Bees swarming or kicking out a failing queen?

Perhaps it started last evening at 5:30PM. I went out in the yard and found what looked like an extra big orientation flight, like the bees do during spring build. Summer flights are usually smaller as the brood grows more slowly when there is not much food for them. For those of you that did not know what a orientation flight is, it is what the bees do at about 3 weeks of age. They are now ready to become forager bees and the orientation flight is done in front of the hive so the bees can orient on where the hive is so they can return safely. Bees might forage 2 miles away so knowing where home is is very important!

So these bees were giving me the impression they were getting ready to swarm, but I have never seen a swarm coming out of a hive at the beginning. I looked skyward and did not see any bees leaving the area, nor building up in greater numbers. Was heading to the Caswell County Beekeepers club meeting so I had to leave.

This is a video of the bees in front of the hive that evening. I got stung in the forehead just as I finished videotaping this.

Jump forward to 2pm the next day. I'm waiting for an animal control officer to show up, yep I called them about the neighbors, some of you might recall last year? Next post I'll fill you in. So anyway I'm in the yard and look at some extra bees in the air, then on the ground I see a small handful of bees. I look closer and see a queen bee, this is 15 foot from the hive mentioned above. See in the video below.

I look around more bees moving in the grass, air and I find a slightly bigger cluster of bees. So I grabbed them by hand and looked for another queen as I drop them into an empty hive box. No queen in this bigger pile of bees. Here is a video of the second cluster of bees.

So I then grab up the other bees, no I let her crawl onto my hand, then I dropped her into the hive box. Only a few bees pay her any attention. I then notice she has a broken wing and is dragging one of her hind legs. Question is did the bees swarm last evening and she had a bad bad night? Or did the bees expel her after superseding her with a fresh new queen? Or had she been stung by a new queen? The hive appeared to still be full of bees. One clue I have that says we had a swarm is the writing spider web in the tomato plant had 15 balled up bees in the web, yes 15 not the normal day for a spider in an out of the bee flight path place. This video has the queen in the center of the bees, near the end you can see she is damaged.

Left to meet customers and Meg and I ate dinner out. We got back just before dark and found the bees clustering over her right where I left her on the ground below the hive.  I think she fell off the landing board before I left at 2PM. Here they are in this short video, I then covered them with a hive cover for the night as it was starting to sprinkle.

Downed beehive in a tree!

On Sunday I was building a top bar hive with Ursula and Wyatt and received  a call from Annallys. Annallys had a friend with a storm knocked down tree with a beehive in the end of it. So we installed the legs on the top bar hive and headed over to help Annallys. There are only a few of us in the area with a bee vacuum, so we loaded my bee vacuum up and headed over there with bee suits.

This was a sizable hive,  in the center of a 14 inch hollow oak tree. David met us there with his chain saw, stayed a short while and took Wyatt and the chain saw home. A neighbor had already left a chain saw for us to use. Bad move on my part for not checking out the chain saw before David left with his. So when we were ready to cut the log, the chain saw would not start. Tried a hand saw and just could not cut the oak log.

Here is a report on the extraction of these bees. I mainly provided limited help, provided instruction on using the bee vac and took photos and video. Annallys and Ursula did most of the work.

 Above is the bottom of the hive, the tree split right at the bottom. Annallys and Ursula were vacuuming up the bees, normally there would have been more bees on these combs. Annallys pulled two of these combs out that were over 2 foot long, watch the last video below.

 Annallys cutting the comb inside the log.

 Some of the first combs removed  were chewed by Small Hive Beetles so these were not reclaimed for the bees to reuse. I was told they had a huge cluster of beetles on these combs.

 The log with the combs removed after we took a break from vacuuming. A queen was needed as Annallys and Ursula found a dead queen on one of the combs pulled it, it appeared she was crushed between the combs when the tree fell. An attempt was made Sunday night to get a queen to lure away these bees, no luck on that.

This video shows Ursula smoking the bees while Annallys vacuums them up! 

 Here is Ursula vacuuming up the bees with my bee vac.

The video above is the log after we cleaned it out and took a small break from the near 90 degree heat. A lot of bees returned back to the bee log!

Above in this video Annallys is rubber banding in brood comb into an empty frame.

 This video shows Annallys pulling out two combs nearly 2 foot long. She hands them to Ursula and she boxes them for her.


So we started on Sunday afternoon, gave up around 5 PM. Monday Annallys found a queen and on Tuesday she chain sawed open the log, cleaned it up and hived the bees!!! I stopped by without my camera and picked up my bee vac. The bees were happily inside a hive with two boardman feeders inside the top of the hive.

Done deal right? Nope there was a small swarm  40 foot up in a tree over the house, very small swarm. Luckily Annallys had a small hive to lure it into and I just happened to have a swarm lure in my truck. Guess we'll wait and see what happens next.

You know it amazes me, this is twice this year this has happened. Bees find there way into someones house or yard and the people living there end up taking an active roll in helping to rescue the bees! Eliza helped Annallys all along the way, even went with her to get a queen.

OCBA/ACBA joint beekeepers field day

Today our local Bee club the Orange County Beekeepers Association and the Alamance County Beekeepers Association had a joint field day at Lewis's bee yard in the blue berry patch. We opened up beehives in two groups and looked at the bees. Lots of new discoveries were made my some of the newer beekeepers. I brought my friend Scott along and it was his first time with a group of beekeepers. We installed Scott's first package three weeks ago, more on that in a bit.

Above and below is a queen we found. The queen above you can see eggs, the little white specks in the cells around her. The photo below shows the queen surrounded by nurse bees.

Lewis showed everyone how to collect bees and do a sugar shake test for varroa mites. The tested proved the mites were at a medium level, not bad enough to worry about yet.

The video below is Lewis pulling out drone brood looking for varroa mites. The first two brood had mites, that did not look so good. Luckily the other eight he pulled were mite free.

We also did a test for hygienic behavior in the hive. We set a four inch pipe over some capped brood and poured on liquid nitrogen on the brood to freeze the brood. If hygienic the bees would have pulled and cleaned the dead brood in 24 hours. Lewis had done a test the day before and the bees did not clean up the dead brood at all.

After the field day we stopped to check Scott's three week old bees. We found 8 frames drawn and everything looked great! Below is a frame from the hive. You can see honey on the top and a reasonable pattern of capped brood.

I returned at dark to Scott's with the bees that were occupying my swarm trap in a tree. These bees have 8 frames in the trap for eleven days, we looked and found 6 frames drawn already, including 4 that had foundation strips only. One thing I learned taking down the swarm trap 12 foot up in a tree. It was screwed to the tree, very hard to take down and still have a screw gun in you hand with the bee box too. When I hang it back up I'll hook it on  some screws so it can be taken down with out a screw gun.

 Surely the box was 15 pounds heavier than when I placed it in the tree. I'm hoping these bees will be moved to the farm with my other hive there. Six hives in our little backyard seems like a lot to Meg.

Next post will be about the garlic we planted last fall. Biggest garlic we have grown, one can barely get their hand around one.

More bees??

Guess we have enough bees here now. I have to talk to the owners of the farm down the road to see if they want more bee hives. Yesterday I removed bees from a ceiling in a closet about 5 miles from here. We dropped the bees into the box of bees I took out of a basement a few weeks ago. Used  newspaper between boxes so the bees can adjust to each other in the same hive, otherwise they might just kill each other.

Lindsey lives in the house where we took out the bees, just days before told me she moved downstairs because she was afraid of bees. Well yesterday she helped me with removing the bees, she did not even get stung. She took a lot of photos and video as I was removing the bees. Guess what I forgot to put the battery back in my camera. Hopefully she'll send me some photos on CD and I can show you some of the action. This video of me installing the bees into a hive Lindsey took with my camera in my back yard.

So I checked the big hive that Kitty and I cut out in Hillsborough several weeks ago, they were pissed I got 3 stings in the legs through my jeans. Both 10 frames deeps are nearly full of honey and a little pollen. Thinking I need to get them a queen on Saturday as no eggs or brood were seen.

My split nuk that I pulled from the mother hive on March 15th got a queen on Friday, finally. They had 4 deep frames of honey and I gave them 5 new frames. The top bar hive I can now see three combs from the window and I checked one comb it was full of eggs!

So we have 5 hives here in the yard and one at a farm currently, not seeing getting anymore as I'm now too busy to work anymore hives. And I believe I have one hive that needs a queen and this newest one we'll have to wait and see if it needs a queen.

The garden report. April 21 I noticed waterlilies blooming in the pond, never seen them before May before. Also on April 21 we ate our first Sugar Snap Peas, last year on May first I took photos of the flowers not the peas!

Rain we have had lots of rain, first April in years we have had this much rain. Barely missed a frost on Monday night hope we are done with that.


The reason you have not seen any posts from me lately is we moved Meg's mom and step father last weekend, it is still not finished. No help from her brother who lives 30 miles away nor the 3 step siblings. Nice to have some help, would it have been nice.

Honey Bee swarm grabbed today

This morning I was home taking care of business and got a call from the OCBA Swarm Patrol that a swarm was in a tree and  could I go get it? I said yes as I looked at the cardboard nuk box Meg bought me 2 weeks ago. So I rushed about to put the box together and gathered my things to go get this swarm 7 foot up in a tree. Brought the camera but left the memory card, darn..

Got there and the swarm was huge 4-5 pounds of bees and more like 10 foot up in the tree. My 6 ft ladder was too short. The home owner offered her pick up to set up the ladder in, now the ladder is 9 foot tall good enough. I'd recently hurt my finger and it is in a split, so I'm a little disadvantaged in getting this big swarm. So I'm up in the back of the truck, I see the method I'll use. The limbs are nearly 3 inches and will hardly shake. So I set the ladder under them as support if the box gets to heavy. I climb up on the side of the truck bed and grab hold of the limb for balance and shake the bees off. With my good hand I hold the card board nuk box just a few inches under the bees. I shake it as hard as I could and half the bees dropped right into my box! The other half stayed on the limb.

I set the box down in the bed of the truck and cover it. Bees start moving in, a few at a time. No bees are exiting, a very good sign. The rest of the bees thousands of them start to take flight in a swarm, they leave, circle and return. Bees everywhere in the air around us for a good 30 minutes. The bed liner in the truck looks like a landing strip, at first a foot wide and two foot long, growing to a mass of bees a foot wide by over four foot long. All moving slowly or waiting their turn as bees proceeded into the box 8-10 at a time. And no memory card, it was so cool!

By the time only 40-50 bees were left I closed up the box and headed home with them. Thinking Meg will have a fit with me setting up a 6th hive in the yard. OK I'm going to the farm down the street, I'd talked about putting bees there a month ago, they were cool with it. I found the owner as they were eating lunch. We went and sighted out a spot for the bees, she carried the bees and I grabbed a concrete block to set them on. Set the bees up on the block and opened it up. With in minutes the bees were bearding out of the small nuk box as shown below.

Looked to me as if they were going swarm as this nuk box was too little to start with this many bees. I went home and gathered up a 10 frame hive box and another concrete block to set them on. I painted the lid and bottom and then put foundation in frames I already had put together. All as the bees foamed out the front of the nuk.

After the hive was ready I grabbed the box and shook the bees off the front. Opened the nuk to find the two frames inside covered in bees and the rest of the box as well. Set the frames with bees inside and waited. Again a big flight of bees in the air and finally most went into the new bee hive.

 

I returned an hour of so later to get the cardboard nuk box and was told that one of the farm workers had been stung already. They laughed at me and said the bees were just settling in. I'm thinking another box will need to be put on this hive in a week or so. So I now have a sunny spot of my bees on a one acre farm. 

 Promised you I would show you the rest of the new top bar hive Meg painted. Above is the Bee Express and the honey cell window. Below is the flowers side. The bee package was installed on Saturday. Really did not need to buy bees, today's bees would have loved this hive. I released the queen tonight, not much progress could be seen thought it has been made in just two days.

 The bee hive we cut out a week ago Saturday, I looked in on Friday. Bees hatching, drones galore and the combs all were secured to the frames already. Bad news is on Saturday David and I looked at the front of the hive and counted at least 6 bees with deformed wing virus on the ground in front of the hive.

The nuk I split from the main hive 30 days ago had a small amount of drone brood in it, I'll wait a few more days to see if it gets worker brood or not, and get a queen for them if need be.

Never thought bees would be so much fun. I mentioned my friend David was over on Saturday. They had an empty hive he was getting ready to install a package in next week. While they were here visiting  a swarm moved into his hive!

More on gardening soon. Below is a camellia that surprised me on Saturday Camellia japonica 'April Dawn' our second ever bloom.

Been watering like crazy, no rain in sight everything is wilting with temps reaching into the mid 80s already. Broke the sprinkler this morning. Replaced the sprinkler and bought a broken one today. Meg found a really good metal sprinkler on her way home tonight.

New Kenya Top Bar Hive!

I know some of you have been waiting to see the Kenya Top Bar Hive I built and Meg painted. Found plans on the internet and modified them to suit my needs. It was built mostly from scrap wood, the bars, roof, trim and legs. I bought the 1 x 12s spruce for the main box and joined them to become 1 x 14s, spent about $30 on that wood. The bottom screen and roof tin was scrap I had laying around. I'm a handyman, so I get lots of left overs and cut offs.

The legs are treated 2 x 4s. Normally one should not paint treated lumber until it has dried for 3-6 months, these 2 x 4s were about a year old, so painting them was not a problem. You can see under the back where you can insert a sticky board to do mite tests.

The landing board is cedar so it can remain unpainted and still hold up a long time outside. The sides are painted also, you'll just have to wait for another post to see them and the window I made to look inside. Funny thing about this hive is Meg has an antique bread box, looks just about like this hive in design and size. The package of Italian bees for this hive are coming this Saturday.

My last post was the bee cut out, my first as lead person. It was a blast, I stayed mostly calm and the bees did not get too upset. Anyway Yesterday I looked at the hives in the morning. Found the Kimberly swarm collected last Monday had absconded, only one bee was in the box. So we went from three beehives to four on Saturday and back to three hives on Sunday.

 Wait look up a swarm from the new feral bees 30 foot up in one of our oaks. I took this photo and the below video from our roof top. Meg found it as I was showering getting ready to be with Meg's family for Easter. Couldn't do anything that high up in the tree anyway. So I placed some honey comb in a swarm box on the woods deck and some comb in the new top bar hive before we left. The swarm trap was still 12 foot up a tree very close to my swarm. We returned 4 hours later and bees were coming and going in the swarm trap up in the tree. So I've got frames in the swarm box I'm letting them move in then I take them down after dark in a few days and place then in a dual nuk, back to 4 hives...

Meg and I crushed and strained feral honey last night, not bottled it yet we might have a gallon of it. Strong taste lets you know your eating honey that is for sure. Our first honey harvest, yeah! Now I have 2-3 pounds of old wax I'm going to melt in a solar melter and see if we get yellow wax or not.

Back to gardening. Meg's mother is moving Meg has been bringing home plants from her garden. Hostas, hellebores, daisies, daffodils, Lilies of the Valley and others. One hellebore was 3 foot across, still another one like it left there. It'll wilt out and reduce in size some what, still beautiful.

Queen Kimberly

The swarm I caught on Monday was pretty small covering only 1 1/2 frames in the hive. Today I moved them into a 10 frame deep made into a dual nuk. In other words one hive box that holds two smaller bee colonies.

Anyway the girls were very easy to work with no threats from any of them. I did get photos of queen Kimberly as seen below in the center of the photos. I'm no expert but she looks to be a very mature queen and not a virgin queen as one might expect when seeing two swarms and this was the little swarm.

 To me these bees seem very dark when compared to my blond Italian bees. Could they be Russian or feral ? Funny, I was sitting in my chair watching the bees and I noticed a different cadence in the buzzing coming from these bees. Might it have been because of the empty foundation?

As you can see they have a lot of work to draw comb so she can lay eggs. I do not have any extra drawn frames yet. The wax foundation was just barely drawn in a few places.

My first swarm capture!

Today I got a call from our local bee club (Orange County Beekeepers Association) that two swarms were in an Eastern Red Cedar tree not too far away. I gathered my gear and headed over there. Once I arrived I knew why the bees were there, the garden was fabulous with lots of flowers for the bees.

 One swarm was bigger and about 20 foot up in a 25 foot tall cedar, not very promising to get to at all. The other swarm was about 7 foot up and easy to get to. So I readied myself to get the lower swarm and the upper swarm took flight just as Meg arrived. Meg followed the swarm up the hill and into a woodland where it looked hopeless to find them and on private property. I stayed with the lower swarm ans focused on capturing it.

My first attempt at getting the bees was to cut off the small limb they were on, the limb was heavier than expected and the bees missed my box on the ground by a foot or more. I did get maybe 100 bees in the box. We watched the bees enter the box to investigate for 10 minutes or so. By then the swarm regathered close to where they were to start with in the tree. Decisions had to be made, so I set up the ladder and grabbed the box with  bees inside removed the cover and knocked the bees into the box. Most went in the box!!!

Put the cover on and placed the box on a stump, the bees were going in, none coming out, a good sign. Within 30 minutes most bees were inside the box. The box is actually an 8 frame deep, cover and a screwed on plywood bottom. It  had 2 undrawn frames of foundation and a swarm lure inside.


Left the bees to figure it out and came back at dark to bring the box of bees home. Kimberly the homeowner assured me that all the bees did go inside. I set them down next to the big hive and we'll see in the morning as I need to add more frames and figure out  how to get these girls into a hive. We'll be naming this hive Kimberly.

Update the morning after. The bees are still there barely covering 2 frames. I gave them a boardman feeder full of sugar syrup. Only 5 dead bees in the bottom of the box. Now I need to decide what to do with them being such a small colony?

Oh, today I found 2 Tulip Poplar blooms on the ground in the hellebore garden, so it begins. Bees time to get busy and gather nectar and make lots of honey.

Swarm Traps and Nuk

I thought some of you might enjoy seeing the new nuk beehive and the swarm traps I made.

 Here is the new nuk entirely made by myself mostly from scrap lumber. I did buy a 1 x 12 to make the deep body. The roof top is left over aluminum flashing. The bees are getting adjusted as I only saw a few of them coming and going today. The glass jar is a boardman sugar water feeder.

 Here is my home made swarm trap. I found 10 pcs of 3/8" plywood 10" x 36" in the clean wood pile at the landfill, enough to make 4 bodies as shown here. The bottoms and tops were from left overs in my wood shed. To hang it seevthat board sticking up in the back is the mounting strip, one can screw it to a tree. The house stain was left over from a house we painted a few years ago. So the only things I had to buy was the frames, foundation, wood glue and staples.

 Here is the inside of the swarm trap. I drilled 4 small holes in the bottom in case it gets wet inside. It is hard to see the cleats made from 2 x 4 cut offs hold up the frames and foundation.

Here is one of my swarm traps attached to a tree 12 foot up in the air. Both traps had 4-6 bee scouts  investigating them today! Been told these swarm lures can be detected by bees up to 1'4 mile away.

I checked the two beehives in the near by meadow today, one going strong the other not so strong.

Just heard my first bullfrog of the year a minute ago! Also found my first dragonflies and damselflies today. Had a Blue Corporal flying over the pond, a Common Green Darner hovering over the garden path and a mystery dragon fly being chased by a duskywing butterfly.

 Oh yeah then there was the Rat Snake, yes a Rat Snake. I was in the basement with the door open working on a stained glass project. I moved to the glass grinder and on the floor was a 2 ft Rat Snake was crawling by, I tried to grab it and it took off. So somewhere in our little basement is a snake hunting some of the mice in there. Hope to spend at least an hour in there tomorrow working on my project maybe it'll slip outside like a good snake.

Bee swarm rescue 60 ft up in pine tree!

Yesterday I went to help Chris and Lucy attempt to rescue a bee swarm 60 ft up in a Lobolly pine tree at a summer camp nearby. This late in the year when bees swarm the chances of them surviving the winter is pretty slim. Bee hives need to store at least 40 pounds of honey to make it though the winter and need to be a large enough colony to make a cluster at least as big as a soccer ball, bigger would be much better. The more bees in a cluster the more effective they are at warming the brood and themselves for the next generation. Collecting the swarm would give them a better chance of survival as the beekeeper can feed them all winter long and give them better odds at making it through the winter.

 This is the bee swarm that was 60 foot (18-19 meters) up in the pine tree. I took this photo with my 400 mm lens, not the best photo the lighting was very difficult.

 The observation beehive at  Camp Chestnut Ridge, this hive was given to them by the Museum of Life and Sciences when theirs was replaced with a new one. We observed the hive closely and saw several supersedure cells  where the worker bees were attempting to replace the queen. The bees were removing dead or infected larva constantly, not a good sign. We also saw several dead Yellow Jackets being removed from the hive. The screened port in the lower center smelled pretty bad, I don't know the odors to look for it, seemed grim to me.

 Here is Chris making his way up the tree using slings to climb the tree.

 At the top you can see the swarm, my estimate perhaps 12,000 bees in the swarm. Chris is setting up rigging to tie off the limb so it does not drop to the ground when he cuts it.

 This was very hard work, he is smiling just the same.

 Above the tree limb with the bees is rigged and almost ready to cut. Afraid of heights? He is 60 foot up and the tree sways often.

The limb is cut, it drops faster than expected. Chris told us maybe a 1000 bees stayed on the limb. The other 11,000 or so took flight and made an impressive sight seeing them swirl all around the limb. Then it happened, they just vanished! We looked nearby and could not relocate them.

Before heading out yesterday I placed a sticky board at the bottom of our hive to check for mites, this morning the results came in 3-4 mites, 15 would be bad, so we passed inspection for now. Also saw our first Small Hive Beetle and the board had a dead beetle larva on it.

Rain, yes this morning perhaps an half inch of rain fell. The lower rain tote overflow drain worked for the first time, it watered the camellia bush very good. The upper rain tote of the shed still is no way near full. So we have perhaps 350 gallons of rain water in storage, more than we have ever had. Currently with the two totes we could store around 550 gallons.

Tomorrow is the Durham Butterfly Count I'll be leading a group or going by myself (Meg and Sharna are here but they are spending time with Meg's son who is leaving to go overseas with the army very soon.) The normal butterfly areas I have covered in the past look pretty dismal from lack of rain and mowing by the highway department. So I'll be covering the Eno River State Park which I know very well. The state parks manage their mowing much better than the highway department so I should do fairly well there.

We had a Common Wood-Nymph in the tomato patch today, normally we see one every other year or so here.