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.