Mold

I looked into #2 and 3 today.  It has been warm and dry and I have seen the bees bringing in lots of pollen.  Some of the pollen is yellow/orange and the rest is off-white.  I planned to see if there was a need for a super, and, without really expecting to find any, check for swarm cells.  I saw no swarm cells in either box.  It really is too early in the year.
#3's top box was heavy with honey.  The bees were clustered on the central frames in each box.  Even though there were not a lot of bees, I added a super.  I will check in 7-10 days.  If the girls are not using the super, I will remove it.  One does not want too much extra space in the hive.
#2's population was a bit smaller.  While checking for swarm cells, I saw mold on the bottom of some comb.  I then did a more thorough inspection.  There was mold on three frames.  I took those frames out and replaced them with frames with drawn comb.  I did see the queen.  There was only a small patch of brood.  I looked online regarding moldy wax, and apparently it is not a problem.
I remembered to order the Apivar strips today.

Close-up of mold.  It is actually greener.

The mold is only on the bottom 2/3

Winter report

Even though I have not gone into the hives since fall, there still has been some beekeeping activity.
I want to repopulate Olea's hive and #1 hive.  I investigated various bee suppliers and ultimately decided to make splits instead.  I was unsure about making a split for the top-bar hive, so I thought of contacting Les Crowder,  a well-known top-bar beekeeper.  I had met him at the bee conference in Oregon.  I wrote an email, but before sending it, I looked in his book. There, on page 41, was the answer to my question.  So, instead, I emailed Les a couple of questions about details, to which he responded.  So come spring, I will make a shook swarm into Olea's hive.  Les advises checking the hive weekly for swarm cells once swarm season is here, which can be as early as March.  When the swarm cells are present, the bees are preparing to swarm and that is the time to make the split.  Logical.

I do not want to open the hive if it is below 60 degrees.  I had an old thermometer laying on the ground but I did not think it was accurate.  I got this garden thermometer at Home Depot ( a store I am not alone in not liking) and hung it on the fence behind the hives.  I made a little eave over it to protect it from the rain.  Now I can see from the house if it is warm enough to go into the hives.


In order to keep ants from getting into the hives, the legs of the hive stands are in cans with oil or water.  I had a problem with the cans rusting so I had the idea of using porcelain soup bowls instead.  They did not rust, but they were too slick and would slide on the brick supports when I worked the hives.  It would not have been a good thing if the stand tipped over!  Replacing the cans is difficult because I need to lift the legs about 10 inches up.  I was talking to another backyard beekeeper who said it was easy to replace the cans.  He uses cat food cans.  Duh!  Tuna fish cans are too small in diameter and I had been saving tomato cans.  So I cut those cans down, turned over the sharp edge with pliers and today replace four soup bowls.  I need a few more cans to finish this chore.

Cut down cans

New cans on #3 stand

I was thinking about the spring build up that the colonies do each spring and, since it was a warm day, wondered what it was that stimulated the bees to do the build up; temperature, hours of daylight, availability of food, something else?  I looked in my books, searched online and was unable to find anything about it.  I emailed Professor Seeley (whom I also met at the conference) with that question but he has yet to reply.

Fall inspection report

Last week, when Jay and Cathy were visiting, Jay and I took a look into #3.  Unfortunately, no pictures were taken.  We were surprised to see nectar in the super (previously a sticky).  I wonder what flowers are providing where the nectar; it could be the cascading rosemary in our yard.  The foragers are also going south over the fence.  There were a couple of frames with capped honey in the top deep box and lots of brood and larvae in the bottom box.  We did not spot the queen.  We did not see any drones; presumably they have been ejected for the coming winter.
Today I went into #2.  There was no nectar in the super, so when I put the hive back together I put the bee escape board in and will remove the super tomorrow.  There were several frames with capped honey in the top deep as well as pollen and a small patch of capped brood.  There were still quite a few drones about.  I saw the queen in the bottom box where there also was a moderate amount of brood, no drone cells.
Both colonies look like they are doing well.  I plan to make at least one split in the spring.  If I can figure out how to populate the top bar hive with a split, I will do that.  Otherwise I may buy a package of Carniolans for the Olea hive.
No pictures from these inspections, but here is a picture of two honeys visiting the vortex hive last summer

Lesson learned

Before I share what I have recently and painfully learned, a quick update on the rest of bee activity.  

A couple of days ago, I pulled out the trays (from below the bottom screen) to clean them.  As always, there were a number of dead bees on top of them, albeit more than usual.  I also noted that there were a fair number of drones, definitely not as usual.  If you can enlarge the picture, you will see that 42% of the bees are drones.  The bees evict the drones in winter, but I wonder if they started early this year and that these fellows were trying to get back in.

I started bringing in the fall harvest of honey.  Since I only have one escape board, I can only get one super each day.  I extracted the honey from two supers (one from each hive) today and put one sticky back on, with the bee escape board.  Tomorrow, I'll take off the super and put the escape board and remaining sticky onto the other hive and the day after that, I'll be able to extract the rest of the honey.
I did take a look into both hives but looked no further than just finding capped brood.
For the past several months I have been saving the propolis that I scraped off the frames.  I now have a  small jarful.
Now for the hard-learned lesson: pay attention to the experts.
Most sources recommend storing comb in special ways, but I erroneously figured that if they were getting air and some light, that would be enough.  Today, I looked in one of the nucs in which I was storing some comb, and this is what I saw:

 

Close up of the webbing and frass

The (out of focus) culprit

These two frames are ruined and I will scrape them clean.  In the meantime, two frames with only a few cells with webbing are currently in the freezer.  It looks like I need to purchase some Paradiclorobenzene (PDB), 80% acetic acid or a large freezer.

Hive #1 robbed

FOOD RIOT IN HIVE #1

HUNDREDS KILLED

September 25, 2014

It was an ugly scene at the Sherwood Apiary this afternoon when hive #1 was robbed of its honey stores.  Since the demise of its queen in June, its population has been gradually diminishing.  Even though, the intrepid insects continued to bring in nectar and pollen.  Although the hive had been reduced to a single deep box and the entrance reducer was in place, Tom Sherwood, beekeeper, expected that eventually the population would become too small to defend itself. 

"I noticed an unusual amount of activity around the hive this morning", Sherwood said.  "I suspected it might be robbing especially with the bees flying erratically, climbing on the walls of the hive and gathering around the vents of the Vivaldi box."

This afternoon, Sherwood donned his bee suit and went into the hive to get a closer look and confirm his suspicions.  "I first looked closely at what was going on at the entrance.  Immediately I could tell this was robbing because of the large number of fights occurring."

A yellow jacket drinking its fill

He next examined the tray below the screen for chewed off capping.  "I didn't see cappings, but there were about a dozen bees and a yellow jacket on the tray."  Another yellow jacket was in the Vivaldi box and one or two others were on the comb.
Inside the hive a few bees were fighting, but most were busy chewing open the cells and drinking the honey.  On the picture to the right, one can see the rough edges of the robbed cells and a small mob of bees gorging themselves.

Fallen dead on screen bottom

Uncounted hundreds of bees lost their lives defending the honey they had worked for so hard.
At the time of the inspection, there were still untouched stores, but Sherwood expects that it will all be gone within a couple of days.

Yet to be robbed capped honey

"It was to be expected", said Sherwood philosophically.

#1 down to one box

There are subjectively fewer bees in #1, although still a fair number.  I did see many wax moth larva in the tray but saw no damage in the hive.
Because the population had diminished, I removed the top brood box.  I selected frames with no comb or the least nectar/honey/pollen and removed them, combining the remaining frames in a single box.  There was one frame that had some capped drone cells, so it seems another worker has started laying.  I removed that frame as well.  I leaned it against the bridge while I checked the honey production in #2 and 3.  (There is still room in the supers for more honey.)  When I went to put things away I discovered a cloud of bees around the frame, eating the nectar and honey.

Capped drone cells in middle and feeding bees at the ends

I will leave the frames out until it cools off this evening.

 This is from later on.  The bees have chewed open and eaten all the capped honey on the frame.

What to do about those danged woodpeckers

The woodpeckers have now found the hives to be a reliable source of food.  There are four or five that regularly hang out on the stakes in the rose bed to gorge on my girls.  I'm not the only beekeeper who has been plagued by these birds.
I have to do something.  I thought of a scarecrow or an owl statue.  Then I remembered my roll of flash tape.  A search through my collection of stakes uncovered one long enough to reach between the hives.  We will see tomorrow if this works.