Bee Yard Visit September 1

It's still pretty hot in Texas during these last remaining summer days.  Our temps have been in the upper 90s with a heat index of over 100 degrees nearly every day.

Mark and I took advantage of an early morning to stay cool while we worked our hives.  Not only was it more comfortable for us, but for our bees as well.  And, watching a Texas sunrise is always a welcoming break from our crazy lives in Houston. (Click on photos to enlarge).

It's been a few months since we visited our bees and we weren't sure what we'd find once we arrived, but we were happy to see that most everything was in good standing.

A tiny (and very hearty) mesquite tree is sprouting near our hives.

We had five hives at the beginning of summer.  This visit, we found four of our hives still going strong.  Just a quick glance at hive 01, we could see that this colony was dead.  The most obvious sign is the very dirty landing board.  Robber bees were working hard to gain access in through the lid, once we removed it.  The box was riddled with wax moth worms.  We left this hive box as it was.  We'll come back to salvage what we can later in the fall once it's cooler.

Our goal today was to see which colonies were up and running and to also add Apivar strips to help control the varroa mite population.  The remaining four colonies looked great.  We took a look inside hive 03.  The bees were so calm we didn't have a need to use a smoker.  They let us work around them and barely acknowledged us.

Below, you can see a very clean landing board and the bees are working together to keep it clean.  They remove any speck of dirt and even some of the paint and wood that they find in their way.

The bees had loaded their frames full of wax comb. They've done a great job of controlling the small hive beetles, as we did not see any during this visit.

We have used Apivar strips since our second year of beekeeping.  They have made all the difference in keeping our hives alive.  Twice a year is a good idea; in the late summer and late winter.

Hive 05 is nearly perfect.  We added Apivar strips here, too.

When we come back to visit in a few weeks, we'll remove the strips.

I'm always surprised with hive 06.  We've done everything wrong with this colony, at least we broke a few rules anyway, and yet these bees continue to hang in there.

Before we could open the hive box we had to relocate this lady, as well as another one that made her web nearby.  This is a black and yellow garden spider, also called a banana spider.  And, they are HUGE.  They can bite, although they aren't poisonous.  I'm terrified of them, but I could never bring myself to kill one.  Mark was graceful in collecting their giant webbing around his hive tool and capturing each spider in their own web before flinging them a few feet away.

These spiders spin brown, leathery egg sacs made of silk and produce about 1,000 baby spiders inside each one.  The sacs are about the size of a half-dollar.  We relocated the sacs too, but we were curious to see inside.

Look closely to see the tiny baby spiders. They were crawling
quickly.  We moved them into the shade and let them be.

One beekeeping "rule" we broke several months ago was not to include 10 frames in the hive box.  Our reasoning was that there were hardly any bees in the colony earlier this year, and the queen wasn't producing many eggs.  We decided that having too much surface area could allow for pests (like beetles and moths) to take over the colony.  It was a good decision on our part.  The bees had less surface area to keep clean, and they've done a fantastic job of it.

Hive 08 has a super on top. We've had it there for a long time, with no plans to use the honey for ourselves.  The bees hadn't produced much honey in the super, so we let them keep it for their own use.  We didn't add Apivar to this colony, since the super is in place.  We wouldn't want the product to come into contact with the honey super.

Below, you can see a little honey the bees have capped.  This will be helpful to them through the winter months.

We're looking forward to another bee yard visit at the end of this month, when we'll remove the Apivar strips.  We'll also make sure the colonies are in good shape for cooler months soon to come.