Dandelion Bloom: 1st Treatment

We have had some pretty poor weather since the last blog post. We all knew that the good times could not last. We are still experiencing some pretty poor weather, with cold nights and not so warm days.

Bee waters near the hives

The bees were spending a lot of time around the house looking for water; especially when it was really dry out. So I took a couple of old chicken feeders; threw in some stones and topped them off with some clean water. These waterers are located close to the hives and more importantly, away from the house.

Dandelion bloom: pollen coming in!

The dandelion flowers are in full bloom. The colour of the dandelion pollen is just striking. The bees are quite happy that I have held off on cutting my lawn so that they can get lots of pollen to feed their young.

Excellent brood pattern: Especially for the time of year

One of my more populous hives has some pretty nice brood pattern, especially for this time of the year. It has been quite poor, (freezing and wet) weather for the last long while and they were still able to keep excellent brood.

Lots of bees

The hives were just boiling over with bees. This means that when the honey flows begin, I better be ready to add the supers.

Egg dangling out! What the heck?

I found this queen running around on the frames with what appeared to be an egg partially hanging out. It was super weird. She actually walked a fair bit before it "fell" out. I looked in other cells and her pattern was decent and she did not have any doubles.

Monster sized queen. Significantly larger than others.

I cannot get over the size of this queen. She is quite  a bit larger than the other queens. She also has darker colouration. This hive is doing quite well.

Bottom board cleaning: chalkbrood

I took apart the one hive because it seemed to have a lot of chalkbrood on the bottom board. It was pretty horrible. The hive stand is pretty rickety, and the hive appears to be sloping backward, so the moisture builds up and does not go down and out of the hive. This queen also has poor brood pattern (due to chalkbrood). It had poor brood pattern last year as well, I am going to have to replace this queen.

Happy Earth Day!

Do something for the planet... keep bees. Or plant bee-friendly plants around your property to support native bee and other pollinator populations.

Today I did an inspection on the single box hives located at my parents farm. These are my observations:
The Blue Hive:
This hive is only covering 5 frames at most. This is a bit concerning because I am feeding them a pollen patty and extra sugar and they seem to have a slow build up. Upon further investigation; I noticed that the brood pattern is pretty spotty. This means that the queen may not be laying very well. My records show that she is a queen from mid summer. She should be well bred and I bought her from a reputable breeder. The workers have not built any supercedure cells; so that means that they still have faith in her!

 As a precaution I treated both hives with oxycet-25 which is an antibiotic Terramycin which is mixed with powered sugar and sprinkled on the top bars. This prevents American Foulbrood (which if you ever get; requires you to burn the entire hive).

As you can see, the powder is sprinkled on the top bars. The hive also had an indication of Chalkbrood disease which shows up in a damp spring. There is no treatment for it and the bees quickly get rid of it when their hive has more ventilation. I am not too worried about Chalkbrood.

The White hive:
This hive was a swarm capture from late summer and it is doing amazing. They cover all of the frames and they have a very good brood pattern. I have no history on these bees. I do not even know what breed they are. I have a feeling that they may be Italians. They have a very strong spring build up. Because of their limited space and the age of their queen (unknown but likely older than one year because the old queens swarm). They have build two supercedure cups in the top third of a frame. This means that one of these potential queens will replace the current old queen. But I have other plans for her and cut out the cells. I also found a potential swarm cell on the bottom of the frame; which I also cut out.

 Those cells are prefect spheres and are built offset from the rest of the cells. These particular ones are in early stages and did not have any eggs in them. If they would have eggs in them, the bees would feed them royal jelly so that they grow to be queens. As the queens grow, the workers would shape the cell to look peanut shell-like. The first queen to emerge would go around the hive and break all the other cells and sting the other queens to death; yeah, its' a harsh world.

Here is a picture of my queen as she scoots across some of her beautifully capped brood. Look at the size of that queen and her darker color!

I did all of my hive inspections without gloves. It was pretty liberating. It forces you to work more fluidly and for you to be a lot more careful. I must have done it right because I did not get a single sting and I did not even use much smoke.