CCCC Bee Yard Updates

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SEPTEMBER 2021 Bee Yard Update–Mimi Gussow

Saturday, 9/18, 2021

David Jones and Phil Uptmor led the Field Day at the CCCC hives at the Community College for about 10 people. It was great to have State Inspector Don Hopkins join us. 

Hive # 5 was doing well with capped and uncapped brood, pollen and honey. The Queen was not seen but we knew she was around due to the presence of young brood. A mite check was performed using alcohol wash with a result of 0/300 mites found. The feeder was empty and feeding is recommended. However, there is a hole in the feeder screen that needs to be repaired. 

Hive #3 was also doing well, with capped and uncapped brood, medium food stores of honey and pollen. The Queen was not seen but finding young brood implies she is around. There was some evidence of hygienic behavior seen in the un-capping of a few cells. A mite check was done using alcohol with a result of 6/300 mites found. Treatment is needed. In a few days temperatures will again be below 85 degrees so formic pro can be used.

Hive #4 the Horizontal Hive was doing well with high amounts of capped and uncapped brood, pollen and honey stores. The Queen was not seen today but there was some ~2 day old brood so she was most likely around. The feeder was empty and was refilled with a sugar syrup of 1:1 (or about 1.25:1) A mite check using alcohol had a result of 13/300 mites. This hive needs to be treated in a few days when temperatures again fall below 85 degrees. David filled the pans below the screen bottom with diatomaceous earth to help kill any mites that fall thru the screen. Hygienic behavior was also seen in this hive. 

We plan to treat all the hives with Oxalic Acid treatment in December when brood numbers are lower.

A huge thanks to Gerry Palmer for cleaning up the pad the hives sit on. It is not easy to maintain with us unable to use regular weed killers. It looks incredible!!

 

AUGUST 2021 Bee Yard Update–Lori Hawkins

Field day was held August 18 and led by Phil Uptmor and David Jones with a surprise and welcome visit by our Chief apiary inspector Don Hopkins.
 
Varroa testing revealed 2 of the hives with < 3 mites /300 bees but the horizontal hive tested showed 7/300 after just having completed an Apiguard treatment. The treatment did knock the mites down but not below threshold. We are limited by using soft chemical treatment at the Organic farm the bees are on, so when temperatures cool down, we will treat with Formic Pro. One hive that had a full super of honey in July was down to <frame of honey one month later. It has been a dry summer with little to nothing coming in and still many young bees to feed.  This hive and another hive that is a little light on honey stores will be fed 1:1 sugar water at about a gallon per week. Most likely we will switch to 2 sugar to 1 water in the next couple of weeks to boost the honey stores.
 
A big shout out to the group Phil Uptmor, David Jones, Mimi Gussow for taking care of the bees and Jerry Palmer for taking the time to weedeat and keep the pad looking good!
 
Our next field day is scheduled for September 18 (Saturday) starting at 8:30am . 

APRIL 2020 Bee Yard Update — Mimi Gussow

Lori, Dave, Phil, Mimi, Andy H., and Mike C. helped with this inspection. (5/2) 

We have 5 hives! All were inspected. There was no significant change in stored honey from 2 weeks ago. All had capped brood except the CNG hive.
 
Hive #3 (CNG hive) 
  • The CNG hive had a whole lot of queen cells.
  • This hive had been reported to have swarmed recently.
  • One queen emerged while watching!
  • Since there were so many queen cells, we gave away the one emerged queen and another queen cell. There will be plenty of time for one of the other queen cells to open and take charge.
We did sugar shake mite counts with average results of 5/300. It was discouraging to see there were such high mite counts despite the brood breaks from swarming. We had also treated with formic pro a month ago. It is important to recheck hives after treatment. Our plan is to not treat at this time as we will be requeening 3 hives with VSH queens. It could take 6-8 weeks for the queens to produce sufficient numbers of her own brood to hopefully take care of the varroa.
We are still planning to have a Field Day when restrictions are lifted. Hopefully, we will be able to have Nancy Rupert, our new State Inspector out for this event.

MARCH 2020 Bee Yard Update — Mimi Gussow

Lori, Dave, Philip and I worked with the 4C‘s hives this morning. (3/28) New members Victoria and Al were there to watch from a distance.

We have 6 hives! All were inspected. At 10:00 AM it was sunny and about 75 degrees.
 
Hive #2  This hive was split (into N1, what was 2A) on 3/19/20
  • There was a good pattern of brood but no larvae or eggs.
  • Pollen stores were high and uncapped honey was high.  
  • The Queen wasn’t seen but there were several queen cells.
  • 5 mites were found after an alcohol wash.
  • This hive was treated with Formic Pro and a shim was placed above the bottom box to make room for it.
 
Hive #3 (CNG hive)
  • There was a good pattern of brood and capped drone with larvae and eggs.        
  • Pollen stores were low and capped and uncapped honey was low.
  • No queen cells were found. 
  • There were ‘0’ mites found in a sugar shake.
  • We had to place the feeder on top as there was no inner cover available.  
Hive N1 (NUC 1 was #2A before) and was a split-off from hive #2
  • There was a poor pattern of brood with only little larvae and eggs.
  • Pollen stores were Low as was honey.
  • The Queen was not seen and there were NO Queen cells.
  • A frame of brood from CNG Hive #3 was added.
  • This hive was fed with 1:1 sugar water.
Horizontal Hive (#4)
  • This had a good brood pattern and also had capped drone cells.
  • There was only a small amount of larvae and no eggs.
  • Pollen and honey stores were high.
  • The queen was not seen and there were lots of queen cells.
  • There were 18:300 mites found with a sugar shake.
  • Treatment with Formic Pro was applied.
  • This hive has 23 frames with lots of Queen cells.  A split is considered a possibility.
  • A second entrance was opened up.
Hive #5 (captured swarm believed to be from the Horizontal hive that was captured Wed. 3/25/20 so it was not expected to see much development yet. )
  •  There was no capped brood, large or eggs seen.  
  • There was some uncapped honey.
  • A green marked queen was seen. It was considered too weak to test for mites at this time. 
  • 1:1 Sugar water was used here.
Three MH Queens were placed in hives 5/18/19.  It appears that at least in the CNG hive she was doing a good job. 

OCTOBER 2019 Bee Yard update — LORI HAWKINS

Monday, October 14

General: Thank you to Jody and Andy who came out to help with the inspection. Fall is a time to check again for varroa mites as we head into cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, we are starting to see surprised high counts in October even after August and September mite checks and treatments. Some people report what could be the varroa “bomb” as strong hives are robbing out hives weakened by high varroa infestation. But as with beekeeping, what may happen in one hive doesn’t happen in all hives to explain this mystery.

Nuc: Our struggling nuc was weak with lots of drone brood, drones, and some workers. The queen was found and beheaded as apparently she was not very well mated and has run out of sperm. We tested for varroa mites (0/160)  before shaking off the bees and dispersing the frames of honey and pollen to the CNG hive and the horizontal hive. The frames with drone brood and a little honey were put back in the nuc. The nuc was moved from its location to the end of the pad so that the bees shaken off would not return but will drift to other hives. This was easier to do than combine with the newspaper method.

Hive #2: This hive is in the middle of an Apiguard treatment but felt sufficiently heavy with honey stores.

Hive #3 (CNG): The CNG hive was found to have several frames of capped and uncapped brood and the queen was seen. No additional sugar syrup was added at this time.

Hive #4 (Horizontal): The horizontal hive is in good shape with 9 frames of honey split on both ends. The queen was seen and 2 frames of capped and uncapped brood were observed. We added an extra frame of drawn comb for the queen as she did not have anywhere else to lay eggs. No further feeding is required. It will be interesting to see how the bees manage this split of their honey stores during the winter. We will leave it to the bees’ wisdom rather than put all the frames at one end.

SEPTEMBER 2019 bee yard update — LORI hawkins

Sunday, September 8

General: Thank you to David, Phil, and Peggy who provided their expertise and all others who sweated some during our Fall inspection at 87 degrees. Honestly, we all had our attention on the hives and what secrets were revealed. True to the story, we are not in charge!

We found that 3 of the hives are light on honey stores as we start to enter the Fall. Not much nectar being produced in this dry weather. Thank you to Andy for bringing sugar water to supplement. We will transition to a 2 part sugar to 1 part water feeding.

We requeened 2 colonies back in May with highly touted and expensive $38 Minnesota hygienic queens. Both queens, unfortunately, have not produced the hygienic bees we were after. One required treatment back in August with Apiguard and fortunately had a good response to that with a 0/300 mite count after the post treatment test. We did throw her in with a mite-infested hive, to begin with; time will tell if her offspring will be able to control the mites. The other Minnesota queen in the Nuc  had good mite counts back in July but came out with 14/300 mite counts yesterday and will be treated with Apiguard due to the ongoing high temperatures we are experiencing.

Our Chatham County local queen has had 2 mite counts of 0/300. Yay!! This is a queen that we would like to graft off of and get some of those genetics out there. 

Is it possible to help our bees develop these hygienic traits? The wise ones say yes. If we left it up to nature, 95% of the bees would die off but the fittest would survive. I don’t think we are up to letting that kind of loss happen. Should we be looking for queens that have this trait and help propagate it? The more we requeen with hygienic traits, the stronger those traits will become in the population. We need to get off the chemical merry go round sooner than later. 

Can we help make Chatham County bees chemical-free?

Hive #4 (Horizontal): Our horizontal hive that had a high mite count back in July that also coincided with a brood break due to a swarm, had a mite count of 15/300 despite an oxalic acid vapor treatment during the brood break. We will retreat with Apiguard for this one also. Very disappointing but good information as we try to understand what may work for horizontal hive configuration. 

AUGUST 2019 bee yard update — LORI Hawkins

Saturday, August 17

General: Never a dull moment in the bee yard! As the hive turns…

Hive New CNG: The CNG new hive was inspected and interestingly enough, there was an uncapped Queen cell that was large enough to be capped within the next day or 2. However, after finding the green marked  Queen we decided to cut out that Queen cell. We opened it up and found a very small larva in plenty of Royal jelly but not the size you would expect for a cell that was about to be capped. The bees would not tell us what was going on. The brood was healthy and the Queen demonstrated a good laying pattern. There was some honey in the hive and we may start feeding it come September.

Hive #3 (CNG): Mike and I removed the Apiguard treatment from the double deep CNG hive.  The Queen was seen and has a somewhat spotty brood pattern but the new brood that was open appeared to be healthy. This is a hive with Hygenic off-spring so that may account for the spotty brood pattern as the bees pull out brood that has varroa mite. There were several frames of capped and uncapped brood. There were not a lot of bees in the upper deep but we feel that there are enough bees about to emerge that they will be able to patrol the area to keep the wax moths and hive beetles out.

JUNE 2019 bee yard update — LORI HAWKINS

Saturday, June 8

General:  Inspection of the 4 Cs bees was carried out in cool and damp weather. Quite pleasant for June. We had welcomed assistance from our State Inspector Don Hopkins. He shared with us that he and other inspectors are seeing a disturbing occurrence of American Foulbrood in multiple counties throughout the state. This is a deadly and highly contagious brood disease caused by a form of bacteria that reproduces through spores and is spread by bees and infected equipment, glove, and hive tools. The hive and particularly the brood will have a foul, putrid smell. To help detect it, a small matchstick sized piece of wood is pushed into the open brood and withdrawn. If the brood comes out in a gooey, ropey manner, it is quite possible that it is American Foulbrood. Our state inspectors want us to call them if we have any questions at all. They will come out and inspect. Don also said he is seeing other brood diseases bacterial and viral diseases. If you haven’t tested your hives for varroa mites, it is very important that you do this now. The queen is beginning to lay less brood as Summer approaches as the varroa are ramping up. As the varroa increases, so do bacterial and viral infections increase. There are multiple products you can use to knock them down this time of year.

Minnesota Hygenic Queen installation:
Approximately 3 weeks ago, we installed 3 Minnesota Hygienic queens imported from Minnesota. One very good way to reduce varroa is to have queens that produce girls that will interrupt the varroa life cycle by various means. Well, true to the drama that we have out in the bee yard, one queen mysteriously disappeared without a trace of laying even one egg. The girls had produced queen cells while the queen was being introduced and apparently swarmed leaving only a couple of frames of bees behind. We chose to put a frame with eggs and open brood from the other hygienic hive into the colony in hopes they will raise a queen with hygienic tendencies. 
 
Hive #2:  This hive — which has swarmed multiple times — is doing well, with good honey stores. We removed the top undrawn super as the main nectar flow for the Piedmont is over. 
 
Hive #3: This hive was found to have accepted their Minnesota queen, and she is producing a nice pattern of brood. We carefully watch during this honeymoon time as the colony can easily decide that they do not like the new genetics and will supersede (or replace the queen). 
 
Hive #4 (horizontal hive):  The horizontal hive is alive and thriving. The queen is in full laying mode with 12 frames with brood seen. We did an alcohol wash to test for varroa. We chose the alcohol method due to the high humidity and concern the powdered sugar would not be as effective. We found 8 mites after washing the bees twice. This would be above the threshold for a sugar shake.  We, with Don included, are not comfortable saying we can compare this number with the sugar shake as numbers have not truly been established with this technique. We saw no evidence of brood disease or deformed wing virus. Don advised rechecking in 1 month.

 

MAY 2019 bee yard update — LORI HAWKINS 

saturday, may 4

General: We have seen unusual behavior of late in the setting of what was once a 3 colony apiary to now a 5 colony apiary. At our last inspection about 10 days ago, we found hive 2 to be full of bees despite swarming 10 days earlier. (I think we are in some swarming vortex energy field) This same hive produced a full honey super.  Within, we found many capped queen cells and decided to split the hive into 2 colonies placed side by side with an equal number of bees and honey.

The suspense starts to rise as this colony appeared to be swarming again just prior to our inspection this past Saturday. Several thousand bees were seen to be congregating on the outside front of the hive. Phil gathered the bees and took them home. 

We wrapped our inspection up and thought we were finally ahead of the bees with plenty of room and queenwright except for #2. An hour after we left, the farm manager called to report hive #2 was swarming again. (3 rd time ). It is only an illusion that we are in control. 
Till the next time, may your supers be filling with honey!

Hive #1 (nuc): The nuc that was created last month was found to have a nice productive queen. We added a second nuc box to give her room to expand. 

Hive #2:  At our inspection, we found this hive to still have many bees almost to the point of being overcrowded in the deep but still having plenty of room to move into the super if needed. In speaking with Don Hopkins, our state inspector, he thought it possible that foragers from the colony we had split off returned to the parent hive. Indeed, we found that the split hive lost a sizeable amount of bees.

Hive #3 (CNG):  The CNG hive was found to have requeened itself, but the bees are backfilling the brood nest with honey. Hives can become honey bound where the queen has no place to lay her eggs. This is one thing we look for in our inspections. We hope we remedied this by removing 2 frames of honey mixed with packed cells of pollen and sent to over to the weaker hive. We replaced this with 2 empty frames.

Hive #4 (horizontal hive):  We checked the horizontal hive and the queen is quite prolific with producing 6 frames of capped brood. Interestingly, the bees are not making new comb-like we thought they would, but there was an interruption in brood production when this colony swarmed. We are still trying to understand the dynamics of bees building horizontally vs vertically. It has been much easier on the back not having to bend over and lift heavy boxes. We also notice that not as many bees are crushed from moving boxes around. 

APRIL 2019 bee yard update — LORI hawkins

WEDNESDAY, april 17

General: Never a dull moment in the bee yard!

Hive #1 (nuc): We had made this nuc several weeks ago with a capped queen cell and had successfully requeened with a beautiful golden queen. Because she had just started laying and had plenty of room, we held off on adding another box. This nuc will be for sale when we have established that the queen was properly mated.

The nuc that was created by Inspector Don Hopkins during the field day April 6 was not inspected as we calculated that a queen would be returning within the next few days. We will need to check this nuc at next inspection. If the queen does not make it back (birds, dragonflies, cars,  storms, etc.), we will recombine the colony with another colony. This is where writing events/dates down comes in very handy to help with managing the colonies and not letting them go too long without a queen where some of the workers will start laying unfertilized eggs. This could become a  doomed colony unless aggressive measures are taken. 

Hive #2: This hive had open queen cells and no eggs and had plenty of bees. We did not find a queen but suspected the colony might swarm soon. Low and behold, the next day I got a call from the farm manager that the hive had swarmed but a large number of bees were located on the outside of the hive and then moved to underneath the hive. Hmmm. Just like Larry reported with his bees, the queen had not been able to fly with the swarm but crawled under the hive and the rest of the swarm followed where they were collected by club members and given a new home. 

So within a couple days, the queen cells will be capped at day 8 after being laid. Within 8 days of being capped, the queen will emerge. We calculate giving her 4 days of walking around in the hive getting strong enough to fly and give her 6 days plus or minus 2 -3 days to start laying eggs. If we don’t see a queen or eggs/larvae then we will recombine the colony with another queen-right colony. The other options are to buy a new queen and install her or add a frame of eggs to hopefully get them to make a new queen and a frame of larvae that will emerge before she does to help her in her new duties. Personally, I like to add a frame of larvae when doing this to give the colony young bees before the queen emerges as the existing bees will be at about  3-4 weeks old by that time.

Hive #3 (CNG): Hive was boiling out with bees. Katie, who had been weeding the pad (thank you) noticed increased activity a few minutes prior.  We followed the somewhat disorganized (what we thought was disorganized) flight of thousands of bees to outside the fence of the farm. Katie watched them settle in a low hanging bush and within about 20 minutes most of the bees had consolidated where and  Katie, Mimi, and I easily retrieved them and put them in a 10 frame box with 2 frames of drawn comb and 8 frames of foundation and added a feeder. What a beautiful sight to see nature at it’s best recreating itself.

Hive #4 (horizontal hive): The horizontal hive inspection found a young, vigorous queen that was just starting to lay. Yay! We will be doing a mite count on this hive as we were not able to do it in early April.

MARCH 2019 bee yard update — Pat Weisbrodt

FRIday, February 15

General: Hives are building up quickly.  Yesterday I had to add a box to one hive and split the other. The one that was split had queen cells a week ago. I had removed them and given them an extra box, but once they decide to swarm, it is hard to change their minds. This week there

February 2019 bee yard update — Pat Weisbrodt

FRIday, February 15

General: Hives are building up quickly.  Yesterday I had to add a box to one hive and split the other. The one that was split had queen cells a week ago. I had removed them and given them an extra box, but once they decide to swarm, it is hard to change their minds. This week there were more queen cells with eggs, so we split it. My fear is that new virgins emerging in 13-ish days will mature and then not have good weather for mating. Drone brood was in abundance yesterday. But, drones take longer to produce and longer to mature. If drones are on a similar schedule in other hives, the queens won’t be able to mate well. We will see how the scenario plays out. Weather will be a big factor and March can be miserable as easily as lovely. 

Tuesday, February 5

General:  We saw larvae, capped brood (both drone and workers), capped honey, open nectar,  lots of pollen (in the cells and in the workers’ pollen baskets, drones -just a few, but no queens -they were elusive.

All 3 hives were gentle, sweet bees. All look great with lots of food.
Thanks to David, Andy, and Mimi for helping!
 

JANUARY 2019 bee yard update — Pat Weisbrodt

Friday, January 18

General:  We peeked inside the hives to check our bees and let the new bee school students get a glimpse. We are happy to report the bees looked like they were doing well. 

Background:  We did not take out many frames or stay in very long, so we don’t know if the queens have started laying. But, glad to see honey stores and a good number of bees.

Hive 2: Had eaten very little of the sugar board we had put on earlier. 

Hive 3: This nuc had eaten a lot of the sugar board.

Hive 4 (horizontal hive):  Had a small clump of sugar board left. 

 

December bee yard update — Pat Weisbrodt

Saturday, DECEMBER 29

General: I want to take this opportunity to thank the care team for all of their hard work and time caring for the 4 C’s bees in 2018!

Background: A beautiful day to check hives and we had a good turn out. With all the rain, we had a few new fire ant mounds active against the edges of the pad and we treated with organic vinegar.

Hive 2:  This hive was the lightest on honey, but still 7 frames either full or partial in the top super. We added a candy board for insurance. There were quite a few dead bees on the ground in front of the hive. There was a large amount flying and noted a good number in the top box.

Hive 3:  This hive also had dead bees in front of the hive. A good number of bees flying and in the top box. Weight was good. We put a candy board on for insurance.

Hive 4 (horizontal hive):  The horizontal hive had a good supply of food, but the number of bees is not huge. Maybe cover 7 or 8 frames. This hive did not have dead bees in front. We put a candy board on for insurance. David added some insulation on top of two of the 3 inner covers.

All 3 hives were very sweet.  We did not have a smoker lit.
All the hives could have been fed sugar syrup if they needed with the temps we have. But, this way if the weather is not good, we don’t have to worry. They all have more than enough along with the backup. That said, we will continue to check every few weeks. Never assume!

If anyone would like to help with the bees in the new year, please contact Lori Hawkins to get added to the team list.

 

November bee yard update — LORI HAWKINS

Sunday, November 4

General: Thanks to Mimi and Andy helping out with the inspection!

Background: Going into our inspection, we have an issue with what appears to be a viral disease that is affecting the brood. We will be going into the hives briefly to see what is going on. We will discuss treatment options, assess for sufficient honey stores, and configuration of the boxes going into winter.

  • A treatment of vaporized oxalic acid was done on the 2 hives that showed disease which is transmitted by varroa mites.
  • The 3-day sticky board test showed low numbers of mites. ( 21 mites on #2 a 2 deep colony and 23 on a 3 deep nuc. These viruses appear to be quite strong ie appearing despite the low mite counts. We treated to reduce stress on the colonies. 

We had a great turnout of beginner and experienced beekeepers this past Sunday at the 4Cs hives!

We discussed the different options for varroa control for this time of year and what problems we had experienced this year. Some beekeepers are using ApiLife var, others are using formic acid. These 2 soft chemicals (vs hard chemicals which have been showing varroa mite resistance and accumulation of toxic chemicals in the wax) are a little iffy this time of year because of fluctuating temperatures. We also talked about using oxalic acid in vapor or the liquid dribble method. Low temp application is ok down to 37 degrees with the vapor method. 

Several weeks ago,  we discovered evidence of viral brood disease linked to varroa mites. Mite counts have been below the threshold, but Don Hopkins has recommended treating for varroa in the presence of obvious viral infections.
 
Our inspection revealed 3 healthy appearing hives without brood disease or deformed wing virus. There was very little brood in any hive, but this is what most of us are seeing this time of year. Honey stores have improved, but robbing was evident when we opened the hives and had to work quickly. The bees are opportunists and are only trying to ensure their chance of surviving the winter. 
 
The bees were consolidating their nests as the 2 Langstroth hives were moving honey stores out of the bottom with very little else going on in the bottom.
 
The horizontal hive was consolidating most of their honey away from the entrance. I know we beekeepers think we should rearrange frames sometimes because we think we know better, but the bees have been doing this far longer than we have.
 
We really should have a good reason for messing with nature. 
 

OCTOber bee yard update — LORI HAWKINS

Saturday, october 23

General: Thanks to Mimi and Andy helping out with the inspection!

We found all three hives to be light on their honey reserves going into the cold weather, so we put feeders back on.

Disappointingly, after treating the hives for varroa mites in August with Apiguard in the Langstroth hives and Miteaway quick in the horizontal hive, we found evidence of brood disease in the Langstroth and nuc hives. One of the hives had uncapped pupa that appeared to be chewed down. There is now a new term out there- CDB chewed down brood, and about 15  bees that were emerging that died in the cell with some of them having there proboscis protruding. These are both signs of Varroa related virus.  None of the 3 hives had little to no open brood but a little capped brood left. We did not have any powdered sugar so could not check for varroa. Pat said she may be able to put sticky boards in so we can check that way.  

Treatment options are limited. Mite away quick strips can be used only if daytime temps are between 50 and 85 degrees.  Oxalic acid can be used in the dribble form or vaporized which may be our best option since there is very little capped brood. The vaporizer can be used with temps in the 30s if needed. 

I too found one of my colonies to be significantly above varroa threshold this past week. Sugar shakes in July and early Sept showed only 1 mite count per 300. Very disappointing! I have no explanation for the high numbers. I discovered it when doing a quick check last week and found the same diseased brood pattern described above. The colony had also lost almost half it’s population. I chose to use the oxalic vaporizer after talking to Don Hopkins about my options. This will hopefully be a one-time treatment this Winter as there was very little capped brood. I will check my varroa counts again in 1 week. Another beekeeper I talked to this week also did sugar shakes and found above threshold numbers of varroa mites and this was after a Fall treatment using Apivar Life. 
 
It would be wise to at least do a sticky board test on your hives since this problem is showing up when not expected. 
 

september bee yard update — pat weisbrodt

Saturday, September 25 & 28

Hive 1 (position 1):  We have a two-story yellow hive-CNG equipment hive set up.  We have the 5 empty frames of drawn comb from that hive between two sheets of screening to keep SHB and wax moth off of it.  So it is bottom board, box, screen, box, screen, inner cover, telescoping top, completely closed off entrance.
 
When I stack my boxes with drawn comb in storage, I do this with the screening and for several years, I had no damage.  This last winter, I did have one super that had damage, but it could not spread to the other boxes.  If you don’t have a freezer to store your comb, you may want to try this method. 
 

Hive 2:   Had plenty of capped and open honey/syrup, brood all stages, and bees.  Feeder taken off. 2 deeps and a super.

 
CNG hive:  Hive is honey bound.  Good amount of brood and bees.  Not much pollen. Feeder off. We converted the 1 deep CNG hive into a 3 deep nuc.  Our reasoning is that we didn’t have enough bees to protect 2 deeps.  We had frozen 10 frames from this hive when it was dwindling.  We were able to add back all drawn comb with bits of capped honey. We had 6 frames of brood that we placed in the middle of the two lower deeps with food frames on the outside.  We had two nice frames with pollen and nectar that we put above the brood with 3 mostly empty drawn comb.  We put a feeder on and fed today.  We will not continue feeding, with hopes that they can store pollen, more food, and have room for more brood.
 
Hive 4 (horizontal hive): Has everything it needs except pollen.  Left feeder on, but not feeding. It has 6 frames with brood totaling about 1/4 of a frame and surrounded by nectar/honey, lots of drawn comb to expand.
 
We checked capped drones in 2 and CNG and found no mites.
 
We are trying to get rid of fire ants and disturbed nests and poured organic vinegar on the nests. 
The hills of fire ants that we disturbed are now gone, but an old one has gotten big.  Will continue to disturb until we get rid of them on that pad.
 
Thanks to David, Mike, Mimi, Lori, Jim, Phil, and Diane for their help these last two work days!
 

September bee yard update — Lori Hawkins

sATURDAY, september 8

[Lori is leading this field day. We will be taking off a two-week treatment of Apiguard and decided not to put another on at this point. The hives have 0 mite counts, but we have virus. We treated on Don Hopkins’ recommendation. Lori is bringing sugar syrup in case feeding is needed. We thought it was two weeks ago.  ~Pat Weisbrodt]

Field day was held at CCCC with 7 attending another warmer than cooler day. 
Thank you to Phillip and Mike for fielding questions for some of the newer beekeepers.
 
Inspection results/actions: Apiguard trays were removed from hive 2 and 3 after the first 14-day treatment. The decision was made not to do the second 14-day treatment as the bees had <3/300 mites with the sugar shake. Even though the counts were low, Don Hopkins recommended we treat anyway as deformed wing virus was seen in hive 2. Varroa transmit this virus. 
 
Hive 2:  Fairly full of bees with good laying pattern in a 2 deep hive colony, minimal honey stores were found.
 
Hive 3:  Population had significantly decreased (viral infection?) so one deep hive body was removed as there was too much room for the bees to monitor all that space making it susceptible to wax moth infestation. Pollen stores were good, but honey was not. 
 
Hive 4 (horizontal hive): Had ~9 frames of bees and the queen was seen with a good laying pattern but again minimal honey stores.
 
We fed the bees a 2-part sugar to 1-part water solution and will continue to do so as long as they will take it.
 
Thoughts:  We may need to combine hive 3 with either of the other hives if no evidence of viruses is seen just because, at this point, the hive is weak and may not have sufficient number going into Winter.  We also may consider putting this hive in a 2-deep nuc box. My experience has been that 10 frames of bees overwinters better in a 2-deep nuc box than 10 frame deep just because the honey is closer (above rather than at the sides of the cluster).
 
Storm prep: Today I put 2 cinder blocks and a paver on top of the langstroth hives and fed again. I tied a rope over the top of the horizontal hive and securred that to 4 cinder blocks underneath the hive. 
 
Walter sent out a great storm preparation letter from Dr. Tarpy a few days ago with helpful hints. 
Best wishes and may God be with you and the people and critters down on the coast.
 

JULY BEE YARD UPDATE — Pat Weisbrodt

Saturday, July 22

HORIZONTAL HIVE: Miteaway Quick Strips were placed on the hive.

Sunday, July 29

HORIZONTAL HIVE:  I removed the treatment and killed the queen.  Only, it wasn’t the same queen I had seen when we did the sugar shake.  That first inspection, we saw the old queen. Sunday, I saw a new queen. The mother and daughter had coexisted a short time. No old queen was found today, but they had started making queen cells. Today, we replaced the queen with the daughter of a VSH queen from 7 Stands Bee Farm that emerged in June.  The queen had mated while living in my bee yard.  Yesterday the sugar shake was 0. The queen is in a large cage with several attendants. I also shook several frames of bees from my hive so that the mite count will stay in check.  There is plenty of nectar, honey, pollen, and bees in this hive.

We will check her on Monday and see if we can release her. Always remember that it takes longer to introduce a hygienic bee to our regular Italian bees due to the alleles being different.

Hive 2:  Has plenty of open nectar and capped honey in the top shallow super. Brood, empty comb and some pollen and honey were in middle box. Deep had frames of brood and some honey, a little pollen, a couple of foundation frames, and some empty drawn comb.

Hive 3:  Has a few deep frames of honey and small amounts on other frames, some pollen, and not very much brood. We will see what is happening next time we go in. Did queen take a break?

Both #2 and #3 have some open cells with white, dead larvae/pupae. We pulled some out and found no mites. We are not sure why they had not been dragged out of the hive. Was it a hygienic act or something else?

JUNE BEE YARD UPDATE

Saturday, June 16

Hive 2: Has lot of bees and 2-3 frames uncapped brood and 3-4 frames capped broad ( reference the inspection sheet for better count) good amount of pollen not as much honey and nectar.  Saw the queen but did not notice any eggs.  Did not do a sugar shake. Honey supper had 4-5 frames capped honey.

Hive 3: Has 4-5 frames of capped brood and 2-3 frames eggs uncapped broad.
Did not see queen.  Did a sugar shake had mite count of 4. The number of bees may have been a little short as my jar did not have a line. 
We reversed the hive bodies as the top hive had a lot of honey.  May want to share honey with 2 and 4.
 
Hive 4: Did not do a sugar shake.  One frame mostly capped brood some uncapped in top hive body.  Slow in drawing out comb.  Bottom hive body had 2-3 frames of uncapped with a lot of eggs seen the frames.  Seems stable but not as many bees as 2and 3.  Did not see the queen. 1-2 frames capped brood in bottom hive. 
 
Thanks to Andy for recording info on the inspection sheet.  It was very hot and tried to make inspection as quick as possible. Started inspection about 9:15 and finished 10:30.
 
The horizontal hive is very nice will be interesting to see it occupied and how it works.
 

Saturday, june 9

Hive 2: Inspected to see if they had made a new queen.  About 3 weeks ago, during a hive inspection (see report below), we found the queen but very few eggs and one almost capped queen cell in the upper part of the frame. Well, of course, we said the girls are superseding her. Her egg production is down, and she has to go. We closed up the hive to let nature takes it’s course. Fast forward about 3 weeks. Not only did we find the queen, but I’m 99% sure it was the original queen as she was long, dark, and slender. Same profile.  And not only that, there were 4 frames of capped, uncapped brood, and eggs. Only the bees could explain it, and right now they’re not talking. You got to love beekeeping-nothing is constant.

MAY BEE YARD UPDATE

tuesday, may 22

(Lori Hawkin and Andy Hunckins inspected)

Hive 2: This hive is doing great. It does have 2 deep frames it has not drawn out, but has bypassed those to fill a shallow super with honey. A second honey super was added. In my neck of the woods, east Chatham, the bees have slowed down considerably with the end of the tulip poplar flow. The 4 Cs bees though are located on a beautiful organic vegetable farm, so they may continue to draw off of this. 
 
Hive 3: Has drawn out all there deep frames and a beautiful, productive queen was seen with a good laying pattern. These bees have not touched the honey super, but this was left on as they they are in need of room to put any spare honey.
 
Hive 4: Our problem child that was treated last month for varroa mites has only 11/20 frames drawn out, so the honey super that was put on was removed as we don’t want the bees to have too much room to defend against wax moths and small hive beetles. Speaking of which, not many people seem to be reporting a problem with the little devils so far. It’s possible the prolonged subfreezing weather we had knocked them down. So as we were going through the hive, we noticed numerous queen cups on  several frames of capped and uncapped brood. We saw the queen, but lo and behold, there was an almost capped queen cell. Only one queen cell was seen in the middle of the frame which tells us the girls are superceding a failing queen. We consolidated the drawn frames to mostly the bottom deep and let nature proceed with the requeening. At this point, we did the bee math and calculated ~ 2 days for the queencell to be capped, added to 8 days before the queen emerges, and ~8 to 14 days before we would hope to see a new queen. This recording of the numbers is important, so that if in 24 days we do not see a queen, we will buy a new one and the store bought queen can continue colony reproduction. If we wait much longer than that, we risk the hive converting to laying workers and it will be difficult to introduce a queen at that time. They will literally reject her. So keep good notes during your inspections for an accurate recall of events. 

 

Saturday,May 12

This picture was taken Saturday at the field day. The bees had their own idea how to build comb. It was attached just at the base of the frame-perfect on both sides and 3/8 inch from plastic foundation. Usually the rounded edge at bottom of comb, but they built this from the bottom up. What wacky girls!

Our three hives are in positions 2, 3, and 4.

 

  1. The # 3 hive with a VSH queen had a sugar shake count of 0.
  2. The #4 hive, that had the thermal treatment a while back, had 1 real mite and a partial fragment of a mite dead a long time. That queen is not VSH, very thin, laying pattern not great.  In other words, her time is up.  We are working on getting another queen.
  3. We have a simplified check sheet that works really well. We will send it out to our bee school students and members.

Thanks to Andy, Andy-yes two, Mike, Robert, John, and Laura for all the help making this happen. It was hot by 9 am! We may start at 8:30 am in June.

 

MARCH BEE YARD UPDATE

Thursday, March 15

  1. Reporting on Hive position #1 (only hive in 4CCCC bee yard)
  • This hive consists of two deeps
  • 10 frames exhibit eggs to capped brood. These frames also have pollen and honey in the corners.
  • 5 frames exhibit foundation to some drawn out comb, but empty. 
  • 5 frames are open nectar and capped honey and one whole side of all shades of pollen. 
  • Drones walking around and quite a few capped.  We removed quite a few drone brood and found a few mites.  We did not see the queen, but we knew she was there. 
  • Good brood pattern and lots of pollen coming in.  Bees very busy and sweet disposition continues. 
  • A few queen cups noted, but empty.

The queen has many good qualities displayed in the hive:

  1. Survived winter and lots of bees
  2. Good honey producer
  3. Sweet disposition

The only con is they are not hygienic.  There is a new thermal treatment that allows you to treat bees and not use chemicals.  If we use this on the hive 3 times a year, we may be able to control the mites (it also kills small hive beetle larvae).   Her scenario is not clear right now.

  1. The hive was split into 3 nucs in preparation for VSH queens expected in a few days:
  • The original queen and five frames of brood, pollen, and honey were moved to position #4 
  • The best frames (eggs to capped brood) were split between the two remaining nucs and placed on positions #2 and #3.
  • #2 was given 2 frames of honey.   
  • #3 was given less honey than #2 because we placed a second story on top of it filled with 4.9 cell capped honey left over from the CNG hive that collapsed. 
  • #3 will be a CNG hive and will be only hive we use small cell in this year (we have about 10 more frames of frozen capped honey we can use on the hive).
  • All 3 have IPM boards with cooking spray on them.  We will get a mite count when we put the queen cages in. All 3 hives have reducers on them with very small openings while they are more vulnerable.

Thanks Laura, Mimi, and Thorne for helping today. And a big thanks to Gerry Palmer for weed whacking the bee yard last month.

Thursday, March 22

  • New VSH queens were installed in nucs #2 and #3.
  • Pat and Mimi tore down a few queen cups and queen cells in each nuc. It was cooler and gusty wind at times, so activity was limited to checking numbers and food while looking for queen cells.
  • There were not very many mites on the sticky boards, so no action was taken.  A sugar shake will be done when Don inspects bees in April. 
  • Food stores were adequate.  Will check that next Wednesday when it is finally warm for a good inspection.
  • The queens will be checked when we can. 

Thanks to Mimi Gussow for helping me install the VSH queens in nucs # 2 and 3!