Varroa mite sugar shake test

Today was the day I did a sugar shake test in order to get a good idea of the hive's mite infestation. I had examined the beetle trap earlier this week (with Karly and Sophie) 3 days after I cleaned and replaced the tray and found 8 mites. That is an okay number.
Three days ago I paid a visit to Mountain Farm and Feed Supply in Ben Lomond. I spoke with Lauren, a beekeeper and bee keeping teacher, about mites and mite control. I bought a frame holder (mine's white) and a drone brood frame.
The weather today was partially overcast, no wind. My girls were happy and calm. No wax in the top super, just a few bees wandering about. In the middle super, there were 3-1/2 frames of brood, in a lovely pattern, and one frame full of capped honey.
Saw the queen in the brood chamber and the usual good amount of brood. I didn't see any drone cells and not a single Italian. Because of my irregular spacing with only nine frames, there was a bit of brace comb. Upon removing the middle super, a cell was broken open revealing a pupating bee. I left her for the others to take care of.
Then for the test. I had a 1 pint mason jar with a 1/8" mesh screen instead of a regular lid. (I'd had to buy a 20' roll in order to just have a few inches.) I had used 1/2 cup of dried beans to measure and mark the level. I selected two brood frames, double-checked that the queen was on neither and observed her elsewhere. Then I brushed the bees from both sides of the frame into a bucket. Most of them stayed in the bucket. Then, using the jar as a scoop, I collected 1/2 cup of bees, about 300 I read. I then put the hive back together with the green drone brood frame near the center.
Then I put in two tablespoons of powdered sugar. I had to rub the screen to get it to go through, making sure that I was rubbing where there were no bees.
I shook and rolled the jar for a couple of minutes and then waited a couple of more. Then I shook out the sugar into a bowl. Those two dark spots on the right are varroa mites.
According to one source I should double the number when the bees come from a brood frame, therefore 4 mites/ 300 bees equals only 1.3 mites/100 bees. Hurray! One needs to treat with 10/100.
The bees in the jar were buzzing angrily. I put the jar outside in the shade and gave them about 15 minutes to calm down. Then I covered up again and took them to the hive. When I opened the jar, some flew out. I then shook the jar, but not vigorously because there was a bunch of sugar stuck on the bottom. More bees came out. I blew in the jar, a few more flew out. Finally I resorted to using the handle of my bee brush to get them all out. Phew!

Tom Seeley and Honeybee Democracy

Tom Seeley is a Professor of biology at Cornell University. He is also a beekeeper. I just finished his book, Honeybee Democracy. Over many years, since high school, he has been examining the swarm behavior of bees. He learned what made an ideal hive, which bees scouted for a new home,how they communicated its location to the other scouts, how they reached a consensus and then informed the rest of the swarm that it was time to go and then led them to their new home. He had to come up with many ingenious experiments and I'm sure there was a lot of tedium. In one experiment, about 3,000 bees were individually and uniquely marked.
At the end, he relates all this to human interaction and group decision making. Here are the five effective habits he learned from the bees: 1. Compose the decision-making group of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect. 2. Minimize the leader's influence on the group's thinking. 3. Seek diverse solutions to the problem. 4. Aggregate the group's knowledge through debate. 5. Use quorum responses for cohesion, accuracy and speed.
This book was full of fascinating bee facts and history of apiology. I liked it.
I have lots of questions about bees that I think are pretty basic. I figured that a basic apiology text book would answer many of them. I tried to find one by looking at bee classes at Davis and Cornell as well as an online textbook site; no luck. So I emailed Professor Seeley. He responded the next morning with two recommendations. What a nice guy.

Traveling queen, pollen balls and varroa mites

Went into the hive with Maidi, who took the photos.
There were some bees in the top super, but no comb had been drawn. We saw the queen in the middle super on a frame with comb but nothing in any of the cells. When I took the middle super off, I had to be very careful that the queen did not drop off the frame. So, after I had inspected all the frames, I checked that she was still there (she was), replaced the frame, lifted the super and placed it carefully on the inverted lid with the frame she was on over the lid. Then I went into the brood box. There I saw a queen! I can't have two queens- she must have dropped into the brood box in those few seconds between replacing the frame and lifting the super.
There was lots of brood, in both the brood box and the middle super. I saw eggs with the use of the hand lens. There were two queen cells, but now I know that Russians have a tendency to build queen cells without signifying supersedure or swarming. I only saw one Italian in the hive. There were a small number of drone cells. I rearranged the 9 frames in the brood box, pushing them close together and leaving gaps at the edges.
I saw a small insect run quickly across a frame. Could this be a small hive beetle? I had set up the hive with a screened bottom and a beetle trap. I thought this would be a good time to clean it up and look carefully for beetles and mites.
I had pulled out the trap a few times before. It had lots of debris on and in it.The yellow stuff is pollen. You can see the balls that have been knocked off the bees legs and then fell through the screen. The white stuff is wax, either flakes from their wax glands that looks like fish scales or crumbly debris. There are also a lot of bee parts, legs, antennae, bits of exoskeleton . There is vegetable oil inside the trap, so the pollen gets mushy. We tasted some of the pollen balls; after all, people pay a lot for bee pollen at health food stores. It tasted a bit sweet.
I then carefully searched the tray with my loupes and the hand lens. I did find one small beetle, but it clearly wasn't a small hive beetle. I did however find a lot of varroa mites! A new worry!

I need to do a mite count. First, I cleaned the tray and replaced it. I'll check it in a few days and count mites. There are many ways to evaluate infestation. Maybe I'll use the sticky paper. For sure I'll try the powdered sugar. I already have some drone brood from the old transplanted frame. I opened each cell, pulled out the larva and examined for mites. 7 of 40 had mites, 17.5%. This is too high, I think. Next week I'll do a sugar shake count and probably treat the hive. I'll use the powdered sugar and drone frame technique to avoid any miticides. Perhaps, and I hope so, the count really isn't as high as it looks.

Washboarding

When I came home from work this evening, I went to look at the bees. There was a cluster on the hive porch acting in a way I had never seen. I ran into the house, got the camera and took this video. As you can see, the bees are rubbing the surface with their forelegs as well as licking or biting with their mandibles. I watched them for some time, wondering what they were doing.
I had read about a scent gland, the Nasonov gland. At first I thought they might be spreading there pheromones. So I got close and smelled, but only smelled the usual hive smell. I also noted that they weren't fanning their wings, which I would have expected if they were spreading an odor. I observed bees returning to the hive; they weren't attracted to the cluster (which was in the area where the feeder had been), and as a matter of fact, they completely ignored them, either barreling through or walking on their backs into the hive.
I peered through the opening and saw that the oddly acting cluster extended into the hive, on the screen bottom as well as the upper edge of the opening. Franklin Carrier had mentioned in his book the need to occasionally provide the bees with salt. Maybe they were getting minerals. I got a small amount of salt and put it in the middle of the cluster. They steered clear of the grains (which were all gone the next day).
At a loss to figure out what was going on, I turned to the internet. First search was for bees cleaning, since that is what it looked like they were doing. That led to washboarding. Aha!

A ramp for my bees

I had read about making a ramp for the bees so that when they land clumsily (which they often do), they can walk up into the hive. One can buy a bottom board with a built-in ramp. So I made one with only a bit of trouble. (The first time I cut the corners parallel to each other.) The bees do use it some, but it probably doesn't really make a difference.

Many bees squished. Transplant frame removed.

Went into the hive with Maidi. Unfortunately, several bees got squished between the telescoping lid and the inner cover. When smoking the hive before going in, I lift up the lid and puff a little inside and wait a minute or two. When I lifted the lid, there were at least 100 bees on the outside of the inner cover and many got squished. What were they all doing up there? There usually are a bunch on the inside of the inner cover,and today there were even more.
6-7 of the combs in the super have either brood or honey.
We didn't see the queen, but I won't worry (much). It is not unusual to not see the queen, so I am told. We did see plenty of brood and larvae in the brood box.
I took out the transplanted frame. All the cells were empty except for about a dozen drone cells.

I opened up one of the drone cells and looked at the larva. You can see the opened cell above the larva. There were also some capped honey cells that you can see on the top edges of the left-hand photo.
I saw only 1 Italian. I expect 100% Russians next week or two.
Because 6-7 of the frames in the super were drawn,I added a second medium super.

Bee buddy and Russians

Kathy had told me about Aram, a new bee keeper who has hives not far from me on Mesa Grande Road. He had earlier offered to let me have a brood frame from his hive, but we weren't able to coordinate schedules. I did get out to see his hives today. (His face is blurred because the lens was smudged.) Aram works with furniture and he built his hives himself. They are beautifully joined with rounded corners. Note the paint work. the hand-holds are also painted to match the entrance ramps. The hives are at his parents' house where he grew up. They're in an former goat pen. I helped him rearrange the order of the hive boxes. You can see the green hive has two deeps on the bottom and a shallow on top while the red hive has the shallow super in the middle. Aram wanted to rearrange the green hive, but we couldn't because there was too much brood in the middle box. He is planning to get honey this year. His colony population is much larger than mine, perhaps because he started with nucs and/or because of my lost queen. I was able to finally see some eggs in Aram's hive.

In my hive today, I saw that nearly all my bees were Russians. I had ordered a package of Russians, but there a lot of Italians mixed in with them. But now, the new bees hatching are from my queen and the original bees have died. Pictured above are an Italian on the left and a Russian on the right. I suppose that most of the bees on the flowers in my yard are from some other hive since they are mostly Italians.
My colony is growing. There were three frames of brood in the super. Saw the queen and some waggle dancing. I moved the transplanted frame all the way to the edge. I'll email Kathy to see if she wants to trade back; I hope so.

Some bee-attractive flowers in my yard

These are some of the flowers in my yard to which bees are attracted. I took some of the photos and Maidi took the rest. We don't know the identity of those other than blackberry, lavender, peas and sunflower. The bees probably don't either, but the nectar and pollen are good. I understand that the bees also like cucumber flowers and I also see them on the hedge by the deck and a few on the roses. Behind our house is a pyracantha bush that has lots of bees.

Pollen

Pollen is the bees source of protein. The bees collect the pollen and carry it back to the hive on their hind legs. I spend many minutes a day watching the bees fly in and out of the hive and watching in which direction they go. I noticed that the pollen they come back with is a variety of colors, as in the picture. I wondered where each pollen was coming from.
I watched the bees carefully on the blackberries- the pollen was a light gray. Sure enough, bees were coming back to the hive with light gray pollen.
I also noted that a lot of bees were heading out of my yard in a certain direction. So I went out the back gate and onto the road and looked to see where they were going. I found two flowering trees with lots of bees, but couldn't get close enough to see the color of the pollen. The bees on the lavender didn't seem to be gathering any pollen.
The colors my bees were bringing back beside the gray blackberry were yellows, from pale yellow to deep orange, red and white.
I know the brood is doing well because they use the pollen to feed the larvae.

Bee hatching

Mickey joined me on going into the hive. Bees were very calm. Saw the queen and lots of capped brood cells (in a good pattern) and larvae. A few drone cells. What I had thought was brood in the super isn't, unless all have hatched. There was only honey in the super, and it is beginning to feel heavier. We saw 6 bees hatching. Their heads were poking up from the cells and they were chewing away to make the opening larger. We didn't wait long enough to see one actually emerge.
We definitely saw a couple of bees doing the waggle dance. No bees squished!
I was able to get some used hive boxes from a friend who had unsuccessfully kept bees a few years ago. According to published advice, I scraped them and scorched the insides with a propane torch. I'll probably use them in my planned new hive next year which will have the two-deep configuration.
My current hive has one deep and a medium super
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