony survived another winter. I guess the sugar syrup worked because there were a lot of bees last weekend when I checked on them. I took the roofing paper off the hive and put on two honey supers. The next day I got an email from the beekeeper association that keepers were seeing weight gain on their hives so we know the nectar flow has started. Not surprising since it has been in the 60s and 70s lately.

Alive and Buzzing

It has sure been a weird winter here. It has been warm and we have not had any real snow. But we have also had some cold snaps. Some weeds are blooming. We had dandelions blooming pretty much all December and early January. Weird.

Now is the time to begin building up for spring nectar flow. I was out this last weekend and while there weren't any bees out flying (I really thought there would since it was around 50 degrees) you could hear them buzzing away in the hive. It is still plenty heavy so that isn't a concern. Hopefully the queen has started laying, if she ever stopped. I put some 1:1 sugar syrup on to entice her to start laying more thinking that there is a nectar flow now so she better start building up the population. Hopefully when April rolls around there is a large population to bring in a bunch of honey!

Mouse Wine?

I was out a couple of weeks back to do some work on the tractor and wrap the bees up with the roofing paper like I did last year. The tractor has had some issues since last fall and since I haven’t been out to the property all summer I hadn’t done anything about them. So it was finally time to get it going again. Unfortunately the mice love the tractor. I don’t know why they like building nests in it so much more than anywhere else in the shed it is in. The shed is actually an old barn that they kept goats and cattle in back in the old days and I haven’t cleaned out much of it except for where the tractor is so it is basically a dirt floor building with a bunch of old wood and junk strewn about inside of it. You would think all those little nooks would give the mice ample nesting sites but, no, they have to build nests in the engine compartment of the tractor, just behind the fan blade. This year there was an add ed twist, though. They had gathered tons of wild grapes and stuffed them into most open spaces in the tractor. There was a pile under the seat, on the foot rests, inside the engine compartment, and my personal favorite, between each fan blade. I pulled a 5 gallon bucket worth out and then pulled out another 2/3 of a bucket. I guess they planned on eating raisins all winter! I didn’t even know there were that many wild grapes around. Looks like I will be have to find them and make wild grape jam next year! I finally got all the grapes, leaves, and dried grass out and could start the job of changing the oil. I finished that and decided to start it up. All the lights came on but it wouldn’t turn over. The battery was on the charger so it should be ok so I started tracing wires. Another thing the mice like to do is chew through wires. I could understand the coating but when you get to the actual copper wire it seems like it would be really irritating to continue to chew through it. But no, they love it. I found one that was chewed through but I didn’t have anything to fix it with so again the tractor didn’t get started. The one picture is from the front looking back at the seat, the second inside the engine compartment.

It was only 50 degrees that day and windy so I didn’t expect much activity at the hive and there wasn’t any. The cluster is big enough now that you can put your ear against the hive and hear them buzzing to stay warm. I started at the back of the hive and stapled the roofing paper around. I had done one corner of the front when one lone bee flew out to see what all the racket was about. I had to duck pretty quickly or she would have run right into my face and then I took a couple steps back. She did a slow flight around a bit, decided whatever was making the noise wasn’t worth getting cold over, and went back inside. I finished up without another one coming out. I did the "heft test" to get a sense of how heavy it was and it was very heavy. They should have plenty of honey to make it through the winter and since I never took any honey off this year it is all pure honey, no sugar water honey. After only 3 years I have already come to hate the winter waiting game to see if they will make it to spring.

Goldenrod

The goldenrod is done blooming, pretty much all flowers have stopped. The little ones that are left I don't think provide much nectar, maybe a little pollen. The extra box I put on the hive has partially filled a couple of frames. But it was enough for the bees to feed on for a little while so I don't have to feed them. I am hoping a more natural diet will help the bees make it through the coming winter. And it looks like winter is coming early this year. Here it is the end of October and we are getting snow in the mountains. Ug.

Back From the Dead

It has been an interesting year so far. Back in March I checked on the bees again and the hive was down to a very small cluster. So small in fact I gave them up for dead. It looked like the queen had just stopped laying for some reason. Then we found out short sale house we had a contract on finally came through after 9 months and in 3 weeks we had to close or loose it. Between moving and then doing work on the house that needed to be done quickly the bees got lost in the shuffle. Two weekends ago my wife and I finally got back out to the mountain to check on them. I was planning on cleaning out the hive hoping that the wax moths hadn't found the hive yet. As we walked toward the bee yard I see bees coming out of the hive, not a lot, but bees. Naturally I had to pop the top and see what was going on. Well what do you know, bees! And lots of them! And two boxes full of honey! I guess the queen must have started laying again right after I checked them in March. The good news is they lived. The bad news is that I probably could have gotten honey this year. Oh well, there wouldn't have been any time to extract it anyway. We have decided to let nature take its course with this hive and will do minimal intervention on it and see what happens this winter. I plan only on performing the Fumigilan treatment for Nosema, put a few empty frames in during goldenrod season to get some extra honey built up for winter, and wrapping the hive with roofing paper as I did last fall.