Reducing hives

There has been a bit of hive maintenance since the last post.
At the beginning of October, I replaced the Apiguard trays.  The first ones were nearly empty and I placed the remainders in the new trays.  I noted that each hive had frames filled with uncapped (sugar?) honey, so I took out the feeders and in a couple of weeks will check to see if they need to be fed.  I took a look into Olea's and there were bees all over the pollen patty.
On the 14th I went into the hives with Matt.  The plan was to remove the Apiguard and check food supplies.  None of the three hives had enough bees to cover all the frames.  I realized that they all needed to be reduced to one deep box.  
In #1, we saw the queen and brood in the top brood box.  We also saw a bee bringing in propolis on her legs- a first for me.  There was some honey in the brood boxes, but the bottom box was mostly empty comb.  We took a peek into Olea's and all that remained of the pollen patty was some chewed up wrappings.
Over the next few days, I put the escape board in below the super, then removed the super from each hive.  There was honey in all of them, mostly unripe and probably from the sugar syrup.  I wondered what to do with it:  1.  Extract it and feed it back to the bees.  No, too much work and then what to do with the stickies.  2.  Put the super on the single deep box and remove it when the honey is gone.  No, no guarantee they will eat it all or not make more and then what do I do when spring comes.  Remember, this "honey" is from sugar syrup.  3.  I finally just put the supers and all other frames with honey out on the potting table.  Let the feeding frenzy begin!  And hope that it does not trigger robbing.  There is a lot of fighting around the frames.  I suspect that is because it comes from a particular hive and the bees think it is theirs.

The feeding frenzy beginning

The carnage below, dead bees, fighting bees and wax debris

Then it was time to reduce the hives.  With each hive, I had to find the queen to make sure she stayed in the hive and select which frames to replace in the box that would stay.  Naturally, I chose frames with the most resources (honey or beebread) and any that had brood.

It was hot, so I rigged an umbrella so in order to not get over-heated.

Another sunny fall day

The umbrella helped keep me cool

The job was easier than I had anticipated.  I found the queen in the top box, removed the bottom box and put the erstwhile top box onto the bottom board.  Then I chose which frames to switch out.  Then I shook all the bees into the one box.  There was some bearding because of the heat.

#1 reduced

Over the next couple of days I performed the same operation on #2 & 3.  I did not see the queen in #3, but I am certain she is safe in the bottom box.  That is where all the brood was, I definitely did not see her in the top box and I shook all the bees into the bottom box.  
#3 actually had a fair amount of honey in the deep boxes, more than I could put in the box.  I had to take a couple of frames with uncapped honey to the feeding station to be cleaned up.  This hive will not need to be fed, probably all winter.  I will keep an eye on it; after all, I do not want them to starve.
I went into Olea's to reduce it,   but took out only 3 bars.  The ones I left had a 2-3 inch band of capped honey at the top and I decided to just leave it since I can not feed that hive.
I have fed hives #1 & 2 with syrup again over the past three days.  I will check on them again in a week or two.
I now have 30 deep frames and 30 medium frames to freeze and store.  I can only fit 2-3 in our freezer at a time, so this will take some time.  Another winter task is hive stand maintenance, but I will write about that another day.

No drones in Olea's

Today I went into Olea's, all the way to bar 7.  Despite the 80+ degrees, it went smoothly without the previous messiness I had encountered.
The number of bees in the colony is subjectively diminished.  There is a 1-2 inch band of honey at the top of bars 12-21, maybe enough for the winter but definitely not enough for a harvest.  There was also a fair amount of unripe honey.
So I wonder, if these bees are finding enough forage to store honey, why am I feeding hives #1-3?  I finished feeding them the last batch of syrup today.  I plan to go into the hives in 3 days to replace the Apiguard, so I will also take a look at their honey stores.  They have received over 50 pounds of sugar.
Back to Olea's-  There was a small patch of capped brood on bar 12 and then brood and young larvae all the way to bar 7, where I stopped the inspection.
I saw no drones and there was no drone brood.  The cells where drone had been raised (the cells are larger),were being filled with unripe honey.
I also saw very little pollen, so before I closed up, I fetched a pollen patty and stuck it in the back below an empty bar.

The bees are buzzing!

There were a couple of projects to do today.  I wanted to put the Apiguard in the hives and take off the extra supers of #1 and 2.  Things went smoothly.  However, when I went to put the supers in the shed, I saw that one had some uncapped honey.  I decided to leave the super out for the bees to eat.

There were bees flying all over the yard, even around the deck by the trellis.  Then I what they were doing.

 

There was still a lot of buzzing in the yard and I saw it was coming from #3.

By the time I finished with these videos (it took quite a while to edit, save and upload), things had quieted down.

A few bees still looking for honey

 

Hive #3's entrance

Today in hive #2

Dinah and I went into #2 this afternoon.
As with #3, there was little honey stored, so I will remove the empty super.  This hive still had a fair number of drones running about, no drone corpses on the bottom and a handful of drone brood. 
We saw an open queen cell in the top brood box.

Even though the focus is bad, you can see this is chewed open at the bottom indicating that a queen has emerged.  You can also see that this is at the bottom of the frame, therefore a swarm cell.  I conclude that this is the hive that swarmed at the end of August.  (By the way, the swarm died in the nuc.)  We looked for the queen but did not find her.  I did see some larvae, and better yet, cells with royal jelly in the bottom.  That means that there have been eggs laid in the past 1-3 days, a very good sign.
I then did an alcohol wash, making quadruply sure that the queen was not on the frame.  The picture below speaks for itself.

Tomorrow I will treat all three hives with Apiguard.

Piles of drones

I went into #3 today, primarily to see if there was enough honey stored for me to be able to take some- there was not.  But here is what I did see.
The top super had no honey nor any new drawn comb.  I will take it off the hive tomorrow; I placed the escape board under it when I reassembled the hive.  The lower super had  both capped and uncapped honey, maybe 2-3 pounds.  Remember, the bees need about 40 pounds to get through the winter.
There was brood in the top brood box and I even saw some eggs.  Of note, there were subjectively a lot fewer drones about and only a small area of drone brood.
I spotted the queen in the bottom brood box.  There was some brood in the bottom but I only looked at about half the frames.
What was especially interesting was what was on the bottom of the hive- piles of dead drones!  (Sorry, I did not have my camera with me this time.)  This is the time of year when the workers start evicting the drones; their work is done for the year and now they will just use up precious resources.  I think the workers stop allowing them to eat, so they starve.  The undertaker bees must be finding it difficult to keep up, hence the piles of corpses.  I expect that if there were not so many yellow jackets scavenging around the apiary that I would see many more drone corpses on the ground.
I am considering the need to feed the bees because of the surprising lack of honey.

It's hot! Lets grow a beard.

The pictures are paired vertically.  Bees do grow beards.

Note protective eave

 

A late August swarm

We had just returned from an overnight with Julie and her children (a lovely time was had by all) and I looked out at the yard and saw bees flying around an unusual area, between the plum tree and the roses.  I went to look and saw a small cluster on one of the rose bushes (Elina, to be precise), only a dozen or so feet from the hives.

The swarm on the rose bush

I prepared a nuc to capture them.  Swarms this late in the year have a very low chance of survival.  This is because the honey flow is over so they cannot collect the necessary resources to survive. (Resources for bees, that is.)  Also. this swarm was quite small without enough workers to collect what is there.  I pondered my choices: let them alone and sink or swim; collect them and feed them until spring; collect them and add some bees and brood from another hive; collect them and give them some frames of honey.  I decided on the last choice.  It was pretty hot, so I chose to wait for it to cool down.  The cluster was being harassed by yellow jackets, and about an hour later, I saw the swarm on the move. 

The same bush, one hour later

I followed the bees to where they had clustered on my neighbors lemon tree

The cluster was a bit bigger than my fist.  I shook them into a nuc box where they spread out on the bottom and sides.  I looked for and spotted the queen.  By the time I got the camera up, the bees had covered her.

The queen is under all these bees

I do not know if this is clustering of if they are balling her.  I certainly hope it is the former.
I now went to get the frames of honey from the other hives.  I looked in both deeps of #1 and #3 and found no frames of honey.  Bad news for the planned fall honey harvest!  Now I will wait until spring and collect any honey left in the supers. 
How to feed the bees in the nuc?  I really did not want to feed them sugar water all winter long and perhaps they just need some to get them established.  I had some containers of honey soaked cappings from last year's harvest.  I smeared this onto a frame and put that into the nuc along with two frames of drawn comb (one with some old bee bread) and two foundationless frames with hand-sized drawn comb.

Honey soaked cappings smeared onto frame with some comb

I am pessimistic regarding the swarm's survival, but one never knows, do one?