Keeping the Hive Alive

The hives in their new apiary. The snow is up to the top
of the benches they sit on (18" high) and the weatherman
is today calling for about another 12" to fall tonight and
tomorrow morning.

As we brace for yet another blast of snow (really, Mother Nature, enough is enough) it might be a good time to think about spring, from a bee’s perspective. We spend a lot of time making sure that our bees have the best preparation possible for winter, but in Canada, that season comes with a lot of variables, so in many ways, it can be a bit of a nail-biter. For us, it is very rare to still have these cold temperatures and snow falling. That is where we’re at right now – wondering if we gave them enough food, wondering if the weight of the hives was high enough to give them good odds of survival, etc. The one thing we do know is that when the temperatures are this cold, we cannot open up the hives to check on them. That blast of cold would definitely hurt them.

February last year, we were able to get into the hives.

In the fall, we closed the screens at the bottom of the hive, to help keep them warm. We treated the hives to make sure there were no mites in them – we want to make the viruses that come in on the mites do not get a chance to impact the brood that will carry the hive through the winter. We have made sure they have food in the hives. They also have stored honey and pollen which will become vital to them once the days start getting longer. That last brood of bees in the fall are ‘winter bees’. During the rest of the year, a worker bee lives about 6 weeks. Winter bees will carry the hive for up to 6 months. They have to be as strong as possible.

The worker bees from one of our hives forcing out a drone
last fall. The drones are much bigger, have much bigger eyes
and have no stinger.

Our bees should have already started laying new brood. They need pollen for protein primarily for the brood, so those stores are already being depleted. In the spring, once we can open the hives, we will be able to give them additional pollen, but right now, they are on their own. In the coldest months, they will be frugal in their use of stores, but once the queen starts laying brood again, the demand rises sharply. Remember that through those winter months, the worker bees keep the hive at a constant temperature (or as close to it as they possibly can) by rubbing their wings, or vibrating them, to create friction. They do this all day, every day, to protect the Queen.

An evicted drone. Notice the size of the eyes. 

Our queens now should be making worker bees. They will not create any drones until they are needed – in a bee’s world, men serve one purpose, and one purpose only; if it is not breeding season, the drones aren’t necessary, and come fall, the worker bees will make sure that every drone is kicked out of the hive. They are not feeding someone who does nothing to keep them all alive.

Making bee boxes... again. 

So, our bees are in their boxes, rubbing their wings, creating friction, eating very little. The brood is starting to be laid, so the queen is doing her thing. They cannot get out of the hive to forage. They also cannot get out of the hive to relieve themselves; there is no indoor plumbing in a bee’s world. On days when it warms up enough, they will leave the hive if for no other reason than to do that which they cannot do inside. Our bees have not had a possible ‘cleaning flight’ day for over three months, and this is definitely a concern to us. As winter drags on, they are thinking about one thing – providing for the hive the minute the temperatures are right. They need to have brood ready to take over, because those winter bees are getting tired. They need to have bees ready to forage, and they need more to take care of brood as the queen keeps producing. It’s all about keeping the hive alive. While some animals hibernate during the winter months, and other (like the wiener dogs) are sleeping in front of a warm fire, our bees are working like crazy in those little boxes.

Of course, they aren’t the only ones working in preparation for spring. We’re once again making bee boxes, making honey supers, putting together frames, and planning what to do with our bees and our honey this year. We’ll keep you posted on that. 

Splitting and Shaking

Queens in cages, with attendants.

It's spring, and in a beekeeper's world, that means time to do some hive splitting, before they do it themselves. That's what has happened when you see swarms of bees on car fenders, or fences or wherever -- the hive is too full, the queen in the hive is getting old, so the bees hatch out a new queen and the majority of the hive's population breaks away to start a new one, once they find a place to live. It was a swarm that started us in this journey, and we get a bit excited when we hear about swarms, as long as they are not from our hives. Losing that many bees is never a good thing. That said we would never say no to someone who calls to tell us they have a swarm on their property and want us to gather it up!

The first thing we need to do making these splits, at least at this time of year, is make sure we have some new queens. Our queens this year are from Hawaii. Each one is in its own queen cage, along with a few assistants to take care of it. At one end of the cage is 'candy' for them to eat on the way, and we give them water by putting a few drops directly on the cage. They don't need a lot, but they still do need some. When we put them into the hives, we will take the plug out of the cage to allow the bees in the hive to eat their way in, while the attendants eat from the inside, trying to get the queen free. This teamwork and time allows the bees in the hive to acknowledge that they have a queen, and she becomes their main focus. They smell her pheromones and make a connection with her. If we just turned her loose in there, the other bees might not accept her, swarming her and killing as they believe she could be an intruder.

Dropping the Queen cage into the hive.

Before we add any queens, though, we have to prepare the hives, and split them. Each hive will already have a queen in it, and since we can't have two queens in a hive, we need to know where she is. To do this, we remove all the bees from the top box, brushing or shaking them off the frames, into the bottom box. If the queen is among them, she will also then be removed into the bottom box. Ideally we do this in the heat of the day, while the foraging bees are out working. Once the bees are all in the bottom box, we take some frames with brood out and move them into the top box. This will make the nurse bees want to be up there with them. We put in a 'queen excluder' -- a screen that allows the bees to go through but not the larger queen -- so that when we go to take that box off in 24 hours, there is a group of nurse bees, larva and eggs, all up there. That will be the basis of the new hive. We remove that box, set it up as the base unit on a new hive, drop in the queen, and we have our split complete.

The queen excluder.

Sounds easy, right? It probably would be, but then again, you have to remember we are dealing with some -- okay, millions of -- very protective, very determined little ladies here. We also have to check the hives before we do anything. We need to make sure they haven't started creating queen cells on their own -- a sign that they were getting ready to swarm. If they have, we may be able to use one of their own queens to start yet another hive. We don't want to add a queen to any new queen cells that are about to open. We also want to make sure the hive is healthy; there is no point dropping a new queen into a hive that is not going to survive. These are queens from Hawaii. They don't come cheap.

'Shaking' the frames. You can see the honey spraying off it.

When the splits are complete, we need to provide for the bees in the new hives for a few days. If we didn't, without foraging bees (because they would fly back to their original hive), the nurse bees would have nothing to live on, so syrup is a requirement at this point. When we did the splits, we also gave them some capped honey and pollen on the frames from the old hives, so they will be fine for a couple days while they all adjust and new bees hatch. Those new bees will soon be able to forage and the hive will thrive. We then will load up those new hives and take them to a new location; we will do this because these new hives will be a bit weaker and if conditions change, they could be overpowered by stronger bees from the original hives coming in and stealing from them. Our hives will be heading north about half an hour, where they will be able to help pollinate some fruit trees. Moving them also should mean that if something happens to harm the hives here again this year, as happened last year, we still have some bees to build from.

The queen excluder in place. The top box will sit on top it.

The bees that stay here will be unaffected by the change. They currently have plums, peaches, crabapples, pears, nectarines and apples all in bloom. The dandelions are out in abundance. The flowers are breaking through in the garden, and the holly trees are, apparently, abuzz with bees as they start to bloom. We have lots of drone cells in our hives, and they are all in good shape. The bee year is well underway. Hopefully these are the first of many splits over the next few months, and we will see lots of honey in the fall.

Bees don't like being shaken and split, so more smoke to calm them. 

Really full hives, and lots of drone cells! 

More indicators that the hives are doing well, and are very full! 

'Bearding' on the front. They are agitated and overcrowded in the bottom box. 

Yes, they even beard on us as we work. For this job, we want to wear full whites. 

He bee? Gee, bees!

Yes, we are talking about drones today – the male of the species. There was some discussion about titles for the blog today – Drone It Make You Want To Go Home, and Droneo oh Droneo. All three are relevant. Drones are the playboys of the hive set. They’re born, they mate, and they die. Well, if they’re lucky, they mate (although that could be subject to interpretation, I suppose).

Today, while watching the hives in action (a not rare pastime around here), we were able to see the drones outside the hives. The workers were working – some bringing in absolutely HUGE loads of pollen, some cleaning, some defending the hive. The worker bees are all – surprise, surprise – female. The workers are the smallest bees in the hive. The drones are slightly bigger, and the Queens outsize them all. We’ll talk more about the workers, and the Queens, later on in the year. Right now, it’s drone time! (although we were absolutely thrilled to see so much pollen being gathered at this time of year).

Drones – they take the longest to mature (no, we shouldn’t be surprised at that, should we?). They are distinctive because of their size, but also because of their huge eyes. You would think that they are built this way in order to better defend and protect the hive, but no. They have no stinger, so they are not a defensive creature. When they hatch, they are fed and cared for by the workers. Then they leave the hive during the day to try to find some sweet new Queen bee on one of her (usually) three nuptial flights. When they do find one, they lay on the charm, hoping to be one of the twenty or so men she will take a shine to. Here’s the thing though – once they have mated with her, that one time, they die, because she rips off their reproductive organs and carries them with her. She stores the sperm in her spermatheca where she can then get it when she is laying her eggs (which she will do all day, every day, for the rest of her life).

Worker bee on the left side of the opening, drone on the right.
See the difference in their eyes. 

When the hive needs drones, the Queen will lay unfertilized eggs that will then become males. She never breeds again, other than on her nuptial flights, and no mating is ever done within the hive. When a new Queen is ready to be bred, she finds drones from another colony, thus keeping her hive strong and healthy. A colony will produce several hundred drones (compared the tens of thousands of workers it produces) so seeing the drones is always a good sign of a healthy hive.

Workers pushing a persistent drone away from the hive.

But, females can be pragmatic critters, and when it comes time to prepare the hive for winter, they are worried about having enough food to last. They know the males will do nothing but help deplete stocks, and they know that the queen can create new drones within 24 days, so when the going starts to get tough… the men get going. Yes, the workers will force the drones from the hive, which is again another death sentence for them. (To be fair, they only live about 4-6 weeks anyway.) As we watched today, the workers from The Dregs were having no argument. The drones were being pushed out, sometimes dragged out, and occasionally wrestled out of there! They didn’t want to go, but then again, they were living a pretty charmed life – no cooking, working, cleaning or helping with the kiddos. In a hive, if you don’t work, you don’t last.

Pushing another persistent drone out the door. 

It’s another sign that the bees are getting ready for winter. We will be helping them in the coming weeks, but for now, as long as they’re pulling in the pollen, we are going to let them. The nights are cool, but there are still some good bee-flying days ahead… unless you’re a drone. 

Workers heavy with pollen. The one had so much she toppled
over when she landed. 

Gimme A High Five!!

Wow, we have a lot of catching up to do! It’s been hot and while a number of beekeepers are saying their hives are slowing down and they are supplementing food, we are still doing okay. There are a lot of alfalfa fields around us in bloom now, and apparently bees like sunflowers, and we have a LOT of them. The other thing we have, though, is a bear nosing around, so we’re getting ready to deal with that. For now, we have a radio (talk radio station) playing all night to keep him hopefully away. There are a lot of berries and a ton of fruit on the trees so hopefully he likes that better. It would certainly be easier for him to eat.

Last week we found that Gang Green had only one frame empty, and they were laying lots of babies, so we added a second box to their hive this week. We removed a lot of burr comb at the top and swapped a couple of frames from the bottom to the new top box to encourage them to move up. We shimmed the lid to give them a bit more air movement in the heat, and we will now see how they do. Considering how late the hive was started, we aren’t going to complain.

Pistachio had already made use of their second box, and had only the outside frames left to use. We swapped them to the middle, and this week we added their honey super box. In the intense heat we’ve been having, this is our only hive to beard – they collect in a huge pile stuck to the front of the hive... hanging there like a beard. We’ll try to get pics this week of it.

The Dregs... the poor poor dregs. Last week there was one frame with brood that we moved to the top box, and there was no other activity there. The bottom box had two frames of capped brood. Today we found queen cells on one frame in the bottom box. We also found one frame with a lot – A LOT – of drone cells. Obviously they need a new queen, so there has been no new brood, and there are a lot of empty frames. We changed to a smaller entrance way with them.

The Moody Blues have been busy bees. Last week they had filled all but one frame in their top box, not with brood but with honey. This week, because they were still at it, and because they had a ton of burr comb on top of the hive, we added a honey super for them.

The White Outs last week had seven frames of honey in their honey super, although nothing was capped. Today, like the Moody Blues, they had a lot of burr comb, and they had the honey super just about full, so we added another honey super for them. When we added it, we put it under the first honey super, so they will be more inclined to go to it now.

Team Tangerine – well, everyone has that one that they worry about, and I guess that’s Team Tangerine for us. We had added a honey super already, but last week there was nothing in it. They had four frames of capped larvae in the second box though, so we were hopeful. Today we took a lot of burr comb from the top of the second box. We swapped out a drone frame for a regular frame. They had some capped and uncapped brood, so we moved the outer frames that hadn’t been used yet into the middle. If this hive survives the winter, we will probably be looking for a new Queen for it come spring.

To end on a high note – really high.... high five, in fact – we added a third (yes, THIRD) Honey super to the Mellow Yellows. They are quite mellow, and gentle, for bees, but man, do they work! Last week the top honey super had 5 full frames of honey. The second honey super was full – it weighs over 30 pounds! – and we swapped the two supers around. Today, they had lots of burr comb that absolutely dripped with honey because they only had three frames left unused. Gotta love those Mellow Yellows!