No honey this year...

We went out yesterday to check the hive, just about 1 week after having removed the queen excluder. Still no work in the super. There were certainly more bees than before, but no work we could see of drawing out comb. I guess it's just too late in the season.

So, we won't be harvesting any honey but we do feel like we have a good hive going and look forward to getting them through the winter. In the spring they should be all set to work on those supers and do some heavy pollinating of the nearby fruit trees. When we installed the hive this spring most of the fruit trees had already bloomed so I'm not sure how much of an effect the bees had on pollination. Next year....

Queen Excluder, Be Gone!

On Friday night we checked the hive again to see if there had been any action in the super. Nope. Still the same, a few bees up there but no action drawing thing out at all. So, we decided to pull out the queen excluder. The only problem was that we had driven the 20 minute out to our hive and realized that we had left all of our bee gear in the garage!

We were determined so I lifted the super while my wife pulled the queen excluder. I was nervous, especially when I felt something land on my bare leg, but neither of us got stung and now we can see what happens. I just hope the queen does NOT move up into the super. We'd really like to keep brood out.

We also saw a SNAKE in the grass by the hive!!!

Where's the honey?

We've now had a super in place above two hive bodies for over 4 weeks. Last night when we checked the super we saw NO evidence of drawing out comb. None. Zip. We did see a few bees in the super hanging out but that is it. We are using a queen excluder and it seems to be keeping out more than the queen. I suppose we could take it out, but we really don't want brood in with our honey when it comes time to harvest. Could we have damaged or killed the queen when we took out the comb they were building in the empty frame slot?

We're gonna let them go a bit longer and see what happens. It's been hot so we tilted the lid up last night too and perhaps that will give some of them another entry point. I'd really like to get at least a little honey this year out of our hive. But, at least we have two good bodies now full of drawn out comb with brood and honey stores. If we can get them to over winter well they should have a much better start than they did this year with a new hive.

Why are you not doing anything in the super?

About 2 weeks ago we put our first "super" onto the hive with a queen excluder between it and the hive bodies. Today we got back to look for the first time and were surprised to see... almost no activity in the super. There were a few bees up in it, maybe 25, but as far as we could tell there had been no drawing out of comb yet.

Before we put the super on the hive bodies were mostly full of brood and honey. We did have to pull out a bit of comb they had built in a space where we had left out a frame, and sure enough they were rebuilding it as we still were missing a frame since then. The thing we are wondering is if this is the reason they are ignoring the super. Since they had the space in the top hive body were the determined to use it up first? Or is it the queen excluder and they just refuse to go through it?

We've left the queen excluder on and will see how they do now. The empty slot in the top hive body has a frame now with duragilt on it. I wonder if they will now spend all their time on it instead of in the super?

What happens when you don't put in all the frames?

Last week we added a second hive body to our bees. At the time we only have 5 frames assembled so we just put them in the middle and figured we'd add more in a few days. Bees always start in the middle, right, and work their way outside. It should be fine.

Well, I guess we were wrong. First off, we waited too long. We planned to get back in a few days but it ended up being a week. When we opened up the hive and lifted the top board we had a surprise as you see in the picture. The bees had built their own comb hanging down form the top board.

The bees had also done a bit of work on the frames as well, but seeing this is a bit disappointing. It was beautiful, but we would rather have had the bees spending their energy and resources on the frame.

So, we added more frames in as was our plan. From a class the beekeeper mama had taken last week she learned that many beekeepers only put 9 frames in a hive to make it easier to move things around so that was our plan. We were able to do this and leave the opening right where this comb hangs down. So for now, there is no loss. However when we get ready to put on supers I'm sure we will have to break this comb off to get the top board on top. Maybe we can break it off and just set it in the empty frame slot.

One other thing we did at this inspection was to pull out the white bottom board to see if there were any mites. We didn't see any but did notice a bunch of ants come out as soon as we pulled out the board. The started crawling all over obviously disturded. Plus, there was a smell. It was almost like something dead. Both the smell and ants showed up only when well pulled the board so we're sure it's related but don't know what. A dead mouse perhaps? Does anyone have any thoughts on the ants? Do we need to worry about them being under the hive body? We've also seen a few roaches in and around the hive. Are these something to worry about?

Ants below the hive that came out after disturbed.

Bees at 7 weeks, time for a home expansion

It's now been seven weeks since we installed our bees and nearly three weeks since our last visit. We brought a second hive body along thinking they might be ready to expand. Sure enough it looked like they were ready. We didn't pull the frames at all but you could see bees between each one with some comb built out. We added a second body and five frames to it. In a few days we'll head back to fill in the other five frames once we've got them put together. Images below are before and after adding the second hive body.












It would have been nice to pull frames and look for the queen, but we really don't want to disturb their comb any more when we don't need too. The number of bees has certainly gone way up and it will be interesting to see how soon they fill up this second body. We have two suppers ready to be assembled and a queen excluder too. Hopefully we'll get some good comb production and be able to add them in another few weeks so that we'll have some honey to harvest in the fall.

in the words of Tom Petty... the waiting is the hardest part

We checked on the bees this evening. It had been 2 weeks since our last visit when we removed their sugar water food source and 4 weeks since installation. Wow, they really look good! The son-in-law of the folks who's land we have the hive on was there too today; just in town for 10 days to paint their house. I don't think he actively has bees but does seem to know a bit about them.

So, we pulled a few frames and took a look. Saw lots of brood and even had a few pupae fall out from a frame. The frames were noticeably heavier too. When watching my wife pull out frames I thought I saw some liquid too.... We didn't see the queen but at least saw a lot of activity. It even seemed like more bees were around.

The son-in-law with us mentioned about not disturbing the hive too much and he is right. Each time we do take a look some of the comb gets broke, pupae may fall out or get crushed, and I'm sure it must stress them out a bit. So it's the waiting game now. We'll probably check in with them again in two weeks or so but will try to not actually pull any frames unless we think we need to. I actually came across a good posting today about how to inspect bee hives on Linda's Bees site. She has a LOT of good stuff on her site and I read it often.

So, there was one thing I thought was kind of exciting tonight. Remember I said I saw some liquid drop? When I was putting away the smoker I saw a drop of liquid on it too. Sticky liquid.... Honey? or just nectar? I'm gonna say honey which is kind of exciting. They are producing and eventually we should get some honey harvested. Awesome!