Hive Check: Week 11

Well, we're gonna leap-frog week 10 for now and go straight to week 11 because even though I am on vacation, I drove into town and am stealing wi-fi from the local visitor information centre.

That is how much I like bees.

I'll mention again that I really like it when photographers come up to the roof to play. It gives me a good opportunity to show off, it frees up my hands to actually work the bees, and nets everyone some nice pictures. This week, I was joined by Macolm Hearn, a photo/videographer based in Brooklyn who is snagging some bee footage for a music video project he's working on. He kindly provided all the pictures featured in this week's update.

You can check out his other work here: http://malcolmhearn.org/

Late day inspection, the hives were in the shade.

SOMEONE (*cough, cough* Emily, *cough*) forgot to return my frame perch, so I was stuck leaning frames against the hive.  Great population!

As the summer comes to a close and we start to hit the first serious nectar dearths, the chances of the bees deciding to swarm is reduced to practically nil. Once you're past swarming season, you only have to check the hive every couple of weeks to assess stores and do basic population checks for diseases and parasites, especially if you're dealing with established (not first-year) colonies.

Esmeralda continues to impress with some solid brood.

For E.M.: The miracle of birth, minus the episiotomy.

Late Summer and Autumn hive checks should be kept succinct and to the point. With little or no new nectar coming in, the bees can be a little more sensitive to outside interference, and are more likely to respond defensively than earlier in the season, when food is cheap and plentiful. On top of that, the bees are more likely to start robbing from other colonies if you leave open comb out in the open too long, and you might even attract some unwanted guests.

Fucking Yellowjackets.  Hate them.  So do the bees.

Yellowjackets can be a huge problem for hives in the Fall. As their own brood laying winds down, they start to get desperate for something sweet to replace the sugary secretions that wasp larvae exude to reward the adults that feed them (really). Honey is an obvious replacement, and if you leave full comb out in the open for too long, wasps WILL find it and start to raid the hive.

Once a wasp gets past the guard bees, they will fill up with honey inside the hive, pick up the scent of the hive, and bring their friends back for more. If you see any wasp traffic in and out of the hive, you should reduce the entrance drastically to help the hive defend itself. Make sure you keep the varroa card out, for ventilation.  A weak hive can be completely destroyed by a strong wasp nest.

The population in Hive 2 finally 'popped' and they are now into their second deep, which they will need to draw out completely and fill with stores if they are to survive the winter. The deep and the frames have been living on top of the feeder for a couple weeks now, but we installed the foundation just before giving them to the hive. In this heat, the foundation will sag and fall if you leave it in the frames too long before you give it to the bees.

The frame assembly line:
Reed, my helper at Added Value, is breaking off the frame wedges.
I am putting foundation in the frames and nailing them in.
Malcolm, the photo/videographer, was putting in support pins, but is behind the camera here.

After meeting Dee Lusby at a beekeeping conference and listening to her talk, I decided to try a technique known as "Housel Positioning" in both of these hives. You can read her explanation of it here at BeeSource, but the basic idea is that bees prefer the foundation, and the comb built on it, to be in a specific orientation in regards to the center of the brood nest. Proponents of the practice believe that it helps increase spring build up, reduces brace comb, and just generally improves the health and mood of the hive. It certainly can't hurt (although I'm sure I'll get a cranky e-mail from *someone*), and I'll do my own write up and explanation of the theory after I get back from vacation.

Marking the frames with cell size and cell orientation.

Housel positioning within the hive.  Notice that I brought down a frame of 4.9mm foundation into the lower deep to encourage the bees to work it.  I put the two corresponding drawn frames of 5.1mm foundation containing brood and stores into the new, empty deep to force the bees up in to the second box.

I'm still feeding both hives with very light sugar syrup to promote comb drawing, and a little bit of supplemental fresh pollen because of the current dearth. Rather than feeding them the fresh individual pellets, I decided to provide the pollen in patty form this time.

Pour fresh pollen  on to a sheet of (paraffin) wax paper.

Spray it with sugar water to moisten it, fold the paper over, and mash it flat.

Rip off the excess paper.

Set it on top of the top bars of the frames and poke holes in the wax paper with the edge of your hive tool to improve access.

Come on little dudes, draw that comb!

Well, I came in town to pick up some new line for my fishing rod and I've been writing for the last couple of hours instead, so for now I will leave you with a picture of me getting stung.

The bees really are getting a little more wary, so if you aren't using your protective gear, you should at least keep it handy. By the end of the inspection, there were at least two bees who were ready and willing to follow me across the roof. One of them got me, the other flew away after I popped down the roof hatch.

If you're gonna get stung, you may as well look manly doing it.

Hello, Ladies.

Thanks again to Malcolm Hearn for providing all the photos for this article!

Hive Check: Week 9

Bees are pretty.

Prepping the smoker.

Getting a couple of puffs into the entrance of Hive #2.

I'm storing Hive #2's second deep on top of the feeder, so it'll be ready when its time to put it on and so I don't have to carry it up and down the roof access ladder (again.)

Joined by a student film crew from the intensive summer program at Parsons, I headed up to my Fort Greene apiary to check whether the influx of pollen from my Week 8 inspection improved the survival rate of the brood in Hive #2.

Cruddy lookin' brood in Hive #2.  Big surprise.  Please excuse the hat.  I had a sunburn.
I am very white.

Oh wait, what's this!?

Solid, baby.

Whistling with appreciation.

This solid as heck brood pattern suggests that the pollen did the trick. These pupae were newly capped, and since worker brood spends 6 days as uncapped larvae a week ago when I added the pollen to the hive, these cells contained old eggs (2-3 days old) and very young larvae (4-6 days old)- just the right age to benefit from the resultant upswing in royal jelly production. After I was done inspecting the hive and making lots of noise to indicate how impressed I was with the level of improvement, I fed them more pollen and will continue to do so until they have a good stockpile stored away for the winter.

Checking for more good lookin' brood.

And I found it.  I imagine that the queen has been laying extra to make up for  all the brood that hasn't been making it.

The answer to all of life's little problems.  POLLEN.

The bees are taking the pollen and storing it under honey to preserve it.

I'm hoping that the increase in viable brood and the resulting boost in population will encourage this hive to ramp up their comb building activity and catch up with Hive #1. It is already July and they are still working on their first deep. As a rule of thumb, they'll need AT LEAST two full deeps of drawn comb and stores to make it through the winter. If they don't get caught up, I'll probably have to squash the queen and combine them with the much stronger Hive #1 in the fall.

The bees continue to build comb in the airspace of the feeder.

Quite a bit of it.

In an attempt to prevent them from reattaching it to the top bars of the frames, I  pressed the torn comb down.

Maybe they'll get the idea.
Probably not.

Hive #1 is well into the task of drawing the second deep, with workers actively drawing comb on about 5 of the frames. Some of the comb in the center is a little bit funky and oversized. It looks like they're trying to build drone cells, so in a week or two I might cut out some empty comb in the bottom, allowing them build a nice little discrete patch of drone brood.

More smoke = better.

Popping the top

OH LOOK, MORE BRACE COMB! YAY!

Workin' up a storm in the top hive body.

There is a bit of funky comb, but it hasn't stopped the queen from laying.

One of the problems with using foundation is that it strongly discourages the bees from building any drone comb, which is decidedly unnatural. The overall population of a feral colony may be up to 10% drones. In a traditional colony built on foundation, the drone population may be as low as 1% or 2% of the total due to the enforced lack of drone comb. Some colonies will fill any available empty spaces (like under the feeder, or between poorly spaced frames) with drone comb to make up the difference, gumming up the hive in the process.

Looking for drone comb/brood.

This frame is being drawn out beautifully.

Getting our bokeh on.

Esmeralda continues to impress with large swathes of solid brood.

Checking out their stores of pollen.

Traditional literature will suggest that drones are a resource drain on the hive; they don't do any work other than mating, so they do nothing but use up energy that the hive might otherwise put towards making honey or raising more workers. However, more recent studies have shown that colonies allowed to raise as many drones as they want are just as productive as those colonies in which the drone population is artificially limited.

*wolf whistle*

I love my frame perch.  Never again will I accidentally kick a frame with my clumsy-ass foot.

Magritte in profile.

A new frame!  Where's that queen?

Heeeeeeere queeny, queeny, queeny!

Why?

Jim Fischer of the NYC Beekeeping Group has my favourite explaination:

Boys are good for morale!

Getting the band back together.

*slurp*

Back to work.

Photo Credit: Thanks to Adrian Bautista, Martha Glenn, and Brooke Tascona for taking/sharing pictures of this weeks inspection!

P.S. If any of my readers want to volunteer their skills as a photographer and come take pictures of my inspections, get in touch.

I like pretty pictures!

Hive Check: Week 8

Ah, the weekly hive check. Easy to do, but sometimes a pain to write about, especially when you've got exciting (non-computer) things to do, like having hardcore beekeeping adventures.

In addition to my apprentice Emily, I was also accompanied by a Who's Who of treatment free beekeepers from all over the nation. We were joined by Kirk Anderson, founding member of the Backwards Beekeepers Club in LA, Sam Comfort of Anarchy Apiaries, Meg Paska of Brooklyn Homesteader, Chase Emmons from the Brooklyn Grange, PLUS Alex Brown, a photographer working with Meg, and Theadora, a friend of Emily's who we pressed into photographic service. It's the largest group of people I've ever had on the roof and it was a blast.

The gang, left to right:
Sam Comfort, Kirk Anderson, Meg Paska, Me, Chase Emmons, Alex Brown

Bees, it would seem, like honey.

Hive #1 and their new queen (Esmeralda) continues to do very well. The workers are drawing out a fair amount of comb in the recently added deep and the queen has started to lay in the cells. There is already a fair amount of nectar/syrup being stored in the newly drawn frames, and there continues to be a large amount (>6 frames) of solid brood in the bottom hive body.

Smoking up with the triangle smoker.

Pop, pop.

*yoink*

Havin' a looko-seeo with KirkoBeeo.

Both hives are still being fed with sugar syrup, which isn't great, but they got off to a late start this year and will need to be fed until they have drawn out enough comb to store all the honey and pollen they'll need to make it through the coming winter. Once they have two full deeps of comb drawn out, they'll come off of the artificial stuff, hopefully forever.

The light, it burns.

I sure am white.

As I mentioned last week, I've gotten the idea that the poor brood pattern in Hive #2 may be the result of a shortage of the high quality protein needed to produce royal jelly. Worker brood is fed royal jelly for the first three days of its larval stage, so to maintain a large broodnest, a huge amount of pollen is required.

Emily removing the ratchet straps holding the hive in place.

OH LOOK! BRACE COMB!  MY FAVOURITE!

Clean and jerk.

Looking at the hive with Sam and Kirk, we saw that there were many eggs laid in a good solid pattern, but that a lot of the brood was being lost before it reached maturity, resulting in the scattershot pattern of capped brood that I've been seeing. While Kirk suggested that I just replace the queen, Sam thought that brood may have been suffering from one of the low grade brood ailments, such as chalkbrood, sacbrood, or european foulbrood (EFB).

So friendly!

We didn't see any of the larval or pupal 'mummies' which are indicative of chalkbrood in or around the hive, but we did see a couple of the dying (yellowing) larvae which Sam refers to as "snotbrood". We didn't see a large amount of dead brood in the cells, which is both good and bad. We know that the brood is dying before it reaches maturity (which is bad), but the lack of dead brood within the hive tells us that the bees are exhibiting good hygienic behavior and attempting to remove potential sources of contagion quickly and efficiently (which is good.)

I feel like Kirk was somewhat surprised by the calmness of the bees.
LA bees like to riot or something.

TAG TEAM!

There are two main courses of action for treating pretty much all the brood diseases, other than American Foul Brood (AFB.) The first is to requeen, the idea being that the current population of the hive is genetically weak and/or susceptible to disease. By requeening, you effectively change the genetic makeup of the population, hopefully for the better. Unfortunately, it can be a bit of a crap shoot. The new queen may be no better than the old one, or worse.

Theadora getting artsy.

The other main option is to fortify the hive with better food. Well fed bees and brood are less susceptible to disease. The hive is already getting plenty of carbs in the form of sugar syrup, so a bit of added protein seems like the way to go.

Luckily, I have a 5lb bag of fresh pollen from Brushy Mountain in my fridge. Let's see if it makes a difference!

Put the lime in coconut.

Time to bulk up, little dudettes.

The reaction of the bees:
OM NOM NOM!

P.S. Photos from this inspection were taken by Theadora Tolkin, our resident singer/songwriter/sea squirt biologist. Every beekeeper should have one!