This story begins with a simple hive inspection on Sunday June 20th, it then spirals into chaos (poetic license). My weekly cursory inspection went very well, on Sunday we had some nice weather making the inspection process a pleasant one. Since all my hives are new this year I have to watch for when they start building the section of hive used for honey storage and sometimes drone production. The reason for this is the bees will build comb in the main broodnest that is about 1-1/4" from center to center at about 7/8" thick leaving almost exactly 3/8" between combs, once the broodnest gets big enough they will start building comb that has much larger cells, this they will space about 1-1/2" apart so if I were to leave all the bars spaced 1-1/4" center to center the comb would start getting further and further off center making it hard to remove comb one bar at a time. For this reason I cut 1/4" slates and place these between top bars in the honey section of each hive, some folks use two widths of bars it really just depends on preference.



As shown in the pictures above hive #7 was really booming, I was very pleased with #1 (as I call it Lazarus) since it has really grown from almost nothing to a large nuc size, I'm confident it will be big enough to winter by august.
Sometime latter that afternoon I get a call, it seems a bait hive I had hung in a nearby tree at the same location I cut the "lazy hive" out of had bees in it! This is the first time I had ever tried baiting a hive, it is really something when bees willingly move into a hive you built. I was so pleased, I like this kind of bee removal, drive over after nightfall when all the foragers are in the hive, staple screen over the entrance, remove hive and take home! Simple.




Day 2: June 21st (the madness continues)

I get up bright and early since today I have a cut-out to do at the same place as the first three. This house is a bee magnet the owner said they have had bees for thirty plus years, this is one of four locations, each location sporting multiple colonies, that I have found feral surviving bees. Bees that have wintered, are thriving throwing off swarms.

Now with this cut-out I had as (I do with every cut-out) surveyed the situation before loading up the car with my equipment, most cut-outs I do take about 5 to 8 hours total, so it isn't quick. These bees were nice enough when standing outside their hive initially. Once I started pulling off the wood they became downright nasty, now I wouldn't call them killer bees since those will chase you for miles, but they were still very unhappy with me, I had to use my smoker to keep the alarm pheromone covered up a little, I could actually smell it when I was close enough to the hive itself. It took some doing but I managed to remove brood and bees, using my bee vacuum and brush I got the brood comb into my nuc with bees to cover it, then sucked up 95% of the leftover bees. Unfortunately I failed to find the queen. Now she might have gotten sucked up into my bee vac, in which case I should have her here. If I missed her leaving her behind she will probably die. This sounds sad but realistically it's only a small setback for the colony, they will raise a new queen using eggs, then roll right along like nothing happened. I'm positive I saved some eggs, to be sure I'm going to check in three days to see if I have new eggs (in this case the queen is still here) or new queen cells (this means she isn't and the bees are fixing the problem). If I don't see ether of these things I will wait another three days and check, if needed I will add a bar of new eggs from another hive. By the way working on top of a ladder is nasty business I wouldn't recommend it. I got home installed the bees, installed the bait hive (it was just resting on the lid of a full length hive), then crashed.


Day 3: Cycle of life

Day three was turning out to be just another average Tuesday, until we noticed that hive #7 was swarming! A swarm is like nothing else, basically an entire hive is flying around, swarms are how honey bees reproduce, the old queen will decide to swarm when there are enough bees to leave behind a healthy hive and enough to take and start a new hive. She takes some (ten thousand or so, some swarms are bigger then others) bees and leaves the old hive, usually she lays eggs in several queen cups before leaving so the old colony has new queens on the way. the swarm will buzz around for a while then settle on some branch or other place until a new home can be found by scout bees, once the new home is located the swarm will take off and colonise this new location. In this way one colony becomes two. Effectively reproducing the species. All of this is OK if the swarm is a normal size and the hive is strong and healthy and swarms for normal reasons, a lot of bee-keepers hate swarms simply because their bees are leaving, as long as the bees have enough space inside the hive then they shouldn't swarm unnaturally often. At any rate once they have decided to swarm there isn't much you can do to stop them aside from artificially swarming a hive by removing the old queen and some bees/brood to start a nuc. Swarms are notoriously quick at building new colonies so if you can catch them they make exellent hives. One problem is often they will settle on a tall tree out of reach, as happened this time. Well I got a ladder and pruner (the kind that is mounted on a long pole with a rope) wiggled up the tree and cut the branch off. I had no idea what would happen when the branch fell some thirty feet to the ground, it wasn't a large branch so hopefully the bees wouldn't get damaged. It all turned out well once the branch was on the ground the bees just settled on it making it easy to pick up and shake off into one of my hive bodies, poof insta hive! I kept an eye on them for a bit to make sure they didn't leave (as they sometimes do) that was that! Three new hives in as many days.

Hive #6 has worried me from the moment I removed it from the wall I got it from. They seem to have a problem with "chalk brood" as I understand it chalk brood is a fungus that infects a bee larva's digestion track causing it to starve, the larva then turns into what looks like a little chip of chalk, the bees will remove it from the comb. Now if I saw lots of chalk brood in the comb itself I would be worried, I always check for it, this hive though always seems to have it on the floor never in the comb itself. It is supposed to be caused in part by damp cold weather and or a weak hive that can not tend its brood properly, hopefully they will correct this problem when the weather warms up through the summer. At any rate this hive is off my nuc list (my list of hives I want to make splits from). All my other hive are fine and ultra clean If this problem persists I will have to re-queen #6.


Now this is something I really wanted to catch on camera, in the top right photo you can see a worker bee emerging from her cell ready to start working inside the hive.

Did you know bees sleep? Well on the left you can see a couple of workers with their buts poking out of some comb, they are on their backs motionless they aren't dead trust me. Another thing in the leftmost picture are a few drones.

You can see them building comb inside? This would prevent my float from working properly. I think what happened is I placed the feeder at the entrance side of the hive, this way it was too close to the cluster so they started working inside the feeder. I moved it to the other side with one blank top bar between the last comb. They had some honey stored up so I'm not to worried about the rain forecast for the next three days.

Talk about grumpy bees! I think the upcoming weather had them extra grumpy, now keep in mind I didn't use any smoke at all, I got stung four times just opening three hives! That's more then I was expecting to from all five hives, after the fourth sting I doned my trusty nitrile gloves, the bees were still extra grumpy but at least I didn't get stung. Bees have (like all life forms) a biorhythm, sometimes they are grumpy sometimes sweet, weather plays a big role in this, overcast cold or coming rain makes them nasty. If its in the evening more old (old bees tend to be meaner) bees are inside the hive back from foraging all day, spring is usually better then fall since bees are building up in spring with foraging prospects ahead whereas in the fall they are protecting their hive from predictors getting ready for winter. If there is a heavy flow and warm (not boiling hot) weather they are usually sweet, conversely a sparse flow makes them grumpy. Like all things in nature bees are 100% predictable if you know all the variables and we can't always be sure we do, this adds mystery to bee-keeping!

The weather was a bit cool today (17c high 8c low), as this picture shows that didn't seem to slow my bees down at all, in fact they seem busier then ever, I'm sure they must be taking off (population wise). My thinking is if its cool plus there are a lot of foragers out then there must also be a lot of bees inside to cover brood. For some reason it always makes me happy when my bees are happy, I must be suffering from some kind of mental sickness. Nevertheless I would rather be nutty then live without passion.

Today I also got another hive! I put this bunch of bees in hive #5 this makes 5 hives. This latest cut out was actually a recent swarm probably swarmed 4 or 5 days ago, they didn't have any brood aside from a small comb of eggs, so I know the queen is laying. I had a hard time finding her because of the lack of a proper broodnest, she always hangs out in the center of the hive near the brood since her roll in life is laying eggs. When I cut out a hive I try to remove the surrounding comb first so she has no place to go, this makes finding her much simpler. This time I couldn't do that due to the lack of brood, I ended up removing honey comb first then vacuuming up the remaining clump of bees always watching for the queen. I almost missed her as she vanished into my bee-vac hose! So I'm freaking out a bit hoping I didn't kill her or injure her, she wont be able to lay eggs if she is damaged. Upon inspection of the bees already inside my bee-vac I saw her moving around, whew! What a relief, she didn't even look upset, but man was she small I have never seen a laying queen this small before, anyhow her size doesn't worry me, all my feral bees seem to have smallish queens as long as she is viable. So after I caught her in one of my queen clips (extremely useful little things) I got them all back to my apiary unscathed and moved them into hive #5 I hung the queen clip from a bar closed up the hive with a full feeder and let them settle down. About 5:30pm the same day I went back and released the queen, I didn't release her directly because they had no brood so I was risking them absconding if she got to agitated, so hopefully releasing her in the evening will help.

You can see the second spot where old comb was left over from the other cut out I did, bees will take over an empty hive that still has comb in it if they can.  That's 5! and counting

Today the weather was moderate cool for June (25c ish), so I was surprised when I noticed my hives elevated activity level, they usually get busy in waves, lots of bees then few bees then lots ect.. It was all day this time, then this evening they were fanning more then usual. Ever since the apples quit blooming the bees seemed slow, like they didn't want to go to work, then today that seemed to change. Clover is starting so maby the flow has improved, after the apples I couldn't see any major nectar producing plant. They were even foraging bird vetch, which they most other times ignore completely. Another thing that could have happened, ether timed too or coinciding with, is a brood explosion, this is when a lot of brood emerges at once drastically increasing a colony's available foraging population. It would be interesting to know how well timed these two events are "brood explosion" and "start of a major flow". As for myself, I am just a humble observer content to watch all my little ladies work hard all day, well almost almost all day.

I still have to get those four hives completed before I run out of hives to put bees in. I think these four hive bodies have turned out very well, best I have built so far. I used my router to add a convex curve to all the edges making them look more finished, I'm planning on posting a build along of sorts on how I build my hives.

Yes it is the begining of swarm season, or as I call it "reproductive season". I got my first indication of this exhilarating event today when a guy calls me about fifty or so bees buzzing around the inside of his window, turns out to be the same guy I got hive #7 from. He asked if he could vacuum up these fifty bees, I said yes but he could also open the screen and they would just fly away. Grateful that he wouldn't have to kill a lot of bees he hung up. As I walked away from the phone it rings again, I pick up.

Hello? Yes he says, I think I have more then fifty bees he says.

He was walking towards the window when he heard the wall buzzing, the same wall that I had cut open to get hive #7 from. He also has a lot of bees at the old hive's exterior entrance. Sounds to me like he has the lucky blessing of a new colony only two weeks after the old one was removed! So I might have hive number 5 (not designation 5 but numerical 5) if I can get these new bees out of the wall and into my box. I'm not sure what to expect, I have never removed a new swarm like this before, should bee fun!

Every time I open a hive I am presented with more interesting things to photograph. The more I work with bees the more I realise how amazing they are, one thing I have noticed is the smell of a healthy hive, you can smell honey being produced, brood being raised, propolis when opening a hive. If the bees get upset with you they produce an alarm pheromone, the queen will have a particular scent, its just incredible and like most anything else in life has to be experienced!
Have you ever seen bee knot work? Nether have I. This is some leftover rubber bands they have been trying to remove, they even drug a bunch of them to the other end of the hive in an attempt to dump them!

And here you can see the same knot being worked on by the cleaning crew, comon girls heave too! We can do it!! (insert motivational speech)


Now this is an interesting example of a queens preference for newer comb, I was wondering how the cut out comb would look once they built new comb on it.
You can see the capped brood around the edge in the light new comb, but only pollen and honey in the old dark comb. Having seen this I think I will have to start cycling out the cut out comb sooner then planed.