Busy Bees

When I got home from work today around 4:45, the TBH bees were going crazy! It looked almost swarm-like, but I noticed that as many bees were going into the hive as coming out, which made me feel better. I went to the grocery store, and when I returned, things had really slowed down--just a few bees going in and out. I couldn't find a swarm in any of the trees nearby, and when I looked through the viewing window, it was just as full of bees as ever.

Your Guess is as Good as Mine

I went outside this morning to say hello to the bees, and I found a group of them dangling from the hive! I can't figure out what they were up to. Maybe this is how bees play?

Starting over

Well, the combo hive swarmed and now they are starting over again. When I arrived today, the usually bustling hive was trickling bees in and out, and when I opened it up, bees scantly covered only about 6 of the 12 filled out frames. Everyone was a little touchy too.

I found a queen on about the fifth frame. She looks nice and fat, and I hope she will get down to laying soon and preferably not exhibit the swarminess of her mother. Time will tell. I don't think we will be getting much honey from this hive, but hopefully they will be able to build up enough to make it through the winter.

I think the split from the combo hive ended up with the old queen because there was never a break in the brood cycle. I'm wondering if we should re-queen to prevent massive swarming in the future. While those of you who know me know I'm not in this thing for the honey, it would still be nice to get a little bit to share with friends and family instead of more bees, which I really don't need or have room for. Tricky!

The TBH is building like crazy. I added two more frames this week. The brood is still patchy, but the bees seem to be okay with that--there are no signs of supercedure--so I'm okay with that. They have loads of pollen stored but still not much honey.

TBH Observations.

The TBH now has 19 frames! About 18 of those are at various stages of being drawn out. I added two frames today--one with a small lobe of wax that was built by the previous denizens of the hive and one completely empty. I've been adding frames to both ends of the hive over the last few weeks, and they are happy to work them on both ends, but they store different things at the extremes of the hive.

To the left of the hive, they tend to store honey and brood. To the right it's all pollen and drone brood. They have a lot of pollen--probably 5 solid frames of it, but not much honey. Drone production seems to be slowing down now.

The queen isn't the tidiest egg layer. She tends to spread things out a bit, especially on the drone brood--a few drones here, some honey there. The worker brood is pretty regular, although it seems to be at various stages of development; eggs, next to larva, next to capped brood.

I've noticed more propolis in this hive than in the others. I'm not sure if that has to do with it being a TBH or if they are just heavy propolizers--it doesn't make things impossible, but I do spend time scraping it off so that I can move the bars more easily.

I noticed a couple of supersedure cells today--maybe the workers aren't happy with their queen's performance. Personally, I like her--she's completely black, which makes her easy to spot--I see her pretty much every time I'm in that hive. She seems to have put on some girth over the last few weeks and now seems bigger than when she first arrived. I wonder if she could possibly be a new queen.

Finally, I've noticed a red dragonfly loitering around the hive and occassionally flying through the little cloud of bees at the entrance. It doesn't seem to be eating the bees, but I do wonder why it is attracted to them.

Very mysterious

Temperatures have been creeping up over the last few days. Yesterday at 4:00pm my backyard thermometer read 100, and at 10:30 this morning as I was getting ready to open the TBH, the thermometer read 90!

As I was preparing the smoker, I noticed a very dark, large bee frantically running around among the weeds. At first I thought it was a drone, but on closer inspection, I determined that it was a virgin queen.  She was much larger than a normal worker, with a pronounced thorax, and her abdomen ended in a point. Since, I didn't know what she was up to, I decided not to disturb her.

When I opened the hive, I found the old queen looking quite healthy on the 5th frame and a happily buzzing colony. They've now filled out about 12 frames, mostly with brood. I added a frame on either end to give them something to work with. There was a lot of propolis between the top bars and the hive walls, and the hive gave off the distinct smell of propolis when I opened it.  Not much honey in this hive yet, but much of their small stores are mixed in among the brood comb. Odd.

I am baffled by the virgin queen...was she on her way to get mated? Was she returning from a mating flight? Did the bees kick her out because the reigning queen is still in good shape? Did the reigning queen kick her out? So many questions!

Hurt So Good

I got stung on the thigh today, and it swelled up to the size of a softball! I didn't tuck my pants into my socks, and one of the girls crawled up the inside of my pant leg and showed me who was boss. Ouch! It's my first real reaction to a sting since taking up with the bees.

It hurt, but harvesting my first frame of honey more than made up for it! The gals had drawn out a frame of wax and just kept extending the cells on one side into the empty frame next door. I wasn't sure how to fix it without making a big mess, so I decided to harvest it. The bees seem to be finding plenty of nectar and pollen, so I didn't think they would miss it.

The frame was about 3/4 drawn out and capped on one side; it yielded about 3 quarts of honey! Most of it I crushed to extract the honey, but I left some of the wax intact because in my opinion, squishing the honey out of the wax into your mouth is the best way to eat honey. I'm also working on purifying some wax to make candles or lip balm.

Putting the drawn out frame into the brood chamber and creating a nuc seems to have prevented a swarm, for now anyway. I put the nuc into an eight frame Langstroth today with a follower board to keep everyone nice and snug. I'll be keeping an eye on that hive to see how things progress over the next few weeks. Hopefully we'll see some eggs soon!

Experimentation

I checked on the combo hive today, and I found about 10 swarm cells in various stages of development. Tim and I discussed what to do about it last week when I first noticed the bees starting to build swarm cells, and we half decided to just let them swarm. However, I was concerned about that for a couple of reasons; first, they might swarm themselves silly like the 'Old Hive' tried to do, and second, I don't want them swarming around the property where they are located--having a swarm of bees settle into the property owners' wall hardly seems like a nice way to say thank you for letting me keep bees there.

Most of the swarm cells, even ones that were pretty well built out seemed empty, so perhaps these are back up cells that the bees will only populate in an emergency?? There were a couple of capped swarm cells; one I left with the main hive, and the other I put into a split.

I also put a fully drawn out frame into the middle of the brood nest of the parent hive to give the bees a sense of having lots of space and maybe curb the swarming urge.

I tasted royal jelly today. I thought it would be sweet, but it was actually kind of salty with the distinct, earthy flavor of a bee hive.

The GOOD NEWS: There were two full frames of honey! Go bees, go! Having said that, the bees have slowed down wax production--they only filled a total of about one frame since my last inspection.

I am curious to see if putting the empty comb into the brood nest helps with the swarming. We shall see.