Anticipating a Swarm

The last time we checked the hive at Clarence Brown's, it was clear the bees have decided to swarm. But, like the time before, they have built the swarm cells in a way that is not going to make it possible to split the hive. My strategy is to ready a new hive and then to either catch the swarm if Clarence sees them.

I spent the day cleaning an old hive body. I scraped the insides to clean out bugs and propolis. I scrubbed the insides with a mixture of diluted chlorine bleach then hosed it out. It needed a new coat of paint. It's not my favorite hive body, but it's the only one I have left. Brushy Mountain is out of stock for hive bodies and bottom boards. I put it next to the other hive at Clarence's.



I have a Plan B if Clarence doesn't catch sight of the swarm when it leaves the hive or see it when it land on its temporary perch. I had checked out Brushy Mountain, but they are way behind on shipping and couldn't guarantee that I would get a trap and lure in time. There were other bee supply outfits in Florida and Minnesota, but the cost was going to just be too much.

I starting thinking and came to the conclusion that a swarm trap is just a box where bees would feel comfortable. Doug Greene had bought some pheromone lure for swarms, so I bought a vial off him.
Evidently the way this works is you just put the lure in the box. You don't uncork it. At least that's what the instructions I read online said. I'll take them at the word.

I put the vial in a cardboard nuc box with six frames in it. (I cross-wired some frames I got from Doug Shaw this morning.) Clarence and I discussed where to put the nuc box. It is waxed and would probably repel water, but I would just as soon keep it dry; rain is forecast for the next week and I'll be out of town attending a conference. We ended up putting it in his wood shed. It is rather close to the existing hives, but they may find it easy enough. If we spot them in a tree on in a bush, we will use the nuc box to catch them. At least that's the plan. Things never go as you anticipate.

Woops

So, the guys who know told me. My strange species of bee were my own drones. There were just so many of them! I'd never seen anything like it before. Not afraid to be embarrassed or admit my mistakes. Woops!

Blue Hive Under Attack

The blue hive is under attack!

I noticed yesterday that there were larger bees going into and out of the blue hive. I checked it again today and got stung away from the hive. The bees are definitely still not happy. This is the one that we just requeened. It has plenty of honey, but also has the weakest defenses. The yellow hive next to it has no honey to speak of and is much stronger with an active queen.

I got some old queen excluder from Doug Shaw, who bought some from someone going out of the business. It is old and metal, so it has little practical value (we both like the newer plastic type much better). He was willing to sacrifice it for me to see if it would work keeping the other species out.

I put it up, sticking it to the front of the hive with old wax. It is definitely working keeping the invaders out. (The hive body that has the excluder on it is yellow, but this is the blue hive.) The invaders are dark and have no stripes. You can see in the photo that they are much larger than the honeybees from the hive.

Tomato Transplants

I was reading Brett Markham's Mini-Farming this morning. I got the book from the library because the librarian was just bringing it out to put a brand new copy on the shelf. I realized that the tomatoes that I have not yet got into the garden (because my new raised beds are not finished, which is because kids are costing us money for school and an upcoming marriage) are suffering from nutrient deficiencies. Specifically, the underside of the leaves are purple which suggests a lack of phosphorus. So, my morning task was to get the remaining tomatoes into larger pots.

I'm writing this just so I can remember what I did. I'm not sure this will work well, but I intend to learn from everything I do. My goal was to get the seedlings into pots that had high quality soil, planted deeply enough to encourage root growth from the stem.

I used left over plastic pots and filled each with composted horse manure and brought them to the garden where the other tomatoes are planted. The manure is well composted.

I added a handful of 10-10-10 and a handful of dolomitic limestone. I put the mixture into the garden bed and mixed it with about an equal about of soil. My goal with this step was to mix the compost, soil, fertilizer and lime so that the soil in the pot would be more or less just like the soil they will ultimately end up in.

This had some added benefits as I saw it.

First, because I used soil in front of each of my 18 tomato plants, rotating around the raised bed with each plant, I was able to examine each. Some are still small. Others are growing pretty nicely now. One even had a flower. I picked off suckers. Second, I was able to do a little bit of weeding. Because of all the rain lately, those stray grass and weed seeds are starting to sprout. Third, because I added a full pot of compost, mixed it, and then pulled out a pot full of mixture, the raised bed benefited with a little added fertilizer, lime, and compost.

I originally had 24 Marglobe seedlings and 12 Brandywine seedlings. One of my 18 Marglobes that was planted in the raised bed died. I replaced it earlier with another seedling, leaving 5 unplanted Marglobes. One of the Brandywine pots actually had two seedlings growing in it. I plucked one out when I was potting them, but decided to go ahead and put the plucked seedling in a pot. I don't know if it will survive, but if it does, I retain my 18-per-bed system.

Requeening the Hard Way

I woke up at 3:30 this morning thinking about how to do the requeening of the blue hive successfully. I think I eventually went back to sleep because it was 6:30 when I noticed things again. When it was time to get up, I was a bit groggy, but requeening pretty much followed what I had worked out in those sleepless hours.

The first thing on the list was to get frames ready. I had 6 medium super frames ready to go. I made one of my unused supers into a 9-frame; so I had three to do. I fixed up two that had previously been destroyed by wax moths, installing new foundation in each. I had an unused frame that just needed foundation.

I also decided earlier that I needed to replace the brood frames Doug had lent me with frames that had cross wires strengthening the foundation. I had spent a little time in the mornings the past few weeks building frames and putting in the crimp wire. So I just needed to install foundation, which I did.

I came home from work for lunch and Doug Shaw and I followed my plan. Doug and I totally disassembled the blue hive. I poked the little hole needed in the candy of the queen cage and took the least used frame from the original brood box and pushed the cage into the upper part. I took out a frame out of the yellow hive that had brood on it and replaced it with one of the frames I had just built. I added the brood frame to the bottom brood box of the blue hive, next to the frame where the new queen was placed.


Then the fun started. We took out each frame and shook the bees to the ground. The theory Larry Tate told us was that if we had a laying worker bee, she would be too heavy to fly back into the hive. I am pretty sure there wasn't a live queen. The bees had tried everything they could to make a new one, swarm cells and emergency queen cells. But since only drone brood had been laid, unless mother nature was really going to play a trick, they weren't going to become queens. We destroyed those cells.

Then we started the process of putting everything back together. I replaced the frames Doug had lent me with frames that had cross wires in the lower brood box. We packed the upper brood box so that the honey laden frames were in the middle. I added a new super because there was a fair amount of honey already in the old super and added an Imirie shim between them.

About this time, the bees were plenty riled. (I'm sure this is good English!) Kathy, who took the photos, started getting hit from about 20 feet away and ended up running around the garden. (She had no veil or suit on.) That part was fun to watch.

The bees quickly found their home and moved in. I went to visit after work. Things are now settled down.

Queenless Hive

It was a day to go into the hives. Doug Shaw and I went into the hive at Clarence Brown's. The super is pretty much full of honey, so I added another. We checked. There are now at least 4 swarm cells developing. Just like last time, they are in dangerous places with a lot of burr comb built around them. I am just going to let them swarm this time.

I looked at the yellow hive, the one in which we caught the recent swarm. It seems to be doing nicely. The queen is laying and there are already capped brood.


The blue hive on the other hand was just plain nasty. I had to put on gloves. I could only see a little brood and the only thing that was capped were drone cells. I either have a drone laying queen, or a worker turned queen who is laying unfertilized eggs. They have put away a lot of honey, but there was so much in the brood box that there was just a wee little space for any more.


I did this inspection on my own and then called Doug. We called Larry Tate (actually talked to his wife, Jenna) and arranged to get a new queen. Larry suggested shaking all the bees in the hive out on the ground. A laying worker will be too heavy to get back in the hive. We couldn't see a queen.

We also added a new brood box to the bottom. There is no drawn comb, but a new queen will need space and the existing brood box is essentially a super it has so much hone in it.

Small Things

It's that time of the season when you mostly watch and wait. And I haven't done much. So there has been little for me to report about.

My tomatoes are looking weak. I expected them to start growing vigorously once planted in their beds, but they are, generally speaking, just limping along. There are a few that have started to grow a little. Several have started looking very spindly. One was so bad off that I replaced it with a new seedling from the greenhouse. I don't understand the problem. There are a lot of things that I could have done wrong and I have thought extensively about it. I have no answers yet.

The potatoes are, for the most part, doing well. I still pick off Colorado Potato Beetles every day. There are some plants, maybe six or seven of the Yukon Gold, that have not thrived. The Pontiac Red all seem to be doing quite well.

The onions are growing well. I haven't seen them start to bulb yet, but I have a month left to go.

I started turning the compost. I have added a significant amount of water to keep the composting going. In two of the three bins at least, that seems to be helping.

I transplanted three of the cucumber plants I started from seed into a strawberry patch where strawberry plants hadn't made it. The strawberries are starting to develop. I am plucking off any flowers I see until they get well established.