My honey and the bees, January 24-March 1st, 2022
March 4, 2022
January 24, 2022
I’ve been a little worried about my Cecilio hive which is just going on it’s fifth year now. Last time we checked, there was a big fat feral queen and she was beginning to lay eggs like crazy. We tested for varroa mites and this hive was low in count.
Luckily my friend David Bock in Altadena had ordered late 2021 Queens from Tuckabee in Florida so I decided to purchase one and swap the feral queen out. I want to be a very good tenant in that wonderful nursery with their really nice workers and I do not want aggressive bees attacking them.
Luckily when we went to the feral hive, there was no larva or eggs and two queen cells, one underdeveloped and one with larva in it. Removed both cells. We checked several times, passing frames back and forth, off-loading to an empty box, and then peering inside to look for the queen. As Jeff was peering, a bee stung him on the lip as his net was close to his face. He flicked it and the sting was minimal. No queen to be found, no eggs, no larva. I felt fairly safe installing her and that she won’t be attacked. Lots of capped brood. Jeff returned on January 31st and she was ready to get busy since her pheremones had plenty of time to be disseminated in the hive. [My other hive (Paloma3) was quite high (12 per 250 bees). We decided to apply the second strip of Formic pro so that the full evolution of the mites could be treated.]
February 14 “Will you bee my Valentine?”
My honey and I went out to the nursery to check on our hives and as we drove up we were surprised to see that the lid of one of the hives was on the ground and the rock was on the ground. We have a hard time believing that we left it off but I guess it’s possible. Luckily we’ve had really warm days and we had a nice inner cover so when we opened the inner cover, there was a lot of activity. We never did see the queen even though we checked several times but there’s evidence that she is there because she is laying eggs and larva is developing. Tons of nectar coming in, good supply of capped honey and beautiful yellow and orange pollen. There were two rows of drone cells at the bottom of the frames. Normally, I cut out feral drone capped brood, but I love the idea of calm bee genetics being passed on as the drones fly out to mate with the queens. I decided to leave the drone brood there!
We did an alcohol wash test of 250 bees on the frame that had capped brood as well as open larva and we found over 12 mites. We treated with oxalic sponge
I then opened the Paloma hive which is two boxes high and has been strong all through winter. I found great activity with a lot of bees, beautiful new comb with lots of eggs, larva and capped brood. There is strong supply of bright, colorful pollen. and I actually saw just one cell of red pollen the rest was yellow and gold. We did a mite test using the alcohol wash method (1/2 cup = 250 bees) and we were surprised that we did not see *any* mites. We will not be fooled by this because we know they’re coming and we will test every month or twice a month throughout the summer.
We noticed that our water source was almost empty and luckily Jeff brought his extension hose so he could fill up the bucket. They also have a lot of water across the hillside (Hansen Dam) but we don’t like them to have to work too hard for water.
Jeff ‘s hive is struggling and so he is continuing to feed sugar water. He spotted his queen and has three or four frames of bees. For some reason, he refused my offer to share a frame or two of my capped brood with open larva. His bee count is too low to check for varroa.
March 1st
I opened my Cecelio hive and it looks very strong. We were able to see our 2021 marked queen (thanks, David Bock) but I did find that the bees were still very aggressive. January 24 to March 1…about 6 weeks. It takes a little longer for this hive to turn around with the gentle genetics of the new queen kicking in. They actually followed me to the other hive and stayed with me a long time. I saw bees in the Paloma hive fighting the Cecilio bees, tossing and turning, wrestling. Great day for mite testing: no mites in any of our three hives. Jeff’s population of bees was up so he did test. Zero! We find the oxalic sponger treatment was very effective in knocking the varroa count from 12 to none.