WIP continuing

Thank goodnes, paint on every bit of the surface.

Signs of Hive Life

Both hives have a few dead bees in the snow outside the hive. Have had a couple of days with calm winds, temps in the high 20s, and sun. Last snow a couple of days ago, so this shows recent signs of life in the hives.

More WIP

 24 x 36

24 x 24.
Got this much done this week.

Progress? Unstable

Unstable. Darker. Further.

This morning in Helena

Package hive with its winter windbreak this morning.

Starting new painting

This is the first bit of paint on a really white panel.

Work in Progress

I do kind of like this stage, where there is a lot of brightness and 'air' in the painting.

Prep for new painting

Posterized and cropped photo for new painting.

Nothing to do with bees.

Bee Troubles

Swarm hive has been heavily hit by the wasps. But there is hope, latest photo of a frame shows they are repairing the damage, and there are still bees in the hive. No idea what the overall health is, but, well, there's hope.

Log entries from past month or two:

10/20/12

Big problem with wasps in the swarm hive. They're going in
and out regularly. Tomorrow begins a series of sub-freezing
night temperatures. I hope that puts an end to the wasps. I'm
afraid they may have destroyed the swarm hive.

10/22/12

Snowing tonight, low 26. Last night low 26. Hope this will kill
the wasps. Not much chance of looking in hive until 28th maybe.

10/29/12

Warmed up in the last couple of days. Today high about 58. Wasps
seen coming and going even after the cold temps (night times into
the teens) of the last week. Today bees coming and going from
both hives, also wasps.

Opened up both hives. The swarm hive has suffered the worst, with
frames centers to about 75-80% having caps removed. The outer
frames are less affected, but still heavily hollowed out. The
large number of uncapped cells seem to have honey in them, maybe
1/3rd full. Contrast to the same frames in August is very
dramatic, when they were completely covered with capped honey.

Looking down into the middle boxes and removing some frames we
saw the same pattern. Looks like brood cells and pollen cells
have been opened and then refilled with some liquid, probably
uncapped honey. There were some capped brood cells and at least
one larva in the pkg hive.

The hive populations of both hives looked like what maybe normal
for this time of year. There were quite a few bees in each hive.
Bees were concentrated in the center frames.
Also wasps were observed, perhaps there were 10 to a hive,
estimating?

10/30/12



10/31/12

Maggie says yarrow plants in garden have pollen. Judy next door
says nasturtiams blossoming.


My theory on the wasps is that somewhere in the neighbourhood
there is a wasp nest that is protected from the temperature
extremes by someone's attic, garage, or other enclosed space.
We have had some successive mid-teen nights and cold days that
i would think would have killed off an outside nest. That could
account for how this is a big problem this year. Also, September
very hot on through the first 2 weeks of October.


11/21/12

After a couple feet of snow last week, warmer but cloudy
temps last week and lots of melting, and heavy rain last night
for a couple of hours. Temp 40 deg outside. High today probably
45, not much sun.

Pkg hive seems to be doing ok, as observing a lot of dead bees
being carried out.

Opened up the swarm hive, expecting to be all dead bees, and
lo and behold, there are quite a few bees in there, at least
as many as a package i think. Furthermore, appeared on the frame
i pulled, that they have been repairing the damaged cells. So
quite a bit of honey in that one frame, which is in the upper
box. Photo by Alex. Outside behavior seems virtually
non-existent. I did see one bee near the upper opening on the
outside which appeared to be perishing from the cold, but at
least one bee had ventured outside.

Winding up the bee year

Winding up the bee year, preparing the hives for winter. At this point Chris and i have 2 hives in my back yard, and 3 hives across town, just out of the city limits. Moving Chris' two/three hives was kind of time consuming, but it's done. We have extracted honey from my two hives. Took us two goes at it, and we've got about 100 lbs of honey from them. What we have left is (for each) two hive bodies and one super. The supers, at least, are full of honey. See attached photo of the end frame from one of the hives. It's absolutely packed.

Next up is a visit to the three hives we moved late in the summer. Doubtful we'll get any further honey out of them, but you never know. It has been very hot and dry all summer, and they're in a dry field. Still, there are weeds, and some flowering plants, so it's possible they've settled down and produced some further honey. We left them with a bunch of partially extracted frames to see if they could clean things up and get their new hives all together.

All the hives have new queens. The queens are either supercedure queens, or the old queens in the swarms. None of them are more than a year old, however. A lot of the genetic material has come from the swarms we captured last year from the 'feral' hive way up in Dave Armstrong's willow tree.

Harvesting honey

Removed honey from both hives and began processing Sat 8/18.
Took 9 frames from Pkg hive, and 18 frames from swarm hive.
Surprised there was so much honey there. The capped honey is
so thick it hardly comes out of the centrifuge. We worked
until midnight spinning frames, and have left quite a bit of
honey on there because it wasn't coming out. Today the last
set of frames is being heated up in hopes they will clean out
more completely. We did start work yesterday when it was
quite warm (Chris garage), but it did cool down as the evening
progressed.

After removing and redistributing supers:

Package hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (mostly empty, left on hive because there is not
        enough to process, but bees still working on it.)
queen excluder
super (really full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------


Swarm hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (another work in progress)
queen excluder
super (very full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

We didn't actually take the hives apart below the queen excluders.
Activity in the hive looks good, there are quite a few bees,
and judging from the super we left in there is plenty of honey.

MQ Hive goes on vacation

The Miracle Queen hive was moved across town this morning at 0600. Despite the early hour there were some bees out that didn't make the trip. Maybe a dozen. Sealed them up, strapped the hive together and trucked them about 3 miles away. Chris and Maggie helped me with this. Mainly, with the kayak carrier in the truck it's hard to put heavy packages in the bed, so enjoyed the help, AND the breakfast afterwards. The girls weren't real happy with the move. The instant the tape was pulled away they came boiling out, but not in attack formation. They came out and were probably prepared to sting someone, but we backed away a few feet and no one was threatened.

In a week we'll truck them back to Chris' yard, where they will be merged with his swarm hive. Which queen to keep???!

Add new supers

Well, no time to harvest honey right now, so added new super to both hives. Only 2 frames (swarm) have wax, rest are bare frame material.

Package hive:
------------
top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

Swarm hive:
------------
top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

Ready for more frames

Hive body, MQ hive. Bees now working most of frames.

Pkg hive top super. Lots more bees. More honey.

Swarm hive. More bees and more honey

.

Has been hot and dry. Near record breaking. One day my therm said 101 deg. Some pollen coming in. The mint plant is flowering and there were quite a few bees on that this morning. Other garden flowers are flowering.

Have stopped feeding MQ.

Looked in all hives today. MQ bees on 75-80% of frame surfaces. Looks like fair amount of honey being put up. Lots of new blond bees. Ready to add a super or, better, merge with Chris swarm hive. Which queen should live?

Pkg hive. More workers. Top super has a lot of capped honey, much further along than on 6/28. Time for a new super.

Swarm hive. Ditto pkg hive. Time for a new super. The recruitment of new workers indicates there is a fertile queen. Hive activity on both this and pkg hive tells me that things are probably all well down below.

Hive inspections

MQ hive has doubled in last 2 wks. Lots of capped brood visible here.

Pkg hive capping honey. Population is up??

6/28/12 80 deg, sunny.

MQ finished sugar water yesterday.

Propped the lids open on all hives since it looks to be
consistently warm to hot for awhile. Looked in all hives.

MQ is now working on 10 frame faces, up from
5 faces 14 days ago. There is some capped honey, and some capped
brood. Activity seems pretty good generally. Healthy, but they
have a ways to go to make it through the winter on their own. Still
feeding sugar water every 3-4 days.

Package hive is doing ok. Looks like more bees are working the top
super, so perhaps the new queen has been producing workers.
There is more honey in the top super now. If this hive swarmed on
5/29 it's likely then that there is a new queen and some of her
brood is hatched and at work.

Swarm hive seems ok too. About the same amount of honey in
top super. Activity on hive is good. This hive swarmed on
6/3, so it would be another week before we see a large number
of new bees.

Corral fire

A couple of pics from S hills of Scratchgravels on fire. Taken 6/26 about 1530. You can see the slurry planes dropping the red retardant. I did see big flames, but the red in the pic is retardant.

Bees seem to be doing well. Too windy to get into hives, but tomorrow? MQ i think had some brood emerge judging from all the bees out yesterday. It was very warm, 90 deg minimum.

The Hive Report

Well, since the hives swarmed i've been wanting to see how things were doing. Got into them this afternoon, and here's the picture from the top super. Without disturbing the (i hope) new queen, no way to tell whether she's there, and laying, and fertile. Will know more in a couple weeks when we hope to see a surge of new foragers and new workers in the hive.

Meanwhile, here's the bee log.

78 deg and sunny, light wind. Looked in all the hives
beginning with MQ.

MQ: now is working 5 frame surfaces. There are lots of
capped brood, about 50% coverage of 3 frame surfaces.
There is some honey, perhaps an equal amount of capped
honey. They are not draining the sugar water
very fast. There is fresh larvae.

Package hive: hasn't progressed very much since last
inspection. The swarming seems to have slowed them down.
The upper super box still has frames with drawn comb,
but not much honey. I.e., they're about at the same honey
fill state as on 6/1. Could be they swarmed right after
that inspection. Workforce much reduced from
pre-swarm, as judged from number of bees on upper frames.
Only 5-10% the number of bees working the supers.

Swarm hive: top two supers look like they're getting filled
with honey, but a lot of it is uncapped as yet. Definitely
ahead of the package hive, though with a lot more honey actually
in the frames. Could be that this hive swarmed a week or more
after the pkg hive, which would account for why they have so
much more honey up there. Workforce much reduced from
pre-swarm, as judged from number of bees on upper frames.
Only 5-10% the number of bees working the supers.

MQ top view. Two and a half frames being worked.

MQ one of the inner frames. Lots of brood. This is a super sized frame in a hive body sized box, hence the descending cells.

Much reduced workforce for package hive. Not much progress in last two weeks, if any.

Swarm hive capping honey. About the same state in the two top supers judging from this view.

Swarm hive shows some capped honey, a lot of uncapped cells.

Need to go back through log, figure out when the swarms probably occurred, and predict when new resources should be appearing. If either of the hives appears not to be laying, then the MQ hive can be merged in to provide a queen. That one seems to be going pretty well.

Best Hangout Site continued

Ralph took this picture of Sharon waiting to close the lid on the bees. Doesn't she look relaxed.

Voted Best Swarm Hangout by Bees

Main ball with auxiliary to right shortly after they settled.

Left-behind portion of swarm that probably just went back to hive.

Donor hive after swarming.

Queen in the box. Rest of swarm working its way in.

Ralph and Lynn's back yard has been voted most popular hangout spot for swarms thee times this month. Yes, yet another swarm. This time off Chris' hive for sure. A mid-morning swarm, Ralph called about 1130 to tell me about a swarm in his apple tree, same one as the first swarm we got from his yard, just opposite side of the tree. Turned out this swarm ball (7k - 9k bees) had an auxillary ball a foot away with smaller number of bees. Went across alley to look at Chris hive, and bees are crowding the porch, hanging off it, and on a branch 15 feet away next to the south fence another ball of bees, about 3000. So evidence is good this came from Chris large hive.

By the time i found someone to come take the swarm, talked to Ralph, etc., all the bees had coelesced into the one major ball. Sharon came with a box, bee suit, tape, and we dropped the swarm into the box. After letting it sit an hour to collect as many bees as possible, we taped it up and she took it away.

Seems likely that the swarm got confused and there was the one left-behind group. I'm thinking that ball probably went back to the hive. The main bunch didn't seem to grow all that much. The donor hive seemed back to normal by the time we were finished at 1430.

Not really bee weather

Yesterday big Tstorm afternoon. Low 60s, cloudy until late afternoon, and windy today.

FEED: MQ finished up sugar water. Refilled at 1700.

List of people wanting swarms

In the Helena area. I've got a list here of 6 people wanting swarms. We have passed on 4 of them lately, so who knows. If you have/observe a swarm somewhere you can call me and i can put you in touch with the next person on the list. 439 0986.

Wow what a swarm

Katie getting ready. Note two swarm balls, large one above the box, but a smaller one in the upper frame edge.

About half an hour after the swarm was dropped in the box. Note that the box is full of bees on the inside as well.

Ready for a ride to their new home.

Big swarm event. The 'swarm' hive swarmed right before
1500 as we went from cloudy to sunny on a mid-70's day.
I was drawing on the patio and watching bees beard on the
porch, disperse on the front of the hive, and create flying
balls. Seemed to abort when clouds moved in, but then a little before 1500 there
was a committment, and a 30 foot diameter ball formed in the
air in front of the hive. I got lightly rained on with bee poop.
Eventually, after 10 minutes or so they began to drift east,
and very slowly, taking 20 minutes or so, moved about 100
feet east where they finally settled on neighbor's tree
branch about 8 feet up. Actually there were two clumps, and
the 2 clumps never did coalesce until we dropped the main,
lower, and larger ball of bees into a box. Pictures
available.

I was able to contact Katie, who had requested a call if
another swarm came up, by phone, and she was here about
1530. We set up one ladder under the main clump and tied
a cardboard box onto it. Another ladder under the limb
that needed shaking. Most of the bees went in the box
on the first shake. Looks like the queen went with them.
Katie closed up the box, and we retreated to have a beer.
There is a 2in x 2in hole in one side, at the bottom
and eventually the bees began funnelling into the box.
The extra clump disappeared, first into the air, and
then to the sides of the box.

Most bees were in the box, but there was a
fairly large bunch on the 'front' of the hive, above
and around the entrance hole. Katie went to get
some porous ground cloth to put around the box. There are
so many bees in this swarm they don't all fit into the
box, which is pretty good sized. Things stabilized on
the box. When Katie returned it seemed like all the bees
were not going to go in, no matter how long we left them.
So we brushed off the hangers on, taped the cloth over the
top and sides, and beat it for the pickup. Then a little
more taping. Off they went in that fashion. Further
report TBD.

Eventually the 'donor' hive settled down and foraging is
continuing. With the size of the swarm, i'm thinking this
was actually the first swarm. It's hard to estimate
because the branch they settled on had a lot of leaves,
but i think between 10 and 15 thousand bees.

After the box was taken to the pickup the left-behinds
took up station back on the branch above the ladder. A thousand bees maybe.
As late as 2030 i went back to retrieve the ladder, and
there were still a few bees on the ladder and some in the
tree, and they were STILL pissed off.

Yet another swarm

About 1000 this morning, Lynn from across from Chris called to say there was ANOTHER swarm in her hedge on the alley. Contacted Cathy and they said they'd pick it up. Hope it wasn't like in the middle of the hedge. (They seem to like to park in a visible location, i suppose so the scouts can find their way back with minimum confusion. Soooo, i'd guess the swarm ball was hanging outside the hedge mostly. True?) Awaiting further detail on how big, etc. When will it end???!

1330 72 deg patches of sun. Lots of pollen going into the hives. Lots of flowering trees. I guess the lilac's are past it. Bees don't seem to be visiting them. The maple trees (in my yard) are flowering and have a lot of activity.

FEED: MQ sugar water down to half a bottle. They are foraging quite a bit now though.

Busy day. Went by to check Chris's bees and lo and behold there was a swarm just hanging there to be taken. See photo of dropping said swarm into nuc box.

Extending comb in pkg hive top super.

Package hive.

Swarm hive showing more swarming type behavior?

'Swarm' hive.

Extending comb in top super of swarm hive.

1700

Looked in top of pkg hive and swarm hives. Both have bees on
all the top super frames extending comb. Probably 50-70%
done with that. Didn't see any honey stored there yet.

FEED: MQ just about finished jar as of 1130, so i refilled
it. That would be about 1 jar per 4 days. Their take, however,
seems to track the activity of the foragers, i.e., not using
the sugar water when the foragers are kept in by weather.
Coming week forecast not particularly warm or sunny, but there
is a lot of pollen and nectar out there, lots of activity.

MQ front and uncovered 5/31 with sugar water feeder.

A frame from MQ 5/31 showing some capped brood and larvae. So she IS laying.

Started blog mtdrone.blogspot.com.

64 deg and overcast. Calm wind. Good activity on all hives.

1430 Pulled frames from MQ hive and did good look and photo
session. In two weeks since last photos, since 5/18, they
don't seem to have expanded frame surfaces, but there is
capped brood and new larvae. So appears like new queen is
now getting started. Given the number of bees, there is a
fair amount of foraging. Started to sprinkle just as i
was finishing up and putting the top back on.

FEED: MQ sugar water down now to about 40% since 5/29 (3 days).



(NOTE: "MQ" refers to the 'Miracle Queen', who survived a series of mischances to make up this emergency, substitute, hive. It just happened.)

Snow and lilacs

'Swarm' hive in remnants of snow with blooming lilacs. Pic probably taken on May 27.