New Foundations and Mid-November Hive Check

It was exactly one month ago when we last checked on our bees.  Mark and I have been so busy with work and weekend activities that we had no time to spare for beekeeping.  While we missed seeing our bees, we weren’t worried about going so long between visits, because we expected they would be slowing down now that the weather is cooler.  And, not bothering them so much can sometimes be a good thing.  And sometimes, it’s not a good thing. 

The last time I posted on our blog I mentioned we would be adding four new hives (which will include six new nucs) this spring.   We visited the bee yard yesterday and installed four new foundations, just like we did this past spring when we started our beekeeping adventure.  We arrived at the bee yard near Caldwell, Texas at 9:00am when it was 58 degrees.  We spent a little more than three hours from start to finish, and we are pleased with our work.

(Click on photos to enlarge).

The four foundations in the foreground are newly installed on flat earth and tilted forward.
Having the hives at a forward angle will keep rain from entering the hive.
The two empty foundations in the background once had hives in place earlier this year.
We will have eight hives in place in March.

Afterward, when the temperature became warmer, about 70 degrees, we opened hive 04.  During our last visit, we added a food supplement patty and placed it directly on top of the frames (we did this in both hive 02 and hive 04).  The bees in hive 04 did nibble on it a bit, but their honey stores were in very good supply, so they may not have felt a need to feed on the patty much. 

Hive 04 has plenty of honey stores for our short winter.

Notice there are no drones; they have been kicked out by the worker bees. 
This happens at the beginning of each winter. The worker bees know that the drones
offer no value in the hive.  They are essentially lazy and do not earn their keep.

Hive 04's population is amazing - and they are all female.

We found that the bees never moved up into the second deep hive as we had expected them to do these past couple of months, so we removed the top deep hive, along with all the empty frames in it, to keep the bees in a smaller space through winter.  This will help them to stay warm while they cluster together in one deep hive.  We also found that we had a fairly large population of small hive beetles in the top deep hive.  We took a look at the lower frames, which were full of honey, and we saw the queen for the first time in a very long time, still sporting her blue painted dot on her thorax. We didn’t see any small hive beetles or larvae in the lower deep hive, so we believe the bees are doing a fine job of keeping them in check in their space.  After adding sugar water to their two frame feeders and putting the food patty back in place, we closed up the hive.  We added an entrance reducer on the landing board to help limit the cool air from entering the hive.  As always, we were very pleased with this hive.

Entrance reducer is in place to keep the cold air at a minimum.

We moved down to hive 02 and we had noticed that the landing board was extremely dirty.  This is a bad thing and a sign that something is likely wrong inside the hive. 

Hive 02's landing board is very dirty; a bad sign. Notice the black hive beetle trap
just inside the hive. The hive is about one inch higher than usual when the trap is in place.

However, we watched bees coming and going all day while we were working and we weren’t too worried.  Our plan was first to remove the beetle trap from the bottom board, so that we could lower the deep hive by about one inch to allow for a newly installed entrance reducer to better fit in place.  As I pulled the trap slowly forward toward the landing board in an effort to keep the oil from spilling, Mark and I immediately realized why the landing board was so filthy.  A very large number of bees had died and collected on the beetle trap.  I noticed that they looked damp and a little moldy, but thought perhaps this was because they were resting directly on the oil. 

Very disappointing discovery of many dead bees in hive 02.

At this point, we weren’t expecting anything good upon opening the hive.  When we removed the top lid and inner cover, my eyes immediately took notice that one month ago we placed the food supplement patty directly on the frames…in the middle of the hive.  Doing this covered the vent in the center of the inner cover, essentially blocking any air flow through the hive.  Mark and I can’t say for certain, but I feel pretty sure this is why so many of our bees in hive 02 died.  It is my opinion that having the top vent blocked, while having oil filled in the trap in the bottom of the hive not only prevented ventilation, but likely caused moisture to collect inside the hive.  Subsequently, with a much lower bee population, wax moths and wax moth larvae had moved in.  There were only a few, but our experience has told us that having one or two will easily lead to having dozens, and getting rid of them entirely is very difficult. 

But, we did have just a little bit of good luck yesterday, when we saw that we still had our Russian hybrid queen alive in hive 02.  This was a huge relief to us.  We removed all of the frames in hive 02 threw them away and replaced them with the empty frames that we had just removed with the top deep hive in hive 04.  To do this, Mark controlled the smoker while I used the broom to brush the bees gently into the hive box from off of the old frames and onto the empty frames, one by one.  We left enough room in the hive box to add a frame full of honey and brood from hive 04, to give hive 02 a chance at a new start. 

We moved a frame from hive 04 (full of honey and brood) to place
in hive 02 to give them a fighting chance.

This is not an ideal time for the bees to be low on population, low on food supply and trying to stay warm enough through the winter.  We are lucky that south Texas winters are very mild (it is nearly Thanksgiving and only in the mid 50s at night, and in the lower 70s during the day).  We are lucky that the queen is still alive.   We are lucky that there are just enough bees to try and make a decent comeback.  We are pretty shook-up about this incident, so we will make a special trip in one week to check on hive 02 again.

Hive 02 with entrance reducer in place for winter.

Mark and I are still learning, and often it is the hard way.  We read and research so much, but still we make mistakes.  Beekeeping is difficult already, but extra difficult for us because our bees are not near our home.   While we are at the bee yard, we often have to make quick and critical decisions, using only the tools and supplies that we have on hand at that moment.  Not having opportunities to get away from Houston more frequently has allowed for our failures to go unnoticed for weeks, until we discover our mistakes during our next visit.  We won’t give up, though.  We love beekeeping and will keep working hard and continue learning as much as we can to ensure that we are improving our beekeeping skills.