Today I'm here to tell you about the past week (or so) in my beekeeping life. I had planned a lot, but then...
Weather Report:
The weather report for the last week explains why I had to push all my beekeeping work forward. After the last inspections from 26'th april the only 'good' day to work bees was april 27'th. After that it was too cold, rainy and wet. I'm expecting a lot of swarms in the coming days of good weather.April 27'th, I'm at work, and I get a swarm-call of sorts. Read about it in apiary 4.
So as for the weather, can't say more than what I did, cold and wet. The bees had to wait most days till it was 15:00 hours before it was warm enough to come out, and then they had to do that in between rainfall.
Hive Report:
I inspected most of my hives today (may 3rd 2020), although I didn't take notes like I should have done, I wanted to visit them all today, even when I didn't go in.
Apiary 1
IC2019This hive has a lot of Varroa pressure, I can tell by looking at how this hive does not grow. I'll have to reduce them down and put a robber screen in front of them soon. Unless they kick in late. They have stayed in the top box and haven't shown any intention of building out. A swarm from last year with bees that can't handle the varroa pressure... Now and again I spot a bee with DWV, not a lot, but still they're there. I haven't even opened them up yet this year!
If I would treat, this hive would get treated, but I don't so I'm ready to give up this hive.
LL2018
During the week of bad weather I peeked in now and again to see if the matingnuc was getting any attention. The only thin I saw was on may 2nd: moisture on the sugar in the mating nuc and three bees in there, but no building out comb in the mating nuc. I'm starting to think: 'how am I going to introduce bees in these mating nucs if I don't have drawn comb?!' Something to get an answer on soon!
Apiary 2
MC2019
This hive started to build out in the bottom box! 5cm of comb was drawn out and where there was no wax foundation I found drone comb. As there were some cups, no eggs yet, I decided to bring some of the brood down. I took out the 4 frames in the middle and dropped 4 brood frames down there. Then, instead of keeping the brood compact - I realise now - I just filled up the wholes I created in the top box with empty frames from the bottom box. I didn't even take 4 adjacent frames down! I looked for the older ones to keep them in the top box and moved the newer frames down. As it happens to be those were each one frame appart... I did bring those brood frames together in the center of the hive, but I didn't bother to shift the other brood frames so the heat would be compact.
I might have set this hive back in my attempt to prevent swarming! And I don't have to remind you of how angry bees can get if you take out frames and roll them over each other... Well I did that too... Shows you that if you don't plan on going into a hive, you shouldn't unless you think it through first.
LL2019
The reason I was here today was this hive. It had a stack of 3 deep brood boxes and I wanted to split this hive since they were nasty last inspection. Even though I don't want to breed 'hot bees' I feel the varroa issue is more pressing, so I'm going to continue with these as 'local adapted bees'. They didn't get treatment last year and are now booming! So these are the bees I want! How many queen cells I get will remain to be seen. How many will be sucessfull is yet another thing, but let's go over how I went about my business...- I smoked the entrance and took away the top to boxes, lid stil on there.
- I smoked the bottom box (full of brood) and moved the entire box, bottom board and all away from where they were. (on the other side of the MC2019 and opening more towards the East-north East.
- I moved an empty brood box to the old place (the hive has a different colour landing board - so the foragers looking for the old hive might find it, but I still believe most of them will come to this new box. There was a frame of honey in this box to start with, a leftover from last year.
- I removed half of the brood from the LL2019, did a quick visual inspection of the frames but didn't find the queen. I moved 2 frames with bees to the old location and from then on I shook every frame off above the hive in the new location before moving the frames. I was pleased to see the hive was built nicely inside the frames. The work went smooth and well.
This did not put me at ease at all since as I'm writing this report here I can't say I saw eggs in any of the frames, nor did I look for larvae... Will both hives be ok? We'll see I guess. - After moving half of the frames from one box to the other, keeping the brood all together now, I opened the lid from the top box that I set aside and started deviding the frames. Not a lot of bees on there so I could move on to the next step.
- Move the box on top of the old hive LL2019 in the new location I also but an empty frame here and there and divided the middle box that was still set aside over the LL2019 and the LL2020 that was being made.
- I closed up the hives
Now I don't know where the queen is, or if I damaged her in the process. I don't think so and I half expect her to be in the new location. Since I smoked the hive to begin with and I shook most bees of there.
LL2020
The new hive get this name. I'll shrink her further back to one box coming inspection may 12th to devide the queens over some nucs and the LL2020. It doesn't matter what side of the MC2019 this hive is on, the one with the queencups and new queens will be the LL2020. But only for a short while, since if I find more frames with queens on them I'll have to rename them as they would all be LL2020-ies. I'm going to keep it simple and go for LL12020, LL22020 and so on.
If I'm right and the LL2020 has the queencups in the old place, I'm going to make the split with frames from this hive, shrinking it down to one box and if needed will shake some more bees from the LL2019 in there. Let's hope I don't shake the queen in there...
Apiary 3
MCA2020Is of to a good start. I only took of the roof to check what's happening in the super (a full deep) and I'm happy to report 5 full frames of honey are being capped of and 2 to 3 more are being built out.
Might take of some honey from this one!
Apiary 4
Ah, the bees are here! As I hinted earlier on, I got a swarm call of sorts on april 27th. A beekeeper witnessed how one of his hives swarmed and he moved them into a 6-framer. He was afraid they wouldn't stick around so he took out some brood frames from his hives, shook the bees of and gave the swarm 4 frames of brood and 2 frames of nectar. Then he gave me a call (he told me all this during the call) He wanted me to come and collect them, as he had 4 hives and didn't want any more.
As I was at work I told him I was interested, but would have to call somebody else to pick up the bees. And that's what I did. Ives, my buddy, was willing to do this all by himself! He collected the bees, drove them to apiary number 4 and installed them there. I went over to take a quick look (without my beesuit) and only got one sting in the back of the knee while looking inside.
As I did not want to inspect the hive - it was growing colder in the evening - I called the beekeeper again: Did he check to see if there were any queencups on the frames he put in there? - He didn't, but he didn't think they were on there...
I knew what I had to do in spite of colder weather conditions. Yes you can inspect bees starting from 15°C and that's what it was, but still, they had brood! So 35°C is 20°C warmer than 15°C I urge you to take a shower with water form 35°C and then have your wife turn it to 15°C in one go, see how you'll like it..
So here's the video of what I did:
I don't recall, did I post the construction of the hive in the video on here already? I don't think so, so I'll show you the pictures from the video on here to:
Above you can see the inside of the brood box, a hexagon shape made out of wooden boards - if I remember correctly 12 mm thick.
This here is the board I'll put on top of the brood box, the outer measurements fit that of the most common hive in Belgium, the simplex hive, so if I want I can super with a box with frames.
The outside material is plastic. I used an old floorboard system as an outer layer. I believe the plastic will help prolong the lifespan of this hive as the rain should just drip off. You can see the plastic floar boards are hollow inside, which should provide a first layer of insulation. In between the hexagon shape and the plastic boards there is more insulation: wood wool. A natural product that I was able to buy from a guy that had a couple sheets to many.
The initial idea was to put this hive on top of some compost and then let the Stratiolaelaps scimitus a predatory mite find a home in there. It is said the bees go down towards the mites to help them get rid of varroa. It's not so much that he predatory mites go up into the brood to find the varroa, as the condition in the broodnest is not ideal for survival of this mite.
But as you could see in the video, and on the last picture, I have not yet built this hive stand for compost and am now using a bottom board with screen.
The hole is the only entrance I was planning on using, with a disc to seal it off, but as you can see, putting it on a regular bottom board also works. I saw the hive today (may 3rd) and am happy to report most of the bees use this round entrance instead of going all the way down to fly out. Returning bees do divide themselves towards bottom and 'top' entrance.
Apiary 5
ZKS2020Is going to prove to be a problem child. I fear I dropped the apparant dead queen in there or damaged her in some other way. As of today she still does not have any brood in the cells. There was heat being generated, but that could be to build wax. Although I heard the bees don't build if the queen is not there. But hey, you only know things when you experience them for yourself right?
The hive in itself grew a bit in size. 6 frames built out in the top box (out of 8) and 4-ish in the 2nd box. They were still building from what I could see. So I haven't lost all hope yet. I do hope to see brood next inspection, 12th of may, and if not, I might just put a queencup in here from the nasty hive LL2020... Even if I don't know if that's such a good idea for a school... The other option is to take a frame of brood out of my IC2019, but seeing as the Varroa load is pretty high, I'm not sure that would be a better option.
I could just let them die and use the was as a resource for the next swarm... Have I given up already? No!! They haven't! They're still building!! So let's trust them!
Apiary 6
Didn't hear back from the owners, didn't go there to install a hive stand yet. It's on my to do list!That's all for today folks!
Bob Out
