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.

Treating My Girls For Mites

Now that the Honey Harvest is finished for my hive, I am beginning to prepare for fall. I had previously reduced the main entrance and closed off the upper entrance to help prevent robbing bees from entering my hive. Using a wooden hive top feeder, I have begun to feed my bees sugar water (2:1 ratio of sugar to water) mixed with the feeding stimulant Honey-B-Healthy. They have taken to the feed and I am checking on it every week ( so far I have added 3 gallons).

Looking into a Hive

Last time I was in my hive, I went through all the brood chamber, checking for eggs and making sure there was a decent brood pattern. I was somewhat disappointed to find that only the bottom two brood chambers had larva and eggs. I have a third brood chamber, mostly filled with honey, and above that, lays a honey super below my hive top feeder. While feeding my bees, I was hoping that the added food would implement laying from my queen.

I rotated my upper two supers, thinking that she might not have room to lay with the frames in the third brood chamber being mostly honey. While I was in my hive, I was thoroughly inspecting my bees for any deformity in their wings or visible mites. During my inspection I noticed some of my bees had smaller spread wings where as the normal bee would have their wings flat against their back. My next task was to check my mite count and see if I needed to treat.

Photo By: Lazy B Farm

My bees were not to this extent but you could see a slight difference between them and the norm.

After using a corex sheet in my IPM bottom board, I was relieved to have a mite count below the average 40 to 50 mites but I thought it best to still treat. The recommended treatment from other beekeepers was Api life Var. This treatment comes in a pack of two wafers (strong odor and should be handled with gloves), with one wafer being used per hive. 

Api life Var Package

After opening the package, I took one wafer and broke it up into four separate pieces to go on the four corners of my brood chamber. For the treatment to work properly, I needed to place these four pieces on top of my bottom brood chamber and close up my hive so that the vapors would not escape. I ensured that my entrance was reduced and my corex sheet was in place beneath my IPM bottom board.

Wafer Pieces on the Corners

Closed up my hive and now I am waiting 7 to 10 days to repeat the treatment (2 more times). I was told that if I were to see a vast majority of my bees outside of my hive, the vapors are to overpowering and I need to reduce the amount of wafer pieces I am treating with. I need my girls to be mite free ( or close to it) going into to winter.

Cleaning out the pests!

Closing Up for the Fall

I was very proud of my girls and all the surplus honey they collected. I walked around my hive the other day to get a feel for what was happening with the nectar flow. Clovers were present upon the ground but no bees were foraging from them. I still had some flowering plants in the garden, yet again, no bees were found. I decided it was time to reduce my hive entrance and let the bees have the rest of the honey frames.

Now that the nectar flow has finished, it is time to begin feeding and checking for mites. I will not begin mite treatments until the end of August/ beginning of September but with the cease of the nectar flow, it is very important that I supply my bees with food as soon as possible. I will also want to prevent robbing as best I can by closing off any upper entrances and reducing the main entrance.

Entrance Reducer

I will be using a hive top feeder and a sugar water feed for the fall that will consist of a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water. Other suitable methods of feeding your bees would be: pollen patties, fondant or high fructose corn syrup. I want to include a feeding stimulant to insure my bees will be healthy going into the winter months, therefore, I need a liquid solution for feeding my bees.

Combined ingredients together and mixed in a 1 gallon jug. Added 4 tbsp of Honey B Healthy and ensured that all the sugar had dissolved.

Bees at Entrance

Out at my hive, the entrance appeared very crowded but nothing threatening was happening. No signs of robbing was a relief but I was intrigued at all the activity that was happening at the entrance. When discussing the issue with another beekeeper, she said that newer bees will need to go on a navigation flight in order to orient themselves with their hive. They will fly out making loops back toward the hive and after every pass, they will extend their distance a little further.

Opened my hive and started to do a quick pass through my supers. I pulled out one of the outside frames in order to work toward the middle frames, and as I was checking the frame, I notice a small hive beetle crawling along the edge. I know that a strong colony will send them into hiding but every hive is bound to have one or two slip out and roam around, right? That was the only downside while going through my hive. Everything seemed normal and none of my bees appeared to be deformed or had bad wings.

Small Hive Beetle

After working my hive, I added the wooden hive top feeder and filled each side with my healthy sugar water mixture. Placed one end of the float down into the mixture and slowly lowered the other end. Floats fit perfectly and were floating properly.

Pouring Sugar Water Mixture

Dropping Float

Dropping Float

I know its not sweet nectar but I hope my girls enjoy their new diet. Having this hive top feeder will allow me to easily check and make sure the feed is topped off and add more if needed. 

Just taking care of my Girls!

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.