2019-04-20: Hiving two packages of bees.

I had a couple of years with no bees.  First, I did not find out that they had died over the winter a couple of years ago until it was too late to order new bees.  Then, it sort of slipped my mind last spring.

So, this year, I ordered two packages from my usual supplier, Nature's Nectar.  I had one package each of Carniolan Honeybees and Italian Honeybees.  I did not really care which bees I got, but I usually do not get two of the same subspecies.

This was the first year that my packages were plastic.  I like the old wood and metal screen ones better, since I can see the bees easier.  I also would learn that it was easier to spray the bees with sugar water through the metal screen compared to the plastic packaging.

It was about a two-hour drive home, but the weather was mild; the bees probably did not get too hot.

I picked up the bees at 0915, but they suggest that you do not hive them until the evening.  So, they sat in the cool garage for most of the day.  I sprayed them with sugar water once to feed, calm, and cool them.

Finally, 1800 arrived, and we were ready to hive the bees.

I have the two packages of bees, and I'm wearing my bee suit.  If you watch other people's videos, they often don't wear a bee suit.  The reason is that the bees do not have a hive to protect, so they tend to be more docile.

Here I am with my helper, Vaughn.  I'm having some difficulty uploading the videos, so I'll outline the steps that we did:

1. The syrup-soaked bees will be "poured" into the center of the bottom (and--at this time--only) hive body, so we removed the center four or so frames.
2. Plug the entrance with the entrance reducer on the smallest setting and block that temporarily with a wad of prairie grass.
3. Soak the bees well with syrup from the spray bottle.
4. Use the hive tools to pry the metal can from the package.  (This is the syrup the bees ate during their trip from CA to MN and then from Stillwater to me.)
5. Once the can is out, spray the bees some more.
6. Remove the queen's cage (she is transported separately) and set it aside.
7. Knock the bees to the bottom of their package by striking the package against the ground.
8. Pour the syrup-soaked bees into the hive.
9. Leave the mostly-empty package near the entrance so the bees can eventually get into there (the bees will probably push the grass out of the hole over the evening).
10. Take the wood cork out of the queen's cage, and replace it with a mini-marshmallow.
11. Put a pollen patty on the top of the frames for the bees to eat until they can bring in a good supply of pollen from plants.
12. Put on the inner cover (the board with an oblong hole in it).
13. Put the feeder pail over that hole so that the bees can feed from that until they are able to bring in nectar from flowers.
14. Put an empty hive body over the pail.
15. Put the outer cover over the empty hive body.

The next step, which we will probably do tomorrow, is to check the queen's cage.  Ideally, the marshmallow will have been eaten by the bees so that the queen can exit the cage and start laying eggs.

Productive queens, good-looking hives, and a couple of (nice) surprises.

Third inspection of Hive A and Hive B, Wednesday, 5/29/13:

This was day 25 for the hives, with the packages having been installed Saturday the 4th.  I was able to do a full inspection today, as the weather was in the mid-70's.  There were thunderstorm warnings for the day and some heavy rain in the early afternoon.  I was a bit worried that we'd not be able to do the inspection, but it cleared nicely and was even slightly sunny (but rarely).

In addition to the usual goals for the inspections, I also was planning to begin using a screened bottom board.  This would allow for counting a parasitic mite that impacts bees and also allow for population control of those mites.  I might discuss this more in other posts.

The day prior to inspection, the 28th, Konrad and I were walking the field and saw "our" honeybees working the Dandelions.  There is a previous post about that, with a couple of pictures.

This evening's inspection has, as the previous ones have, a video on YouTube.  It is split into two parts (part 1 and part 2).  There is still some wind noise as I didn't start using my digital recorder and microphone yet.  But, it is much better than the videos that go along with the second inspection.

I might not be able to get to the hives for 10 or more days, so I decided that I would add the second box to each hive today.  We prepared our trusty and rusty wheelbarrow.

Smoker in foreground, two white feeder pails w/ new syrup, and the wheelbarrow filled with various supplies and the two hive bodies that will be added to each hive.

Close-up of the tools and of the hive bodies that will be added.

The beekeepers at the apiary.

I'm putting on my gloves.

Getting ready to light the smoker and dismantle Hive A.

Before I close this post, I'll let you know of the two surprises...

First, in Hive B, we saw the queen.  We have some good video of her.  She has a much longer and slightly more rotund abdomen compared to when we last saw her during the installation of the packages.  She is full of eggs and laying hundreds to perhaps thousands per day.  She was moving along slowly and surely.  She was inspecting cells and possibly even laying.  I should have checked near her for eggs, but I just wanted to get her and her frame back into the hive so that she would keep on doing what she was doing--laying many eggs.

Second, also in Hive B, we saw and videotaped a new bee emerging from her cell.  From my angle, I could see her antennae and mandibles and head poking out of the cell off which she had mostly chewed away the cap that had sealed her in when she was a large larva and ready to pupate.  The video doesn't show this as well, but you still can clearly see her head moving around in the chewed-open cell as she tries to emerge.  It was funny to see other bees just walk over the top of her, seemingly oblivious to her struggle.

Almost forgot a "bonus" surprise.  There was a tree frog hiding under the log weight on top of Hive B.

Advice of "Re-queen every two years" doesn't seem right...

At the University of Minnesota Short Course for Beekeeping in Northern Climate, I learned two general concepts that seemed to be at-odds.

The first was that a healthy hive is one that has a young queen.  This is so important that we are to re-queen each hive every other year.  To do this, we buy a new queen from CA or elsewhere for each hive every other year and install it.  The old queen is either already dead by this time or becomes obsolete.

The second is the general idea that our repeated interference in evolution and normal life cycle of the bee has yielded problems with which we are now dealing.  Examples include mobile pollination, monocrop fields, medications, mites, other bee pathogens, and hive construction.

These two ideas present--to me--the following problem.  If I am always re-queening my hives, I am not allowing the hives (with their queens) to grow, shrink, thrive, suffer, and otherwise go through the vagaries of life.  How will evolutionary pressures ever develop bee strains that can best manage the stresses of my specific area of MN?  If a new queen comes from CA ever two years and is plopped into my hive, there is no hope of any selection pressure having any effect, no matter how small the scale, in my apiary.  More simply, I won't be able to have any local "survivor stock."

As I try to learn more about this topic, I have decided that I will allow the bees in the meantime to develop as naturally as they can given the constraints of the hive.  Specifically, I will allow the hives to keep their queen as long as they see fit.  I plan that natural selection, supercedure, queen mating, swarming, and the like will happen without my interference.

One problem I see now is that I only have two hives.  Might there be too little genetic variation for the newly created queens and the drones with which they will mate?  As I consider this, though, I realize that I have neighbors with hives, and there are likely to be feral colonies within 2 - 5 miles.  So, I think that genetic variability will be sufficient.  In fact, with the feral colonies surviving completely withough human "help," they might be a very good source of genetic material.

First box about 60% full on each hive.

Second inspection of Hive A and Hive B, Saturday, 5/18/13:
This was day 14 for the hives, with the packages having been installed Saturday the 4th.  I was able to get my videographer out into the apiary with me, but it required a shocking amount of cajoling and pleading.  I have yet to edit and upload the video to YouTube.  In brief, I think that the hives are doing well and that the inspection went well.

It was much warmer for this inspection than the first (77 degrees versus 55 degrees for the first inspection).  I decided that I would be able to do a full inspection with no worries that I'd keep the hive open too long and chill brood.

I now seemed to have the hang of the smoker.  You might recall that I'm using wood shavings (bedding for small animals) found at Pet Expo.  There are no scents or chemicals added.  It is just simple cypress shavings, I believe.  I fill the smoker to the brim with this and seem to get at least 30 minutes of good smoke output.  It lasts the duration of the inspections, at least.

We smoked the entrance to Hive A.  I removed the log that weighs down the outer cover, and then removed that outer cover.  The pails were still quite full.  I hadn't yet put the labelled ones on the hives, and I lost track of which feeder pail was on which hive.  But, neither seemed to have taken any significant amount of 1:1 sugar syrup from the pail.  Each had at least 0.8 - 0.9 gallons left (out of a starting 1 gallon).  I put the pail to the side.  Again, with it having been one week, I wanted to replace the syrup with fresh.

I opened the inner cover.  It was not yet stuck down with propolis, but perhaps it was a bit harder to get up than it was a week ago.  We put a puff or two of smoke under the inner cover.  With the inner cover removed, the hive seemed pretty busy.  I don't recall how many frames had bees, but I did call out this information on the video so that I could record it on my inspection checklists.

Basically, the outer ~2 frames on each side were mostly untouched by the bees.  I had brought a second hive body for each hive, but ended up not needing them.  With luck and good weather and active bees, I will need them next week.

I proceeded to inspect each side of each frame.  Again, more details can be seen and heard on the video.  At some point, I may make my hive inspection checklists available on here if/when I can figure out how to upload PDF files.  Each hive seemed to have several sides of frames full of brood.  I think that I was able to tell the difference between capped honey (of which there was only a little) and brood.  The brood pattern of each hive was solid.  Any uncapped cells in the midst of the brood pattern had what appeared to be new larvae in them.  So, perhaps the bee that started out in that cell didn't make it and the queen came back along and placed new eggs in the gaps?

I still did not see eggs.  I assume that they were there somewhere.  In the places that I saw young larvae, I looked for eggs toward the outer edge of the frames.  But, I think that I am still worried about time and keeping my inspections brief.  So, I may have given up on finding eggs too soon.  In any event, the queens are seeming to be laying strong.

They hadn't eaten a lot more of the pollen patties.  I have been seeing the bees bringing in pollen over the week before, so I decided to toss the pollen patties off the hive and into the grass.  They are clearly getting pollen from other sources.  They had pollen stored on many of the frames.  I decided against adding new pollen patties.

Incidentally, when I was doing the inspections, I saw bees crawling across the frames with bright yellow pollen in their pollen baskets.  The pollen patties are a dull brown, so those bees must have been getting pollen elsewhere.  Likely dandelions as they are blooming all over lately.

I didn't see the queen of either hive.  But, I think my ability to do so will increase with time.

In the end, I closed up the hives and the bees were happy again.  Although, I would note that they seemed to be fine with the inspection, not overly upset.  No stings.  I'll end this post for now, and will update the blog when I have the next video uploaded to YouTube.

Evidence that both queens are alive and well!

First inspection of Hive A and Hive B, Sunday, 5/12/13:
This was day 7 for the hives, with the packages having been installed Saturday the 4th.  If you've read some previous posts, you might know that I was a bit worried about what we'd find (or fail to find) under the covers of the hives.  I mixed up new syrup, bagged a new pollen patty, got the smoker full of fuel, and headed out to the hive.  My videographer was in tow, grumbling only slightly and--thankfully--with minimal profanity.

It was 55 degrees and a bit windy.  But, the hives have windbreaks to their north and west.  So, by the hives, it was still and pleasant.  It was a cloudless day, and we started the hive inspections at about 1500.

The smoker was going nicely.  I filled it to the brim with animal bedding from Pet Expo.  It put out ample smoke for a good 1/2 hour at least.  One of my onlookers brought out extra bedding, but we ended up not needing it.

The video of the hive inspections can be found on YouTube by following this link.

We puffed smoke into the entrance, and the bees at the entrance retreated into the hive almost immediately.  Some flew off.  Opening the top, I could see that the queen cage that I left up top was empty of any bees.  I took it and threw it to my onlookers and well-wishers.  I was surprised at how full the feeder pail was yet on the hive.  I wondered whether they took any syrup at all.  When I opened and emptied the feeder pails back at the house, it looked as if each hive had taken only 1/4 gallon or less.  After getting the pails back home, I realized that I should have marked the pails so that I knew which hive had which pail.  This would let me know which hive ate more or less.

In any event, I took off the old pail.  I opened the inner cover.  It was not "glued" down at all on either hive.  The pollen patty was clearly smaller and even eaten into two pieces.  Where the patty had stretched across the gap between frames 5 and 6, it was eaten completely through.  I removed them and inspected them.  They looked good still, so I decided to use them again after I did the inspection (rather than put on the new ones that I had brought out).

Under the inner cover, I could see many bees.  Perhaps 2 - 3 frames were pretty full of bees.  This was somewhat of a relief; they hadn't absconded, at least.  I started looking at frames.  I didn't see eggs or any other signs of the queen in Hive A...  Until I actually saw the queen!  There was no mistaking her; she was much darker than the other bees with her abdomen visibly longer and extending well past her wings.

Once I saw her, I put the hive back together.  There was some comb that they were building out past the edge of one of the frames, but I didn't want to push my luck by bothering with it during this trip.  I closed Hive A with the pollen patty replaced, new syrup, and the queen healthy-appearing.  I was much happier about the state of things for that hive.

Hive B's inspection was similar.  The queen cage was empty; I passed it off to a spectator.  Bucket was still pretty full, but I intended on replacing the syrup either way.  I didn't want it to ferment.  Pollen patty chewed up quite a bit.  I began inspecting the frames.  On the second frame I removed (if memory serves me), I saw young larvae.  They were white, glistening, and wet-appearing.  It was a small "C"-shaped maggot, basically, that was curled up at the bottom of the hexagonal cell.  That was good enough for me.  I closed it up and ended the inspections.

This was my first "real" inspection of the hives, removing frames, replacing feed, etc.  It seemed to have gone very well, and I was pretty excited about things afterward.

Now, I will probably give them another week.  When I saw how little syrup they used, I decided to fill each bucket only half full next time (1/2 gallon per 1 gallon pail).  I've also labelled the pails.  I'll have to refresh my mind with the egg/larva/pupa timetable, but I think that I might be able to find capped brood next weekend.

Along with new syrup in the half-filled feeder pails, I'll likely have to bring out new pollen patties.  I plan on cutting one pollen patty in half and putting 1/2 on each hive.  They had only eaten about 1/4 - 1/3 of the full patty in one week, so a 1/2 patty should last them a week.  Also, as flowers appear, they can start to get their own pollen from natural sources.