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.

New parent anxiety

Last night I went to mom's house so that I could let the bees out in the morning before I went to work. The weather was pretty rainy out, so I left the bees locked in their hive (as Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey suggested). But when I went to go check on them, there were hundreds of bees clustered around the hive entrance (imagine about 2 cups of bees bundled up in front of the hive - since we accidentally deleted the picture).


Since it was late in the day, I thought it was best to just leave them - especially since I wasn't sure if those were my bees (who maybe managed to escape) or if they were neighbor bees trying to rob my hive.


This morning I went to let the bees out, and there were still hundreds clustered out front. I brushed them away with my bee brush and removed the screen keeping the bees in the hive. Only one or two were curious enough to come outside - it was pretty cold out, so that is probably normal but my first thought was "Oh my God, I killed them. I killed them by locking them up for the weekend".

Later in the day, Mom assured me there were lots of bees flying around the hive, so they are probably fine. I'll feel better when I can do my first hive inspection this weekend.

Hive Day!

Today Brandon and I drove up to Santa Rosa (to Bear Foot Honey Farm) to pick up my bee hive! Cheryl (beekeeper/owner of Bear Foot Honey Farm) helped us load the bees in to Brandon's car so we could drive back down to Los Altos (Brandon was very excited - that's sarcasm if you can't tell).

We also picked up the remaining suplies that we needed (another deep, a medium super for honey, and Apiguard - a medication to kill mites, which are one of the suspected causes of Colony Collapse Disorder). In the picture below, the deep is the unpainted box (which I'll paint later), the medium is the painted one, and a that little blue box has 2 treatments of Apiguard in it (one for now, and one again in August). Both supers are filled with frames (where the bees will create the honey comb, in the deep they will also make cells to hold eggs to raise more bees). There is one frame off to the side - right now the hive has 9 frames and one feeder (filled with sugar water that they can eat). Once the hive is established and out collecting nectar and pollen on their own, I'll replace the feeder with that extra frame.

We picked up the bees around 7pm, you have to wait until the evening to move them because most of the bees will be in the hive. During the day, most of the worker bees are out collecting nectar, so you don't want to move their home and leave all the bees out in the field. We got down to Los Altos around 10pm and put the bees in their new home.

Cheryl said that I shouldn't open the hive to do an inspection for at least 48 hours, otherwise the bees become too stressed out. Instead of blaming me for the stress, they would blame the queen and kill her - NOT a good situation. If the weather was better, I could open their front door so that they could go out and explore their new area, but there is a storm forcast all weekend. Keeping their front door closed is how we keep them from escaping into the car, and you would usualy just open it up the morning after you move them - but we'll wait for some sun so they don't all run out and get lost in the rain. Below is a picture of the mesh Cheryl put over their entrance, I guess you can't really see it that well in the picture, but there a few bees trying to get out (that was before their car trip, after we got them down to Los Altos, there were hundreds of bees on the mesh trying to get out).