O.P.H. Part II

I took a stroll over to visit the Droogies during my lunch hour today and was astonished to see how the activity at the entrance of my hive compared to the hives around it. As you might recall, I've been jealous of the amount of bees going in and out of the neighbor's hives, but I don't have to be jealous anymore. It is a bit of the "Tortoises and the Hares." His hives were gangbusters earlier this summer, having started with 4 lb packages of Italians, whereas I started a few weeks later with 3 lb packages of Russians. However, my hives now have much more activity and many more bees than those around them. Why might this be? I can think of a couple possibilities:

• Feeding: I fed my bees longer after installing them in the hive. This might have encouraged the queen to lay more, but I doubt that this is the reason.

• Swarms: I think he might have had some swarming. His packages were installed in a deep hive body, and still only have one deep and one medium on them, which makes me think that they would be very crowded by now. His hive that overwintered almost definitely swarmed. There were soooo many bees in that hive at the beginning of spring, and now it looks like his other hives.

• Disease: I hate to say it, but I think his hives might be suffering from mites. I don't think he uses screen boards or any other form of pest management, including treatment for the hive that overwintered. His bees are also Italians, which may be more susceptible to mites than my Russians.


The commercial beekeeper who has many hives in the yard next to ours has harvested his honey recently. His hives, which were six or seven supers tall, are now just a deep and a medium. I wonder if he'll start medicating his hives in preparation for winter, and if this will affect the honey that I'm planning to take from my hives in a couple weeks. I sure hope not.

Hive inspection, August 6th

Here's what I observed today while inspecting the hives.

• Droogie 1 is drawing new comb in the top (4th) box and storing nectar. I'm surprised that there is still nectar available out there, but glad to see it!

• There are about 5 capped frames of honey in boxes 3 and 4, and more will be capped soon. I'll probably harvest a few frames in early September.

• There was lots of activity at the entrance of both hives. I think there are more bees now than ever.

• Droogie 2 continues its strange habbits. The queen is laying all the way up in the top box (3rd), and they don't have much honey stored away. The brood pattern is really dense on some frames, and then she'll skip a frame for some reason, and then there is more brood on the next frame. I'm not sure what is the reason for this. Perhaps the comb isn't the right size? I think the wavy foundation might have had a negative impact on the way the bees were able to draw out the comb. I'm only going to use foundationless frames in that hive from now on. They also continue to leave the combs on the side of the boxes alone.

Dog days

July and August are slow months for beekeeping, and I expect they'll be slower months for the blog as well. All my favorite bee blogs (including this one) are also quiet these days.

The bees have established themselves in their hives and really don't need tending until later in the summer or early fall, when it will be time to treat them for mites and help them prepare for winter. It's actually better to leave them be (bee?) except for a hive inspection every 10-14 days.

Today was day 14, however, and I was excited to take a look at what's been happening. Droogie 1, by far my better hive, is 4 boxes tall. The top box has three of the ten frames fully drawn out with wax, and two of those frames are being filled with honey. The third box is almost full of honey, some of it beginning to be capped! This is great news, because I think I'll be able to take some of this and still leave them with enough to last them through winter. The first and second box are filled with bees and there is lots of evidence of a healthy, busy queen (eggs, larva, capped brood).

Here is a picture of a frame that has capped honey, and below that is one filled with honey but hasn't yet been capped (The bees dehydrate the nectar until it has the appropriate water content, which we call honey, at which time the cover the cell with wax). I'm thrilled that I'll be able to harvest some honey this year- I was dubious for a while.





Droogie 2 remains a laggard, and for some reason the bees have ignored four or five frames in each of the three boxes. I saw some eggs and so I know the queen is there and doing fine, but this hive just doesn't seem to be thriving. Unless they pick it up, I'll have to move drawn frames from the upper boxes down to the bottom boxes for winter, and I doubt I'll be taking any honey from this hive.

Orientation flights

When bees are born, they don't inherently know how to find their hive once they've gone out foraging. In order to learn to recognize their own house, they do what are called "orientation flights." Typically this happens in the late afternoon, which was the time of day I was heading out to check out my hives (smelling like a mouse).

What happens is that all of the spry young bees fly out of the entrance, turn and face the hive, and fly in little circles right in front of their joint.

I had not seen bees doing this until Wednesday. It was impressive.

Here's a video of what I observed. The hive that I filmed was one in the adjacent bee yard.

Bees and mice are not friends

Sometimes I have to play with mice as part of my job. And by play, I mean use them for experiments. It isn't something I feel great about, but some biological processes can only be studied in living organisms. And so I treat them with respect, and thank them for helping us learn about our universe.

It occurred to me that mice and bees are natural enemies. Mice will get into a hive in the winter, when the bees are all clustered at the top of the hive, and build a nest at the bottom of the hive. It is warm, provides protection from the elements, and the mice can eat the bees once they die. However, once spring arrives and the bees are free to un-cluster, the bees unleash their pent-up anger and kill the mouse.

After some days at work, I'm positive that I smell more like a mouse than a human. I can smell it on myself, and I know that if I smell it, it must be bad. Today is one of those days. And despite my better judgment, I'm about to inspect the hives and add another super. I hope this is not the precursor to the awesome blog title, "Wrath of My Bees," that Ellie mentioned.

O.P.H.

I had an opportunity yesterday to go to the bee yard with the scientist who allows me to keep my bees next to his. It is always fun to peek at other people's hives. Every time I visit my bees, I am amazed at how many bees are at the entrance of his hives and was excited to be able to see inside.

This hive is 6 boxes tall and is one that survived last winter in great condition. The top two supers are full of capped honey, which he's planning to harvest next week.*



This frame is full of capped honey. I thought that the honey was dark but he said that it looks that way because the frame had previously been used for brood.



His other hives were started from packages a few weeks before I started mine and have much more capped honey. The late start for my bees probably meant that they weren't ready to take advantage of the early nectar flow. Hopefully the droogies will be ready for next year and will be able to keep up with the Joneses' bees.


*I didn't actually go back in time to take those photos- just didn't know how to work the time-stamp feature on a borrowed camera.

Coming and Going

Happy 4th of July!