Renewing my energy and first thing was to check hives
January 12, 2022
A lot has happened since I last posted…
On November 17, the last day that my house was being painted, my painters went around to the backyard and asked Jeff to tell me they wanted to talk to me. I had just hopped into the shower and Jeff was on a Zoom call with head phones with our LACBA Education Committee. Little did I know that they had gone to the back door to tell me NOT to go out the front door… because it was freshly painted. I took this dramatic fall! Six weeks later, I still have some pain and the MRI showed ace fracture in my tibia above my knee, and a fracture in the L1 of my spine.
I’ll tell you all this just so you can understand why we haven’t been to the beeyard. Jeff has been making quick visits to make sure there is water and to check for ants. We also decided to feed the top board with raw sugar since they eat it much more slowly than sugar water. Jeff did one full inspection in November and we did lose one of my hives which had no queen and had a very high number of Mites (60)! In my six years of beekeeping, I have never had such a heavy mite load.
Today was a gorgeous day and the weather was 76 degrees! It was a perfect day for a beekeeper! We had been waiting for a warm day to open the hives. The problem with going into hives when it is above below 70° is that the bees maintain their brood nest (baby dees developing) at 97° whether it’s winter or summer. When you open the top cover and let all that cold air in, they have to warm it up again to keep the brood alive.
My first check was the Cecilio hive which I’ve now had for 5 of my six years of beekeeping. The last time we checked this hive, we could not find the queen. So exasperating! Jeff and I passed frames back and forth, checking each frame seven times. We saw larva so we knew she was probably there. We knew it was a feral queen and last time Jeff fed them, they were aggressive. Today, I smoked under the cover ten minutes before I opened the hive, and they were calm. Since it is hard to find a queen in January, we decided to leave the feral queen there and keep a close eye on her. Today, we saw her and she was big and beautiful but very dark in variegated color, not like the golden Italian bees. As soon as we see signs of aggressiveness, we will take her out and replace her. We’ll have to see if we can find one locally, or we may have to order from Hawaii ($$$)
I was so happy to see stores of honey arched around some larva and capped brood and plenty of orange and yellow pollen. The bees are bringing in a ton of nectar and bright orange pollen. The sugar that we poured on the inner cover was still there and it seems they take it as they need it rather than just gobbling up the sugar water which we have traditionally used. We did an alcohol mite test and after ten minutes, there were only 4 mites per 250 bees, so we did not treat
The second hive “Paloma” is named after the Nursery owner’s daughter who was so instrumental in lobbying to get our bees in the nursery. This hive has two deep boxes and I was so surprised when I opened the top box, it appeared that the bee population was low. Because I had smoked under the lid 10 minutes before I opened it, they were all down below on the frames. Huge resources: capped honey, brightly colored pollen and nectar, some larva and a good amount of capped brood. You may remember that when a queen lays an egg, it takes 21 days for the bee to develop from egg, larva, pupae to adult. They then chew through the cell wall and emerge from the cell.
The second box with strong as well with capped honey, nectar, tons of pollen, very low population of larva and some capped brood. You may also remember that during the winter the queen will slow down her laying cycle until after the winter solstice and then the whole process will ramp up again. There was still sugar on the top of the inner cover. When we were doing the mite test, Jeff saw my marked queen. Always good news! 10 mites! We installed a Formic Pro strip which is safe for the honey and can be used in temperatures 55-85 degrees. It was 76 degrees. We still took three frames that were so strong with honey since we had only harvested about 18 pounds of honey this year.
Jeff’s hive was disappointing. Only about 1000 bees and still had sugar water in the feeder. He saw his queen and had a little amount of larva, pollen, capped honey. He didn’t want me to share resources that might weaken my hives although I thought we should. He added a mild strip of oxalic acid sponge and we will check it again in ten days. More later… 