Shopping list

Shopping list:

Oxytet-25-S or Oxysol-62.5 powdered sugar mix

65% formic acid OR Mite-Away II single application pad (250 ml. per pad) OR Mite-Wipe multiple application pad (35 ml. per pad)

Maybe: Fumagilin-B in sugar syrup

Added 1 August: pollen patties?

and, for sure, winter wrap.

RE 2009 Ontario recommendations for honey bee disease control:

AFB (American Foul Brood) prevention: (a) in fall after the honey comes off; and (b) spring, stopping 4 weeks before first main honey flow, which is what? Dandelions? Fruit trees? If dandelions, then that's beginning of May, and treatment is 3 times at 5-10 intervals in spring and fall, so the minimum time is 3x5=15 or two weeks, so need to begin in mid-April, and medication is Oxytet-25-S or Oxysol-62.5 powdered sugar mix. I am a bit puzzled RE prevention, because if you have AFB you create a pyre of bees and hives and etc., so don't you either have AFB or not? Isn't AFB prevention sorta being a little bit pregnant?

HBTM (Honey Bee Tracheal Mite): (a) fall; and (b) spring, place 150 bees/bee yard in alcohol and send samples to the diagnostic bee labs. Call the labs for sampling directions. If infestation level is 10% or higher, treat. Medication is 65% formic acid OR Mite-Away II single application pad (250 ml. per pad) OR Mite-Wipe multiple application pad (35 ml. per pad), ensure that a total of 3 pads are applied: a fresh pad is placed 3 times, 4 days apart.

Varroa mite: Monitor. Give bees drone foundation in brood box, remove before hatching; we can give the yellow hive a brood frame of drone foundation on Monday. Drones will be evicted in mid-August, we probably just barely have time to do this. NB: I note that freezing for a week will kill the varroa larvae, so we could have frozen the two frames we gave them in April, and given them back to the bees to clean up and re-use; that would save them the trouble of raising comb. Bees that form the winter cluster are hatched in the last week of August/first week of September. Take off the honey before they hatch and treat with 65% formic acid OR Mite-AwayII OR 6 applications of Mite-Wipe pad, 4 days apart OR CheckMite+ and Apistan. In the late fall, at the time of packing the bees, Oxalic acid trickle method.

Nosema: obtain 25 bees from the front entrance, and send to the bee labs for diagnosis. Query: do we need to treat (Fumagilin-B in sugar syrup) no matter what the lab says?

Diagnostic bee labs:

Perrin's Bee Lab, Cameron, Ontario (705) 359-1505

Tanglewood Honey Bee Lab Services, Eganville, Ontario (613) 628-2890.

Took a look; added a super

These days, we need muscles to lift the yellow-hive's capped honey-filled super, which weighs 40 lbs (30 lbs of honey), so the Young Beekeeper's dad came along, and suited up. Here, at about 7:30 a.m. on a cool, fresh, cloudy morning (from left to right): the YB, me, the YB's dad, the YB's cousin (gray sweatshirt), and, foreground, the YB's younger brother.

This hive had fully-raised comb in all frames on the last-given super. So, we gave this hive a new, empty honey-super above the queen-excluder, and put the other three supers back in order. NB: This hive had a varroa mite count (24 hrs) of 30 on the sticky-board, so I will give them a sticky-board next Sunday, so we will get another 24-hour count on Monday morning, our next check-up day. At the end of July, depending on the varroa level, we must make a decision of whether to remove the honey supers and treat for varroa, or let them go through August.

In this photo, the YB's dad is putting the fully-capped honey-super back onto the yellow hive. The supers go back in the order in which they were given: most recent directly above the brood boxes, etc.

Next, we opened the red (swarmed) hive, and they have done almost nothing in their honey super above the queen excluder. (It's advised that new beekeepers keep two hives, in order to

compare, and we certainly have the two extremes to compare!) We pulled out two frames from their top brood box; we saw no eggs in the empty brood cells, there was a bit of honey in the bottom of these. Evidently, the new queen, if we're right she was bred on Sunday, has not yet (Tuesday) begun to lay.

Below, the YB's younger brother sitting on his chair, the rest of us are inside stripping off our bee-garb; see ya next week, bees!

Varroa mite count

This morning, the Young Beekeeper's mum counted varroa mites trapped in Crisco on file folders: the yellow hive's 24-hour count--30; the red hive's count--zero.

Nuptial flight?

Lots of excitement at the red hive this afternoon, drones flying around and around, and a clot of bees on the landing lip. The yellow hive caught the excitement and although flying hard, paused/came out to watch. Let's hope all the excitement was about sending the young queen on a nuptial flight. (She will fly several times, to be bred in the air, and each time by a different drone, because drones destroy their private parts in the mating, and die; this ensures an albeit-narrow range of genetic diversity.) Phoned the Young Beekeeper, left a message on the answering machine, went back out to watch the show. By the time he called back, the red hive's bees were back inside, the yellow hive's bees were flying hard as usual these July days: the show was over. Perhaps on Tuesday when we open the hives, we will see eggs in the red hive's brood frames: let's hope so!

Red hive schedule

Question: what's the soonest after swarming that a hive may be queen-right; what's the soonest--or the latest--we can expect--if all is well-- to see eggs in the cells?

Tentative conclusion: We should see eggs laid by the new queen in the red hive sometime between 18 July and 1 August. (I wonder if we could/should transfer a frame or two of brood from the yellow hive to the red hive, to make up for the gap in production?)

Background information: The red hive swarmed on Canada Day. The queen must have laid the egg for the new queen before leaving. The workers stop feeding her before swarming, so she can slim down and fly. Query: does she continue to lay despite the Weight Watchers? Assuming that she does, the latest the egg for the new queen could be laid is 1 July 2009. "The queen cell is sealed 8 days after the egg is laid [latest, 9 July 2009]. The virgin queen emerges 8 days later [17 July 2009], on the sixteenth day, and may fly next day. [So assuming the latest laying, the earliest she could fly and be bred is 18 July 2009, and hmmm... see Hooper, below, p. 45.] Therefore if a colony has a clipped queen and is not making queen cells at one examination, it will not be able to get a swarm away for 17 days.... In addition, if a colony is making queen cells at one inspection, and these are killed by the beekeeper, then emergency cells will probably be started from worker larvae. If a 4 day-old larva is chosen (and this is probably the oldest they would choose), then this larva, being 7 days old (3 days in the egg and 4 days as a larva), should emerge as a queen after 9 more days (16 days minus 7 days) and can be on the wing on the tenth day after inspection. The fact that the bees will usually select a larva at least 2 days younger means that usually the virgin will not emerge for at least 11 days." (Hooper, p. 111.) "The queen mates on the wing during the first ten to twenty days of her life" (Hooper, p. 45)...."the queen starts egg-laying within a few days [after mating]."

Further: "...where the swarm has been lost, the beekeeper must deal with the colony as soon as possible to prevent other swarms, or casts, from coming out as well. The colony is opened and a good queen cell is found and is left to produce a queen (some beekeepers mark the comb by putting a drawing pin in the top bar above the cell). On no account must the chosen cell be on a comb that is shaken, or damage may result to the queen, who is quite loose in the cell. The comb should be searched thoroughly to ensure that no further queen cells are left on it, and the other combs should be shaken through and any other queen cells destroyed.

"If no hatched cells are found amongst those destroyed the colony is then left for ten to twenty days before being examined again, when the new queen will have emerged and should have mated and started to lay. [We didn't do all that; I just called Tibor Szabo Sr. and he confidently said they'd make a new queen.] It is often three weeks or more before a young queen will come into lay in a large colony. Do not be impatient and think the colony is queenless: it is unlikely to be so. The new queen is just slow in getting started. A more detailed understanding of this situation will be gained by reading the section on queenlessness in Chapter 9." (Hooper, p. 145; follows with interesting information on tearing down queen cells when bees decide not to swarm after all, etc.)

RE queenlessness: "Although it is true to say that brood is usually absent from queenless colonies, the converse is far from the truth. A colony with no brood can have a perfectly good young queen who has not as yet started to lay. In my experience the number of colonies that become queenless by natural means is very, very small. Usually the queenless colony, particularly during the main part of the active season, has been made so by some mistake by the beekeeper. Recognition of queenlessness is far from easy if one is just relying on conclusions drawn during examination of the colony. The main signs are that the colony is more irritable than usual, the bees seem to be less well-organized on the combs, very few brood cells will be polished up ready for the queen to lay in--certainly not a large circular area of such cells. Pollen in the broodnest will be shiny from being covered with honey to prevent it going mouldy whilst it is not being used. Often there will be some cells with little hoods drawn out from the top walls and often these are covering pollen, and in some cases an egg from a laying worker. All these signs are straws in the wind pointing towards queenlessness but none is conclusive." (Hooper, pp. 181-2, followed by a five-days-long sure-fire test using a brood frame from another hive.)

New supers; varroa mite check

Yesterday, bought two shallow supers, and a honey gate (spigot sized to allow honey to flow freely and which can be turned off without drips). This will be installed in a food-grade bucket in which will be placed the honey sieve and into which will drain the extractor. Yesterday, painted the supers with a coat of latex primer and a coat of white exterior latex paint; will give one more paint-coat today. This morning, put together the frames, and have become pretty fast at doing this (assembly line on the kitchen table; electric drill...) Will place drone-foundation in these frames, mainly because that's what's on hand; it's easier to extract, because the cells are larger; we may find to our grief why this is a specialty product even in the very narrow specialty-product beekeeper-supply world. Lovely day for bees yesterday, cool and bright; they were flying well into the early evening; then lots of humming from the yellow hive, busy fanning to evaporate.

RE the varroa mite check using file folders slathered with Crisco and placed for 24 hours on cookie sheets below the screen bottom, the red hive turned up no mites; found what seem to be three on the yellow hive's sheet. The Young Beekeeper will look at these with the strong magnifying glass--all I can see is tiny red shiny ovals. He may be able to see the ferocious mouth and horrid little legs and confirm their identity.

Maintenance

Early this lovely cool summer morning, we checked our hives; did some maintenance:

1. placed a Crisco-slathered file folder on a cookie sheet below each hive to monitor varroa mites;

2. opened the yellow hive, and found that the comb in the first-given (i.e. the top super of three) honey super is partly capped (see fourth photo, below);

3. opened the red hive, and it seemed at first that they had done nothing in their honey super, so we decided to take this off and feed them, but in the course of emptying the super of frames, we found that comb has been partly raised (see the second photo); we pulled the east-most comb of their top brood super, and found this full of capped honey; we pulled a centre comb of this brood super, and found brood (see third photo below); so we put the hive back

together exactly as we had found it. This third photo is interesting because it shows the brood-globe which bees create within a Langstroth hive--honey (food) on the outside, brood within the "globe".

The first photo, above, shows the Young Beekeeper, having emptied the contents of his smoker into the metal garbage can placed for that purpose, airing his smoker, which he will then place on top of the metal garbage can's lid.

We will check our bees again, in a week. Tomorrow, I will drive to Cambridge and pick up two additional shallow (honey) supers and frames to match.

Bee-escape removed!

This morning, lifted the yellow hive's cover, and discovered the top honey-filled super still filled with bees. Lots of indignant humming, which soon subsided. (These are the best-tempered bees!) Evidently they'd either spurned the bee-escape, or they couldn't escape downwards by that route. I took off the cover, and lifted a couple of frames, and discovered the comb yet uncapped, so lifted off the top super, removed the bee-escape from the inner cover, removed the inner cover, put the full super back onto the hive, the inner cover on top, and on top of that, the cover and a brick. Evidently this super is not ready for extraction. Query: did they remove the capping during the night? Conclusions: (1) should have looked at a couple of centre frames when had the hive open yesterday; (2) use the bee-brush to remove bees from frames: poor bees, trapped all night above that dad-gasted bee escape!

Bee-escape installed!

This afternoon, noted that the yellow hive had a traffic jam at the entrance, so I removed all the honey supers, put an empty honey super (fourth of four!) above the queen excluder, put the last-given (half-full) honey super above that, and above that the inner cover with a bee-escape installed, and the first-given honey super (which now weighs well more than Thomas), above that, and the cover on the top of everything, with a brick on top. Here's a photo of our set-up as of mid-afternoon today. We will open the red (swarmed) hive on Sunday or Monday and see how they're doing; we will extract in order to free up the nine full frames (above the bee-escape) for more honey-making. Just for the record, they have raised comb and substantially filled a honey super in a week. Conclusion: we need two additional honey supers.

Perfect summer's day

Today was truly the Glorious Fourth, a perfect summer's day, and the bees from both hives were flying fast in their bee-lines this afternoon; one would never know from the outside that the "red" hive had recently swarmed. When they're flying, they're quite noisy: BZZZZZZZZZZ... I have clover in bloom in the lawn; perhaps they're working clover in our several square kilometers?

Chat with Dr. Tibor Szabo

This morning I phoned Dr. Tibor Szabo, from whom we bought our bees, and asked him whether it would be better to re-queen our "red" swarmed hive, or to let the bees raise their own queen? He said:

1. better to let the bees raise their own queen now; great difficulty finding the home-raised queen(s) at this time;

2. one advantage of a swarm is, all the mites go away with the bees, so the mite burden is greatly reduced;

3. bees do not like to "go up" and they probably got so crowded that they "just had to swarm"; that the weaker hive swarmed has to do with temperament by contrast to the "yellow" hive which went up easily and is now busily working on its second honey super;

4. honey production is good for us, but not "good for the bees"; it's better for the bees to swarm;

5. the swarmed hive will lose ten days in brood production;

6. and his first remark will come last here: "but we have had such poor weather!" That's interesting: I have been enjoying this quasi-English spring/summer weather! So have the peonies, and--except for the heavy rain (a Chinese emperor required that each blooming peony have a personal servant to stand over it with an umbrella in the instance of rain)--they've had long bloom times.

In retrospect, since the decision to swarm is made three weeks before the swarm is accomplished, perhaps they should have received their second brood supers earlier? OTOH, the "red" hive was weaker, and therefore less crowded, and second-year queens are "almost programmed to swarm" so perhaps the swarm was inevitable? Inevitable or not, if I could turn back the clock, would give the second brood super three weeks earlier and right away zoom the time-clock forward to assess the result.

Second honey super on the "yellow" hive

Today, the Young Beekeeper and I and three young aides opened up the hives, and sure enough, it's evident that the "red" hive swarmed, which is to say, is no longer packed with bees. This hive has just begun to raise comb in their honey super. The "yellow" hive, by contrast, is full of bees, and they have raised comb, filled and capped all the way to the outer frames in their first honey super. We gave that hive a second honey super, which we placed directly above the second brood super, and we placed the first-given honey super on top of the second honey super. If they can fill a honey super that fast, we must look again in ten days, and if that's full, we can give them a third honey super, and after that, we will be all out of supers, and must extract before we can proceed.

Swarm

Alas, we had a swarm this morning just after 9 a.m. I phoned the Junior Beekeeper, but he was marching in the Lynden Canada Day parade this morning, and nobody was home. And, I cobbled together a hive from two shallow honey supers and a couple of tarpaulins, etc. and placed it on the bee cart and trundled this under the ball of bees, but this was too high in a spruce tree to knock down into the hive, and on too small a branch to support a ladder, and too awkward a place to saw down the branch with the extension saw. So I placed some lovely comb and honey sprinkled on a plate at the hive-front to create scent, and when I came back at noon, they were just preparing to leave for wherever their scout had determined they'd go. Good bye, bees! Farewell! It's late for a swarm, and first year bees are usually too busy raising comb and so on, to swarm, but...