Animal helpers

Since trying to clean up the cross combing in #3 at the end of May I have had a bunch of sticky comb sitting in a large pot. Before I could  process it in the solar melter, I had to get all the sticky off, so I put the pot in the yard for the bees to clean, which they did in two days.  Here they are, hard at work.

I had removed the drone frame from #2 last week.  After leaving the frame in the freezer over night, I put it out to be cleaned by the birds and the bees.  The jays really like to eat the pupae and the bees remove all the sticky

Hive #1 looks like it is failing.  I inspected two days ago (yes, it was a couple of days earlier than initially planned).  There only capped drone cells and no queen seen.  I'm afraid there may be a laying worker.  However, hope springs eternal- I saw one capped queen cell.  Once again, time will tell.  I did put the entrance reducer in because the colony is not very strong.
#2 still looks strong.  I found the queen on the drone frame in the upper brood box.  There was a lot of capped brood in the bottom box.  There were a lot of drones running around.  Oddly, there was brood on the frame facing the edge of the hive.

Visible foundation is on frame behind

#3 has nothing new in the super.  The girls are making honey in the irregular comb on the foundationless frames in the top brood box.  There was a lot of drone brood on one of the foundationless frames in the top brood box.  I tried using my new scratcher to remove the pupae.  It is not as easy to do as I had been led to believe from reading internet postings.  Mostly I just squished comb and brood.  I did manage to extract a score or so of pupae and saw one mite. 

The woodpeckers are eating my bees

 A couple of weeks ago I saw woodpeckers hanging out in the plum tree by the hive and in the tall tree behind our house.  They would swoop down and grab a bee out of the air.  I had no idea woodpeckers ate this way.  This site describes that sort of behavior.  I did video one flying in to capture a bee.

Post-Hawaii inspection

In recent inspections I had removed the drone frames.  The bees just were not drawing much comb on them.  Drone brood culling is one method of Varroa control but I did not want to remove the regular frames with that had plenty of capped drone brood.  I should probably get a capping scratcher to remove as many drones as I can.  I left the drone frames on top of Olea's hive.  This bee was gleaning propolis- you can see her booty on her corbicula or pollen basket.

Hive #1.  After returning from Hawaii, I noticed that the activity around the entrance was less than around the other hives, so I inspected it first.  I looked into every box.  My subjective impression was that there were fewer bees than before.  I saw no eggs, larvae or capped brood and did not spot the queen.  My first pessimistic conclusion was that the colony was queenless and dying.  But I did come up with a more optimistic theory that fits all the facts, i.e., while we were away the colony cast a swarm (explaining fewer bees)  and the new queen has not yet started laying.  I did not see here because new queens are very shy and quick.  I will wait a couple of weeks and then check for signs queen activity.  I was concerned that there might be too much space in the hive for the bees to effectively patrol for wax moths so I put the bee escape board in and removed the top super.  I ultimately placed the super on #3.  I am also keeping a lookout for robbing activity; if/when I see any, I will replace the entrance reducer.

Hive #2.  This one now seems to be the strongest.  I spotted the queen in the top brood box and watched her lay three eggs.  (If I had my own GoPro, you would get some great pictures and videos, clue, clue.)Most of the brood is in the top brood box, but there is some in the bottom box.  There were a lot of drones all over.  The drone frame in this hive and very irregular comb, many drone cells and some capped honey.  I took it out and inspected the pupae for mites.  I only looked at six and found four mites!  I did not replace the drone frame, but I have just now decided to get a scraper and use it assiduously

Hive #3.  There still is cross-combing, but I think it may be a bit better.  The number of bees looks good.  There is honey in top box as well as drone brood.  I did not go into the bottom box.  Placed honey super from #1 (that had some honey already in it) on top.

Bees in Kauai

We recently spent a relaxing week on Kauai at a lovely home with some friends.  One evening, just as I got out of the shower, I was called urgently into the study.   There were about 100 bees crawling around on one of the windows.  We looked for  the way they got in, but found none.  We also saw bees flying around outside.  Figuring there was a swarm nearby, I went out to try to locate it.  There were many bees flying around the eave above the window, but palm fronds prohibited me from getting a clear view.  Then I noticed a 4-inch diameter hole in the siding below the window (where a cable had been brought in) and a few bees were flying in and out.  We notified Mike, the caretaker and he called Oliver, a local beekeeper who promised to come out the next day.
Meanwhile I discovered a small opening behind a soffit from which a bee would periodically emerge.  We covered the hole with packing tape.  Overnight, the bees in the room died.
When Oliver came out the next day, he found bees flying into the dryer vent and into another opening on the opposite side of the house.  There were more bees in the study (now called the bee room) as well as a couple in the bathroom and in the downstairs room.  Oliver set up a bait box, but no one went into it.  He also showed us from where he had removed a colony from the walls of the house last year.  The next day, thousands of bees suddenly appeared and settled just above the bathroom skylight and crawled into a gap in the flashing.

In this photo, most of the bees had already entered the wall.  Note the lizard looking at a potential meal.  There were geckos and lizards all over, as always in the tropics, and they were feasting on the bees.  One lizard was on the wrong side of the glass (not this one) and kept snapping futilely at the bees.
Oliver came back, removed the siding and...no bees.  They had crawled into the gap below the joists.  He had to drill several holes in the wall of the bee room and spray in his homemade bee repellent (that smelled heavily of almond) to drive the bees out to the roof where he patiently scooped them up and put into a nuc box.  Finally he caught the queen in a special cage.  Now all he had to do was wait for all the girls to go to their queen in the nuc and then take the nuc away.
We swept up the dead bees and now could go barefoot again.

Debris on the sticky board

Yesterday I took out the sticky boards to count the mites.  The results were overall good.  #1, 7, #2, 20 and #3, 9.  That is fewer than 10 mites a day and does not warrant treatment now.  According to the Beebase calculator, I should treat #2 in about a month and the others in about two months.  Of course, I will do another count before treating.

There seemed to be much less debris on all the boards than I usually see.  These are the three (home-made) sticky boards together.  In the past there has been debris all across the boards.  I'm not certain how to interpret this.  At first I thought that the boards had been scraped while being removed, but careful forensic inspection uncovered to tell-tale marks.
The debris conains lots of chewed wax, some wax flakes, pollen balls and pieces of bees.  I had also often seen these:

I had wondered what they were, so did a bit of a google search.  What I found out was not encouraging- wax moth worm poop!  Since I have seen no damage to the comb, I assume the girls have this pest under control.  I have often found wax moth larvae or their webbed tunnels in the thick piles of debris that accumulate in the trays, but since these are beneath the screen, I have'nt worried.
I also saw some new (to me) debris in the tray of #1 when I cleaned it out and again on the sticky board:

These look like thin cups.  Above shows one curved up and the other down.  It seems that these are the top of drone cell pupa cases.
Finally, one more picture of why we have sticky boards at all:

I visited Bruce and Gregg's hive yesterday.  While watching the queen, we saw her lay two eggs, a first time and thrilling experience.