Hive Check 5/22/17

Kat and I checked on the Sunflower River hive yesterday. It was a good day: warm and full of blooming things. It was off and on blustery, so it wasn't perfect, but that's okay. I think it was around 1:30 in the afternoon when we got into the hive.

My main task with today was getting the brood box I added two weeks ago swapped out with the newly routered box, and to see how they were doing. I noticed that the bees were particularly grumpy, and that was probably for two reasons: they had a huge gap in their hive that was probably letting cold and robbers in, and they were out of sugar water. So we're not caring well enough for those bees!

Kat went back to make sugar water while I got into the hive. The smoker -- which I had Kat light this time, because she's better with fire-making -- went out after one puff into the entrance. So I did this without smoke, which I don't think would have mattered, because they were pissed off already.

I checked on the various frames, finding the queen relatively quickly and making sure she was put back when I did. She's still there, but the progress from last hive check to this hive check is almost stunted. I didn't notice any growth, and I wonder how long they've been without food. We'll probably have to feed them throughout the summer at this rate, and I'm happy to do that to help them get established.

One thing of note is that I pulled one frame out and the wind gusted just at that moment, scattering the bees off of it (I'm SO glad I found the queen early and put her back) and onto me! They all fell on my shoes and I realized I hadn't tucked in the legs of my jeans. Sure enough, a bee crawled up my pants leg and I got my first sting of the season on my calf. It was my first bee sting since I was, like, 9 years old, so I was interested to find out how the sting would go. It hurt for five minutes while the venom was being pumped in (I was too in the middle of tasks to go reaching down there and scraping the thing out). But after that it was done: no swelling, no pain after the initial few minutes, just a red dot where the stinger was in my skin. I did stop breathing, but...just kidding. So it was good to get a sense of how I react to bee stings.

Anyway, I swapped out the brood box and put the hive back together. We gave them a full bottle of sugar water, and we stepped away. I'll look at them all again next week just to see how they're doing again, and get on a better schedule.

Goddess Save the Queen! (Hive Check 5/18/17)

It was a little over two weeks since my hive checks. The weather has been strange here in Albuquerque for May. Lots of rain, and lots of cold. Blustery is normal, but the rain and thundershowers were not!

Today around noon I went out to check on my top-bar hive at The Source, mostly looking for that elusive queen. It's nice out, not too hot, but a little windy. I needed to do it, since it'd been 16 days since my last check, so I just dove in.

Things are going great! The bees have expanded to make nine combs total! The one on the end is half-complete, but they've already started putting pollen in it. All except for the one on the end, which is almost all nectar, they have a strange pattern of a little honey at the top (some of it capped) and smatterings of worker brood and drone brood and pollen. Not a great pattern, but it's not super alarming. There's no cross combing, and they are all making perfectly straight comb, so I haven't had to do any repairs or turning around of the bar. I see a lot of black pollen, which is awesome, but I have seen no sign of disease or mites. They're so kind to me!

Most importantly, I found the queen! Finally! She was on the next-to-last bar, so I put her back immediately. Before I closed up, I saw her wandering toward the front again, probably to get away from me. She's nice and fat with eggs, so that really makes me happy.

I placed two empty bars between two of the most productive brood comb, to make them feel like they had room. I'll check them next week and see how they're doing with them. There were no supercedure cells, so I am not fearing them swarming. A good hive check all around!

I replaced the empty feeder, which probably won't last the two weeks, so I'll check on how their honey is doing next time I'm in there and put more in.

Hive Checks May 2 & 3

May 2: Source Hive Check
A little after 3pm, I went out to check on my top-bar hive. It was a mild but sunny day, and the hive was in the shade. It was warm out and pleasant.

My goals today was to replace their feeder with more food, to take care of the comb they were using on the bottom board, and to look for the queen (just generally taking a look at how they're doing).

Replacing the can of syrup was the easy part. I then started going through the combs until I could get my tool into the hive to remove the comb on the bottom. As suggested by one of the instructors in my certificate program, I should just put the comb in the back of the hive and let them take everything out of it before I remove it. Scraping it up was also easy and I placed it back there without trouble, finding pollen and nectar inside. Unfortunately, some of the nectar splattered on the bottom board as I moved it, but I saw bees cleaning that up.

As far as the queen, I couldn't find her with a visual inspection. The bees were busy, having made about 9 bars of comb, with one completely empty and one of them only about half completed. I saw more drone brood than I thought I should, and some capped worker brood, so I think that they must have a queen, but the amounts of worker brood was smaller than I would have liked.

The pollen, though, is beautiful, with tons of color. They have quite a bit of nectar, too.

As I was closing everything up, I realized I need to build a better lid. The one I have simply is too tight to adequately get it on the hive without making a bunch of racket, which the bees don't like. I'll be setting up a day to make hives soon, so I'll make a new one then.

May 3: SR Hive Check

Kat Heatherington thinks these are "action
shots." I think she needs to understand what
"action" means.

Kat and I wandered back to the hive at about 7pm. It was a nice, warm day that was going to quickly become night, so I wanted to work fast. They had lots of sun this late, the shade being more of an afternoon thing, I'm finding.

Kat Heatherington likes
their cute faces. She thinks
they look like cats. I'm sure
they're offended by that.

My goals for opening the hive was to just see how they were doing, look for the queen, and see what they need. Kat's goals was to get a decent picture of a honeybee, which she obviously did.

I opened the hive and found that they were going gangbusters! All but two of the frames was mostly built with comb (so there were 8 frames). Where the old queen cage still was, they had done some cross-combing, but it was very little and easy to remove. The very first frame I pulled out, I came face to face with a very lovely queen, so I put her back in. Seeing lots of brood, and very little drone brood, I decided it was time to add another brood box.

I sent Kat scurrying away for more frames while I looked over the rest of the hive. No problems, and everyone seems happy. All the brood looked good, and I could see them in all phases of growth...it was really cool to see that in my own hive! There was lots of pollen, a good amount of nectar, and I couldn't find evidence of disease.

Once Kat was back, we added another brood box on top, putting a couple bars with some brood in it and filling out the rest of the space with more frames...

...And found out the box doesn't really fit. So add another thing to the list of things I need to make. I will definitely be making more boxes soon.