Queenless hive from a cutout

In the 2004 hurricane season a tall palm in a residential back yard located in southern Martin county succumbed to the tortuous winds.  Over the years following the storms the telephone like tree stump was visited by insects that bored into it's surface and then birds that foraged on the insects.  Eventually there were large enough holes in the tree that accommodated the nesting of a family of wood ducks.  Following the wood ducks a swarm of honey bees moved into the tree.  On September 24th the bees swarmed and alighted in a nearby tree temporarily until eventually flying off in search of a new home.  The following day the standing stump that was once a majestic palm tree fell splitting open and spilling comb and the remaining portion of the honey bee colony on to the ground.  I received a call from the home owner asking if it would be possible to move the bees into a hive box and manage them.  I agreed to check out the situation and make an evaluation.  It was obvious at first glance that the colony would not survive for long in its present state.  I pulled out my equipment and proceeded to collect the bees using a homemade version of Robo's World Bushkill Bee Vac.  I collected most of the bees after over an hour of vacuuming then proceeded to cut the remaining comb out of the split tree.  I like to salvage any comb with brood if possible to give the bees something to do in their new home but in this case the infestation of small hive beetles made it impossible to salvage very much comb.
The chance of collecting the queen in a cutout such as this, is very hit or miss.  I usually set the bees up in a hive box and then leave them alone for two to three weeks.  When I checked the hive after this waiting period I knew something was wrong when I only saw drone brood.

Upon closer inspecton I noticed what I had only read about; multiple eggs in many of the cells.  This is an indication of a laying worker bee.  In an attempt to salvage the hive a worker will take over the duties of the missing queen by laying eggs.  Unfortunately the worker was never mated so all the eggs that hatch and mature into an adult will be drones.

 It's interesting to see in some of the cells that had multiple eggs more than one larvae hatched.  Two or more larvae developing in the same cell quickly consume all the royal jelly and bee bread placed in the cell by the nurse bees.  It's unlikely that two pupae would develope from a single cell.

The only recourse I had was to combine the bees from this cut out hive with another existing hive in my apiary.

Bee removal from a cable junction box.

I recently worked on removing bees from a cable television junction box.  I checked out the site ahead of the actual removal and it didn't appear to be that big of a hive.

Cover over a cable television junction box.

I removed the cover and found the inside filled with comb and bees.

I worked for three hours cutting out five frames of brood comb, scooping up handfuls of bees and vacuuming the remaining bees into the two nucleus boxes using my BushKill Farms design bee vacuum.

I set the hive up in my apiary and by the next morning the bees were swarming and had covered the outside of the hive box.  I scooped them up and poured them into a set of two eight frame medium boxes that contained new foundation and a frame of uncapped brood from one of my other hives.  I placed a queen excluder just above the bottom board to keep the queen in, if there is one, and I stuffed grass in the opening to keep the rest of the bees in the hive until they get used to their new home.  I also gave them some sugar water in a Boardman entrance feeder to further entice them to stay put.

Re-queening

I have had two hives that have been very crabby for the last few months and two hives that were either cut-outs or swarms.  These four hives were do for queen replacement.  I picked up four mated queens from a local commercial queen breeder on Saturday morning, May 21st then proceeded to re-queen the hives on Saturday late after noon.

A new queen packed in a small cage is visited by bees from my apiary.

The first step to re-queening is to locate the existing queen and crush her leaving her either on the bottom board or the entrance to the hive so her hive mates know they are queenless.  The lack of queen pheromone in the hive alerts the workers that their queen is missing.

Workers examine the remains of their queen on the entrance to their hive.

This queen had fallen to the ground and is surrounded by her daughters.

The caged queen has a candy plug that the workers must chew through in order to release the new queen form her cage.  A small hole is made in the candy to shorten the time needed for the workers to chew through the candy.  The cage is then wedged between two frames and the hive closed up.  In one to two days the workers will have released the queen.  Check back on the hive in three days to ensure they did release her.  If they accept their new queen she should be laying eggs before a week has passed.  Checking for larvae on the frames will let you know whether she has commenced laying or not.

I was only able to find two of the four queens before light started to fail so I had to re-queen the remaining two hives the following morning.

Searching each of the boxes in one of my hives trying to locate the queen so she can be removed before re-queening.

043011 Visit to an apiary.

I recently had an opportunity to visit an apiary in Palm Beach County with some members of the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association.  There were about 15 hives on this five acre parcel that housed pigs, wild hog, a turkey, horses and a cow.  The hives were mostly nucleus hives (five frame) that were made to be sold at a recent conference.  The condition of the hives varied from frames of capped and uncapped brood with honey, nectar, and pollen to weak hives overrun with small hive beetles.

 Beginning beekeepers were given the opportunity to open a hive and examine frames of brood.

On one of the frames you can see where the bees exercised some of their creativity and built some comb in front of the foundation comb.  You can even see a queen cell along the edge of the comb which may indicate the hive is preparing to swarm or replace their queen through a process called supercedure.  You want to manage your hives in a manner that reduces the circumstances for swarming and you should replace your queens on a regular basis (every six months to a year) with a queen of known lineage so you always have a strong laying queen.

The next hive we examined had several pupa on the landing board which indicated something was very wrong with this hive.  When we removed the cover we saw a preponderance of small hive beetles.  Chris immediately went to work squishing the beetles with a hive tool.  It gives you some satisfaction that you are doing something but in the case of this hive it is just a drop in the bucket.

The comb was covered with small hive beetles.  If you look at this frame all of the dark spots on the lower portion of the frame is a small hive beetle.  The beetles defacate on the honey and cover the frames with a slime coating making it unusable for the honey bees and the beekeeper.

When a hive gets this infested there is little you can do but shake the bees off onto the ground and cut the comb off of the frames.  We captured the queen in a queen clip and placed her in a new nuc box with the empty frames.  You can see the bees marching  up a makeshift ramp to get back into the box with their queen.

Being vigilant with performing hive inspections ervery one to two weeks, keeping your hives strong, and your bee yard clean can help to prevent the out of control conditions depicted here.  Old comb and propolis scraped from the hive should not be left in the yard around your hives.  This material attracts the very pests you are trying to avoid.

2011 Master Beekeeper program and Univ. of Florida Bee College

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 2011 Bee College in Marineland, Florida.  This is a two day conference dealing with beginning and advanced classes in beekeeping and honey bee biology.  Preceding the class is a half day review for the Master Beekeeper Program followed by examinations for the Aprentice, Advanced, and Master Beekeeper levels.  I passed the Apprentice level in October and thus have to wait one year before sitting for the Advanced exam but I attended the review classes in order to garner a little extra knowledge.  Two of the members of the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association, of which I am affiliated with, passed the exam they sat for.  Also we had one member qualify for the Welsh Honey Judge class.
The bee college included a honey competition, which I entered some extracted honey and a photograph.

My extracted honey entry is the second set to the right of those entrys with ribbons.  This was the first contest I have entered, also it is the first honey I extracted, so I wasn't surprised or disappointed at not capturing a ribbon.

I thought my photograph would have attracted some attention.  I entered the infrared picture of a brood box (second image from left) that shows a bee cluster maintaining 93 degrees Farenheit observed in a hive in Ambler, Pennsylvania at Temple Univerity in April 2010.

This is a closeup of the thermogram I entered.  The white or yellow areas are warm and the purple or blue areas are cool.  This picture was taken in Pennsylvania in April but a similar phenomenom can be seen in Florida in February when I took th photo below.

This thermogram demostrates how the warmth of the brood chamber is concentrated in one area of the center of the hive in order to keep the queen and all of the workers warm throughout the winter.  This heat signature was radiating right through the wood side of the hive box.  The two bright white spots at the entrance of the hive are individual bees.  I am hoping dispalying these pictures will give someone an idea of how this technology could be used to help the Beekeeping industry.