Checked My Hive

It seems like it has been forever since I was able to go check on my bees. I wanted to ensure that they were doing ok but every week seemed to bring in bad weather. It would either snow, rain or be well below 50 degrees. I was able to quickly work my hive 3 weeks ago but that was just to throw on some fondant and add corn syrup to my hive top feeder. This past weekend was the first decent weekend that I had a full day of sunshine.

As I got to my hive, I saw that my girls were out and about, bringing in pollen. That was a great sign. What wasn't so great was seeing twenty or thirty bees dead on the ground in front of my hive. Assuming that it was disease or starvation (again, it has been 3 weeks since I last checked my hive) I began to get worried about what I would find.

Bringing in Pollen

Dead Bees in Front of Hive

The corn syrup in my hive top feeder was mostly crystalized but there were a lot of bees still feeding from it. Using my hive top, I started scrapping it out but found that it was still soft and moist so I sat it to the side for the time being. I continued checking my hive bodies and supers. There were a lot of bees between the frames and when checking my frames, I saw all stages of the brood process. I did not find my queen but I knew everything was good, having seen eggs and larva.

When I got down to my bottom brood chamber, it was completely empty. No bees, brood or honey stores. The bees must have moved up over winter. I took off the bottom brood chamber so that I could move it to the top and give my girls more room to move up if need be. As I took off the hive body, I noticed a few bees were dead on the bottom board. It all came together now with the dead bees laying at the front of my hive. Some of my girls had died over winter and the colony was cleaning them out.

All is good in the hive. My bees were looking good, I added more fondant, reversed my brood chambers and removed my hive top feeder.

I am ready for spring to come!

Checking Over the Winter

This past weekend was absolutely beautiful. I went out to my hive to see how it was doing and could see some activity out front. Temperatures got up into the high 60’s ( Don't check unless it is above 55 degrees) and even though it was cloudy, my bees were out foraging for whatever they could find and going on cleansing flights. I’ve learnt that seeing bees at the entrance doesn’t mean that your colony is still there (a friendly beekeeper thought differently and found out her hive was being robbed). I put my ear up to my hive and could hear a lot of buzzing inside. It was a great sound to hear.

My Hive

Currently, my hive has three supers on it. Bottom is based as the brood chamber where the cluster should be. The top two were mostly filled with honey frames at the beginning of winter (early November). With the weather being nice, I was able to work my hive and check my bees. I did not know what the food stores would be like for my bees so I brought fondant and corn syrup with me (always pays to be prepared).

Bees at Entrance

Bees on Inner Cover

My main concern with checking my hive was to ensure they had enough stored honey to last them a couple more months. When I took off my inner cover I found a lot of bees at the top of my hive. I was happy to see my girls doing well but I knew that there wasn’t much in the food stores. There was no corn syrup left in the hive top feeder...bummer… and only the center two frames of my top honey super had any honey left on them. My girls had broken cluster and were needing food bad.

Hive Top Feeder

I worked my way down to the bottom brood chamber. I flattened out my fondant and placed it on the frames right above the cluster. I closed up my hive and added two gallons of corn syrup to my hive top feeder.

I hope my girls are able to store some more food before another cold spell.

Checking on my Queen

At the end of last week I finally had a chance to go back to my hive. I wanted to go back and remove the queen cage that I had bound to a frame. I removed my inner cover and noticed the rubber band was missing that I had used to secure the queen cage with ... I was a little scared that it broke and the cage had dropped. I did notice, before I began removing frames, some of the worker bees were sticking there tail ends in the air and beating there wings. They were fanning out pheromones signaling  their sisters to come to them.

A Lady Fanning Her Pheromones 

I slowly began removing frames and was checking thoroughly for my queen. With the first frame removed I was able to see the queen cage and it was empty (thank goodness). I knew the queen had been released but was she laying? As I started turning over the frame in my hand I noticed a queen cell. This was just my luck to  install a new hive and have the queen already replaced. I didn't know how this had already happened and what it meant for my colony. Set the frame down and gave my mentor a quick call (would highly recommend attending a bee meeting and make some friends).  As to what was going on: 

When a colony is first installed into the hive, the queen is still in her cage and will not be laying for a couple of days. During this time that she is caged, the colony has interpreted her as being weak, therefore the begin to develop queen cells. When she is finally released and begins to lay she will go through and kill off the queen cells that were produced. I was told not to worry, scrap off the queen cells and go through my frames and check for eggs and larva. I was also told that as a newbie I was to remove the queen cell and taste the royal jelly that it held..."It is a delicacy and is the initiation into beekeeping". Lets just say I'm a beekeeper.

He also mentioned that if the queen hadn't been released and I was still seeing queen cells, the package that I had received had a queen already in it. In this case I had many different options.

I removed the queen cell from the frame and began looking for eggs. While looking over the frame I noticed that the bees were already storing food and out of the glimpse of my eye, I saw her!

My Queen Bee

I was really excited to be able to spot my queen and see that she was doing great. I checked some other frames and noticed patches of laid eggs and larva. I concluded that the bees must have chewed through the rubber band and everything was okay. 

My hive was looking great, the colony strong and I was happy.