Old Frames From Our Robbed Bees That We Are Putting in the New Hives

Mar9

 

Here are the frames from our hive that was robbed of all its honey last summer. We are dividing these well-developed frames as the four side frames (two on each side of the existing bees) in each of our new hives. Having comb built out will save the bees a lot of energy. They will clean these old frames and fix them up to suit their hives. There are some dead larvae and a few dead bees, but no foulbrood or other disease.

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Bees are loving Sugar Fondant Candy

Mar4

When the hive was new, less than two weeks ago, it took the bees a week to drink the ball jar of syrup. Now, it’s taking them only two days. Similarly, the bees are making fast work of the candy fondant we put above the queen excluder, so we added more today. IMG_7057_1024They are putting wax on the queen excluder, but don’t seem to have spread out to the extra four frames much yet, so we don’t think it’s quite time to put a new super on top.

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Feeding our new bees

Feb27

Feeding Time:

It’s early spring here, and the bees don’t have honey on their frames we transferred from the nucs, so we must feed them. We’ve done that in two ways: liquid and cake food.

Here is the liquid food. I dissolved sugar and honey in hot water, then let it cool. I made the solution thicker than 1/1. I’d say it’s closer to 2/1 to give them a rich start for their colony building. Plus, we’re about to have 3-4 days of rain, and it’s still cool, so I didn’t think they needed hydration as much as sugar sustenance. This reminds me of having babies and thinking how much water to add to juice to dilute it in their bottles.

We used the kind of feeder for the liquid that gives the bees access from inside the hive because we worry about robbing bees. Basically, it’s a mason jar with holes in its lid, turned upside down that drips onto a container that the bees can get access to from the side facing into the hive.
We also added entrance reducers to the left of the feeder after I took this photo.

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The second kind of food I’m giving the bees are cakes of sugar that I made using 10 parts sugar to one part water. You boil water, add the sugar gradually until it dissolves. It will turn caramel color instead of white. Just as the mixture begins to reboil, you take it off the sheet and pour it on paper plates on which you’ve put waxed paper or plastic wrap (to make removing it easier). After it’s cooled, it breaks up nicely to put on top of the colony, and they’ll eat it slowly as needed.
I put these cakes above a queen excluder inside a ventilation shim that I bought from Evans Cedar Beehives in NJ.
After you’re done, you can turn any leftover sugar into sugar water solution for your liquid feeders.

IMG_1447_1024IMG_1471_1024   IMG_1470_1024   our lower hive                  IMG_1500_1024 our upper hive

Transferring Nucs into Langstroth Hives

Feb26

It was nice to see our queens in our nucs. Here is one laying eggs.

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Can you find the queen on the frame below?

IMG_1488_1024Hint: she’s about 1/3 of the way down, and 2/3 of the way over to the right.

Below are more photos of the overwintered frames of bees from our two nucs, as we put them into their new homes.  More in a few weeks when we see how they’ve expanded. We are giving them each 4 frames to grow into and lots of supplemental sugar to grow on.

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Two new nucs for 2014

Feb25

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We have two new nucs from Wildflower Meadows to replace the hives which died at the end of last summer (we think from being robbed of their honey).  Ants were attacking the nuc in the lower garden, so we quickly got on that and put tanglefoot around the legs of the stand.  Next Saturday, after a week, we’ll move the frames into our supers.

July -September- Hives are Humming, then 2&3 die abruptly

Jul22

We inspected the hives on July 4th and July 20-22nd, unrecalled dates in August, and September 14th

7/4/13

Hive 1:

 

  1. queen looked healthy
  2. many drones
  3. original frames look very full, but little or no expansion/wax creation on adjacent frames
  4. no wax yet above queen excluder
  5. curious removal of plasticell at perimeter (bottom) of new frames

Hive 2:

we had fed hives 2 & 3 “Brood Builder” – they seemed to really enjoy it

  1. saw queen, looked healthy
  2. 1/2 new frame had wax buildup

Hive 3:

Comparison July 4-20th

 

7/20 Hive 3 (small hive):

We saw queen:

We had two friends observing, Joanne:

 

and her daughter, Julia:

We saw activity on one new frame:

On 7/21, we noticed bees in the house and garage, being aggressive.  The problem appeared to come from the fact that we accidentally left the top-feeder, filled with sugar water, between hives 2 & 3, open, overnight. Thousands of bees were in the sugar-water, many dead and more attracted to it. We weren’t sure if they were our bees, or others. Hive 2 seemed to be experiencing vigorous robbing behavior. We covered the entrances to Hives 2 & 3 overnight.

7/22:

Hive 1:

outer 4 frames still not built out:

September 14 Hive 1

July 22 Hive 1

 

Main Frames

September 14:

July 22

Inner frames:

Hive 2:

Outer frames not much on them:

Inner small frames we accidentally used are very full. These were the frames we partially filled with comb from when we captured the bees in the irrigation box. The bees have fully filled out the frames:

and the bees are forming their own comb below the frames:

We found the queen and she looked healthy and productive:

Re-Hiving and Getting Bees Established

Jun4

6/4/13

Opened hives and re-hived into large size supers

Hive 1

  1. did not see queen
  2. 6 large old frames

Hive 2:

  1. 6 short frames

Hive 3:

  1. 2 long frames from old nuc

Beekeeping is a family affair:

6/5/13

Hive 1:

humming

Hive 2:

humming

Hive 3:

  1. Saw queen,

6/24/13

Hive 1:

  1. Queen in good health
  2. 15-20 drone cells

6/25/13

Hive 1:

  1. Bearding started at sunset. At max, was 500+ bees at 3AM. Reduced opening to 4″ and made 1/4″ lift on top for ventilation
  2. Bearding subsided after 2 days