Split hives, mating nucs and queen cells (100th post!)

I have been avoiding this post because I wanted to make it 'special' since it is my 100th post. That's right, this is my 100th post. What I have written about in the past 99 posts, I am not sure. I hope that the few people who stumble onto my blog enjoy what I have been up to over the last couple of weeks.

I am attempting to increase my hive numbers to be 5 hives total. I am also trying to replace some queens in my remaining hives. I am trying to do this the cheapest way possible as well. I understand the benefits of just buying a queen and doing splits and putting the mated queen in a candy cage and being done with it. This year I am interested in making my own queens. The hive at my farm is fairly mediocre. They seem to be aggressive and the queen is failing. So that hive was split up into (2) 4 frame splits; and (2) 7 frame nucs. I also made (4) mating nucs which required a cup of bees in each.

How many hives do you see?

This is a mating nuc; which is made out of injected polystyrene. It has a built in hive feeder and an entrance disc to open and close.

My one successful mating nuc

I purchased 9 queen cells from Ferguson Apiaries in Hensall, Ontario. They are within a reasonable driving distance from where I work and live. The cells are capped queens which are ready to emerge in a day or two. The cells need to be stored in a warm thermos. This was achieved by placing warm water bottles in wood shavings and just dropping the cells into the shavings. Bill Ferguson claims that queen cells have an 80% success rate; I am not sure if that means that only 80% of the cells will emerge or if 80% will be accepted, etc. That may be a question for the next time I see him.

Queen cell pushed into foundation

How do you use a queen cell? Well, you push it into the foundation on a frame that is centered in the hive. Make sure you do not damage the cell when handling and that you do not obstruct the queens exit.

Queen cell hatched and removed

The bees add wax to secure it to the foundation. I am fairly happy with how easy they were to use.

Brood with chalkbrood! Did I expose the frame too long?

The hive which was at my other site had tons of swarm cells in it. The hive was also brimming over with bees. So I split it and put the 'old queen' in the new location. I saw some swarm cells which a queen had emerged from, so I placed another queen cell into that hive in the hopes of getting the genetics I wanted. The next week I could see that the old queen at the new location is still laying eggs. One thing that scared me was that there is a fair amount of chalkbrood in the hive. This may be due to the fewer bees in the hive. I will continue to monitor the situation. I gave the new location a lot of capped brood so that their population will catch up to the original home.

New eggs

It is difficult to see the eggs, but they are there. They look like little grains of rice. The queen hasn't laid in all the cells in this particular picture.

Apple and Cherry blooms

We are still having very wet weather. Somewhere between the rain my trees were able to bloom. The real quesiton is wether the bees were able to pollinate them. The rain knocks off the peddles, which make the flowers less attractive to the bees. Local orchards are worried that this incessant raining is going to greatly affect their pollination.

Apple Blossom

Cherry Blossom

You can see that some off the cherry blossom pedals are off of the flower. This is because of the heavy rains and some blooms are older than others.

Dandelion blooming right beside the new landing board & slotted rack.

I put on a 3rd box, by mixing some existing frames into the new box. I put in 4 brand new empty frames which I plan to remove to use as a nucleus hive in the future. I also used 9 frames from my 'dead' hives so that the bees can clean off some remaining honey.

3 Box hive

I am working out how to split the hives as cleanly as possible.

Queen spotting and hive reduction

Yesterday I checked out the hives at my place. Lots of pollen was coming in. I gave my strong hive an additional 1lb pollen patty.

Lots of pollen coming in today.

I did an inspection and found the queen! She was on a frame with lots of freshly laid eggs. This was all very exciting. She was laying eggs in the middle of the top box. She is the daughter of my "super hive" queen that succumbed to my poorly designed ventilation box this winter.

Dark coloured queen!

My green hive is an entirely different story. It is still suffering. I opened up the hive on a nice day and saw that they still were only covering 3 frames. The honey that was inside was going stale and there was almost some mold starting in the corners. I took the 3 frames of bees (in which I found their queen) and placed all of the bees in a 5 frame american nucleus hive. I took one monster of an uncapped frame of honey and placed it in the hive. This smaller arrangement should be easier on the bees. They will have a smaller volume of air to keep warm. Hopefully the queen is able to start laying so that they can get out of their current rut.

Nucleus hive replaces the big hive.

State of Affairs

Since I have fallen behind on my posts a bit; here is an update to my hive situation. I have transferred my nucleus hive into a full sized box. I have also been feeding them a bit of sugar syrup so that they can build up enough stores for the winter. They seem to have a very strong population and they do not have much for diseases it seems.

Strong honey bee population, hive top feeder beside.

I have been worried about my white hive which I have re-queened with an expensive queen with supposed good genetics. I had not seen much new brood in the last couple inspections. But when I pulled out the first frame, this is the sight I saw:

What a relief! The queen is alive!

I also have taken the honey super off of these hives and placed them onto my much stronger hives at my parents property. I am hoping that those hives are able to top up the boxes!

Current view of the apiary.

Does not look like much any more!

I just placed some feeders on the two larger hives. I will be feeding them syrup in the morning.

Nucleus Hives : Queens Laying!

Things have been really busy around the farm. I was ready to give up on my nucleus hives but an inspection tonight shows that both hives have laying queens. The eggs are very young, meaning that the queens just started to lay in the last couple of days.

4-frame nuc box

In other news, I found some evidence of a skunk going around my hives so I placed a skunk trap near my boxes last weekend. I did not catch anything yet. I think I am going to have to try something other than peanut butter on bread ( a suggested skunk bait).

Skunk trap

The hive which I created my nuc boxes from was very heavily congested so I spread out their existing frames and added another 9-frame box on top. I added 6 brand new frames into the hive and 3 used frames which were partially drawn out. I hope this keeps the bees busy and avoids a swarm. A swarm cell was found on a frame and I kept it in case that my nucs would not work. I must go back into the hive and cut it out as soon as possible!

Another deep super added to my 'swarm' hive

The next order of business is to place my new laying queen onto my blue hive so that the hive can start doing better.

Nucleus Hives : The beginning

My swarm hive from last year is doing very well and it looks like they are trying to supersede the queen. I want to keep these genetics so I have decided to try to make 2 nucleus hives from her. I do not know how old she is but I figure she is at least 2 years old. The nature of swarming is that the old queen leaves with half of the bees and bees rarely swarm on their first year. To make 2 nucleus hives from her I figured out which frame she was on and set that aside. I then took 2 frames of very young eggs and some capped brood and pollen frames with bees still covering the frames and placed them in my 5 frame nucleus box. I put empty frames to fill in the rest of the space. I did the same thing with the other box but took 3 frames this time. I placed the queen back in the original parent colony and replaced the frames that I took with drawn out comb. I then took these nucleus boxes and brought them to my other bee yard (my house). I have 2 full colonies here and they will have enough drones to breed with the queens that these nucleus hives produce. These nucleus hives will detect that they do not have a queen and they will start feeding some young larvae some royal jelly and they will raise emergency queen cells. These queens will emerge in 13 days. The first queen out will kill all of her rivals by tearing apart their cells and stinging them to death.

 Here is what the nucleus hives look like. I put some blocks in front to reduce the entrance so that my strong colonies do not rob them out. 

The bees were moved at the end of the day and therefore took new flights the next nice day and re-orientated themselves with their new surroundings.

They quickly can find pollen and honey and a good source of water. I was happy to see a lot of different colored pollen on the bees; this indicates that there are some good sources out there and that the bees have a lot of resources. I will check the hives soon to see that they indeed have started some emergency queen cells. This is the first time I have ever done this; so I am excited to see how it turns out!

This happened May 10th, 2010. I am running behind on my blog posts!