9/15 - today's inspection

I checked up on both of my Gainesville hives today.  I've got good news and less good news.

Pink hive - as of my last inspection, four weeks ago, this hive appeared to be making a come back.  Overall the population is up.  They still have capped honey stores and plenty of food.  There remains a fair amount of capped brood and even some nice, fat larvae that are yet to be capped.  The thing that concerns me is that I didn't see any eggs or really young larvae.  I also didn't see the queen, but that doesn't mean much.  Now, I did this inspection before the sun was well up in the sky, so perhaps I just didn't have the right lighting conditions to see eggs and small larvae...  though I did observe what appeared to be a capped queen cell in among some drone brood on the bottom side of one of the frames in the medium super.  Additionally this hive seemed a little "buzzy" and I've heard from experienced bee keepers that over time you get to where you can detect a queen-less hive based on its sound.  So maybe that's what I'm hearing, or maybe this is just my own weird confirmation bias :)

Plan: I'll give them two weeks and if they're not clearly back on track I'll give them a frame of brood from my hill hive.

Hill hive - This hive is still going awesome.  They've not only pulled comb in more than half of the honey super, but they've actually started storing honey in there!  This means they're pulling nectar in from the environs and doing very well at it.  I'm extremely optimistic that I'll be able to harvest some honey this fall.

As for the rest of the hive, it's boiling with bees.  They still have plenty of capped honey and wall-to-wall brood on a number of the medium frames in the upper portion of the brood box.  If anything my only concern is that this hive is getting overpopulated and may swarm, but I saw no indications of swarm cells.  So hopefully they'll stay put.

Plan: next inspection I should be prepared for two things- 1) there's a chance these bees will take another honey super this fall and 2) I need to bring a couple deep, small-cell frames as this hive is ready to start having the large cell stuff removed.

Last note: both of my Gville hives have lots of beetles.  The beetle traps seem to help, but I'd really like to get ahead of the population.  I think I'll try nematoads again (I'll be quicker with spreading them this time, last time I think most of them died in my fridge)

9/15 - Always playing catch-up with the blog

Again I've missed a couple posts, so I'll try to dump what I can recall and then I'll cover today's G'ville hive inspections in a separate post.

Back on 8/17 I made a trip up to Dadant in High Springs to pick up some equipment and supplies.  Also I wanted to ask advice on a problem that's been developing w/ one of John's hives out in Interlachen.  He's got a hive that seems to have a small colony living UNDER the screen bottom board of the larger hive.  This hasn't been a big deal, but they've begun pulling comb down there, so we need to intervene.

8/18, I did a quick inspection of my pink hive - this is the one with the newly minted queen.  This hive had good brood pattern (better than two weeks prior) and still lots of capped honey.  My impression is that they were making a come back.  Still a fair number of beetles.  So I introduced a couple new beetle traps with some rotten old banana to see if that will help attract the beetles.

8/19, went to Interlachen.  John and I swapped the screen bottom board out of the white hive with the population setting up under the screen.  This allowed up to flip the affected sbb on its side and cut off the comb.  Don't see any signs of a queen down there, so its unlikely they have a queen.  We kept as many of the bottom-side bees as possible and got them into a medium on a new bottom board.  We gave them some empty frames, and cut out some foundation from the middle two frames and grafted in their comb from under the old hive.  We also gave them one medium brood frame from his pastel hive, thinking this would give them a chance to rear a queen if they care to.  Then John put some feed on this hive to see if we could get them to set up shop...  within a few days it was clear that they had abandoned their new home in favor of, surprise, the bottom board of his white hive.  *sigh*

Aside from the failed transplant of the under-hive bees, the two hives seem to be doing well.  We spotted both queens and I was generally please with the condition of both hives.  The pastel hive seemed a little light on overall population, but there was some nice brood so hopefully they're on the mend.  Otherwise, both hives were depleted of any capped honey, so John is going to go back to feeding them.

8/25, did a full inspection of my hill hive.  It's doing very well - tons of bees, plenty of good brood and eggs, plenty of capped food and pollen.  Also they're actively pulling comb in the honey super I gave them.

8/4 Gville hive inspection

Pink hive: decent number of bees, good brood pattern in med super, with some oddly grouped brood in the deep.  Plenty of capped honey and other food stores.  Spotted a queen in the deep.  She's a very pretty dark color.  This suggests she's less Italian than my other queen.  My understanding from Jerry Latner was that the hives I got from him were a mix of Italian and Caucasion, so perhaps she's more along the Caucasion line.  I wonder what she's been bred with?  Overall her brood pattern is relatively uneven, but she's still young - she's only been laying for 3 weeks at most, so hopefully this will improve.

Worth noting that this hive continues to have a concerning number of beetles.

Also worth noting that even though I haven't fed these bees in well over a month and it's now August which should be relatively short on nectar flow in this area I did see a good amount of uncapped honey and noticed some shake out of water even with gentle manipulation.  This suggests they're still collecting nectar from somewhere.

While I had the deep open I moved some of the wooden/large cell frames toward the outside of the box in favor of moving some of my small-cell frames in toward the brood area of the box.  As I do this I'm trying to avoid breaking up the brood pattern as much as possible.

Hill hive: this hive is PACKED with bees and doing wonderfully with both brood and food stores.  Didn't spot the queen, but I'm not surprised given the sheer mass of bees in this hive.  Because of the dense population I was concerned for swarming, so I made sure to check for swarm cells.  To my pleasant surprise I found no signs of queen cells on or under the frames in either box.  Since this hive seems to be doing well and have plenty of food supply, I decided to throw a medium on top w/ nine frames to see if they'll draw comb.  Hopefully they will so that I might get some honey from them this fall.  Will continue to monitor this hive for signs of queen cells, if they show up and the hive continues to otherwise do so well, I'm inclined to split this hive and forfeit a chance at honey this fall... I'll let the bees decide which to do.

A little behind... time to catch up on notes

Since my last update back on July 8, I've missed some notes.  Here's a brain dump of what I can remember. Dates and details are to the best of my recollection.

Weekend of July 8 John and I put sticky boards on our hives to get a mite count.  We did a three day count and then averaged by /3.  My hives in Gville showed some mites, but were well below the economic threshold of 60/day.  One of John's hive didn't get a good count because part of the catch and release swarm glommed on to the bottom of his white hive and caught a bunch of bees on the sticky board - to minimize the damage we removed the board.  The other hive; however, got a count that was right around the ecomomic threshold, so John has been applying the "Dowda method" or sugar shake to help cut down on the adult mite population.  He's now ready to put in some more sticky boards to get a new count.  If the sugar treatment didn't help, we'll have to revisit options and decide where to go from there.

Other notes: post tropical storm Debbie there has been lots of standing water and hence mosquitoes throughout N. FL.  The mosquito levels were at a point that the gov't considered it a threat to public health, so they've been spraying.  Where I live in town they spray with a truck that runs at night.  To my knowledge they've sprayed my neighborhood at least 3 times.  So far I haven't noticed any problems with my bees, but they're back far enough from the street that it's my hope that their exposure is minimal.  Our in the country where John's hive are located, they done some night-time aerial spraying.  To help protect his bees John had to cover his hives with a tarp after dark for several days.  Here's hoping there are no ill effects to the hives.

Lastly, on the weekend of July 15th I did a top-super only inspection on my hives.  I noticed the pink hive has eggs and some larvae, so it looks like they've successfully reared and bred a queen.  Horray!  The hill hive continues to do very well.  Both hives had signs of laying queens as well as plenty of capped honey/sugar water.  I've stopped feeding them for awhile now, as I'm under the advice that once a hive is putting up stores (capping honey) it means they have decent food stores and there's no real need to feed them.

Catch and release swarm

Went to Interlachen today to do an inspection with my father-in-law.  One of his hives was thin on bees and apparently queenless or at least without a laying queen.  On the way back to the house he spotted a swarm on a nearby tree (explaining the state of the hive).  So we decided to capture the swarm... John bravely climbed an extension ladder with a sawzall to cut the branch that was hosting the swarm.  After shaking the swarm into a nuc box with 5 frames my wife noticed there was still a good sized clump of bees that had reformed on a tree branch.  So John went up the ladder again.  After another shake we were pretty sure we had the queen in the box.  So we relocated the box back over near the parent box ( perhaps this was a mistake).

After cooling off we went back out to check on the captured swarm.  They were nowhere to be found and the nuc box was empty.  There was a pretty good clump or beard of bees under the parent hive, but not enough to account for the swarm.  We searched the trees nearby for awhile looking for our missing bees with no success.

So what started as a very exciting and self-congratulatory atmosphere turned to frustration and disappointment.  Oh well.

7/1 frame transfer

The day after finding one of my hives queenless, I decided to go ahead and transplant a medium frame of brood to the struggling hive.  The transplant frame had a nice spread of eggs, young larvae and even some capped brood.

6/30 Hive inspection notes

Thanks to Tropical Storm Debby and some other factors I've been overdue on my inspections.  Today I did my Gville hives and here's a quick summary:

Pink hive - rich in food stores, queenless!, lots of beetles

Pink only has a handful of capped brood left and a handful of what appear to be emerged queen cells.  Plan for next time - transplant a from of brood from the hill hive.  Also, they weren't drawing at all in the honey super I'd given them so I pulled it - I think the extra space was just giving the SHB room to do their thing.

Hill hive - not so rich in food stores, very queen right, fair number of SHB

The plan on this hive is to feed a bit and let them get their food stores up so they can support the brood they're rearing.

Also, though overdue (and therefore likely less effective) I finally watered in my SHB nematoads.  Hopefully they'll help, but I'm afraid I sat on them too long.  So I'll probably order some more in the near future.