Long Story Long...Bee Yard Drama!

Mark and I have a lot to report on from this weekend’s trip to the bee yard, so grab your coffee and settle in!

You may remember from our last visit, that hive 04 was down and out.  We picked up a new nuc on Friday, May 6, in Navasota from R Weaver (adjacent to Bee Weaver apiary) to get hive 04 back in business.  This nuc is special to us in that we now have Buckfast bees.  We have never had Buckfast bees before, but they were available on short notice, so we were happy to get them.   This breed of bees was developed by "Brother Adam", (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany) in the early 1900s, who was in charge of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey in the United Kingdom, where the bees are still bred today.  We have learned that these bees are very productive and very gentle.  They took to their new hive box just fine and we are excited to see how they work differently than our Italians and our one Russian hybrid (hive 02).  Click on photos to enlarge.

 

Look near the center to see the Buckfast queen
painted with a blue dot on her thorax.

Hive 04 installed has their work cut out for them, since they
have a late start in the season.

Hives 01, 03, and 06 are growing slowly, but growing.
   

Hive 03 queen on the bottom of one of her frames.

Hive 05 is doing well.  With one super in place, they are still drawing comb to fill with honey.

 

The white grid on top of the second deep hive is a plastic queen excluder.
It allows the worker bees to move upward into the honey super
(the super will be placed directly on top of the queen excluder), but the queen
cannot fit through the holes.  This keeps her from laying eggs in our
honey that we will collect later this year.

Look closely and you will see tiny eggs in the cells in frames from hive 05.

Hive 07 also has a super in place and they are working on building comb to fill with honey.  Below you can see the brood production in the frames from the deep hive boxes which are below the honey super.

 

This frame is full of brood, some not yet capped (the whiteness you see in the cells are bee larvae).
You can distinguish capped brood from capped honey because brood
cells are "fuzzy" like felt fabric.

We experienced something completely unexpected during this bee visit.  We found a large swarm near hive 08.  Mark and I differ in opinion as to exactly where this swarm came from.  Mark believes it is a wild swarm and I believe it is a swarm from our hive 08. 

Hive 08 is on the far left.  I am standing just to the left of hive 08.
This is where we found the swarm.

Swarm found in a cedar tree near hive 08.

Both of us have supporting reasons for our thoughts on the swarm’s origin.  My opinion is supported with the fact that hive 08 already had at least one queen cell last week, and the deep hives were very crowded.  Mark’s opinion is supported with the fact that even after we discovered the swarm near hive 08, hive 08 was still packed full of bees.  We will likely never know who is right.  Regardless, we had a problem to address. 

We decided we would collect the swarm and combine it with hive 02, our weakest hive.  Hive 02 houses our Russian hybrid queen.  Hive 02 still had not drawn out all of their comb in the first deep hive.  They are the only hive (except for our down and out hive 04) without a second deep hive box in place and they have more than four empty frames in their first deep hive box. 

Hive 02's first deep hive still has room to grow.  This hive is the
slowest growing of all of our hives. 

There are more than four empty frames that still
need to be drawn out with comb.

I used scissors cut the limbs from the tree that held the clusters of bees.
Once cut, Mark helped me place the bee clusters and limbs into
an empty nuc to transport to hive 02.

It was a slow process cutting several small limbs.  We moved
gingerly, but quickly to get them into the nuc.

The bees were so gentle and didn't seem to mind us interfering at all.

Before collecting the swarm, we placed a couple of sheets of newspaper on top of the first deep hive box of hive 02 and made a couple of slits with a knife into the papers.  These slits allow for time for the bees to create a break in the newspaper to enter into the bottom deep hive box to mix with the original bees, and it will eventually allow them to have access to the exit/entrance to the hive.  This is beneficial for two reasons.  First, it gives the two groups of bees time to acquaint themselves with each other and to not feel threatened.  Second, it gives the swarm bees time to "reposition" their GPS, so that in a couple of days, they will associate this box as their new home. 

We then placed a second empty deep hive box directly on top of the newspaper, where we planned to install the swarm bees. 

 

The last remaining bees were clinging to the nuc box that
we used to transport them from the tree to the hive box.
A few gentle upside-down taps will encourage them
to move into their new home.



In this photo, the swarm is installed in the top deep hive box
of hive 02.  Newspaper separates the two colonies and they will
soon be one colony in just a few days.

In combining the swarm with our hive 02, we have one issue to be concerned about.  When bees swarm, they are already have a queen with them.  So, adding this swarm to hive 02 may have created a situation where we end up with two queens in the colony.  If this is the case, the queens will fight to the death.  We will watch and see what happens with our queen situation in hive 02. 

Look toward the center to see the Russian hybrid queen (original queen)
in hive 02.  She has a little remaining white paint on her thorax.

It was our first time collecting a swarm of bees and it was very exciting. We wonder how many bees we ended up adding to hive 02 and estimate that there were about 8,000 – to 10,000 bees.  They were so gentle and allowed us to move them around very easily, almost as if we were rescuing them. 

Then, just when we thought we had made the best decision in combining the swarm with hive 02, we glanced over at hive 08 and couldn't believe what we were seeing.  The bees in hive 08 were bearding outside the entrance and there were a lot of them.  This was very unusual.  
  

Hive 08 after collecting the swarm and adding it to hive 02.
We weren't interacting with hive 08 during the swarm capture,
but somehow, the bees in hive 08 were affected.

Because this happened so quickly after we collected the swarm, we figure it had something to do with our collecting the swarm.  My thought is that the bees were still in the process of swarming, or moving over to the tree where we found them.  And, when Mark and I moved them, they became confused and moved back to their original home on hive 08, gathering on the outside of the hive.  We aren’t sure that this is the case, but we don’t know what else to think. We opened hive 08 to peek inside.  There were still so many bees in the hive.  Additionally, there were an amazing amount of queen cells - about 15!  We removed each of them to help keep the bees from swarming.  We did not see any eggs, but we did see larvae that appeared to be about one week old, so we believe that there was a queen in colony just a few days ago.  We are still very confused about what has happened with the overpopulation in this hive. 

 

As a backup plan (which we have learned the hard way is always good to have), we had a new mated queen on order with Kelley Bees in Kentucky and we received her today.  We will likely be installing her in hive 08 during our next visit. 

It is a lot of work, but well worth our efforts.

The end of the day at the bee yard near Caldwell, Texas.