The Mating Sign?

Let me start this blog with a question: What does the "Mating Sign" look like?

All 22 hives at Dr. D's have bees in them. It has been two weeks since I made my last hive splits. There are lot of good reasons why I was too busy to get out to the apiary sooner but none of them make me feel less guilty or get me any closer to my goals.

I spent Monday and Tuesday night waxing 110 plastic frames. I used up almost all of my wax reserves in the process. So on Wednesday, Noah and I took 11 supers to Dr. D's.

Only one hive looked like it had a beard and it was the one I suspected would (see pic).

This is the beard 3min after smoke

Most of the hives looked strong, though several did not have any brood (but they did have empty queen cells). After all this time, I can speculate what had happened but I can't be sure. In one of these hives I found the queen who had two tiny white specs at the end of her tail. I think this might have been "The Mating Sign". I couldn't find any good pictures with Google so I'm not sure.

I don't believe my hives have swarmed, simply because there were still empty frames in each hive. It could simply be that the hives are growing slower than I expected.

Nonetheless, in every hive that lacked brood, we placed a new frame of eggs. If the hive needs a queen, then the bees can convert a young larva. If the queen is there, then the added brood will strengthen the hive.

Since there were 22 hives and I only had enough freshly waxed frames for 11 supers, we divided the frames among the hives where needed. We inspected the first 15 hives closely, however the sun was going down so we simply opened the last 7 and added a super to each (all seven looked healthy but we didn't search for brood.)

We accomplished all of this in just 1.5 hours. At this rate, it would only take us 8 hours to inspect 100 hives. I also tried out my new bee jacket for Bush Mountain Bees and it worked great - no stings. (You can see how big it is in the picture - I'm fat but that's not all me in that jacket). Of course Noah was wearing an old cotton jacket and didn't get stung either, so the bees might have just been in a good mood.

Final Hive Count: 23 Hives

"A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower." Kin Hubbard

With my shoes off, I can count to 20

"Oh heart, such disorganization!" Sylvia Plath

Well, I have split 6 hives into 22 in just a couple of months. This has been the best year by far. This will be my last splits until after I harvest honey. Though, if the bees continue to do as well as they are doing, I should have a crop of honey in late July to mid August... I hope.

17 Hives on 4/30/18

The splitting process went well but ultimately became chaos. In the new diagram below, I have changed my numbering system to help make it clearer.

 At the start of the day, there were 17 hives at Dr.D's. We had considered moving all the hives to their new locations and then make the splits but we thought we might get confused (it was a simpler time).

First we split Hive-D2 to location E5. The first frame we pulled had the queen on it, so we put her back on location D2 and closed up both hives. (We felt pretty smug!)

Then we split Hive-B2 to location D4. However, despite being packed with bees and honey, there was no queen. First hiccup. So now we needed two frames of eggs. We marked the two boxes by placing an empty super on each lid and then took a break. (It was 89F and I'm fat... don't judge me.)

Now when we returned, we opened Hive A-2 (and even though I found the queen last time) it was now queenless. So we didn't split it but we made a mental note to put a frame of eggs in it. (Mental note, humf.)

Next we made it easy. We decided to move Hives-A3,B3,C3 to location A5,B5,C5.

Hive-C3 was split onto location C5.

Hive-B3 was split onto location B5... and that's when we found it was full of swarm cells. So we started pulling those frames out and giving them to the other splits. A2 B2 B3 C3 D4 and E5 all got a frame with a queen cell on it... (I think!)

However, Hive-A3 didn't have a any brood, so we decided not to split it. We added eggs (I think) and left it as it was.

Then we decided to split Hive-A4 AND THAT WAS WHEN IT TOTALLY WENT TO SHIT!

We had already split Hive-A4 at some point in all of this. In retrospect, I "think" we split it to location D3 but I can't be sure. It had a new lid and bottom on it, so we had definitely split it but neither Noah or I could remember when.

In just two hours we had made all of the splits and, in doing so, had lost the largest game of Three-Card-Monty ever played. In the end, I have 22 hives at Dr.D's.

Final Hive Count: 23 Hives

And the splits just keep on coming

"By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination," Christopher Columbus ... Big talk for a man who thought he was in India.

If the following blog goes off the rails, forgive me. I woke up at 3:00am with my "Night Dreads." If you're not familiar with my "Night Dreads", it is the phenomenon where I wake up in the middle of the night and begin worrying about the most ridiculous things. Last nights night dread topic: How I would change my life if I somehow traveled through time and was 17 again. At 5:20am I concluded that I would have to go back to age 16 to make any real change but that I would have started building bee hives the moment I arrived in 1990! "There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line." - Oscar Levant.

THE PLAN:
This past Wednesday I had planned to build 10 lids & 10 bottoms and Saturday I would make my 10 splits.

THE OBSTACLES:
When Wednesday came, I allowed myself to be lazy. If failure was a sickness, laziness would be the symptom. I instead told myself, I would build them Saturday and make my splits Sunday.

Well Thursday, on my way to work in Vicksburg, the water pump on my truck began leaking - like a sieve. There was a lot stress and drama involved in getting home but by 6:00pm Saturday, I made it back.

Sunday I bought the new seals for the water pump and while I waited for the truck to cool down, I made the lids and bottoms for the splits. I then spent the rest of the day taking the whole truck apart to put in the seals. Thanks to YouTube, the job went smoothly but it took all day.

So yesterday, Monday 4/30/18 at 5:00pm (after I got home from work) Noah and I went out to Dr. D's to make splits.

THE SPLITS:
We only had time to make 4 splits - A,B,C,D. We started with D and found 5 frames of swarm cells. So we removed them from the box and divided them amongst the other splits.

On split C we found that the box was full of honey but no brood, so we decided to put a frame of queen cells in both boxes. Figuring that it might be missing a queen or just need a better one. However, when we retrieved the the frame with a queen cell, the cell was open and empty. Noah checked the other frames we had set to the side and there she was - the virgin queen. So we grabbed her (gently) and popped her in the hive. So as you can see the splits were just in the nick of time.

I worry that there might be other hives on the verge of swarming but I just don't have time to do anything about it. If all goes well, then Saturday, I will build boxes and wax the old plastic frames. Then Sunday, I will continue with the rest of my splits.

For now, HIVE COUNT: 18 Hives.

Queen Cells: If at first you don't succeed.

"In our response lies our growth and our freedom," Victor Frankl

Yesterday's hive inspections couldn't have been worse (well anything can get worse but it was bad).  The sky was sunny but the temperature was a cool 56F degrees with winds around 20mph. The weekend will been even colder and with lots of rain, so it was now or never.

As one can imagine, the bees were quite cantankerous, to say the least. In fact, they were down right pissed. Given that it was so cool, I put my Carheart jacket on, thinking it would be a fine bee coat given its elastic waist and cuffs. I was wrong!

The bees seemed to know right where to attack. They actively targeted my wrist and waist in droves. I could actually feel them rolling my sleeves back and I am fairly certain I heard battle cries and a little laughter.

Well, I knew they would be that way, given the weather and the fact they were queenless, so I should have worn a full suit. Oh well.



Only one of the three Queen Cells I placed Saturday seemed to have made it - and even that one is questionable. I had cut the three cells from a plastic frame and in doing so, I had opened the back of the cells and not left enough surrounding wax to attach the cell to the new frame.

Two of the cells were just gone. The third cell was laying in the bottom of Hive-E and the bees had secured it to the bottom board.

The solution was to leave Hive-E as it was and see if the queen emerges. Hive-E had a lot of bees and honey, so if this doesn't work, then I will just place more eggs in it in a week or so.

In Hive-D, we placed a new frame of eggs from Hive-L (Hive-L is the smallest hive and therefore, the easiest to find eggs).

Hive-A got a Queen Cell from Hive-G. This was a very good cell since it came from a wood frame and I could cut a big chunk of extra wax to help secure the cell in the new frame. Though I mashed a lot of worker larva - ick!

Now the bees will be given a week to do what they do. We'll see what happens. Nonetheless, all the hives are packed with bees and doing well.

Checking the Walk-Away Splits

"Success in not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

Let's skip the suspense: 13 Healthy Hives but 3 did not make queen cells.

All the splits are full of bees. Three made Queen Cells and Three did not.

Now last year, I labeled the hives A,B,C, etc and then labeled splits with A.1, A.2, B.1, C.1 etc. However, that could get confusing for the reader so I have relabeled them below.

The colored arrows indicate the original location of the hives
and then where the hive-queen was moved to during the
walk-away splits.

Black arrows indicate queen cell moves.

I cut queen cells out of Hive-B and put them in A, D, & E. This would have been a perfect correction except that when I removed some of the queen cells, the wax opened on the backside. I immediately placed the cells into their new location but I don't know if the introduction of air into the cells will have harmed the larva.

I'll check them Wednesday. If the Cells look okay then I will leave them be. If not, then I will remove eggs from one of the parent hives and try again.

My beetle traps didn't catch any beetles but there were beetles in the traps. The drier sheets just didn't snag the beetles. I will make some new ones with Swiffer sheets inside and set them Wednesday when I inspect the queen cells.

All and all, my splits look really healthy and the bees seem to have made a fairly even split.

All the hives were full of bees

Hive-D made 3 frames
of new wax

Queen Cells

First Split of 2018 & Big Bryan's Beetle Box

"Necessity if the mother of invention." - Plato

I am an inventor at heart and given my beetle problems last year, I have been trying to build a better mousetrap (beetle trap). Beetle Busters are great but they can get expensive. Fat Bee Man's political sign traps seem reasonable but I still have beetles when I use them. Of course dryer sheets work really well but they seem to kill one bee for every two beetles.

So here is my latest invention. Big Bryan's Beetle Box.

It is a simple and cheap beetle solution. It's a 3/8" thick #8 hardware cloth box with a dryer sheet inside. This way the beetles can get to the dyer sheet but the bees can't.

I put my first prototypes in the hives yesterday. There were not a lot beetles since all of my hives are so strong but there were still a few. I placed 7 traps in seven hives - 3 of them I poured Apple Cider Vinegar on. I'll let you know how they work next week.


"He also divided the two fish among them all." - Mark 6:41 

I split (divided) the six hives at Dr. D's place into twelve. Of course this isn't the first time I made splits but this is the first time I did it with complete confidence.

If you've been following my blog, then you know that last year I made a lot of splits that ultimately failed. But in the words of Thomas Edison, "I haven't failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

So here is what we did yesterday.

First, we cleaned the apiary up and leveled our concrete blocks.

The next step was to decide on the location of each split. We did our best to put the split as far from the original location as possible - though this is really not that important since the nurse bees will stay with the move and all the workers will go back to the original location.

With the locations decided we began the process. We started with "F" and worked backwards to "A" since "A" had been our most cantankerous hive last year. "F" was also the only hive with only one super.

I moved the whole hive to location "F1" and then placed an empty supper on the site of "F". I placed 2 frames of eggs, larva, and nurse bees on the "F" site. Then I added a frame of honey and pollen. The rest of the frames were empty waxed frames. I added some empty frames to the "F1" site and closed them up.

Now I never found a single queen in any of the hives yesterday but I made sure to leave eggs in both hives just in case the queen ended up on the original location.

We repeated the steps for each hive. Since it was very cloudy, it took a long time to confirm eggs were in each frame. The whole process took us 3.5 hours.

Despite the clouds, the bees were fairly docile. Noah got stung 5 or 6 times and I got stung about 7 or more but that isn't really too bad considering the weather.

I will check the splits next Saturday and make sure there are queen cells in all of them.

Now I know you shouldn't count your bees before they hatch but I'm going to.
New Hive Count: 13 Hives

Linda Passed Away

"A year from now you may wish you had started today," Karen Lamb

I have been overwhelmed as of late. I can't put my finger on the exact cause of this feeling but it is there just the same and it has been crushing my productivity.

Nonetheless, Monday (12/4/17) I finally managed to winterize my hives. It went very well despite working in a light misty rain. However, it was warm and the bees were agreeable.

I did not merge hives B.1.1 and VSH as planned. I made all the preparations - I reduced B.1.1 to one single super and placed paper over it. However, when I opened the VSH hive it was full of both bees and beetles.

B.1.1 is small and should make it through the winter but I doubted it could survive another beetle attack. So I closed up both hives and left them separated.

Only time will tell if this was the right decision.

On a personal note: My mother-in-law past away on Tuesday (12/5/17). She has been sick for years with a mental condition that mimics dementia and over the past couple of years she had required full-time care. The task was divided amongst my mother, nephew, daughter, son, paid sitters, me, and my wife (the order of those names gives the magnitude of contribution with about 90% of it falling on me and my wife).

It has been exhausting. Her passing feels like a blessing but saying that feels selfish and cold. My wife has now lost both of her parents in the past 18 months and that breaks my heart for her. Just the same, I am sure that the reduced stress of caring for her mom will actually make her life infinitely better - once she has finished grieving of course.

I don't know if my feelings of being overwhelmed are significantly linked to my mother-in-law or if I am just lazy. The weeks to come will answer that question. Either way, 2017 is coming to an end and Spring will be here before you know it.

I have two goals for next year: 100 hives and mastering queen rearing. I think I'll make a chart to hang in the shop and mark off each hive as I build it - then do the same in the spring and mark them off as I fill them with bees.

BTW: My chickens started laying eggs the day before Thanksgiving and I am getting an egg every day now.

The Magnificent Seven

Hive-B.1.1.VSH

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secrete is patients." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm down to (8) hives; one at the old farm and seven at Dr. D's. However, three of those hives are from recent splits. Given my recent loses, I've been obsessing over these remaining hives. The thought wakes me up at night and I imagine empty hives that look like the ruins of bygone civilizations.

The trouble is that with this project still only a side venture, it's priority often slips down the list. So when I finally got out to Dr. D's this weekend, I was nearly sick with worry. However, it turned out to be the best beekeeping day of the year.

For starters it was a pleasant 85͒ and sunny. Given how hot it's been this year, this felt like air-conditioning.

However, what made the trip so wonderful was how well all the bees were doing.

Hive-A has filled six of the ten re-waxed frames with honey.

Hive-B was full but didn't show any signs of swarm cells, so I added a box of re-waxed frames.

Hive-C.1 had three boxes so I harvested a box of honey, leaving two supers.

Hive-C (like Hive-B) was full but didn't have any swarm cells, so I added a box of re-waxed frames.

Hive-B.1 & Hive-VSH both had lots of activity so I didn't open them.

Hive-B.1.1.VSH, despite previously being overrun by beetles, has snapped back. It has a beautiful queen that is laying like crazy and the bees have filled six frames with brood, pollen, and honey.

All seven hives are doing really well. In fact, next year, I plan to make splits in mid-August since the bees seem to have so much to forage.

Re-Waxing Frames:

I mentioned that I put re-waxed frames in the hives. I've mentioned this before but bees WILL NOT build on bare plastic frames. They have to have a thin coat of wax on them. "How thin?" is the question.

I melted what little wax I had in a metal pan and added two parts water. Then I did my best to stir the mixture as I worked to make the wax as thin as possible. However, I am not sure the water actually mixed with the wax.

The first (13) frames worked out perfectly. Each took just enough wax to highlight the printed comb pattern. However, the last seven frames had mostly water but it gave the frame a slightly tacky feel - Hopefully this was enough wax to get the bees started.

To see if it works, I marked each frame with either "Good Wax" or "Wet Wax". I placed the good frames in the middle of the hive so that the bees could fill these first but hopefully they will fill them all.

End of the year:

I only plan to open the hives two more times this year. This weekend I will go back to Dr. D's and gather all of my hive top feeders. After I caulk the inside of them, I will fill the void with diatomaceous earth and cedar chips.

I will then return to Dr. D's to set the hives up for winter. I will place a feeder on each hive as well as an unscented swiffer pad on each the bottom board. Finally, I will dock the front entrance up so that there is only about an inch of open space. With that, I will say a prayer, and wait for Spring. I'll still visit the hives once a month to heft them and feed them if need be but other wise, the season is over.

Walkaway Splits - Right & Wrong

"If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly first." - Joel Salatin

All of my hives at Dr.D's are spaced 18" apart in all directions

Work and weather have stifled my beekeeping but it hasn't stopped me completely. Saturday, my wife and I went out to Dr. D's place and split Hive-B.1 & Hive-C. This gives me (10) Hives and (3) Five-Frame-Nucs.

However, while making my splits, I wasn't thinking and therefor I made two different kinds of Walkaway Splits.

Hive-B.1 was split by taking the top box off and placing it on the new location. Then I made sure that box was filled with eggs, pollen, and honey. Of course a lot of the bees will return to the original location, so I shook (10) frames of bees into the new box in hopes that at least half of the bees might stay. This will probably do fine but it is not the best practice (in my humble opinion anyway).

Hive-C was split perfectly. I moved the whole hive to the new location and then placed a box filled with eggs, pollen, honey, and two frames of nurse bees on the old location. All of the field bees will return to the original location and that will ensure there are enough bees to fight the dreaded Small Hive Beetles. That is, in my opinion, the best practice for making a walkaway split.

All four of the hives were given eggs, pollen, and honey so that no matter where the queens ended up, the other half of each split would have everything needed to produce new queen cells.

Also, if you notice in the graph above, I did not use the VSH eggs in these splits. Hive-C is my oldest and most resilient hive, so I wanted to keep that genetic stock in my yard.

Hive-B was a swarm that just took up residence in an empty box in my apiary but that queen has proven over the past couple of years to be resilient and gentle - again, good genetic stock.

The VSH queen is the mother of all of the hives at my house and will be the root stock of most of my grafts but it is important to keep diversity in breeding and so that is why I chose to make my recent splits without VSH eggs.

The last thing I did was to shake 5 frames of bees into a Starter Hive (Hive-VF). The Five-Frame-Nuc has a screened bottom and no exit. I also placed a hive top feeder on it and then made brackets so the lid could be secured in place. At the end of the season I will give this box a queen and enough resources to survive the winter.

So with this addition and the (3) hives at my house, I am now equipped to graft at will -- well as soon as the rain stops.

The Queen Is Dead - Long Live The Queen

"Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back." - Vigo the Scourge of Carpathia, Ghost Busters II


I got up early Saturday morning to find all the caged queens had died - though there is still the sole survivor in Hive-VE that I didn't cage. Given each queen cost about $30 (if sold), I lost $240 worth of queens. Oh well.

Time is marching on and as of now, I figure I have about (9) weeks left till the end of the bee season in the Delta. I think that is still enough time to master my grafting technique.

It has now gotten too hot to work much in the afternoons. However, I still need to go to Dr. D's and get a few pounds of bees to start my mating nucs and to bolster my Starter Hive-VD giggle giggle. I'll force myself to do that on Wednesday (if my truck is out of the shop by then.) Once that unhappy task is done, then all of my grafting can be done at the house.

Queen Cages: (4) living (3) Dead (1) Stillborn

Just a note: The Queen Cells I caged Monday have hatched. As stated in the title, (3) are dead - the cause of death is unknown but I suspect starvation.

This has been a hard year filled with ups and downs. However, I take these setbacks, not as failures but as lessons. This lesson is easy: Queens are fragile and, no matter the weather or life conditions, the queens must be systematically dealt with.

I knew I should have checked the queens on Tuesday but I let the heat keep me inside. Yesterday it rained and I took that as an excuse to again avoid the extreme heat (92 degrees - 60% humidity - 105 heat index) - though I did at least check the queens.

Of course being a better beekeeper doesn't mean I have to have a heat stroke. If queens are fed, they can be kept caged for a week before mating them (They must be introduced to the hive the same way that a mated queen is introduced). Yesterday I dripped a little honey on each of the four remaining queen's cages - Noah is going to do the same today while I'm out of town. Then Saturday, I will get up early and get my beekeeping done before the heat sets in.

The two lessons here are:

1. Pre-plan all queen rearing activities.
2. Regardless of the weather, the show must go on.

Chickens Day 1

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” 
― Theodore Roosevelt


Saturday I bought five Barred Rock chickens - that's not accurate - I bought five Barred Rock pullets or chicks. This means, that the chicks are so young that they can't go outside for two months.

They have to be kept in the house under heat at 95-degrees for the next four weeks. They must be fed special starter feed. So by the time they are old enough to eat beetles, my hives will have either overcome the beetles on their own or perished. 

What have I done?

"If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly first." ― Joel Salatin

I'm on the proverbial fence when it comes to Joel Salatin but I like the logic of this quote. I wanted chickens because I think they might help with the beetles but the more research I have done, the more I think that other livestock might be part of my future as sort of an insurance policy against bad bee years.

Of course I live in town, so live stock is problematic. Nonetheless, I need to get my feet wet and, as they say, Chickens are a gateway drug. 

I have a lot of plates in the air already. I work full-time as a Safety Man, I teach part-time, I am trying to get my bee business going... there are also the family obligations of course... not to mention I have two pet projects that I work on when I have time (my next novel and mechanical puzzle that I hope to one day patent)... now I have chickens. Only time will tell if this is a mistake or the first step in a new direction.

BEES:

Hive-VD giggle giggle
is still alive

My grafts from last Wednesday did't take. However, there seems to be a good reason - It turns out that Hive-A.1.VHS already has a queen in it. I didn't find her but there are four frames of brood in the hive. We made the split on June 7th. So when we first moved the hive we assumed it had a queen but on inspection, there was no sign of eggs. It had only been (21) days so that makes sense. Nonetheless she is laying now.

This is a good thing. Sure I didn't have any successful grafts but I did get some grafting practice. Now this Wednesday, I will get to try it again.

On a side note: This weekend was hotter than midget porn - mid 90's with 80% humidity. Saturday, I worked in my backyard apiary for about an hour then commenced digging post holes for my new mating nuc stand. The roots where thick as a Delta welfare line and by the second hole I had broken my shovel. Tired of the heat and drenched in sweat, I called it a day. 

Sadly, Sunday I accomplished even less. This weekend the heat won.

Third Graft Attempt

"Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try." Dr. Edward Boyden, MIT

Yesterday, I made my third attempt to graft. We pulled a frame from Hive-B.1 and transported it to the house. I left it covered in bees and placed it in a special box that did not allow the frame to move in transit.

I made (15) grafts in (3) different types of cells: JZBZ's green cups with JZBZ mounts, Brown JZBZ cups with waxed wood plug mounts, and wax cups on wood plugs.

The (15) grafts only took me (15) minutes - half the time of the previous two attempts. I also used a German tool rather than the Chinese tool. The last thing I did different was that I hooked the larva from the closed end of "C" rather than the open end.

I mean to say, that the larva forms a sort of "C" shape. Previously I tried to approach the open end of the "C" but found it much easier to do the opposite - as in the picture shown above.

The larva was placed into each cell with only the royal jelly that clung to it. This could cause a problem but I should know tomorrow night when I get home.

The grafts were placed in Hive-A.1.

CHICKENS:

I ordered (4) baby chicks that will arrive on Saturday morning. I am hoping they will help to break the beetle cycle. We'll see.

For now VD (giggle giggle) is still infected (giggle giggle) - Damn it, it's not funny! Anyway, I mashed all the beetles and larva in VD (giggle giggle... damn it) and added the frame of bees from Hive-B.1 and gave VD... the... (giggle giggle - DAMN IT!) the frame that I grafted from. This will either strengthen the hive or give the beetles more brood to eat.

All the hives at Dr. D's are doing well.

Uncapping Knife Explosion

"The last time I heard a boom like that, Japan surrendered the war." Nelly

I bought an Uncapping Knife last year and just got around to trying it out this week. The first time it worked okay but kept getting so hot that it burned the honey - perhaps that is normal.

What is not normal is that on the second use... IT EXPLODED! No exaggeration here. About three minutes into the process the knife short circuited, blasted a hole in the side of the knife, and began throwing sparks and slag as far as two feet away. It literally looked like fireworks! Some of the slag sprayed out and burned my wife's arm before I could get it unplugged. Luckily she only received minor burns - though she was rattled for a while afterwards. We were lucky - blessed!

Since Amazon won't post my review, here is the link to the product so you don't buy the same one:

HLPB Electric Honey Uncapping Knife Stainless Steel Hot Wax Knife Scraping Blade Beekeeping Tool

Well that was just part of the day. My two grafted queens were, as I feared would happen, destroyed by the beetles. Hive-VD (giggle giggle) had the shiny frames that heralds the death of the hive. I removed all but two frames and manually killed all the beetles and larva I could see.

My chickens will be in at the end of the month and I hope that they can help break this beetle cycle.

THE GOOD NEWS:

The miller frame that I placed in Hive-VE has lots of Queen Cells. I suppose they just needed a day to settle in before they began building them. So I will have enough queen cells to make several splits this weekend.

What happened in both hive VD (giggle giggle) and VE were blessings. The presence of two accepted grafts, showed me I was on the right track. So now that the grafts are ruined, it gives me a chance to try again this week. At the same time, I won't loose any ground on my splits, since VE has plenty of queens to go around.

I made a new grafting frame with three kinds of cups to see if any of them do better than the other.

All and all, it was a good day.

My First Successful Grafts

"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." James Allen

At least two of my grafts have been accepted. This is that quintessential first achievement that opens the door to all my future successes. I realize this fact. So why am I not more excited?

I made (12) grafts and (2) were accepted - 16% success on my second attempt. Of course I am 200% more successful than I was on the first attempt. So I really am counting this as a huge success.

My joy was a little muted when I found roughly (10) or (12) beetles in each of the hives at my house. I mashed them all - that is my new beetle strategy - manual annihilation. I don't know why there are beetles but the hives seemed okay - well Hive-A.1 seemed to have a little damage to the comb as though the beetles have been eating on it but there was no sign of larva. That was Friday - today is Monday and I will check again this afternoon.



Hive-VE

As you can see in the picture, VE is packed with wonderfully docile bees. Yes I found beetles but they were all hiding together in the corner of the lid - obviously being cowed by the bees.

The other joy stealing issue is that other than my two grafts, no other cells were created. Not just on the failed grafts but none on the Miller Frame I placed in VE and none on the VSH frame that I placed in A.1. The question is why?

Did the Miller frame get too dry while it was on my table - did I take too long making my grafts?
Did the frames get jostled too much on the drive home?
Did VE not have sufficient time to settle in before I gave them the larva?
Did the beetles have something to do with it?

Perhaps but I don't know.

All and all, I am very excited about the two new queen cells but the presence of beetles is robbing my joy. I half expect to find the two new cells abandoned and all three hives filled with beetle maggots. I pray this is not the case.

Nonetheless, if the two queens survive, I plan to name them. I'm taking suggestions if you care to leave a comment.

Lucy and Ethel?
Thelma and Louise?
Eve and Lilith?
Cagney and Lacy?
Julie and Julia?
Kate and Ashley?
Emile and Zooey?
Lavern and Shirley?

Well, you get the idea.

More Queens Than A Cher Lookalike Contest - Graft #2

"Agh, that is bad luck. But grandfather say, 'It never rain everyday.'" - Mr. Kim, The Fifth Element

I've been quoting that line since 1997 (holy shit - I just realized how old that movie is... even worse... how old I am) - actually I've been misquoting it, as the case may be, since I always say, "It can't rain everyday." Either way, I've had two sunny days in a row now and I hope the trend continues.

Yesterday, Noah and I went to Dr. D's to get two frames of eggs. I say eggs because if there are eggs then the adjacent larva is young enough for queen rearing.  While there, we did a few quick hive checks.

We didn't check Hive-A. Until we requeen it, I could do without the aggression - so we moved on.

It turned out that our walkaway split of Hive-B was textbook. The queen actually ended up in the split (Hive-B.1) and is doing really well. So we knew Hive-B would have the queen cells and boy did it. There were at least (12) to (15) cells. There was a lot of bees in both hives and they were all very docile.

Hive-VSH is doing well.

Hive-D.3 is still infested with beetles and there is still about a hundred bees waiting inside for death.

Hive-C looked much stronger. I still need to split it and replace the rotted boxes but it seems to be doing fine.

The last thing we did was to take (2) frames of eggs from Hive-VSH, without taking any bees, and put them in a Five Frame Nuc (i.e. VE). We then shook (4) frames of bees from Hive-B into the nuc. If that doesn't survive the beetles then it is hopeless.

To finish our visit we placed Don the Fat Bee Man beetle traps in all of the hives.

We took VE home and did the following:

One frame of eggs was placed in Hive-A.1.VSH to let them raise their own queen.

The other frame was taken to my shop table where I made my grafts. The queen cups had been in VD (giggle giggle) overnight for polishing and were made from new (chemical free) wax. I also kept a moist towel over the larva while I grafted them.

It again took me (30) minutes to complete my grafts. I would have liked to have gone faster but I'm still learning and it is very delicate work - especially for a guy with Bananas Hands (That's my wife's nickname for me).

When I completed my grafts, I took the remaining frame of eggs and, using the Miller Method, cut it in a zigzag pattern.

The miller frame was placed in VE and the grafts were placed in VD (giggle giggle).

On a separate note: I found about (5) hive beetles in VD (giggle giggle) and a few beetle larva. All of them were on the bottom board and it appeared the beetle larva was eating the Crisco in the FBM traps. I squished all of the beetles but left the larva in the Crisco to see if that kills them.

At the end of the day, the Hive Count is: (8) Hives and (2) Nucs.

The Beetles Kill Another Hive

The bottom board of Hive-D

"I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me," John Lennon... but then John never kept bees!

I was sure that all was well in my home apiary. I had strong (though queenless) hives and minimal comb. So you can imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon, when I went to check my hives and saw beetle maggots dripping out of the front of  Hive-VC.

I quickly went to the shop, donned my veil and lit my smoker. VC still had all the bees I left in it but they had given the frames over to the beetles. I had only put (3) frames in VC but they were destroyed.

I took the hive apart and put the beetle larva in the sun.

Close-up of Hive-D

I then checked Hive-A.1.VHS only to find that it was queenless. Luckily the hive didn't have any signs of beetle damage.

Lastly I opened Hive-D and found that beetles had already begun to destroy seven frames. The hive had (20) frames in it but some of them were either empty comb or bare plastic. So I stripped the hive down to just four frames of honey and one frame of empty comb. I then added the bees from VC - Creating Hive-VD.

I also made a few of Don the Fat Bee Man's sign traps. The ones I made before using Borax didn't seem to work. This time I made them using straight Boric Acid that I bought off Amazon.com.

Don had remarked that the only reason these wouldn't work is if they were filled too full. So I took one and cut it in half to check - it was correct. I then placed about (4) on each bottom board. I also set one Beetle Buster in Hive-A.1 and my home made Beetle Buster in Hive-VD.

I took a total of (10) frames and put them in the freezer. The other (2) didn't seem to have any beetles on them but I left them in the sun just the same.

I harvested three frames of honey from Hive-A.1 and will continue to harvest through out this week until I get the hive down to just (10) frames.

Wednesday, I will go to Dr. D's and bring home some VSH eggs to graft.

In all I have lost (5) hives to beetles this year - or to be more dramatic (33%) of my apiary has been lost to beetles.

A Good Day to Make Splits

"Five hundred. … five hundred fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. Five hundred street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that’s what you are." Vin Diesel, in Knockaround Guys

After a long (very hot) afternoon of beekeeping, I came home and jumped in the shower - that's when I saw them. Four stings on my forearm. I knew I had gotten a couple of stings; one on my back and one under my arm but that was it. That's when I realized I had come to a turning point. I quit counting stings about a month or so ago (right after the day I got those (60) at one time). It stopped being the point... and I got past the silliness of it all.

This may be as much to do with the calmer hives I have begun to breed. At present I only seem to have one cantankerous hive left at Dr. D's place. Hive-A is still fairly aggressive but Hive-A.1.VSH has become as calm as a Hindu cow.

All and all it was a great day of beekeeping. Here is what we did:



Hive D.3.VSH has succumb to the hive beetles. In fact it has also begun to have Wax Months. There was still about a cup of bees in the hive but the beetles had destroyed all the wax. For now we just left it but I will retrieve it this weekend.

Hive A.1.VSH was dealt with next. We opened the top and found it full of bees. No further inspection was needed. We stapled #8 HW Cloth over any openings and ratchet strapped the whole thing tight. We then loaded it up and took it to the house.

Hive B was then split. I did this in the walkaway split style. First I moved the top two boxes of honey to the new location. I then placed the brood chamber on top. From there I split the brood chamber in half, making sure to put eggs and stores in both. I then used the frozen frames (after they thawed) to fill in the open spaces. I then placed the single box with about two frames of nurse bees back on the original location.

When complete, I had a new hive... Hive B.1 I didn't put a VSH egg in this one because it was already calm and I want to keep some genetic diversity in the apiary.

VC was last. VA and VB are the two five frame nucs that the beetles destroyed. I've decided for now just to keep the letters running in order. VC was filled with two frames of brood, eggs, & bees from Hive A and one frame of just eggs from Hive VSH. We then took it home with us. At home, I took the mini mating nuc full of bees and added them to VC. I also took the VSH frame of eggs and placed them in Hive D.VSH.

I would have like to have done more but the heat was pretty bad and my suit was stifling. Saturday I plan to do more. Nonetheless, it was a great day of beekeeping and I felt confident in all of my hive manipulations. It is late in the season but I think I still have time to make some gains.

Hive Count: (9) Hives and (1) Five Frame Nuc

Split Update



This is just a short update on the recent splits.

Hive-A.1.VSH has two queen cells. It is also fairly populated with bees. I was worried that the bees may have all returned to Hive-A but it turned out to be a fairly even split.


Hive-D.3.VSH did not make any queen cells and is showing a lot of beetle damage. There was also no sign of a queen. Therefore, I placed another VSH frame of eggs in it and then placed a beetle blaster trap and 5 drier sheets that covered the top of the frames completely. I'll check on it Friday as I have to work in Vicksburg Wednesday and Thursday.

The Five Frame Nucs I took home are doing okay so far but the queen cells in them must have been damaged on the ride home and have now been discarded by the bees.

sketch: homemade Beetle Blaster trap

I have to do something about these beetles. I think I will try using the diatomaceous earth under them this weekend. I will only do it under two or three hives and see if it makes a difference.