These past couple of weeks have been a bit full-on for both Kat and I, so today I’m taking control! *evil laugh* The power! No doubt it’ll be rambly and Kat will have to edit so it’s likely to be a bit of a beast, so sorry in advance:
18/4/21
We managed to check all of the hives properly on Sunday 18th April in the glorious weather, mostly to look for disease but also to check the queens, food and brood patterns, etc. Some interesting things occurred: Kate was found to be low on bees and, due to the inability to send out many foragers, she was also very low on food - even with us feeding her syrup.
Laura, on the other hand, had drawn out all of her foundation in a week! As well as fill most of the fresh frames of comb with brood! It was strange to have such a difference between both the hives as Kate, if untouched, would probably dwindle and die or at least just meander and not produce much honey for us this year however, if Laura were left to her own devices, she would most likely fill up to the brim with bees when all the brood hatched, produce swarm cells and disappear over the horizon leaving us with a small colony which wouldn’t produce much honey either ...
Surprisingly, both of these problems could be fixed with a single, simple manipulation:
We took a frame of capped brood and a frame of Pollen/Stores from Laura and swapped it out with some empty comb in Kate. This gave Kate the food she needed to rear new brood and when the frames hatched it would also gave her the extra bees she would need too, whereas taking these frames from Laura knocked her back by a few weeks and gave her some new comb to use to delaying any swarming. Win-win!
On inspection of our new hive, Steph, we found the queen and all of her healthy brood. The warmer temps had allowed her bees to break cluster and to move up into the top box and start drawing out the foundation which stopped Kat and I worrying so much. Steph was a lovely colour and was extremely calm on the comb, meticulously going from cell to cell checking cleanliness to lay. It was the first time I’ve actually seen a queen lay an egg before! It was strangely satisfying/cathartic to witness.
The Nuc seems to be our problem child, unfortunately. While looking for the Queen we came across a couple of supersedure queen cells.
The colony makes a supersedure queen cell when the worker bees can sense something is wrong with the queen. She could have run out of sperm, making her a “Drone-laying queen”, or she could be injured in some way; It could even be that her pheromones have started to weaken for some reason and the bees are having trouble sensing her. These cells are quite hard to distinguish from emergency cells and swarm cells but some traits are that there are usually less than five made in the colony and they are halfway up the frame, rather than on the end.
The three stages of the nuc's supersedure cell.
When looking in the cells of the comb I found that the queen had been laying two eggs at a time which is a sign that she is failing, like a going out of business sale, her body produces lots of eggs as a last-ditch effort that a fertilised egg is laid. (If you look at the first picture above you can see a larva and an egg just below it) After about an hour of searching through the Nuc trying to find her majesty to see if she were damaged somehow but I just couldn’t see her at all.
When I got home, I contacted the seller and asked if she had ever actually seen the queen in the nuc before and she said “no, but there were always eggs and worker brood so I never worried”. This is a fair point as it isn’t always necessary to find the queen to look after a hive, but my guess is that she may be very small, maybe even worker size which would explain why I couldn’t find her and due to her size she wasn’t able to mate effectively. That is purely speculation to keep my fragile ego intact for not being able to find the little lady after an hour of serious rummaging.
23/4/21
A few days after the inspection I needed to go back and top up the feeders in Kate, Steph and the Nuc. While I was there, I decided to have a nosey [of course you did! ~ Kat, ed] at how they were all coming along and to have another try at finding the queen in the Nuc as it was bugging me…
I started at the Nuc, as I was most concerned about it. Another hour and a relighting of the smoker twice and I just couldn’t find the old gal anywhere! She must have the best cloaking system ever! In passing through the frames, I noticed that the Nuc had quietly drawn out all of their remaining foundation in the five days since we’d last seen them, which was impressive! The Supersedure cell had also come along quite well too. Worryingly the bees had reformed the cell that I opened up for the picture, usually, they leave them alone as the larva can become damaged extremely easily if there is no cell around to protect it. They must be really strapped for fertilised eggs if they’re doing this. The larva looked healthy inside so I marked the frame (where the egg was) and shut everything all up, resigning myself to the fact I couldn’t find the queen again! Harrumph.
Steph was doing ace! LOTS of eggs and larva although they were all on the 14 x 12 frames, which we’re trying to move them off. They had drawn out a couple of frames but were using them to store nectar and sugar syrup which was most annoying because we really want her to move up and be busy laying eggs in them instead. Remembering how well the Nuc was drawing out frames in comparison I decided to do a quick trade so I could find the queen in Steph and keep her in the top box via a queen excluder.
A queen excluder is a piece of equipment specifically designed to allow workers access to areas of the hive without allowing the queen to get past. It can take many designs but the ones we use are hard plastic sheets with specially sized holes that the queen can’t get through.
It took mere minutes to find Queen Steph (see I’m not so bad at finding them!) and I debated trying to mark her, but after the past two failed attempts I decided to leave it until we have more colonies to our name, just in case I goof up again. Here I am releasing her into the top box! This should encourage her bees to move up with her. Finally, I decided to keep feeding Steph to encourage the remaining foundation to be drawn out but the Nuc was full of stores so I took the feeder off and left them to it.
Next, I had a gander at Kate to see how the frame of brood helped and it's remarkable the difference inside the Hive. Whereas before she was a small cluster huddled in the middle trying not to be noticed, I opened up and there were bees all over the frames busy as ... er … bees. Looking through the frames, the brood nest had increased to about 5 frames and the outer frames had started to be filled with nectar/syrup. There were still quite a few cells of capped brood that hadn’t emerged yet so I shut everything up and decided to take the food off due to how well she was doing.
Laura, my golden child, blew me away once more when opening her up. She was almost filling both brood boxes (this is quite a feat so early in the year) and they were starting to cap honey and brood in the top box. I closed her up after having a little nosey as thoughts of queen rearing and splits started hounding my mind and I couldn’t concentrate fully.
25/4/21
After a few days of contemplation and vast amounts of research in bee books, websites and YouTube I was still trying to decide what to do about Laura. On one hand, with the size of her, I could probably take half the bees and frames away from her and she’d still probably give us the best crop of honey out of all of our hives this year. On the other hand, if I leave her to grow a bit more, I could get healthier/larger splits out of her. Other thoughts were running amok in my mind such as I could use the hive to rear queens or make a small Nuc out of her to do it, so I wouldn’t really slow her down ... I decided to keep pondering over it for a little bit longer as once you decide there really is no going back.
It was getting cooler on Sunday so I decided to only check that Steph was laying in the top box and see if her feeder needed filling up again. There was only one frame with eggs but every single cell on that frame had an egg and she was pottering around on top of them waiting for the other frames to be emptied of stores or foundation drawn out. I popped her back in the top box and filled up her feeder.
The Nuc is right next to Steph and I could feel the queen mocking me … [of course you did! ~ Kat, ed] So I had yet another search for her! Still no luck whatsoever. Something of note was that the supersedure cell had been capped meaning in a few days the new virgin queen will emerge, defeat the current queen (if she can bloody find her!) in mortal combat and then fly off victorious to be mated. All of this means that the Nuc is out of bounds for me for at least two weeks. If I disturb the bees before the new queen starts laying then they can panic and surround her for protection, killing her in the process. I’ve set an alarm for when I can go and rummage, lets hope the new queen is easier to find! [How will you manage? Yes, gentle reader, he is still nagging at me and keeps staring mournfully at his countdown alarm. You can bet he’ll be up and off as soon as that thing goes off so watch this space! ~ Kat, ed]
As I was in my bee suit and it was a nice day, I decided to pop over to Laura and Kate to see how they’re doing [of course you did! ~ Kat, ed]. The rest of the capped brood in Kate had emerged as she had nine out of eleven frames of bees and they were everywhere! It’s amazing what one frame of brood can do.
Kate’s laying pattern was excellent and she was bringing in lots of pollen and nectar. I did notice that she had a single charged swarm cell so needed more space. After removing the cell, I made a note to get a queen excluder when I get home and come back tomorrow to give her a super or two.
A brood hatch must have occurred for Laura as well, she was full to the brim with bees, all 22 frames in the two brood boxes were heaving! I did a cursory check for swarm cells but couldn’t find any, fortunately. But my plans of queen rearing were kicked into the forefront of my head and I realised that I didn’t have any equipment in my car for it. I drove home as fast as I could to get everything I’d need but the heavens opened so I would have to hold off until the next day.
27/4/21
Oh weather, you fickle mistress. The weather this week has been cold and mizzly, the bees have gone back into their cluster and are barely leaving the hive for anything other than the necessities. I hadn’t been sleeping through worry over Laura and Kate bursting at the seams and deciding to make billions of swarm cells while I can’t get into them. There was a slight warm patch on Tuesday so I decided to give them space and hope it would suffice.
I put a queen excluder and a super on Laura although I may go back this weekend and pop another one on her. I did something I never thought I’d do for Kate, I put a second brood box on her and some syrup to help her draw out the foundation in it. Kat noticed my worrying; [of course I did! You don’t shut up about it! ~ Kat, ed] I may have been pacing and muttering intelligibly to myself. She suggested putting a second brood box onto Kate to try and get her up to Laura’s strength for summer. Kate is currently at around the stage Laura was at when we put the second brood box on this March, so in a month Laura has turned into a beast thanks to the extra space of the second box and ideally, we want the same for Kate.
Spring around where we live won’t really give us a massive honey crop due to the lack of diverse plants around us. Most beekeepers use the spring flow to do manipulations and increase the number of colonies they have, building up strength ready for late June when the summer flow starts and the honey for the year is made. Kat’s suggestion made absolute sense to me and I was very proud of her for coming up with it. [Ever the tone of surprise … ~ Kat, ed]
2/5/21
So, it’s still a bit cold but it’s been a week since I saw the single-charged queen cell in Kate and I was feeling a bit antsy about it. I managed to convince Kat that I needed to check for any other cells they may have made in the meantime [of course you did! ~ Kat, ed]. Kat thinks they may be making them if we’ve harmed Kate in any way when we tried to mark her and I agree. If this is the case, we’ll make a nuc up with Queen Kate inside and let the bees produce another queen which I think is the best way of dealing with it.
When I checked it was cold – about 14°C – colder than it should have been for opening them up really but I was desperate [of course you were! ~ Kat, ed]. It was a quick inspection – just lifting up frames, checking for any cells and putting them back. Kate hadn’t moved into her second box yet but the bees were taking syrup from the feeder so when she runs out of space she should start moving up. Going through the frames there was another charged queen cell with an egg in it. This isn’t a dire situation because the bees can decide not to develop these into full queen larva. I still decided to remove the cell but Kate seems to be doing quite well with lots of brood in all stages. She just needs some good weather so she can start moving around the upstairs. Kat isn’t sure whether we should let the bees re-queen Kate on the off chance she is damaged. She thinks they must be making queen cells for a reason but I think it’s more likely to be a space issue at the moment but we’ll keep an eye on it and if they make one of these cells into a larva then we’ll make up a nuc as mentioned before.
Next came Laura, I opened her up frame by frame, again only looking for queen cells due to the weather and found 19 play cups! A play cup is a queen cell that isn’t ‘charged’ in any way (no egg or larva growing in it). The bees do this naturally to practice the process of making them. They do this en-masse when the swarm instinct is being tickled e.g. when there’s a lack of space, an abundance of food, among other reasons. I then knocked every single one down. They are hopefully just complaining because of the weather and the fact that there are so many of them. They hadn’t moved into the super yet so hopefully, as soon as they realise that’s there, this should satisfy them a bit more. The weather just needs to pull its finger out and warm up. It’s been surprisingly frosty in the early mornings these past few months and not getting much above 10°C during the day. [I proofread this while listening to the rain pour down outside my window … he’s not happy! ~ Kat, ed]
I didn’t really feel the pressure to inspect Steph during the cold weather as it’s unlikely she will swarm in her current state and I’m not allowed in the nuc at the moment. Harrumph!
So, that is it for now, told you it was a lot! When this cold weather clears off a bit, I’m going to make a Nuc up out of Laura and try my hand at queen rearing for the first time. The excitement is palpable!
I hope you’re all safe and well and we hope to write again soon.
Greg, [and Kat, ed]
Laura, Kate, Steph
P.S Here's a very satisfying slow-mo of our smoker in action!
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