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.