Apiary Visit - Queen and Queen Cell

After work today I visited my apiary to check on the Bees and see how my nucleus hive was getting on. Upon arrival at the land I was greeted by my Dad and Brother-in-law working hard at the land. My Brother-in-law was busy wrestling with some more clay in the ground and I'm not sure what my Dad was doing but he was rather sweaty. I had a quick chat with them then lit my smoker ready to get into the hives.

The first hive I inspected was the nucleus hive which I made last Wednesday. I gave it a really small puff of smoke and opened it up. Within the second frame I saw what I was hoping to see which was a Queen cell dangling off the face of one of the combs. As this cell that I saw was already capped it must be at least 8 days old which means in just over a week she should hatch and then with some good weather do her maiden flight and get mated with drones.

Queen Cell

Next was the main hive and to start with I checked the super I put on last week for any honey. At the moment there is no honey in there but under the Queen excluder in the half brood box below there about 3 frames almost absolutely full of honey and also mostly capped. This is the honey that I will be leaving them as stores for a couple of reasons. Firstly they worked hard for it so they deserve it and secondly as there has already been brood raised in the cells it may taint the honey. The honey in the super is on a combination of drawn out clean frames and foundation only frames so will be clean for when they start filling it with honey.

When I moved onto the main brood chamber I was keeping an eye out for the Queen and any signs of Queen cells. Within a few cells I had found everything I needed to find but not what I wanted to see; I needed to see eggs, pollen and larva but I wanted to see the Queen! After a couple more frames I was rewarded with a sight of Her Majesty!

When I had finished the inspection I put the hive together and went over to help my Dad move some equipment around the land. We moved a large storage box to a corner and when we got there we saw a frog. Unfortunately it was a rather camera shy little beast and kept jumping away before I got a decent picture of it but you can just see it in the below picture.

Apiary Visit 28/04/2012 - Feeding The Bees

Anyone who lives in the north of England will be well aware of the lovely weather we have been having over the last few weeks, in fact we have had little more than a few hours of dry weather since the last time I went to the Bees and split the hive. Due to this bad weather I have been increasingly worried for the Bees, especially the hive that I know is queenless. For a few days I have been trying to get to the Bees but kept putting it off due to the rain but then I received a email from the National Bee Unit advising us (the Beekeeper) to feed our Bees as starvation is a real issue at the moment. I decided that opening the hive for a short time and risking a little water getting in was better than letting them starve.

Friday just gone would have been a perfect day for feeding the Bees as it was much better weather and the sun even revealed herself for a short time, unfortunately I had already made plans for the day and wasn't at home. By the time I did get home it had started raining again anyway. The following day, yesterday, was again slightly better so I prepared some syrup and took a spare frame feeder up with me to the apiary. I had to stop off at my Dad's on the way as he has the keys to the allotment gate, it was about this point it started raining again.

When I got to the allotment the first thing I did was to have a look at the apiary and I was surprised to see a Bee flying back into one of my hives; it was only lightly raining and as it wasn't raining a short time before she could have been returning from a foraging trip. The first hive I fed was the new hive that has Queen Bee-atrix in. It was fairly simple to do this hive as it has no supers on yet so less equipment to move. I removed the hive roof and slid the crownboard slightly back to reveal the feeder frame only. The sugar syrup was then poured into the frame filling it to the top. I didn't fully open the hive but from the small amount I opened it I could see there was a lot of activity. I will do a full inspection as soon as the weather allows.

The next hive was slightly different. As it already had two supers on it I had to remove these first; I did have a quick look in the supers first and found that they did still have some stores but not much. This time of year with better weather they should be full of oil seed honey but unfortunately it was not to be. Once I had taken the supers off and placed them to one side I removed the Queen excluder (not sure why that is still in as this hive is Queenless!) to allow me access to the brood chamber, which was full of Bees! The first thing I needed to do was remove a frame so I could put the frame feeder in. Last time I was in the hive I moved a frame of brood further out to the edge of the box, this was a mistake and I will not do it again. With the weather being wet and cold the Bees may have formed a ball to stay warmer and by doing this they have left the frame that was at the edge and due to this it has got colder and all the brood has died. I have taken this frame out and taken photos of it which I will put at the end of this post. With the space created by removing this frame I placed the other frame feeder in it's place and filled it with the remaining syrup. Now for the good news......

......The rain was even lighter now so I decided to have a quick look at a frame, unfortunately I was unable to take any pictures of what I saw which is a shame as it was the best sight I could have hoped for, a Queen cell fully formed and capped; this means the Bees have realized they have no Queen and raised a new one from eggs that where already in the hive, they do this by feeding a freshly hatched larva royal jelly only. Now with any luck there will be some decent weather once she has hatched so she can go and do her mating flight, fingers crossed! After seeing the Queen cell I closed the hive up. There probably will be more that one Queen cell in there but I didn't want to disturb them too much.

The frame of dead brood. 

I removed some of the cappings to see what state the larva was in. 

The larger cells have drone brood in them

This shows pollen present in the frame

A Queen cup on the side of the frame, if an egg had been placed in this the Bees could have created a Queen cell from it

By placing a match into a cell you can test for American Foul Brood; if it was present it would "rope" from the match, I can only describe this as a snot like substance stuck to the match, luckily it looks like I don't have AFB

The lines of empty cells are actually where the wire runs through the foundation to give it extra strength, the Queen has detected this and chosen not to lay in there. I have read somewhere that this is actually a good trait for a Queen.

A dead Bee not fully developed, if it had died of European Foul Brood you would be able to see it's gut through the skin and it would be bright white or creamy. It looks like I don't have EFB either thankfully.

Another Queen cup

I have learned a lesson with this and in the future will not move frames out of the cluster in the brood chamber. I have had a good look at the frame and I am fairly happy the brood died of being chilled at the edge of the brood box, rather than any kind of disease. I will do full inspections soon, if the weather picks up, and hopefully will get photos of the new Queen. I will also attempt to mark her to make her easy to spot! 

Apiary inspection 29/09/2011

Just a quick post to say that on Thursday this week the last stage of the varroa treatment was added to my hive. As anyone else in the UK will know this week has been incredibly hot and sunny for this time of year and where I live, in Wakefield, was no exception; this helped as it meant a lot of Bees were out and about foraging. 

When I got to the hive there was a good flow of Bees coming and going. Once inside the hive I did a quick check in the supers to see how their stores were doing and was happy with what they had although I will keep an eye on this. When I start doing my Winter inspections a quick way to tell if they have enough stores is to tip the hive with one hand and if it tips easy they need feeding. That tip was given to me by someone I've been talking to on Google+. After checking the supers I did a quick check of the brood chamber and managed to find the Queen, eggs and larva so everything is still o.k. in there The only thing left to do now was to replace the treatment. Below are a few photos of what the treatment looks like.

The packet with directions, ingredients, batch number and best before date.

Half a bar of treatment, this half is wrapped in cling film to keep it fresh.

The above bar broken up and put in each corner of the brood chamber.

Apiary inspection 22/09/11

This inspection was mainly to replace the varroa treatment with a fresh dose. Next week will be the last treatment and then I'll be able to do a count to see if the level of mites has dropped.

As my sister was available to babysit both me and Steph did this inspection. Our initial intention was to do so really quick inspection but it turned out slightly longer than originally planned, but not by too much.

Upon arrival at the apiary both myself and Steph were a little shocked to see that 2 of the trees in the allotment had been chopped down; they were the cherry tree and one of the plum trees. Although my dad had been saying for a while he was getting rid of them it still came as quite a shock. They weren't the most productive trees and the other plum tee although less than half the size does regularly produce hundreds of fruits.

When we got over the initial shock of the missing trees I went up to see the Bees while Steph got suited up. From about 10 foot away I could see plenty of traffic coming and going from the hive. I then returned to the car and got suited up myself  before both of us headed to the hive.

Again this week we went in without smoke. To begin with I lifted the hive roof and crownboard off exposing the super. We started removing frames and was happy to see plenty of honey in storage. It was at this point that the Bees started to get a little aggressive and before I knew it there were loads if Bees flying around buzzing angrily. Rather than risk a full scale attack we backed off, carefully replacing the crownboard, and regrouped at the car. We then got the smoker lit and returned to the hive.

After a few small puffs of smoke in the hive we removed to crownboard again and continued to inspect the hive. This time they were a lot calmer and we managed to finish checking the super without further issue. There were no eggs in the super, only honey! In fact there were about 5 frames of honey, nearly full.

When we moved onto the brood chamber the first frame we inspected was completely empty, but in previous weeks this was full of stores. I was slightly worried that they didn't have enough stored honey at this point but when the next frame was lifted my worries were over as it had quite a weight behind it and was full of honey. The next frame was the same but with a much darker honey, though unfortunately I won't get to taste the dark honey; this is due to the treatment in the hive possibly tainting the taste rather than any health risk.

When we got to the central frames the main thing we were looking for was either the Queen or eggs. In the first of the central frames there were no eggs but there was larva present and capped brood. The next frame had more capped brood, larva at a younger stage in development but most importantly there were eggs present. This was a relief as I haven't seen evidence of the Queen in a couple of weeks. The next frame was better still; plenty of eggs, larva present and Queen Beeatrix herself!

The final step was to add the varroa treatment and then quickly pack the hive back up. By this point they were getting a little frisky again and I could hear them banging off the veil of my suit. Luckily neither of us got stung but I believe that we could have if we had stayed much longer, though I still don't think they are aggressive. The Bees are generally more defensive when they have less stores and varroa treatment is in place. Next week will be the last stage of the treatment. I will have to keep an eye on their stores and if needed feed them with a sugar syrup.