Hive Visit: July 3

Another week, another visit to the hive. Unfortunately, I had terrible weather during my little 4 day holiday at the farm. But nonetheless, I wanted to do an inspection on the hives. I can definitely confirm what plenty of books have told me – inspecting the bees when its cold, wet or dark really stinks. The bees prefer to stay indoors when the weather is poor which means the disruption of the entire population, as well as a difficult inspection of a crowded hive. If I had known that Sunday afternoon was going to be so nice, I would have waited. The bees once again whispered ‘patience’ and I once again failed to hear them.

Oh, and I also committed my first triple digit mass murder.

Hive A

Hive A was the scene of the crime. My nice big top-feeder, loaded with 4 litres of thick sugar syrup was the weapon. And I (not Colonel Mustard) was the prime suspect. I think the problem was a poorly fitted lid, which allowed bees into the reservoir rather than restricting them to the feeding canals. In the future, I think I will actually screw down tight fitting lids on the feeders. I estimate the body count between 200 and 300 bees.

But in spite of murder on a scale beyond any serial killer in modern history, Hive A is doing great. The top brood box is full of bees and I added a honey super on top. As I was leaving on Sunday, huge amounts of bees (the most I have seen to date) were zooming in and out of the hive. Unfortunately, I was without my camera. I think the big feeding may have been a net gain.

Hive B

Hive B looked great at first glance, with plenty of bees, and good honey and brood production in the top box. But an inspection of the bottom box showed that in spite of having lots of bees, there a few worrying signs. First, the two outer frames are still bare of comb. With the top box filling up nicely for weeks now, I’d been assuming the lower box was full. Second, there are a lot of empty combs – no brood, no honey. I’m hoping that they were full of eggs that my eyes aren’t good enough to see.

I didn’t want to mess around too much in the slightly cool weather, so I didn’t try to solve these problems immediately. Next week I will check the empty cells and hope to see larva. I will also try moving some frames around in an effort to get the empty ones filled. I spotted the queen in the upper box, and she looked active, so I’m not queen-less.

Treatments and Feedings

Hive A received its first honey super. Hive B got some syrup in a front entrance feeder to encourage comb building in the bottom box.

To Do List

Bring my glasses next time so I can see the eggs.

Move some frames around in B.

Keep a close eye on Hive A which is in a population boom, and could start feeling the urge to swarm (half the bees fly away to start a new colony).
Figure out how to fix those death-trap top feeders

Thoughts

300 bee deaths in a day is a pretty typical stat for a hive. 300 bee murders are another story. I felt so bad that one little oversight or slip-up or something led to such a grizzly event. I’ve spent so much time this bee season second guessing my decisions – is that too much syrup or too little? Too much space or not enough? Even after the fact, the outcomes have been difficult to decipher – is that too much honey or note enough honey? Are the hives growing fast enough?
This was clearly, undeniably bad. 300 little sugar soaked corpses don’t lie.

P.S.

I am copyrighting “Sugar Soaked Corpses” for use either as my new band name, or for a series of erotic vampire novels.

First Video

This clip shows the action around the hives at 10:30am on a warm sunny day. My bees are notorious late risers, so this is a pretty good activity level from them for this time of day.

Hive Visit: June 27

What a difference a week makes; especially a week of hot sunny weather. I’ve gone from worrying about underfed, underperforming hives, to worrying that I might get harvestable honey before I’m ready to deal with it. The hives are filling up, and there is plenty of bee activity which I will hopefully be showing in a posted video soon.

Hive A
Hive A is healthy and strong. I was sweating like crazy in the heat, so I didn’t bother lifting off the top box to gain access to the bottom. But the top box has wax comb on 6 frames, and those 6 are filling up steadily with brood and honey. Everything looks great… except for my flagrant screw up of not pushing the frames tightly together. This mistakes has caused an absolute mess of free-form comb building. The upside is that I had to scrape out this wild comb and was able to eat some sweet sweet honey. Below you can see a nice clean sheet of fresh comb – this is not the frame I buggered up.

Hive B
Hive B has taken off like a rocket. The top box was heavy enough that I could have easily thrown my back out. The picture at the top of this post is some great looking brood from the top box of Hive B. And below is the top view of the top box. Lots of bees! All but two frames are covered in wax. This means Hive B is cut off from sugar syrup, and in exchange gets a “honey super” (an extra box in which to store the honey I will be stealing later). Also good news for Hive A, as they received a double dose of feed this week – maybe Queen Latifah can finally catch up with Elizabeth.
Treatments and Feedings
Hive B gets nothing but a honey super with framed foundation.
Hive A gets all the syrup this week – over 4 litres of 2:1 syrup – let’s see if they can drink the whole works.

To Do List
Order some more supers.

Thoughts
The problem with the wild comb building in Hive A has me thinking about the role of the CEO in a large corporation. I have a staff of roughly 50,000 bees now, and let’s not kid ourselves, they do most of the work. But I make a lot of decisions and consequently, a lot of mistakes. In fact, you could say that all the mistakes are mine and the bees just respond to the conditions to which I subject them. A small slip-up on my part led to significant wasted effort on the part of the bees, and I had to tear down some of their hard work. While the bees got busy fixing my mistake, my girlfriend and I sat in the shade eating the honeycomb I had been forced to remove.

I screw up. My team suffers. They fix the mistake. I eat honey.

Being a CEO is awesome.

Hive Visit: June 20

Another late posting, because, frankly, the bees looked a lot this week like they did last week. Maybe I’m expecting too much. Maybe the line between patience and boredom is becoming blurred.

The biggest difference between this week and last is that I did my full hive inspection bare handed. While I stated last week that I looked forward to working in this way, the reality was somewhat different than my expectations. I avoided being stung, but that was mainly due to paranoia. I took an absurd amount of time to place my hand every time I grabbed a frame. While I’m certain that this slower more cautious approach was better for the bees on this particular visit (i.e. far fewer bees were squooshed by my nimble gloveless hands) I can easily imagine myself dropping a full frame of brood or honey after being stung, resulting in the death of several bees and the agitation of thousands more.

Hive A
Hive A looks good. The top feeder was dry, with just a few bees picking at the residual sugar crystals. Plenty of bee activity and plenty of new brood. Also a large amount of honey stored in the top box – presumably this is primarily sugar syrup based (this is why you stop feeding sugar prior to harvesting honey). Around noon, with a temperature of 23C, bees were entering the hive at a rate of 42 per minute, far slower than the 180 per minute I have clocked on warmer days later in the afternoon. But overall, everything looks good.

Hive B
Well, it was Hive B’s turn to host the ants this week. They really do seem to alternate, and I have never seen ants in both hives at the same time. Weird. But the ants seem to stay between the top-board and the outer cover, never really going into the hive. Maybe they are taking advantage of the dryness, darkness and warmth rather than the honey. If this is the case, they are free to stay. Hive B had a steady rate of 62 bees entering per minute. Better than Hive A, as usual. No new signs of nosema, and no other indicators of poor health.

Treatments and Feedings
No treatments. No feedings.

To Do List
Consider making another batch of sugar syrup.

Thoughts
Three key thoughts this week. First, I am still a big fraidy cat despite knowing I am not allergic to bee stings. How many times must a man be stung before he grows some cajones? The answer my friends is blowing… never mind.

Second, the online beekeeping community is either too small or too fragmented to be of much immediate direct benefit to a beekeeper. Maybe the discord between ancient agrarian activity and online discussion boards is simply too strong. Or maybe there just aren’t that many beekeepers. An aggravating factor is the importance of geography to beekeeping. A question asked in Ottawa can not be easily (or authoritatively) answered in Arkansas. I may need to go off the grid and talk to some real live people if I want good local answers to simple questions like ‘can I stop feeding my bees sugar syrup yet?’. Seriously, I have sticky spots everywhere.

And lastly – I CANNOT WAIT TO GET ME SOME HONEY!

Hive Visit: June 6

Sorry for the late post. Non-bee-related events kept me from my computer for a few days.

I visited the bees on June 6, and made three important discoveries. The first is that the field test for nosema is far more difficult than the internet would have you believe. Second, is that dead bees can still sting you, which reminds me of Billy Crystal's explanation in The Princess Bride about the difference between "dead" and "dead dead". Third, and most importantly, I am not allergic to bee stings. The dead little guy managed to sting the tip of my index finger while I was attempting to perform the field test for nosema (pulling on his head to dislodge his guts and investigate for whiteness and swelling in the mid-gut). It hurt, as you would expect. Worse, the guts did not slide out easily as advertised. Only by squishing the bee could I get any guts out at all, rendering the field test entirely useless.

Given that I could not confirm nosema, and that the bees seem to be healthy and active, I elected not to re-treat with antibiotics. In part because I worry about the over-use of antibiotics generally, and in part because I want to be 100% sure that no medicine ends up in the harvested honey.

Hive A:

Hive A is going like gangbusters. All but one frame has wax on it, and most of those are heavily waxed. The bees are busy. There is a large volume of traffic in and out of the hive; on this nice warm afternoon, I counted about 3 bees heading inside every second (over 10,000 returns per hour). I added a screened (wire mesh) bottom board to the hive, a second hive body, and a top feeder. No trace of illness, ants or other problems in this hive. Keep it up Queen Latifah!

Hive B:

Hive B, much to my relief has no new poop stains on the outside (photographic evidence is great for confirming this type of thing). The hive looks good and healthy, and every bit as active as Hive A. It is getting difficult to report on the number of frames that the bees have expanded on to, since there are two boxes and I've rearranged the frames to encourage comb production (they say it's easier for the bees to produce comb on frames that are near the middle).

Treatments and Feedings:

Each hive given almost a gallon of 2:1 sugar syrup in my fancy new top-feeders.

Added screened bottom boards to both hives (which helps keep mite populations low)

To Do List:

Finally make that darn apiary sign

Make little A and B signs to help identify the hives in pictures

Thoughts:

Now that I've been stung and not gone into anaphylactic shock, I think I should be able to enjoy beekeeping even more. It's not that I was especially afraid before, but the risk of death does put a damper on most things. And it's not that I'm especially anxious to get stung again, but now I know it hurts a little and then goes away. I'm looking forward to more work without the protective gloves.

On my decision to not treat with antibiotics, I hope I made the right call. The disease is old, the antibiotics are new, and bees have survived the former without the benefit of the latter for many generations. I have to keep reminding myself that I've chosen patience as my guiding rule when it comes to beekeeping.

Nosema update

So the troubling brown stains on Hive B are confirmed to be a result of dysentry (the runs). But apparently dysentry does not always indicate the presence of nosema. While that still seems the most likely diagnosis, I can't be sure until I perform a nosema field test, which involves a rather crude disection to remove the digestive tract.

This weekend I will dose with the antibiotic Fumagilin again, and try to perform some field tests to confirm the diagnosis.

Hive Visit: Saturday June 6, 2009

I managed to get out to the hives again this weekend, and had some great weather. And the bees appeared to be doing great. Still buzzing. Still busy. Still not stinging me. I even had my first taste of honey! I scraped off some comb that was attached to the inner cover (bees never stay between the lines) and found just enough for a little snack.

The only thing sweeter than the fresh honey was my avoidance of what should have been a guaranteed sting. I had my gloves off for a while to get some pictures, and a minute or two after putting them back on, I felt six little legs crawling on my right hand. I slowly put down the frame I was holding and eased off my glove. My little bee buddy just flew away. If you can have a bee in your glove while you’re working and not get stung, bees are definitely getting a bad rap.

Here is a picture of Queen Elizabeth. I know I earlier claimed she was marked with a yellow dot, but clearly she has red. I have no idea what I saw, or thought I saw, previously.



Now on to the update.

Hive A
Hive A looks good. The feeder is bone dry. There are bees on 6 frames, and 5 of those are almost covered with comb. There aren’t a lot of bees flying in and out of the hive, but there are tons inside. They may just be enjoying the sugar syrup too much. Initially I vowed to wean them off this week – a promise I broke when I was so pleasantly surprised by not getting stung. You want to reward good behaviour, even with bees. Maybe especially with bees. I opted not to add an extra hive body this week, mostly to see what difference it would make between Hive A and B to try something new.

Hive B
I thought Hive B was doing great. The feeder was drained, there were tons of bees, and lots of activity around the front door. I thought Hive B was doing so well in fact that I added an extra super to the hive, giving them more room to grow. But just a few minutes ago I found out the cause of these weird stains


It is bee diarrhea caused by nosema parasites!!! With all new equipment and high quality (read expensive) bees, I thought I would avoid disease for at least a month. This is also why I treated them with Fumagilin. I don’t know yet how bad this is, but I don’t like it and I’m worried. If anybody knows anything about how to measure the severity of nosema, please pass it on.

Treatments and Feedings
Both hives given a feeder of sugar syrup.
My awesome neighbour helped me cut down some more branches to let the light in.

To do list
Find out more about nosema and follow any recommended steps.
Put a sign on my apiary (just realised this is required by law)

Thoughts

I guess all animals get sick. I’ve been sick myself sometimes. Of course I’ve never been so sick that I shat down the exterior wall of my home, but I’m not a bee either. I’m going to try not to worry, and instead will seek some expert advice.

By far the happier thought from this weekend is that I am now a farmer of sorts. My neighbour Adrean, who is a farmer from his hair to his boots came over to chat on Saturday. For the first time, I felt like I knew something he didn’t; that I could contribute to the conversation. The residents of Fournier, Ontario all consider me a city boy, no doubt. But I have livestock – more head than any cattle farmer. I have a crop – honey's comin' in fast this year. And I have problems to grumble about – dang bees went and got sick. If that doesn’t make me a legit farmer, I don’t know what would. But yes, the barns are a little small.