Bee Yard Visit May 11

Mark and I have been very excited about our honey bee colonies this year and the thought that we will have honey soon!  We came to the bee yard on May 11 hoping to see some honey production in the few supers we have in place, but the bees still have quite a bit of work to do. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Many flowers are blooming around the countryside
and thistles are one of them.

We have a honey super on hive 01 and it is filled with comb, but there’s no honey at all in the super. The top deep hive box still has room to grow.  There are about five frames that need to be built out and filled with honey before the bees will add honey to the super.  The top deep hive also has new brood and new larva.

 

A nice spread of honey at the top of the frame
and capped brood at the bottom.

We saw our queen in hive 02.  She is not performing well though, and hasn’t for some time.  She has very little brood and the solo hive box is only half-populated with bees.  This is the time of year when this box should be full of bees, brood and honey, and we should have at least a second deep hive box on top of it in the same condition. There is no honey at all in this colony.  Mark and I made the decision that we must requeen this hive during our next visit.

 

Our hive 02 queen is near the center.  Sadly, her days are numbered.

When we inspected hive 03, we did not find our queen.  There was also no larvae and no eggs.  There were a few queen cells as well, which can be a sign that the hive is queenless.  We decided this hive too, will need to be requeened.  This hive did have a lot of honey though, and so we gave a frame of their honey to hive 02 to help them out a little.  Hive 03 has done a great job of filling in honey in the super.

 

Notice the queen cells along the bottom of the frame.
The bees know they are without a queen and are trying to create a new one.

Beautiful (and heavy) honey in hive 03!

No eggs, no larvae, no brood.

Hive 04 is still down and out, but we think we will soon have enough bees from one of our other colonies to split and get hive 04 back in business.  Crossing fingers!

Hive 05 has two deep hive boxes and a super.  The colony was full of bees in both of the deep hive boxes and there was a good amount of honey and pollen, but no queen and no new eggs or larva.  There was some capped brood.  We noticed queen cells in the middle of some of the frames. Here we go again; we need to order a replacement queen for hive 05.

 

The bees are working hard making this honey.

We found queen cells at the center of this hive 05 frame.

More queen cells on another frame.

Still, more queen cells.

You may remember that hive 06 was without a queen for the past few weeks.  When we inspected the colony weeks before, its population was very low, and we thought the hive was abandoned for the most part. We had planned to take the empty deep hive box home today, but it looks like perhaps robber bees are using it as a resource for pollen.  The box should be empty when we visit next, so we will take it home then.

 

Hive 06 empty cells, except for some pollen.

Hive 07 has two deep hive boxes with capped brood and new larvae.  The population looks good in this colony and we are happy with the work they have done.

 

Hive 07 capped brood.

Hive 07 capped brood and larvae.

Hive 08 also has two deep hive boxes and has a super as well.  The super has no honey in it yet and we are puzzled by this.  Maybe we put the supers on the hives too early and the bees weren’t ready for them yet.  The two deep hive boxes are loaded with bees.  We saw our queen, but we noticed no eggs, no larvae and no brood.  Mark has a good eye and looked a little harder at our queen and realized that she is a new virgin queen.   We haven’t been successful at getting virgin queens to mate and return to the colony, so we decided this queen will need to be replaced with a new queen when we visit next.

 

Nice honey in hive 08.

Bottom deep in hive 08.

The yellow "fabric" is what is left of a Beetle Bee-Gone sheet.
These sheets are fantastic at keeping the SHB population in check.  

Virgin queen in hive 08 near the right-center of the frame.

In all, we will need to requeen four hives; 02, 03, 05 and 08.  And, we will need to do it very soon.  This is a bit of a downer for us, as honey production is slower than we expected.  Hopefully, new queens in these hives will help us gain some ground.