Fall Cleanup

 

Fall is here. Colors are beautiful, the days are getting shorter and the bees are getting ready for winter.

 

Yuck! Got some wax moth damage. This frame will go in the freezer.

 

The bees are still flying a little when they can if they get a break from the rain and the wind but the days are pretty short. I'm done feeding and all three hives are up over 100lbs. I thought I was going to over-winter a nuc but hive #3 went queenless out of the blue a couple of weeks ago so I combined it with the nuc. There's not much left to do other than pull the Apivar strips out next week and put the insulating boxes on top after it really gets cold.

Fair

The Spokane Fair has come and gone!  The boys and I spent an afternoon working at the bee club booth.

 

Toby gets his product ready to sell.

 

Taking a break. A four hour shift is a lot for an 8-yr old.

 

Working up an appetite selling honey? Ok.

 

The annuals are looking good at Manito Park but there's not much for the bees to eat. The hives are losing weight every day. I'm feeding them sugar syrup 2-3 times a week and trying to build them up. 

 

Yuck! What's this? The mite count has spiked up just like last year. Ugh. From 6:300 to 32!!  Not good. So now I have Apivar strips in the hives for the next six weeks. 

Honey Harvest

It's that time of year again for buckets and bottling.

 

It was a better harvest than last year but not by a lot: about 130 lbs. That's enough for me to replenish my stash and share/sell a little but not as much as I was hoping for. What happened? Good question. I think the swarming and re-queening were the main issues. The hives just didn't have the big numbers of foragers at the right time. The queens did eventually kick in and raised a lot of brood but by then the big flow was already over. Looking at the scale data, it's pretty clear that we had one big flow when the locust trees were blooming late spring/early summer. This was followed by a dearth and then another smaller flow in late July/early August. I can't wait to see what happens next year and see how it compares. I wonder if this year was typical or not. If it was, I'm hoping the scale data can help predict what to expect and help me be better prepared next year.

My mite count was good after I got the supers off but I'll check it again in a couple of weeks. Seems like the numbers spike after they get rid of the drones. 

Next, time to go to the fair!

Mid-Summer Update

It's been a busy June and July. All three hives have had me on my toes.  The swarm hive did indeed swarm and raised a new queen. I don't want to put up with that every year so I re-queened with a nuc that I raised off the daughter of Bob's queen.

 

And now it's the star of the apiary!

 

Look at this! Pink pollen. How cool. I don't think I've seen that before.

 

It could have come from the astrantia. That's been a bee magnet this week. Or maybe the oregano?

 

Toby likes to watch the bees. The scale hive had a few too many mites in the drone brood when I changed it a couple of weeks ago so I bit the bullet and put formic acid strips on all three hives and the two nucs. A formal sugar shake count didn't look too bad but the numbers are only going up from here, so why take a chance?  I think I read that the mite population doubles in a month.

The scale hive went queenless last month and raised a new one. I hate to say it but it might have been my fault as it happened right after inspection. Yikes.  I guess there's a first time for everything. They seem to be doing ok but I'm sure they lost a little momentum. 

So in all, the hives all have new queens this summer: one raised by me, one purchased and one emergency replacement. I think that probably hurt the honey harvest a bit but it still looks better than last year. The big honey flow was in late April to mid-May but then they got going again in mid-June. They have been losing weight like crazy in the last week so it's looking like the dearth is here. They're also building up propolis everywhere. Just what you want to be struggling with in the middle of August when you're harvesting honey! I guess it's all part of the natural cycle. I'm hoping for some rain to get some more flowers blooming.

Testing New App

Pretty, but no bee food here! 

 

A pretty conifer in a friend's yard.

Swarms and Supers

We're well into the spring nectar flow now and a lot is going on.

Now that is the lawn of a beekeeper! Good dandelion crop this year.

The scale hive continues to be the star of the bee yard.  One full super and filling the second. Some queen cups but no real swarm cells. 

And photogenic to boot.

Their grandmother was from Bob's nuc last year and I think she was part Italian. I raised the mother here last summer so the drone fathers were from Spokane.

I'm trying to raise some more queens from this hive this spring and have a few cells cooking in a nuc.

The bad news is that the other two hives aren't doing as well. This is a queen I got at Tate's to re-queen the hive that was Bob's nuc last year. They were looking puny with a scattered brood pattern and they had mites. In April! So I treated with formic and got the counts down from 25 to 2 (per 300 bees).  Then I bit the bullet and killed the old queen (hate that!) and put the new one in. We'll see if she's any good. If she is, I'll try to raise a queen or two off of her. That would improve the diversity in my apiary.

And then there's the swarm from last year. They were building up like crazy and also filled a super but really wanted to swarm. I guess that should come as no surprise. I kept pulling brood frames out for nucs and cut out the swarm cells but I think they went and swarmed anyway! At last check I saw only capped brood, no eggs or open brood and no queen. If that hive was on a scale I'd know for sure. Anyway, I was prepared to risk it since I was thinking of re-queening it anyway. I think I'll put a frame of eggs from the scale hive in and see what they do with it. If they start making emergency cells I know they're queenless. If not, I missed the queen somehow. I'm kind of hoping they are queenless and then can just raise a new one from the scale hive. Fingers crossed!

Souvenir

I got a great souvenir on our trip to Maui this month:

A stylized honey bee perched on a jewel. It took almost three hours! So cool.

April Flowers

We've had some beautiful sunny days here this week and flowers are popping open all over town. I see dandelions, ornamental cherries, bulbs, and even azalea blooming now.

My hellebore have been blooming for weeks. So pretty.

The bees are getting serious about foraging for water, pollen and nectar.  Check out the scale data from the last three days:

It's gaining weight! About a pound a day net gain for the last three days. You can see the dip as they all leave the hive in the morning and then the steep climb that peaks at dinner time. Then there's a slow drop overnight as they reduce the moisture content. They're also consuming food stores and raising brood like crazy right now. This is a 2-deep 8

frame hive that has 9-10 frames of brood as of a week ago. They're starting to ramp up drone production too so you know what that means? Swarm season is coming. Let's hope we don't see the hive lose five pounds in a day from a swarm! Stay tuned. I will probably make up a nuc or two in the next month. 

Blue Bees

Cool! Blue pollen.

It's from the Scilla bulbs in the front yard.

Tele Update

It's been about a month now that I've been using the SolutionBee hive scale. It is a lot of fun to see what the bees have been up to!

The green is the temperature, orange is the weight. This is the data from the last week. The weight is starting to fluctuate more than it did in February. Some days there is a net gain but the overall trend is still going down. They do gain weight on rainy days from all of the moisture but I've noticed the weight go up a little on warm days too. 

There's lots of pollen coming in.

And what goes in must come out!

Almost Spring

I had a chance to have a peek at my hives last week for a quick inspection. Good news: all had brood and lots of bees. Two hives had about 2-3 frames of brood and one (a swarm from last year) was going to town with 4-5 frames. They were also starting to raise drones, too. That queen raised brood last year like crazy too but they never made much honey. We'll see how she does this year.

Lots of bees flying mid-afternoon this week. This is the hive with tons of brood. The other two aren't as strong and one has a fairly spotty brood patten. I'll have to think about re-queening if that keeps up. How? When? It's going to get really fun in the next month....  Swarm season is right around the corner! Might be a good time to make up some nucs and raise a couple of new queens? Let's go!

End of Winter?

Looks like another early spring.  The snow has melted and the bulbs and trees are starting to bloom. The bees are finding pollen to bring in even on 40 degree days.

They are going through their honey stores more quickly now and raising brood.  The hive on the scale is losing around a half a pound a day.

You can see the weight drop every day around "lunch time" when the temp warms up.

The hive with the biggest cluster was dropping a lot of weight so I gave them some extra feed with a 10lb bee candy sugar board.

There was a lot of moisture on the inner cover when I checked a couple of weeks ago so this may also serve to absorb some of it. I also added the supers filled with pine shavings.

Look at those stingers! They are not happy about being disturbed. I don't blame them. Can't wait till it's warm and sunny and the nectar flow starts.

Hive Telemetry!

We're going high tech this year!

I got a hive scale for Christmas. We had to wait for a thaw to put it on.

The scale sits underneath the hive and measures weight and temperature every 15 minutes. It has Bluetooth to send the data to my phone. I just push a button on the monitor and it downloads the data onto an app on my phone.

The green is the temp and orange is the weight. I can track how much weight it loses over the next couple of months as they go through the honey stores and raise brood. And then when the honey flow starts, I can watch the weight go up and know when to super (if all goes well!). 

I can't wait to see what the data looks like over the next few weeks.

2015 Wrap Up

Just a few supers worth of honey this year. I guess the good news is that the bottling and clean up went fast!

Mite counts started to spike up after the supers came off so I bit the bullet and put Apivar strips in all three hives in September. They came out the week before Halloween.

It was a nice mild fall and we didn't get a hard freeze until November.

A freak windstorm hit Spokane in November and trashed our front yard and damaged the house. The hives were untouched, thank goodness!

Snow's been on the ground pretty much ever since.

The snow is pretty deep in the back yard so I've been clearing it off the front entrance. Heat from the hives is melting it off the top. All three hives were over 100lbs going into winter so I'm crossing my fingers. Nothing to do now but wait and worry til Spring.

Almost Fall

The days are getting shorter and colder. The bees are supposed to be getting ready for winter by topping off their honey and pollen supplies. Two of our three hives seem to be getting into winter mode but one is still raising brood in full force. Maybe she's part Italian?

Full pollen baskets!

The mite counts were starting to climb from August to September so I have the Apivar strips on all three hives.