Ahhhh

Bees are back. After a 2-year hiatus, it feels wonderful to be working bees again. I have a calmness that I didn't have before. In fact, everything is easier...a Subaru that provides much easier access. A new hive location and set up that includes landscaping fabric, gravel, hive stands, places to set things. A beautiful Spring. A rare early and boutiful bloom of Russian Olive trees (I think) that the bees love. A serene location.

And a new package that is doing well.

Ahhhhhh.

2B or Not 2B

Well, things are not going well on the bee front. Lost both my hives this winter.

So I bought two new packages this year, set to arrive March 30th. On March 29th, my Dad broke his hip. I contacted Waldo Ohio Apiaries, and they said no problem, they would send me my packages in two weeks with their next shipment.

So I get the new packages and the bees are half dead. Even the postwoman commented, "I've never seen a package that looked that bad." I called Waldo Apiaries and they said I shouldn't have accepted them from the post office, it's my problem now. Thanks a lot. They promised that they had not sent me two week old packages, but I wonder.

So I installed the packages, and find that one of the queen cages had a live queen and all dead workers. The other queen cage looked okay.

Today, it's 3 weeks later, and both hives have laying workers, no queens. Bunch of drone cells. Argh. In a Hail Mary effort, I drove 30 minutes away, bought two queens and put the queen cages in my hives. Now I guess I just wait and hope they don't kill them. I SUCK AS A BEEKEEPER. dangit.

What a Cluster

Well, it's the dead o' winter round these parts, and I want to leave the bees alone. But on a 45 degree day, I noticed that one hive was acting strange. I peeked inside, and they weren't clustered and they were buzzing very loudly. In my limited experience, loudly buzzing bees are unhappy bees, for any number of reasons.

Today was colder, so I couldn't do much. I peeked in and they were more clustered, but not really like I expected. At least they aren't buzzing loudly. This hive is in two mediums and if this is the cluster, it's huge. I thought this hive was smaller. If this is indeed the cluster, they'll run out of food before Winter is through with them.

I really don't want to lose this hive. It's the more natural of the two hives. It's also serene. This hive has never stung me, even when I tore into the hive, pulled apart the comb, dropped it, picked it up off the ground and replastered it in the frames with rubber bands.

I love these little buggers. What's up with that?

Here's a close up.

Christmas Spirit

Having fun with Christmas decorations and the camera today. These were temporary decorations, if I'm really good, I'll do better and get some "outside" decorations.
















Pretty as they are, I hate to admit that I've left my smokers out in the weather. Might be time to put them away, huh?

Varroa Mite Saga: A Quick Sugar Shake (Part 3)

So my traditional hive has mites, and I'm freaking out that it might be a pretty bad infestation just before going into the winter. This makes no sense. It's so unfair. I did everything I was supposed to do.


So I rationalize. Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it's just that one frame. Then I start thinking about how long I'll have to wait to find out. Spring. Just when I would want my bees to be bringing home the bacon, er, honey, that's when the mite load will explode and they will murder my poor, defenseless bees.


Ok, maybe that's a bit extreme (ya think?). But the real problem is that I'll worry all winter. It's just not worth it.

The problem is, it's too cold to do much. Hmm, better to do something that may help...or at the least allow the delusion that it helped. So I wait for a 65 degree day, put the screened bottom board (SBB) back on, and do a sugar shake again.

In this picture, I have just finished putting confectioners sugar (aka powdered sugar) between each frame. I put the sugar in a jar, then I shake about a half cup at a time into a small sieve. This allows for pretty good control, and I can do it with my veil and gloves on.



Here is one of the frames right after the dusting. The poor bees hate this, but mites fall off immediately, so maybe some of them like it. Yaaaahhhh, that's the ticket. They know it helps and they like it! Or at any rate, it's natural, the sugar provides food, and I don't think it hurts.

I needed the SBB because I don't want the excess sugar and mites sitting on the bottom board, where the former will attract pests and the latter will find their way back onto the bees.


I was grossed out to see how many mites there were. This white picture is actually a piece of construction paper that I put under the screen. And this picture was taken right after the sugar shake. I noticed that I didn't get nearly as many 24 hours later, so it seems like most of the benefit of the sugar shake happens immediately.







Last but not least, here is what happened after I was done. A few bees were outside the hive when I did the sugar shake. They didn't seem to want to go back in and were festooning outside. Too much work to help clean off the the white bees I guess. Well, I showed them. I threw sugar on them.

Hey, it's for their own good, right?

Varroa Mite Saga and Deformed Wing Virus (Part 2)

According to my records, I did a varroa mite check on September 20th and found one mite. I actually did a lot more checks and found more mites over a 72 hour period, but still very few.

On October 10th, I removed the screened bottom boards (SBBs), replaced with solid boards, and converted my hives to top entrances, for reasons I won't go into here. I was ready for winter, or so I thought.

On November 9th, I had a mess. I had decided to do one more check of my hives to try to add dry sugar and fix the bottom boards. But that went out the window.

As I approached the traditional hive (the one with foundation), I heard a dull roar. The bees were loud, all over the place, and something was obviously wrong. I watched them for a few minutes to make sure they weren't being robbed. I ran down to my other hive to make sure they weren't robbing it. No and no.

So I went in. I was horrified to find bees with deformed wing virus (DWV). Just a few, which isn't horrible according to people with far more expertise than I, but disturbing nonetheless.

And that wasn't the least of it. I took a few pictures. Only a few because of course the camera battery died.

Later, when I looked at my five pictures, I saw 3 mites in one picture. Over the last 6 months, I have looked and looked for mites in my thousands of pictures, and have never seen a single one...until now.

Here's the picture. The longer arrow points to a bee with deformed wing virus. The three shorter arrows point to mites.

As I researched VFW, I mean DWV, I found out that the virus is carried by varroa mites, so what I really have is a mite problem. DWV might actually be a good thing as it alerted me to a problem. (And hopefully I wont need the VFW.)

I probably over-reacted. That is the subject of the Part 3 (next post).

Varroa Mite Saga (Part 1)

Back in September, I did "the right thing." I was so proud of myself, little miss dudley doo-right had built new screened bottom boards (SBB) and had both hives sitting on them.

My SBBs are so easy to use when I want to check for mites. I just spray Pam on some construction paper, slide it under the board, then come back 24-72 hours later and examine it.

On my first try, I could barely wait. I think I waited 23 hours before I grabbed that construction paper and found no mites!

Hmmm, what's that spot? One mite. Can you see it?

Here's a close up, thanks to my trusty camera with the great macro lens. Used to be my boyfriend's camera but now it has propolis all over it and, well, he faced facts before I did. The fact that I'm probably buying him his next camera.

Is this thing ugly or what? But only one is great news. Until the beeks told me to do a 72 hour test. Crap. Luckily, my hives passed that test, too. Maybe less than ten mites on the whole sheet.

Still, I decided to do a sugar dusting just to further reduce the mites. I only did one dusting per hive, as it was just a prophylactic treatment.

This was September. In October, I took off the SBBs for winter, put the hives on solid boards, and to top entrances. Note that one hive is mostly foundationless and the other is mostly on foundation. The foundationless is theoretically more resistant to mites.

So everything was good in the garden. And I thought I was done for the Fall.

The hives are both young and small, and I keep checking their honey stores. So I did what I hoped was one last check in November. Can you say "population explosion?"