Beekeepers Guild Meeting

I finally attended a meeting with the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild meeting, I've been meaning to go for a while. There were some really good presentations on how to make mead, lotion, soap, and candles. I really liked it and everyone was really friendly so I joined the guild.

I also asked some folks there what they thought about what happened to my bees. Here were their thoughts:

1. Too much Apiguard -  if the bees are dosed with too much Apiguard, it can kill them just as easily as a pesticide. When the temperatures are too hot (100 degrees Fahrenheit +) you should reduce the amount of Apiguard that you are using. I also found out that a lot of people halve the amount of Apiguard they apply to the hive anyway. I think that it is unlikely that I applied too much Apiguard because the temperatures were in the 70s, I was following the label instructions, and when I opened the hive I couldn't smell/see any Apiguard when I opened the hive.
2. Varroa Mites - the population of Varroa Mites peaks after the population of the bees peaks, so as the bees are preparing for winter, there are way more mites. I may have treated the bees too late in the season and the mites would have had time to overtake the bees. I also doubt that this is what happened. Some of the folks at the meeting said that the wings are a dead giveaway, if the wings are very tiny and curled up, it's a sign that there are a lot of mites. Looking at the pictures of my bees, they look absolutely fine other than their behavior. I'll look more carefully next time I am at the hive.
3. Poison - There were recently a few cases of vandalism in Saratoga where people sprayed poison onto bee hives. Since my bees are behind a gate, I doubt my bees were victims of vandalism. I sent an email to our gardener to double check that he didn't spray anything in the yard (I really doubt he did anything, since he gardens for a few other folks with bees). There is also a lot of new landscaping around Los Altos because of all of the renovations in downtown, so it is possible that the city is just spraying their plants (and that is what my bees were into).

Of all of the theories, I still think that it was most likely pesticide. There is another meeting in December, some of the members suggested that I bring in one of my worst frames so that they can take a look.

The Queen is Dead

Well, after 5 months of having a hive - game over. I found the queen. Dead. Outside the hive. (In this photo she is in a little dish that I picked her up and put her in there so she wouldn't be lost in the mass grave that is our side yard).

I think I actually exhibited a very fast-forwarded version of the 5-step grief process:

1 - Denial: When I found a bee with a white dot on it on the ground I looked at it and thought that it was not the queen. That was probably someone else's bee, it was too small to be my queen (the bees look so much tinier when they are dead, she looked the size of a normal bee, not a queen). So what if she had a white dot on her, maybe someone was just running around painting my bees for fun.

2 - Anger: Why my bees? I was taking such good care of them... I actually stomped down to the empty lot on Alvarado Ave because I had heard that round-up could be especially bad for the bees. I swear there were some dead plants there.

3 - Bargaining: Maybe if I just feed them, they'll be fine and make a new queen. I called Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey to see if there was ANY chance of me re-queening (even though I knew the answer would no). It is too late in the season for me to re-queen the hive myself, and it is too late in the season for the bees to create their own queen. At the beginning of winter, the worker bees (all girls) kick all of the drones (boys) out of the hive. The boy bees are useless during winter and they just take up space and eat food. The girls just make some new boys in the spring. It is more than likely that the girls have already kicked the drones out, so if they made their own queen, she wouldn't be able to mate and would be useless anyway.

4 - Depression: :(

5 - Acceptance: Ok, I lost my one and only hive this year. On the bright side, it looks like I could perhaps reuse my equipment (hive and frames) next year (since they didn't die of disease). Cheryl said that I should leave the equipment out for 30 days to make sure that the pesticide had dissipated, then I should freeze my frames to kill off any fungus or wax moth larvae (since the pollen is not completely unprotected and vulnerable). Brandon agreed that I could have 2 hives next year (I think mostly just because he doesn't want me to be sad any more right now). Next step: convince Mom that 2 hives is a good idea :)

Chilled Brood

Got to Mom's house early this morning and peaked out at the hive. There were a lot more dead bees, and there was one chilled brood near the entrance of the hive (the white thing is a dead developing bee that has been removed from the hive by the bees):

Chilled brood is when the developing bee larvae are too cold and die (or are deformed). This can happen as a result of the beekeeper opening the hive when it is too cold or as a result of severely decreased numbers of bees (from pesticide poisoning because there are not enough bees in the hive to keep all of the brood warm).

I've fixed up some more food for the bees (a 2:1 sugar to water ration that is more like honey than their spring and summer mix which is only 1:1). Hopefully this will help them out a little so they can make it through winter.

I'm also going to wrap the hive in tar paper today hive today to try to keep them warmer (this is a normal winterizing step - the black paper will help warm up the hive as well as protect the bees from the wind creeping in to little holes).

Bee Funeral

Mom said that I should go clean up the bees so I don't freak out her gardeners, so we had a bee funeral. There was no activity near the entrance of the hive, but it was about 9pm when we were cleaning up the bees, and it was about 50 degrees out so there would not be any activity anyway.

When Brandon and I peaked into the hive from the entrance there were dead bees all over the bottom board of the hive, no bees were moving. Usually bees are much cleaner than this, when a bee dies, the body is removed. Though if I listened really carefully at the hive entrance I could hear the bees walking around inside (probably all up in the top deep since it was so much colder than it has been recently). During the winter the brood moves upstairs to keep warm.

I mixed up a 2:1 sugar water mix and quickly threw it in the hive top feeder. I didn't want the bees to get too cold, but I'd also like to make sure they are getting plenty of food.

Here is our bee funeral:

Poison

Talked with Vicky today (one of the seasoned beekeepers at my work). She agreed that the bees had been poisoned.

She said that I should feed them a 2:1 sugar water mix to try to help them through this. The bee population does decrease going into winter, but definitely not that drastically. I'm worried that the bees won't be warm enough and that they'll just die... hopefully they make it though.

Bee Massacre

The title gives away the content of this post - most of the bees are dead. Here is the whole story:

Dad and Pauline came down to visit before they are off for a well deserved Hawaiian vacation. Pauline really wanted to see the bees so we swung by Mom's house. We mixed up some sugar syrup to feed the bees and walked out to the hive (no suits, since I have a hive top feeder and can just pour food in the top without riling up the bees). When we stepped into the side yard (where the hive is) there was a carpet of bees on the ground. Thousands of bees were dead or dieing:

I was horrified. That's what the ground looked like for a 3ft radius around the hive, it tapered off after that, but there was still a high concentration of dead bees for a 15 foot radius around the hive.

Pauline and I suited up and popped open the hive (I definitely needed her help, that top box is still really heavy). The bees on the frames seemed to be walking around fine, but the bees that were trying to fly would get their front legs off the ground then fall over. The only thing that I can think of is that the bees were poisoned. We live in a relatively populated town, so there's no use trying to figure out where the bees were poisoned. Each bee can travel up to 5 miles from the hive searching for food.

I recently discovered that there are some experienced bee keepers at my work, so I'll ask them what they think tomorrow.

I grabbed the Apiguard tray while I was in there, the bees must have finished off the medication before the massacre.

Lets end on a positive note though, so here is Pauline in a bee suit! Dad only got to wear a veil but he took it off before I snapped a photo.

Queen Sighting

Just did a regular check up today. I found the queen, so phew! I guess I didn't really see two eggs in one cell last time.

In general, everything seems to be in really good shape. The top deep is getting very heavy with honey, Brandon has to help me lift it now. A deep full of honey weighs more than a deep full of brood, if the deep were completely full, it could weigh around 100 pounds. Too bad I've already started the Apiguard medication or I would have considered taking a frame of honey - humans shouldn't eat medicated honey (it's fine for the bees though). Here is a deep frame filled with honey and capped (meaning that the honey comb has been sealed with wax):

I can tell that there are more bees in the hive than the first time I did an Apiguard treatment because the bees actually cleared out the whole tray in 2 weeks. I put on the second tray of Apiguard today.

Kizzling Around with the Bees

My friend, Erica (from "Kizzling Around",) came to visit this weekend. She took some really awesome pictures of the bees while she was here. Here is a picture of Erica all bee-suited up:

Here is a picture that I am actually really worried by. I am not sure how I spotted this, since bee eggs are very small, but I am sure that I saw two eggs in one cell. I read that the queen only ever lays one egg per cell, and if you see two eggs in a cell you almost certainly have a laying worker. Eggs look like a miniature, slender grain of rice in the center of a cell standing on end. Here is the cell that I think has two eggs in it (you can see that the surrounding cells have one egg per cell):

 
Here is a really high resolution picture that Erica took of some more bee eggs:

Here is a picture that Erica took of some larvae (the white things in some of the uncapped cells):

Another concerning thing that I spotted was this beetle (hiding in a cell, I found another one in the feeder, but I only saw two):

I also found this little bit of burr comb between the top and bottom deep (I scraped it off and saved it):

Here one more nice photo (of bees taking off and landing at the entrance of the hive):

Other than taking photos, I also fed the bees and started the fall treatment of Apiguard so I can ready the bees for the winter.

Mom Releases the Bees

So at the last minute, Mom called in an exterminator to exterminate the termites in her house. Since the exterminators were going to be going around the outside of the house, we thought it would be best to close the bees up that day. The exterminators finished up around 2pm, so I probably wouldn't be able to let the bees out until after work. I convinced Mom that she could let the bees out without me since it was very hot out and the bees probably wanted to get out (all she would have to do is pull out 2 nails then run away). Here's how far she got:

Overall, the bees were out and Mom was very brave for releasing them on her own :)

Misbeehaving

I did a full inspection of the hive today hoping to be able to put on my honey super, but the bees are acting strange again. They seem to have mostly moved out of the bottom deep and moved into the top deep (where I found Queenie today).

Upon inspecting the lower deep, I found that some of the partially drawn frames that I moved down there (to try to get the bees to move up to the top deep) are still only partially drawn. Some of the older frames that were fully drawn are empty and abandoned. Overall, it looks like there is only activity on 3 or 4 of the 10 frames in the bottom deep.

The top deep is much more active, but the bees were drawing the extra thick comb again, but only on one frame. That was the frame were I found Queenie (thank goodness, because I did not see very many eggs anywhere - there was a lot of honey and a lot of capped brood and a lot of empty cells). Here is a picture of the very strange frame (Queenie is on the bottom right, the thick comb is on the right and along the whole top of the frame):

Unfortunately since the bees aren't filling up the hive space they have now, I cannot put on a honey super. This means that I am not going to get any honey this year :( I think this is probably a combination of me inspecting them too often and them not getting enough sun. Maybe I'll try moving them next year.

Also, Brandon helped me out a lot with this inspection. He loosened the frames and separated them while I just picked them up and looked at them. The inspection went much more quickly this time, I got through the whole bottom deep and all but two frames in the top (then the bees started buzzing my veil again, I am trying to be very gentle, but they seem a bit grouchy when I leave the hive open too long).

All Closed Up

Last night I closed up the bees so that someone could come today to trim the tree above the bees. I used a mesh screen and my mouse guard (to hold the screen in place) to close the bees inside. Here is what the hive looked like on Friday after the tree guys left:

Here is a close up on the closed entrance, a few bees that didn't make it in before curfew last night are trying to get inside:

As I opened the bees, they burst out (I bet it was pretty hot in there):

I also fed the bees, since all of their sugar water was gone. Here you can see that a bunch of bees were up in the feeder trying to find a way out of the hive:

Feeding the Bees

I asked Chery about leaving the gap open (between the top deep and the hive top) and she said the bees would patch it up, so I went ahead and put the feeder on. Below is a picture of the hive top feeder, it has two wells to put sugar water in and it has a mesh screen in hte middle. The bees have to come up through the middle to get to the sugar water. Since they have to climb on the mesh, they don't drown like they do on the board feeder (where they can access the sugar water more directly).

Here is a picture of the gap that the bees are going to have to fill (I don't think you can see the bees in the photo, but when I look through the gap I can see the bees walking around):

Here is a picture of what the hive looks like now (a little taller now, I left the inner cover off to the side because I don't need it anymore. You usually put it on so that the outer cover can easily be removed, but since the bees no longer have access to the outer cover anymore I don't need the inner cover):

There's a Hole in my Hive

The bees finally seem to be occupying the top deep. There seems to be comb drawn on 6 of the 9 frames I peeked at in the top deep, though I didn't do a very thurough inspection of the top box because the bees were being a little grouchy again. I need to try to get through my inspections more quickly so the bees don't get as angry towards the end.

I removed the board feeder that I had in the top deep (which takes the space of one of the regular frames) and wanted to put on the hive top feeder, but noticed that my top deep is not really level in the back (pictured below). You can see that the side of the deep is a little bit (1/8" to 1/4") higher than the back wall of the deep.

Looking at how the inner cover sits on top of the deep, you can see that there is a hole all the way along the back edge of the deep:

I was a bit worried about leaving the hive open like that, so I didn't put on the hivetop feeder this time (but I did leave the board feeder out. The bees have plenty of pollen and nectar right now, so I am not worried about leaving them without food. I have been feeding them extra so that they can build honey comb faster). I'll send an email to Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey to see if that is ok, or if I have to repair the deep. I know that bees fill holes that are smaller than 3/8", but this seems like a pretty long skinny hole for them to be pathching up.

Another realization that I am coming to is that I might be checking the bees too often. Cheryl recomended not opening the hive more than once every 10 days. I've been opening the hive every 7 to 14 days, and every time you open the hive, it sets the bees back a few days (because opening the hive and smoking them is very disruptive). I'll probably wait a bit before opening them up again, because it doesn't look like they are building honey comb fast enough for me to harvest anything this year :(

Movin' On Up!

Finally! The bees are moving upstairs! The bees now seem to be drawing comb on the blank frames upstairs and just generally milling around. Here is a picture of what it looks like when I opened the top of the hive:

This is what the bottom deep looks like when I take the top deep off (notice how many more bees are wandering around, the top box should look more like this):

And still no Queenie this time, but I actually saw a whole frame filled with eggs up in the top deep! So even Queenie has moved upstairs.

The bees were extra grouchy today though, I was making a bit more noise than usual (I accidentally made some cracking noises when using my hive tool to break apart the frames. The bees hate that). They buzzed my veil a few times and stung my thumb once. This time around I think the sting was less severe.

Just a Checkup

Nothing exciting this time around, just a regular checkup. I've been having trouble getting the bees to move upstairs. I moved two frames upstairs a while back, but as soon as all of the bees hatched out of their cells, they seemed to vacate and move back downstairs, leaving empty comb up top. Here is a picture of one of empty frames they left upstairs:

I tried moving another frame upstairs, so hopefully the bees take a hint after this. You can see the darker colored frames are the ones from downstairs that I've moved up (2 from last time, 1 with bees on it that I just moved up there):

The other thing that I did this time is fill the buckets around the base posts with vinegar. Apparently vinegar removes the scent of ant trails (which is why I have the buckets there, to keep the ants out of the feeders).

This is also the first time that I have checked the hive and I haven't seen Queenie. I saw some eggs down in the bottom box, so nothing to be alarmed about. As the hive gets bigger, it will be more and more difficult to find her.

Bee Movie

Not the one with Jerry Seinfeld. Brandon took lots of video of my last inspection and edited it all together on his new toy (iPad2). This video shows:

• Me taking a frame out of the hive.
• The comb that the bees have been able to draw on an empty frame over the course of a week.
• Queenie (the queen bee with a white dot on her torso) walking around on a frame.
• Me inspecting a frame.
  
• Baby bees hatching out of their cells (you have to look really hard).
• Me putting a frame back into the hive.

Babees!

I did another inspection today, I didn't have anything specific to do, so I decided to try to clear off some of the propolis that has been collecting. I am using a little mason jar to collect it so maybe I can use it for something later. Here is a picture of my jar of propolis (the orange stuff) along with some of the other things I recently got (I spray bottle of rubbing alcohol to clean my tools and a little blue tote to carry my tools around):

The bees seem to have started another nodule (on the exact same frame as they did before), I should have whacked it off so they don't spend time on it, but I didn't get a very good look inside to see if it was empty again - so I just left it for now. Here is the new nodule (middle left of the frame):

Most of the activity is still down in the lower hive, the bees are doing a great job drawing comb on the two new frames that I put in last week (because I put two old brood frames from the bottom box up in the top brood box). It doesn't look like the queen has visited the top box yet, but I did get to witness a few baby bees (babees, haha, get it?) coming out of their cells in the top top brood frames! The queen laid those eggs before I moved the frames, it takes about 21 days from when the egg is laid until a fully developed worker bee emerges from it's cell. Queens take only 16 days to develop, and drones take 24 days. Here is a picture of my baby bees hatching (there is one bee coming out of a cell head first, that is the one I watched hatch. The bees coming out butt first are adult bees just going into a cell for a peek. If you look at some of the other cell cappings, you can see some more baby bees trying to come out of their cells).

One strange thing that I encountered when checking my top brood box was some yucky little white larvae in the feeder. Gross... I cleaned out the feeder thoroughly and refilled it.  I hope these little guys just go away.

Brandon also put up these nifty signs that I had made. Mom wanted me to put up some sort of sign to warn her gardeners about the bees, I figure it is probably a good idea to have those up from a liability stand point:

The pointy end...

I sent the image of the bulging honey and what I thought was a supersedure cell over to Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey (taking advantage of their digital checkins). So when I did another inspection today I tried some of the things that she suggested.

Cheryl said that she thought my supersedure cell was probably a nodule (a false queen cell which is empty). If I took a peek inside the cell, and it was empty, then I could just remove the nodule (because they bees would be wasting their time on the nodule). But, when I took out the frame that had the nodule on it, it was gone! And to boot, my marked queen was on that frame, so it sounds like everything turned out alright with that.

As far as the bulging honey comb goes, Cheryl said that the bees are looking for more space to store honey. I did add the extra deep, but the bees haven't drawn comb on it yet, so they can't really make use of the extra space. The fact that the comb bulges out can be a problem when moving the frames around, so Cheryl suggested that I take my hive tool and squish it down. In doing this, the honey will drip down the frames to the bottom of the hive and the bees will pick it up and move it somewhere else. I probably didn't do this in the smartest fashion - I was inspecting each frame one by one, and as I saw the bulging honey comb, I would smoosh it down. There was some residual honey left on my hive tool, so anything I touched after that had a bit of honey on it. The bees would cluster around the spilled honey and lick it up - but they were usually in the way of me pushing frames around in the hive so it took me longer to do the inspection (since I was trying to nudge bees out of the way much more). Here is a picture of some smooshed bulging honey comb (if you look closely, you can see the bees licking up the spilled honey along the edges of the broken comb):

I also finished the first half of the Apiguard treatments today (the treatment that helps kill the Varroa mites). The bees had put a lot of propolis around the tray (I saved it because I can hear you can make things out of it - I'll see if there is anything seems worth it). The propolis is the orange stuff around the metal tray, it is very sticky. The bees use it to seal up the hive, humans use if for medicinal purposes and I hear that propolis is even used as varnish for Stradivari violins.

The bees have also made much more progress on the new frame in their bottom deep. They have drawn most of the comb, and have even filled and capped some cells:

In order to encourage the bees to move upstairs to their new box a bit quicker, Cheryl suggested that I move a few brood frames up to the upper deep. I moved two empty frames from the top level down to the bottom as well (the dark frames covered in bees are from the bottom deep - that white thing is shortening with powdered sugar in wax paper. That patty helps guard against tracheal mites):

Wax production takes approximately 6 times more energy for a bee to produce than honey, so in order to get the bees to produce more wax, I've been supplementing their honey with some sugar water. I put a 1:1 sugar water mix into their feeder (the black thing on the far side of the above picture).

And lastly, I have finally had my first encounter with the pointy end of the bee. I went out to the hive with no protection from the bees just to pick up a few things I had left out there. This wouldn't usually be a problem, but I noticed that I had dripped some honey on the hive stand, so I wiped it up with my finger (bad idea number one). There were a few bees nearby, and two of them started to lick the honey off my fingers - very cute actually. I was very tempted to take a picture of the bees licking honey off of my finger, so I picked up my camera that was nearby and went back to the hive (bad idea number two). As I walked away from the hive a bee flew after me and stung the hand that had the honey on it, I bet she didn't like the idea of me walking away with her honey. All in all, I probably deserved that sting, and it was not nearly the worst thing that I've ever been stabbed by (for those who remember the sea urchin incident where I lost mobility in my left thumb for over a week). This was my first bee sting (ever), and I seem to react the same way as I do to most other insects - the area turns white and swells a bit (there is a lot more soreness than I was expecting though, my pinky still hurts and is swollen and it has been nearly 8 hours. I'm sure I'll live though). The sting is near the base of my pinky.

Second Inspection

Today I did a more thorough inspection of the hive. Last time I was just so happy to have seen the queen that I missed two frames. I was a little more calm for this inspection, so I only wore latex gloves (to keep the propolis off of my hands) instead of leather gloves.

Since I have two deeps now, the inspection is a little harder (just because the hive is bigger). Brandon took the top deep off, and I started my inspection in the bottom deep. Usually you don't get to see the queen, so during an inspection you are supposed to look for evidence that the queen is there. This was actually pretty neat - I picked up a frame, and there were uncapped cells with big fat larvae in them. The next frame I picked up had little tiny larvae, the next had eggs, and the next had the queen. So the age of the bees decreases as you get nearer to the queen. Seeing eggs is a very good sign because then you know the queen is doing her job, and she has been in the hive within the last few days. Here is a picture of Queenie, since I did find her again (she has the white dot on her):

There wasn't much to inspect in the top deep, as the bees hadn't even drawn much comb on the one new frame I put in last week. Here is the progress they had made on the one empty frame in the bottom deep (you can sort of see the beginning of some comb in the upper right corner, the rest of the frame is relatively flat):

Since the brood is still mainly in the bottom deep, I started their Apiguard treatment on the bottom box:

During this inspection I put each leg of the elevated hive stand in a bucket of water to protect against ants, the cinnamon did nothing for me. A few ants are fine, but there was a steady stream of ants climbing up to the feeder (that holds a bunch of sugar water). If there are too many ants, the colony will leave the hive.

I also took some pictures of a few strange things that I noticed last time. This is the supersedure cell (the little nub of comb towards the bottom of the image).

Here is the other odd thing that I found, for some reason the bees are building the honey comb extra thick, I have no idea why they decided to do that (maybe they wanted more space, I only just added their second deep. The bulge of comb in the upper left portion of the frame is what I am talking about, it should be flat like the rest of the frame).

I'll have to email Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey those pictures to see what she thinks I should do (I think it is great that Bear Foot Honey offers support to people that they sell hives to - I'm not sure what I would do without them).

Lastly, Brandon was playing with his new toy (iPad 2) while he was waiting for me to finish beekeeping, so he drew this picture of me and the bees:

Ants!

I stopped by Mom's house on today to take her to the airport, and I briefly checked on the hive. There was a line of ants crawling into the hive! That's definitely not good, one quick solution is to surround the hive with cinnamon (or so I have read). I'll try that for now, then when I do my second inspection on Saturday I'll see if I need to take more drastic measures.

First Inspection

Today I did my first hive inspection. I was a little nervous, so I wore the bee suit and leather gloves to protect myself from stings.

The bees are very calm when you take them out of the hive - they just continue crawling around on the frames and doing their business.

I only got through checking 8 of the frames because I was frantically searching for the queen to make sure she was ok. I did find Queenie (this is what I have named her), and she seemed happy enough, so I just put her back in the hive without checking the last two frames. Below is a picture of Queenie (she has the white dot on her):

Today I also added on the second deep, in general, once the bees are done drawing comb on 8 of the frames in the lower deep, you should give them more room. So I added one new frame to their bottom deep, moved their feeder up to the top deep, then placed the top deep on the hive.

One concerning thing that I noticed was a supersedure cell - the bees make this when they are planning to replace the queen. When there is only one, it doesn't seem to be a problem (from what I've read). If I had spotted 5+, there is a big problem (because I want the bees to use my queen rather than making their own). I'll take a picture of this during the next inspection.