It's All About Population Control

Mark estimates that we have about half a million bees in total in our apiary.  I think he is right.  One good thing about having eight hives is having the ability to better control our bee population.  When a hive is overpopulated, we can balance out that hive with another that is under populated.  

Remember that last week when we inspected the bees, we were very happy with the overall results of each hive.  Yesterday when we arrived, we found two separate small swarms.  Both were relatively small swarms.  One swarm was high up in an oak tree about 50 feet away from our hives.  We found the other swarm behind hive 08, about 15 feet away and 10 feet off the ground in a cedar tree.

Swarming is common this time of year, and is a natural process for bees to increase reproduction.  It is us beekeepers who interfere with swarming, because when a hive swarms, the "old" queen leaves with half of the bees, causing an interruption in our hive's progress.  When the queen leaves, beekeepers must buy a new queen and introduce her to the remaining bees, or rely on the bees themselves to create a new virgin queen to take over the hive.  The latter has a lower probability of success.  And buying new queens is expensive.  Beekeepers must do their best to keep their bees from swarming.  Click on photos to enlarge.

Bee swarm in tree near center of photo.  This swarm
was too high for us to capture.

 

This video above shows the swarm we found behind hive 08.  Watch a few of the bees near the bottom when they "waggle" quickly.  This is how they communicate with one another.  Scout bees may have already located their new home and the bees all gather here over the next day or two, before heading out together to settle in.

We started the inspection process by looking at hive 08, our overpopulated hive.  This is the hive I believe is creating the swarms.  In hive 08, again we noticed the overpopulation continues. 

This top box is an empty sugar water feeder.  The bees still
like to gather in the feeder, even though it is empty. We fill it up
with one and one-half gallons of sugar at each visit.  It is
bone dry in less than a week. 

Hive 08 overpopulated.

We also noticed that we were not successful in getting all of the queen cells removed during our last visit.

We have read that a queen cell near bottom of the frame (versus near the
center of the frame) is an indication that the bees are overpopulated and likely to swarm.
Notice the cell is opened (flap door open) and a virgin queen is on the loose somewhere.

Our plan to fix the overpopulation in hive 08 was to split the colony.  For hive 04, we only had one deep hive box.  Moving the top deep box from hive 08 to hive 04 fixed two problems; the overpopulation in hive 08 and the under population in hive 04. 

We prepared hive 04 to add a full deep box from hive 08.
It rained off an on throughout the day.  We only opened the
hives between rain showers.

Hive 04 are our Buckfast bees that were recently added. They
have plenty of empty frames and room for growth.

We placed newspaper between the two boxes (hive 08 box is on top)
in order to allow time for the bees to chew through and get
to know each other.  This will take a couple of days and will
also allow for time for the hive 08 bees to reorient themselves
and realize this is the location of their new home.

We also decided to collect the swarm behind hive 08 and add an empty deep box to replace the one we removed, then place the swarm into the empty box on hive 08.  Basically, we were putting them back from where we think they came.

We found the swarm bees in the cedar behind hive 08 and
collected them in an empty plastic tub to place them in hive 08's
new empty deep hive, just added and shown in the above photo.

Swarm bees behind hive 08.

We collected the swarm in a plastic tub to move them over to their new home.  While we were holding the tub over the deep hive to place them in, we noticed the bees within the hive moving very quickly up from below heading toward the tub of bees.  We realized that they had picked up on the queen's pheromones and her presence within the tub.  They were heading toward her.  Mark spotted her on the edge of the tub and we quickly dumped the bees into the hive box.  We hope the queen will stay in her hive with her bees, now that they have more space.  However, when bees decide to swarm, it is hard to talk them out of it, so we will have to wait and see.

In this case, the queen that we saw on the edge of the tub may be the queen we introduced last week, or she may be the virgin queen that emerged from the open queen cell.  If she is the virgin queen, she will need to take a maiden flight to mate and return to the hive safely, before she begins to lay eggs.  Regardless of which queen she is, we are counting on her to stay safe and remain with her bees in this hive.  Otherwise, our queen problem will still not be solved.

Hives 01, 02 (the Russian hybrid and first swarm that was collect two weeks ago), 03, 05, 06, and 07 are all doing great.  They each have great queens that are hard at work.  Each of these colonies have all stages of brood.

Hive 01 queen with eggs surrounding her.

Hive 02 swarm and Buckfast bees already capping their
honey on their second deep hive box.

Hive 02 supersedure queen cells.  We have read that these
queen cells that are found near the middle of the frame are
to replace a queen that is either missing, or not good at laying eggs.
According to what we have read, these are not swarm cells.
We removed each of these cells, because we located our Russian queen
in the hive and there appears to be a good population with
all stages of brood.

Hive 02 with lots of bees and brood.

We found a ton of capped brood in hive 03.

This hive 03 photo shows very small larvae. 

Three days after an egg is laid by the queen, these larvae hatch.  During the first three days of the larvae's life, it is fed royal jelly, a secretion from the worker bees' heads that is full of nutrients. Afterward, as the larvae grow, they continue to be fed by the worker bees, but instead of royal jelly, they switch to a diet of a mixture of honey and pollen.  This food substance is called bee bread.  Five days after the larvae hatch, they are capped by the worker bees.  These are the "fuzzy" tops added to the open cells, as seen on the left in the photo above.  They will stay in the capped cell and develop into pupae for 21 days, until they emerge as baby bees.

Hive 05 larvae.  Notice the milky substance around the larvae.
This is royal jelly.

Hive 05 worker bees with their heads in the cells, feeding
the larvae royal jelly secreted from glands found in the
worker bees' heads.



Hive 06 queen with her young larvae around her.

Hive 07 with young larvae. 

We have had a lot of rain this spring and there are still many flowers all around southeast Texas.  Summer is just around the corner and hot days are soon to come.  

Roadside wildflowers at the entrance to Doug and Linda's property.
In this photo, you can see horsemint (light purple), chicory (yellow), and
brown-eyed Susan flowers in the foreground (orange).

Blue gilia phlox.

There is also Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot) on the property.

Our hives at the end of the work day.