Propolis Season

The bees have been collecting the sticky stuff which is an antibacterial properties which coats the inside of the hive to make it more sterile. The sticky stuff is more technically known as Propolis.

Propolis along the top bars

Better view of propolis, bee gum

Hive situation

Along the frame closeup

I added a couple of small pictures just as interest. The weather has been very hot for the last several week.

Splits moved into double boxes

I have moved the single box hives to their more permanent location. This was a feat in itself because it required me to pick up the hives and put them into my vehicle at night. In my first attempt, I was trying to staple a mesh wire on the entrance and it was very warm out and the bees were bearded onto the landing boards. I for some reason forgot to close my veil. Before I realized it, I had 5 bees down my shirt, 10 flying around my face under my veil and 10 stinging me in the face! To say the least, I hadn't ran that fast in quite a while.

Two days later I had a much better strategy. I added a box onto the bigger hive and took off the bottom boards; which left the screened board open. Later at night I just pushed the remaining bees into the hive (which were not many). The entrance was closed with a solid piece of wood and a little bit of duct tape. The hives were loaded into my vehicle and driven 7kms down the road to their permanent home.

Yesterday I was finally able to inspect them and distribute their single boxes into two boxes. The following pictures are what the hives looked like before I split them up.

A look inside the single box hive. Lots of bees

Lots of new honey/wax. Look at how white the wax is.

Almost full frame of honey. Bees are filling and capping.

The single box hives are now doubles.

 The queens are laying well in both hives. I was able to find the queen in the white hive but I was not able to find the queen in the green hive. There was plenty of young larvae in the green hive which indicates that there is a laying queen there.

Oddball Queen?

I was inspecting a colony which I have found to have an odd brood pattern. I initially was concerned with this hive because it has had a fairly poor brood pattern. What I have done to 'fix' this problem was to force the queen to stay in the bottom box by using a queen excluder.

Poor brood pattern

This poor brood pattern is what I had seen first. It is quite discouraging. I have also noticed a lot of chalkbrood on the landing board in the mornings that I check. Then the next frame baffled me.

Great brood pattern

Crazy that the next frame of brood was so good! What the heck is going on here? This really does not make sense though.

Queen feeding herself!?!

I found the queen and it appeared as if she was laying eggs and feeding herself by plunging her head into some cells of honey. Maybe she was just trying to hide from me, but she did not seem to be that scared. It looks like her entourage is pretty confused with her antics.

Here is what I think may be the issue:
- When I did my splits, I may have took too many nurse bees out of the mix and so there were not enough bees to maintain the day-to-day operations. (I always thought that field bees or other bees quickly filled in the necessary gaps).

- The Queen may be laying in a odd pattern. This would make for bees emerging in odd sequences.

- The bees may be very hygenic and they are removing any bees which have mites with them in the cells. Not sure about this one.

- The humid weather may have caused chalkbrood.

Any commments are most welcomed. I also noticed that these bees are consistantly aggressive. I may just want to change out the queen.

Honey Flow: Alfalfa

It appears as through one of my hives is enjoying a strong honey flow. I placed empty drawn out frames in their hive 2 weeks earlier and they are putting in a lot of honey and they are capping some even. This will insure that I do receive a honey crop this year.

Honey being capped

This is my blue hive; when I was inspecting it a few weeks ago, I found a swarm queen had emerged and so I did a split and placed my old queen in a new hive beside. This hives' new queen is laying well and the workers are collecting lots of honey.

Side view of honey cells.

A peak into the more center frames show capped frames. In retrospect, I should have taken the frame out to take a picture! It looks like I have a lot of really nice and clear honey.

Capped honey frames

A big thanks going out to my neighbour who has a field of alfalfa in bloom! The bees couldn't have done it as fast without you!

Neighbourhood canola field!

This is the view from my hive at my farm. If you look at the top left corner of the picture below you will see a yellow glow. I had no idea that my neighbour had a 40 acre field of canola planted down the road from me.

Canola field view

I went to the field to see if I could find any bees. I saw a couple and could hear a couple more. I took a picture of one flying between flowers.

Canola flower with bee behind(center)

There are so many flowers in this field. It is just crazy. Unfortunately my hive near this location is not the strongest, so I do not know how much they can take advantage of the situation.

Big bloom of Canola flowers

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.

Canada Post killing your buzz?

It appears as though the Canada Post is the latest thorn in the side of beekeepers. Everyone knows the importance of the handling of queen bees. If you read through the article you will hear how many beekeepers and bee suppliers are in a bit of a pickle for not being able to ship reliably. If the package gets stuck in the mail, the queen will perhaps perish, which would not be good for business obviously!


I was at Fergusons' apiary this week to pick up queen cells; I am working on the post for this adventure.  They are out of the way for me but I am satisfied with their stock. They have Buckfast honey bees. The most important thing is that the bees are quite hearty and very gentle. Having constantly angry bees is discouraging. Actually, I would say that I would not keep bees if they were always aggressive.

Take a look at the Toronto Star article and draw your own conclusions. The woman in the picture was part of the University of Guelph Tech transfer (bee crew).

TheStar: Canada Post Strike putting honey crops at risk?