Collecting the Wild Hive

I sent out an email to the San Mateo Beekeepers Guild to see if I could borrow some equipment and get some help putting the wild hive on the back fence into a wooden beehive. Thanks to Vicky for letting me borrow some of the hive components I was missing, and extra special amazing thanks to Art for helping me get the bees into their new home!

I had no idea how to get the bees off the fence into a hive, so Art was a great help. Here's how we did it:

So our plan A was to prune the bush they were hiding behind, then carefully take the comb off the fence and put it into frames. So we started out pruning the bush, the bees were extremely calm and manageable, we didn't even need to use gloves or veils:

Here is the full size of the hive once everything was trimmed. It's probably about 1 and a half feet tall and almost a foot deep as well. Looks like they have definitely been living here for about a month. We put a tarp down to catch any bees that fell:

Great! Plan A is going so well! Wait... I spoke too soon. We only had the hive fully exposed long enough to put up the tarp and snap that last picture. Then this happened:

 

Not sure what that is? The entire hive fell off of the fence at once. When it hit the ground, bees flew everywhere. It was literally an explosion of bees. It probably happened for a few reasons, the hive was probably partially supported by all those branches we cut away, the sun was setting and shining directly on the hive (which warmed the wax enough to melt the connection to the fence), and the hive had a surprising amount of honey in it (making it quite heavy).

Ok, plan B: scoop up the bees and put them into a hive, also pray that the queen didn't get crushed to death. Here is how we put the pieces of comb into frames, you cut chunks of the hive to the right size and then tie them in with cotton string. Once in the hive for a few days, the bees will patch up the comb and attach it to the frame:

We managed to salvage about 5 frames of comb (if plan A had worked out, we were expecting to get 10+ frames). We did need to check through all the little bits of comb to make sure we didn't miss the queen. here is Art shaking some bees into their new home:

After we were done, we filled up the box with frames that had foundation on them and then put another medium on top. We left the cover askew so that the scent of the queen would attract the stray bees left on the lawn and fence:

It was a really good sign that the bees at the top of the hive and around the entrance were "fanning". Fanning is when they stick their butts in the air and fan their wings. I've seen bees doing this when the hive is hot - then they are doing it for ventilation. However, in this case the bees are doing it to fan the scent of the queen out around the new home. This means that the bees think the queen is in residence inside the new yellow hive:

We made sure to remove as much of the scent from the fence location as possible. There were little nubs of wax on the branches, Art said these were "scent tabs". Essentially little bits of wax that smell like the queen to attract bees that got a little lost in the swarming process. We left the hive near the fence location so the bees would go to the new hive rather than cling right back to the fence. Here are the "scent tabs":

I'll check back in on these guys in a week or so to remove all that string and make sure they are liking their new home :) Luckily there were plenty of eggs in the comb we put in the hive, so if the queen was lost in the fall, they should be able to make a new one. Hopefully the fanning means we got her in there though.

Lost and Found

So I lost half my Thistle hive to swarming, not to mention a very good and productive queen. However, I didn't lose them for long! I found them! They were hiding in this bush about 30 feet from the original hive! This is actually right where my neighbor noticed the high bee activity. Brandon is pointing out the swarm's hiding spot:

Oh? You don't see them? How about now?

  

Still don't see the bees? Try again:

Here they are!

I estimate there is about 1 deep super full of comb built onto the fence. This is no longer a swarm since the bees have started building comb. I guess my swarm left, found this fence and decided to stay! Lucky me! Now I'll just grab them and make that third hive I was talking about :)

Swarm Confirmation and Supersedure

Well, I think I've got a confirmation that the Thistle hive swarmed. Earlier this week I was talking to our backyard neighbor, he had said there was extremely high bee activity happening on our property line around June 4th. It was only for a day, so I assume that about half of the Thistle hive took off with the queen. Usually a swarm will leave the hive and regroup within 50 feet of their hive, then they'll send out scouts to look for a permanent location. I assume my bees hung out around the fence and then moved on.

A new queen only takes about 16 days to hatch, since I saw queen cells around the end of May, I figured it was ok to take a peek inside of the Thistle hive to see if she had started laying eggs yet. If she hasn't it's no big deal, it's still early. A new queen hatches, then kills any other younger queens that didn't hatch (eliminating the competition). After that she goes on a mating flight where she mates with several drones, then she returns to the hive to start laying eggs. That whole process is probably not complete quite yet.

Inside of the Thistle hive, there were a lot of empty cells and a lot of capped brood. No larvae and no eggs. Worker bee larvae gets capped with wax around 9 days after a queen lays an egg, then hatches 21 days after the egg has been laid. That means that the queen must have been in the hive between June 2nd and June 14th, but then she left - so our neighbors account of a ton of bees swarming on the 4th lines up exactly with what is happening inside the hive. I actually didn't see any queen cells, but perhaps the bees have cleaned them up by now. I'll check for eggs in the next few weeks just to make sure everything is going well with the new queen.

Now to the Mint hive - there has been extremely low activity in front of the Mint hive. During the middle of the day, when there should be peak activity in front of the hive, there are only 2 or 3 bees coming in or out of the hive:

The Thisle hive, even after swarming, looks more like this (these pictures were both taken within minutes of each other):

So something definitely seems wrong with the Mint hive. When I opened up the hive, there were extremely few bees, and supersedure cells everywhere. Supersedure cells are cells used for growing queens. When a hive wants to swarm, they build swarm cells - also used for growing queens. The only difference between the two is that swarm cells are usually built along the bottom of the frame, the existing queen will take half the bees and leave, and a queen that hatches from a swarm cell will take over. Supersedure cells are built all over the frame and are used to replace a failing or non-existent queen, when the new queens hatch they will kill the old queen. The long cells are supersedure cells that have hatched (well, only one of them hatched, then that queen went around to all the un-hatched cells, opened them, and "took care" of the competition):

So it looks like either A) The Mint bees didn't like their queen and replaced her, or B) The Mint queen died and they replaced her. Apparently this is quite common with packages (Mint was a new package this spring). On the bright side, I saw one frame that had about 1/4 of the cells filled with eggs and 1/4 of the cells filled with larvae - so it would seem that there is currently a queen in residence.

Wax Moths

I was preparing for a hive inspection, so I went to go check on my drawn frames in the garage - they are covered with wax moths! The webbing you see below is from wax moths, there is even an adult wax mot in the picture:

Wax moths are generally kept in check when they are inside of the hive - the bees will recognize them as a pest and chase them away. When storing frames not on the hive, wax moths can move in quite easily.

I salvaged most of my frames, but a did clear out 3 or 4 that looked like the one above - there is just too much webbing. I put about 20 of the frames in the freezer, putting frames in the freezer kills the wax moth larvae so it won't be a continuing problem.

Honey Harvest

Today we did another honey harvest, with some brand new honey helpers! Special thanks to Shawn, Amanda, Laura and Eirik (and of course thanks to returning helper, Brandon, mandated to help because he is marrying the beekeeper).

We harvested 27 frames this time, split into two batches. The first batch was new spring honey (about 22 pounds collected). The second batch was honey that has been in the hive since the fall (I'm still waiting on the filtering, so no final weight). I tried to divide up this honey because the fall honey crystalizes so quickly. Brandon and I really want to get some nice clear spring honey to use as wedding favors, so that 22 pounds is going straight in to some adorable glass jars. The fall honey we'll either sell/gift/brew or use ourselves.

Here is the honey extraction team in action:

With the new extractor, we can spin the frames much faster. Since this is a radial extractor, there is less of a  risk of destroying the comb by spinning too fast. In a tangential extractor, you risk the honey on the inside of the frame pushing through the middle of the frame - destroying the comb on it's way. However the extractor can get really wobbly when we spin faster, but luckily the legs have holes drilled in the bottom so that you can bolt it down. So some of the men folk ventured to the hardware store to find a solution:

They were pretty close to solving the problem - but the screws that they got didn't quite work out. We'll probably grab some bolts before we try to harvest again.

Queen Cups

When we were taking the frames of honey to harvest off of Thistle, we found two frames of brood and A LOT of queen cups. None of them seemed to have any eggs in them, but that is probably because these frames were above the bee escape. One of them had some white waxy looking substance in it, I think it may be royal jelly, though it looks a lot more solid than I thought royal jelly would:

I suspect the bees are preparing to swarm - meaning the existing queen is preparing to leave with a large portion of the bees in the hive. They've run out of space and want to find a new home. The bees that remain in the hive would raise a new queen in one of these queen cups.

This would be the perfect time to split the hive. Splitting is essentially me swarming for the bees. Since Thistle feels like it is out of space, I would split it's resources in half and create two hives. Unfortunately I don't have the resources or time to perform a split right now. Though I have been preparing to split Thistle into a new yellow hive, I still don't have an extra bottom board or inner cover - so I have no where for a new hive to go. This means I'll probably end up losing my queen, which is too bad since she is obviously doing an amazing job since her hive is so strong.

Tall Tower

Today we put the bee escape on the Thistle hive so that we can harvest honey over the long weekend (the bee escape makes it so the bees can move downward, but not upward - so they'll empty out of the honey supers so we can harvest the honey). We can barely even call it the "Thistle" hive anymore though - I've already used my extra white box, cannibalized some supers from the Mint hive, and now I've even started using the boxes from an un-named third hive (we haven't named the yellow hive yet - perhaps sunflower, buttercup or sourgrass).

Here is the crazy multi-colored tower Thistle has become: