Hive Report up to date till april 26th

Hello readers,

Time for a new report on what's going on in my hives!

Weather Report: 

We have had nothing but good days since my last report on april 11th.  Yes there were some days that temperatures didn't climb all the way up to 20°C, some days had heavy winds, but all in all we had some nice weather.  Not much rain, but the grass is still green...  There are talks of early draught problems this year, but talking about it won't make it come true, and as long as we're not there yet...  Let's hope for the best!

Hive Report: 

Good news for me! I caught a swarm! Apiary 5 is in business!  But let's not get ahead of ourselves and work through the apiaries!

Apiary 1

At home I still only have my two hives, both of them got some oil as a coat to protect the wood on april 23rd.

IC2019

This hive is still on 3 boxes of Warré, but the bees don't show any indication of building down.  The floorboard tells me the varroa load in this hive is rather high, the poop on the front of the hives is an indicator of nosema.  But that being said, the activity is all good.  Plenty of bees coming in with pollen and good overall activity.  I have not yet opened up this hive to do an inspection and I don't really want to, but if they don't build soon, I just might have to check what's going on.  I don't want them to swarm on me without me knowing about it ahead of time.

LL2018

These bees were ready for a super, even though they are on 2 boxes of Zander, with the brood in the top box, and nothing in the bottom one, I was thinking about putting a super on top.  I finally decided that I'd go with an experiment.  I added some sugardough in a mating nuc (with only 3 small frames) on top of this hive.  They can access this mating nuc through the top of their hive and the bottom of the nuc.  The rest is closed off.  I monitored the progress on a daily basis but haven't seen more than one bee in this nuc at a time.  Not on the foundation that I provided either, but on the sugar.  The bees don't seem interested.

I'm planning on doing an inspection of this hive later this week.  I might move the brood so I have a good base in the bottom box, with a smaller amount of frames of brood on top of that.  Some empty frames next to the brood to get them building and then all the honey I can find (unless it's sealed, then I might take it off) on the outside of the hive.

I'll leave the nuc on top untill they show an interest in building it out.

Apiary 2

Apiary 2 also received a coating of lineseed oil on the hives on the 23rd of april.

MC2019

Here I copied the setup of the LL2018.  2 brood boxes of Zander, the bottom one all frames that have yet to be built out, the top box is booming and on top of that I placed a mating nuc.  This one is a mini-plus plus box with smalls trips of foundation in them.  No idea if it'll take, but I felt the bees were ready as all frames were filled with bees.   During the inspection I noticed a good amount of drone brood AND I also noticed some cells with pupae in them that were uncapped.  No signs of wax-moth other than that, so maybe it's hygenic behaviour?  These are survivors from last year, so could be!!

I spotted the queen in this hive, she looks like a buckfast queen if you ask me, but she's a beauty... Unmarked, and we'll keep it that way!  If only I had my equipment ready for making splits already, drones present, the queen on the frames... Next time, next time...

There ware also some queencups in here, so a split might be in order...  I'll think about that in the coming week(s). 

As a final note on this hive I can say they were showing a little hostility towards the end of my inspection.  I didn't use smoke but tried to spray some water, as it had been dry I thought that would be the best of the two options.  The water didn't impress them at all.  It did keep them from flying up at first, but to be on the safe side, I put my gloves on just the same.

The LL2019

Talking about hostile hives... This one is my hottest yet. I could aply the oil on both hives no problem, no protection, even the front of the hive did not pose a problem.  But then I moved on to the inspection of MC2019, maybe the vibe was already signaled I was coming to the LL2019, as they didn't take that long to come at me.  I was prepared for it and endured the bees for 15 frames out of 3 boxes.  The first box had some activity, and was being scouted as a honey super, but they didn't build anything there yet.  I ended up moving two honey frames in that box to checkerboard the honey supplies.  The ambient volume of the buzzing did rise when I took that box off and went into the 2nd box.  There were 3 frames of brood in here, but those frames didn't follow the frame!  I had to cut through some pieces, enfuriating the bees further, I switched positions of these frames, hoping they would fix it to my liking for a next inspection.  There were drones there, but most of it was nectar.  it's from this box that the supplies were moved up.  I can say the box was showing a good amount of bees, I felt confident the 3rd box could stay on top, opening up the bottom box confirmed that idea, and the volume swell...

I cleaned up some burr comb and inspected 4 frames before I had enough.  The black cloud of bees that was looking for a way in got to my nerves and I figured I wasn't going to learn much anyway.

This hive showed what MC2019 showed me, as far as I can compare the two, the main difference is that the LL2019 seems to be doing better (in the simplex boxes, compared to the Zander boxes)

This hive needs to be split.  I'm going to move this hive to a different location on the same apiary I'll put a new landing board and the middle box on that new landing board on the old location and switch out frames so both have some open brood, enough stores and plenty of bees.  (Well more bees with the queen as the foragers will go back to the hive at the old position.)  What I'm going to do with the queencups in the hive with no queen?  I might split them up further, but due to the agressiveness, I might not.  It all depends.

Apiary 3

The only hive here is the MCA2020

I installed them on 9 april, where they had 6 frames built out, I checked on them april 15th, found they occupied 9 frames and were doing a good job on the other 2 so I supered them.  The first inspection I did was on april 21st. I got stung by these bees, and I can't say I was expecting it.  They were calm, and I continued the inspection after I got stung as if nothing happened.  The top box I gave them was starting to get some attention, one frame was being drawn out, but nothing much else was going on.  The bottom box was full of brood, 8 out of 11 frames!  Some honey was already capped in the back of the hive, so giving them room was the right call in my opinion.  I'll go back in this week if I have the time to check on swarmcells.

I did spot the queen and she's marked: She wears a green shield with the number 45 on it.  A buckfast queen similar to what I saw in the MC2019

Apiary 4

I have yet to repopulate this apiary, I gave the owners of the field a call, asking them if they will still permit me to restart and they have no objections.  So when I do make splits, I have a place to put them.

Apiary 5

Did I mention I teach beekeeping as a project in a Freinet school?  I can't recall, anyhow...  This apiary isn't really far from my home and I promised them to install bees as soon as I got my first swam-call...  April 16th was the date.  I had collected the swarm from a garden in a residential area and moved them to the school apiary.  They were put inside a Warré hive  - I believe I did put up the link already?  Or did I?  I have a hard time tracking what I have or haven't done here on this blog lately...  Anyhow here it is (again?) 

I inspected them a week later, on the 23rd hoping to see eggs or proof of a laying queen.  But I didn't spot the queen, nor did I find any eggs or larvae.  I'm starting to wonder if this hive is going to be all right.  In my mind I go over what you can see in this video .  I collect the queen from the skep and put her in the hive with my hands.  I cup my hand over the queen to prevent her form flying away, but when I release her she fell into the hive, rather than walk in.  So I'm thinking, maybe she was faking death, as queens are known to do, when I put her back in.  Maybe she got damaged, or maybe the bees killed her whilst she was in that state of apparent death?  

Only a new inspection will tell, although I'm pretty sure none of my worries are true, as the bees were extremely calm during the entire inspection.  Even though the buzzing sound did swell up.

Apiary 6

No bees on my apiary here, yet!  I contacted the owners informing them of my winter losses and my plans to expand - I hope to receive an anwser soon welcoming me to install the hive stand.

So that's all for today folks

Bob Out

Sites to visit - resource on solitary bees

Hello readers,

In another type of blogpost, this will neither be a 'Weather & Hive Report', nor will it be a read and write article.  It'll be a website I found and browse through.  You might find simmilarities between this and the Read and Write posts, with the difference I'll start my blog with the link to the site I went through.

So let's get to it!  Here's the site: http://www.atlashymenoptera.net/bibliogen.asp

This post will be a short one, as I'm not going to go through all the PDF files you can find on there, that'll be work for another day...

The site is a library of articles on different bee-species, not only honey bees.  The articles are not translated, so you'll need a bit knowledge of languages, as there are French and German texts in there.

The articles are all sorted in order from Apoidea to Apidae and ending with Pompilidae and 'divers'.  You can find the author(s) and the topic and the link to the article in question.

The site in itself doesn't give you a lot, other than being a library of articles.  So when in need, you might find an answer here.

As you can probably relate, I didn't feel like going through every article one by one to fill up the content of my own blog here, nor do I have the time to do so at this moment.

I have moved a shortcut on my browser to this topic under 'beekeeping - wild bees'.  I'm going to make a note in my 'to do' list that if I ever get through all the reading on my dropbox for the Read and Write blog here, there's still some reading to do there...

That's all for now folks!


Bob Out

Read and Write - Follow up; Honey Bee Valley Arnia monitoring systems in use

Hello readers,

Last Read and Write I  commented on a report from Honey Bee Valley co-worker Dries Laget. A project where they use Arnia hive scales and monitoring systems to collect data and draw conclusions from that data.  The report from last time was released shortly after the implementation of the project, and at the end of that I wondered if I could find any follow ups.

As I am all over the place when looking for new information I had no clue where I found that report.  Maybe it's an idea to take notes on what my sources are for future reference.  That being said, I started my search on the Honey Bee Valley Website, a site packed full with information about bees and plants that are good for pollinators.  A site that is still growing!  But I didn't find what I was looking for.  So not to waste too much time I drafted up an email and sent that to Dries asking him if the follow up reports were 'free to acess' and where I could find them.

The day after I received an email directing me to those reports, you guessed it, on the very website I was looking for them...  (facepalm myself much?)

First follow up, shortly after the first report from september, there's one from october and november.
The first difference is that now 28 of the 35 systems are up and running (instead of the 22 from last time).  The trend that started in september continued till october 25th (flow was on even though it's supposed to be fall here).  A little side note to that is for some data only 20 systems were used (as the others were not active during some periode)

The most important conclusion remains: beekeeping is local.  Out of 20 hives 5 lost weight where the rest gained weight through influx of nectar, in 2 hives there was an influx of more than 16 kg! On average the overall influx was around 4,5 kg.
A second observation is that after a periode of bad weather, when the bees can go out again, there is a drop in weight.  The hypothesis is that this weightloss is due to bees dying.  In one hive the loss was
2,5 kg, and that hive is no longer alive...

What the monitoring system fails to do is letting you know with absolute certainty when the queen stops laying.  The sensor you put inside the broodnest is stationary, so when the broodnest shrinks down, the sensor could very well be outside the brood, making the measurments unreliable.  The advice here is: after a night with frost, it'll take 3 weeks to be sure there is no brood left in the hive.

You can combine the data from the sensor with the weight of the hive to see if the colony is still alive.  Fluctuating temperatures with a steady drop in weight shows the bees are still alive.  This fluctuating temperatures with an even, unchanging weight tells you that hive is dead.

The next report looks at november 2018 to march 2019. For some reason only 18 systems were operational during that time (dead hives?)
The winter was rather warm for our climate, this means pathogens have an easy time surviving.  This is disastrous in bigger colonies, as the pressure put on them is bigger.  The smaller, weaker hives, that might have died if the winter was harsher, took advantage of rising temperatures early in the year to find extra resources sooner than normal and thus they were given a boost, instead of collapsing.

The report doubles back on the difficulty to determine when the colony no longer has brood, as this is input you want to know when you want to treat for varroa mites.  The sensors did see that some beekeepers did an oxalic acid treatment in december, which in hindsight was too early.  In fact the data in some hives suggests there was no broodless periode at all.
In the hives were broodbrakes did occur the queen started laying again early in february (around the 12th) as the temperatures started rising above 12°C at that time.
The switch in winterbees to summerbees is not visable in the data, it happens too gradual and with other things going on (cleansing, gathering of resources...)

Looking at the data from individual systems the corrolation between the local weather and how the hive fares is clearly present.

Winter stores were used up faster by smaller colonies, as the bigger colonies have more bees to keep the temperatures in check.  But overall the average use of stores can be noted as 66g per day (give or take 18g).  The consumption of stores increases the moment the queen starts laying again, an observation that is easy to explain as generating heat requieres consumption of sugars.
Suppose the queen would continue laying during the winter, the consumption would raise to 120g per day!

Cleansing flights!  You may not expect this, but the cleansing flights show up in the data.  The first few days of good weather, the weight drops with this as the only explanation, the drop in weight continues and one could say the cleaning in the hive also is part of this data, and this is very plausible, but the first few days of nice weather does point towards cleansing flights.

Next we have the start of the spring; march and april 2019, again with 22 systems in operation.
The data shows we did not have a good spring time.  Every couple of good days, with hives collecting resources and increase in weight for the hive were interupted by a day or a few days of bad weather and consumption of what was brought in, or what they had left from winterstores.  It is only starting from 16 april that the real 'spring' started for the bees, but even that early start was again interupted 10 days later. 

Weightloss during the night shows how many nectar vs the amount of pollen was brought in.  Higher loss of weight means more nectar was brought in, as the water is vaporised from the nectar during the night.  Hives that gain weight during the night are affected by the weather, moisture is absorbed in the wooden hives, adding to the weight.

First weightloss in the morning is tied to the outside temperature; 12°C -15°C is the starting signal for the scoutbees to leave the hive.  If the drop in weight is significant and takes a while to climb back up, this is an indication that the landscape does not provide for the bees and they have to fly to far to be effective.  The data collected shows the diversity in the landscape, the north of Belgium is better for the bees during spring.  West- and East-Flanders have not much to offer to the bees, according to the arnia monitoring system.

The final report that is up looks at the remaining months up until july 2019.  The amount of monitoring systems used now is very diverse.  Batteries running out, problems with connections and other problems took some systems out of commision. 
The data is also difficult to interpret as the beekeepers go into their hives and are managing their bees, the notes they took didn't always explain what the readings after the interventions meant.  But one observation can be made: it is only when temperatures start hitting the 20°C that the increase or stability of the hive-weight starts.  Unfortunatly the year 2019 was not the best year for the bees.  After a good periode of flow, and harvest for some beekeepers, there was a setback in weather conditions, and beekeepers hade to give back to the bees as the stores started to decline as bees needed the resources to survive.

One hive, where the beekeeper reported a swarmcells, the hive did not swarm but the data shows this internal switching of the queen has cost 16 kg of honey.

A stop of nectar flow is an annualy recurring aspect in Belgium, in the end of may - beginning of june it's waiting for the Tilia trees to start flowing.  In 2019 this was a short break as from 17 june you can see the bees bringing in more nectar again.  Even though this was a short periode, the loss in weight per hive has an average of 8,2 kg!

- - - - -
So what do these reports tell me?  In my opinion this data could be usefull for scientists, but not so much for the beekeeper himself.  Maybe, in the future, when these measurements are wide-spread and projections can be made into the future this will be viable for beekeepers too.  But as it stands, I believe the beekeeper has to know his bees and his environment.  As a beekeeper you want to know when to do what, as putting supers on too early can have a devastating effect, but putting them on too late is maybe even worse.  So as long as these monitoring systems are uncapable of giving you a heads up; Saying it's time to do this or that, I don't see them being used all that much, especially if you look at the prices of these things.
It's ok if you're tech savy and you only have a couple of hives, but I don't see myself purchasing a base for 10 hives each...

The report itself is also clear that some readings have to be accompanied by the notes of the beekeeper, they have not much value if you don't know what's happening in the hive at that moment, or what the weather is like...

We'll see what my BEEP-base brings me ... (Not an Arnia system, but simmilar)


Bob Out

-I did not proof read this, there could be a lot of spelling mistakes in here, sorry for that! -

Read and Write - Honey Bee Valley Arnia monitoring systems in use

Hello readers,

As I posted a while back I'll start doing 'read and write' pieces on here.

No weather Report, no hive Reports, well if you want to see bees, scroll down, I have a surprise there that has nothing to do with cleaning out my dropbox that's stashed with documents.
I hope to find some gems in there and today I'm reading a paper written by Dries Laget from the University of Gent, Department Honey bee Valley.

Dries Laget is the founder of the project VespaWatch.  The project keeps an eye out on how the Asian Hornet is doing here in Flanders, Belgium.  It also does 'pest control' towards this Vespa Velutina.

To keep an ear to the ground, or rather a monitoring device inside the hive, they have 35 systems active spread across Flanders.  It comprises of a recording device for sound, it has scales and measures the outside temperature and temperature inside the brood nest (if the sensors are placed in the right spot).  Oh I almost forgot they also measure humidity inside the hive and the amount of rainfall there is.  (If you want to see what devices are being used, head over to www.arnia.co.uk.

The report I'm reading is an interpretation of data recorded from 22 systems from september 2018 to 16 October 2018.  I'm not sure how useful this report is since the time period is rather short... But that's not the main goal for this document, it is meant to showcase what data can be collected and how it can lead to interpretation of what's going on.

The Scales

First the document shows the scales are very accurate.  

Looking at one day; When compared to the outside temperature you can see a drop in weight in the morning when temperatures are around 12°C; Indicating the foragers have left the hive to start their work.  The coming and going of bees shows on the diagram in fluctuations of weight during the day. As temperatures start dropping the bees return and the scales stop fluctuating showing an overall increase of weight.  Looking at the scales the next day shows that the weight has dropped again, this is accounted to the vaporisation of the water from the nectar, and possibly some consumption.

Comparing all these daily results over the whole period shows a clear correlation between the weather, the flow of nectar in plants and the weight of the hive.

As winter sets in a weight loss is noticed that does not follow this trend, what did cause is is unclear but could be attributed to the death of the 'summer' bees in combination with excluding drones from the hive (that were still present till that day)

Differences in resources across Flanders

As weather conditions were steady across the whole of Flanders between 15 - 21 september this was an ideal time to compare the flow of nectar.  And there were differences!  Some hives consumed, others only consumed what they could find and then there were those that found some or a lot of resources.

The abundance of resources is not always deemed profitable for the bees, some do see it as a good thing (pollen coming in late in the year) others say it's a negative thing for the bees as the broodnest gets clogged up with whatever they find preventing the queen to lay eggs to provide enough 'winter' bees + the amount of 'winter' bees that are already there shorten their lifespan by foraging!  Both hypotheses are plausible, but cannot be confirmed (nor denied) by looking at the current (small) amount of date.  Let's hope the continuation of this project helps solve this puzzle!

There we have it folks,

a short paper that now makes me wonder if I can find a follow up on this project...  I'll have a look around and report back with the next Read and Write for you guys!

- - - - -

On another note, I caught my first swarm of the year and deposited it in a hive at a Freinet School : De Kleine Wereld (The Small World)  Here's a video on that (up on 21/04/2020 18:00)

Bob Out

Hello readers,

It's time for some beekeeping!
I have bought 2 more hives to bring my number up to 6 and I'm preparing to go out to catch some swarms.
But the most important thing is: I got to check my hives!

There was a lot of confusion at first ; Would we be allowed to travel to our bees during the COVID-19 lock-down (it is a semi lockdown here in Belgium) so I prepared as you can read up on in my previous post here.
So I was pleased to learn that taking care of your bees is allowed and moving them to pollination areas if you have a contract is also allowed.
And yes, buying bees is also allowed - if overseen by the beekeeping association.

But let's get to it!

Weather Report:  

Spring is finally here! This last week has been beautiful and temperatures go up into the 20° C.
It's not raining a lot, but it's not a dearth either so the plants are flowering and the pollen are in the air!

Hive Report: 

Home Apiary:

In my home apiary only 2 hives made it through winter: the LL2018 and the IC2019 (or the ZK2019 in previous reports)

As an intermezzo I'll show you a bee-watching video from my home apiary (and other bees)

The blue hive is the IC2019 - the wooden landing board is from the LL2018

The LL2018

I took out some old frames for comb renewal.  Frame 1 and 10 in the top box.  Frame one was of a smaller size (from making this hive) and I believe the last frame of this smaller size is now removed from this hive.  I moved frame 2 over to position one, that frame had a lot of pollen and bee-bread in it.  Next to it on position 2 I put in an empty frame to get them building. 

Next to that on position 3-5 is brood, not a lot!  So this hive had it rough coming out of winter!

On position 6 I put a frame with foundation moving all previous frames towards the edges.

7-10 is all honey!

The box I put underneath is untouched.

I don't intend to super this hive just yet.  Hopefully they'll start building down as the nectar flow starts, if not, I might have a swarm on my hands.

The IC2019

This hive is on Warré boxes, and I intend to not inspect them by going in.  I hope to do visual inspections through a window, looking at the bottom board and looking at the hive entrance for this hive.

I can't see a lot through the window.  The bees are all towards the front of the hive, away from the window.  It feels like there isn't a lot of them.

Looking at the landing board I notice a lot of poop, so they might have a case of NOSEMA on their hands.  I also noticed the one bee with DWV.

Seeing all this made me think the varroa load was going to be heavy in this hive, something that is to be expected.  I did not treat any of my hives, so all varroa that survived winter will want to gain maximum profit out of the first few brood cycles.  Let's hope the bees can handle the stress.

When looking at the bottom board I get confirmation : a lot of varroa.

The landing board tells me there's 43 bees coming in at 15:00-ish in the afternoon with 3 different colours of pollen.  I believe it's willow (bright yellow pollen) and dandelion (a more orange color), The third color is a dirty white-ish/light grey and I have no clue where they get it from.

As there are 2 unused boxes here for the bees to expand their nest I'm sure there's enough room!

Apiary 2

LL2019

One of the survivors is a nasty one.  They let me take of 2 empty boxes and look through 4 frames (without brood) before the humming started letting me know I'd better close up.

I moved 4 frames of nectar and a bit of pollen to the first super, over the brood nest.  Thus giving them space next to the brood frames to grow and showing them there is room above for honey stores.

I hope to move these frames to the top most box next inspection but we'll see what happens when we open this one up again.

As this hive is on Simplex I might use it to ship out for a Darwinian Black Bee Project (minus the queen).

MC2019

This hive survived on one Zander box, something I didn't expect, I gave up on them!  But they are here!  And they are doing good.  Going through the hive I noticed position 1 still had a filler block putting the hive on 9 frames.  This one needs to be replaced during my first inspection.  Those 9 frames have 5 frames of brood 3 frames of pollen and an empty frame.  I hope they'll build towards the bottom.  I'm toying with the idea to put 3 frames of brood in the bottom box with 2 frames of brood above - or something along those lines, depending how many frames of brood I find during my next inspection.

Something else I noticed, and I wish I took pictures now, is possible signs of VHS; Some of the capped brood was opened up with the pupae still white.  Are they doing something against the varroa mites?  I hope so!

Also, if you read back in my reports, I wouldn't be surprised that you'll find me planning on changing the roof on this hive... Well I still have to do just that!

Apiary 3

This is a new hive! (as the old hive that was here didn't make it!) Welcome to the:

MCA2020

The MCA2020 is a hive I bought from a beekeeper within throwing distance of my home.  So local bees! (the beekeeper does use oxalid acid) They are on 6 frames of Simplex when I got them and are now inside one 11-frame box of Simplex.

The plan is to let them grow and ship them out (minus the queen) for that same Darwinian Black Bee Project I mentioned earlier.  I'll have to write a blog report on what that project is, so if you're interested, keep your eyes peeled!

So, they were on 6 frames, now in positions 3-8.

Position 1 is an empty frame, position 2 is a buit out comb frame.

In slot 3 we have some pollen and nectar and the next 5 frames are all brood!

Frame 9 is an empty frame, 10 has foundation and 9 is empty again.

God I hope they build straight here!

I'm going back in a week since they are in a fruit orchard with cherry, plum and apple.  The plum was already in bloom, the cherries are ready to go and the apple is sprouting flower buds.

They'll get ample opportunity to fill out this hive.

I have half a mind set on instead of supering them putting a 6-framer next to them and to divide up the frames to make a walk-away split next week - depending on how strong they are growing and if they're building or not.

So that's it for today!  I hope to make pictures and video's again this year!

Bob Out