Orange County Beekeepers Association - Comments

See here for a lot more

jeffb — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:35:48 -0400

See here for a lot more detail on how to build a top bar hive: http://topbarbees.wordpress.com/about/construction

Here is a copy of the latest

jeffb — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:35:25 -0400

Here is a copy of the latest report on CCD/Fall dwindle disease from Dennis van Engelsdorp and his colleagues at Penn State:

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf

I took the basic idea from

Randall Austin — Wed, 23 May 2007 13:18:41 -0400

I took the basic idea from plans on Beesource.com. One of our OCBA members gave a presentation on catching swarms and doing cut-outs with his bee vac, and he had suggestions for improvements (e.g. plexiglass sides and a thermometer to monitor internal temperature). So the end result is original.

Randall Austin

Randall Austin Bee Vac I

Ronald Young — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:24:47 -0400

Randall Austin Bee Vac

I like the bee vac. Do you have plans for it or is it something you just thought up?

I combined the swarm back to

Ronald Young — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:04:08 -0400

I combined the swarm back to the split. I will give them a few weeks to get things sorted out and then determine there worth.

Any sugestions on a particular variety of queen, just in the event that I need one???

Guess everyone is busy in

Ronald Young — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:26:30 -0400

Guess everyone is busy in the beeyard

I have posted the details of

Ronald Young — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:55:22 -0400

I have posted the details of my start in beekeeping earlier. But, here is a short recap. Started with one hive-- split on 13 March-- split raised several queen cells and ended up swarming on 31 March. Cold weather hit over easter, and perhaps caused some mating problems.

I went in to the hives today. The queen-right hive that has the original queen is doing well. They are in the first honey supper now, and I expect that if the flow continues, I will get one supper of honey from them. Not too earth shattering, but it is a far cry better than the split, and the five frame that has the swarm. They did have a good deal of work in drawing out the comb and getting house set up in a second deep prior to the hone supper being added. So I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

The split was just working on the drawn comb that they had. They have not hardly touched any of the foundation. So, I took one deep off, and reduced there real estate back to one deep. The queen in that Hive is laying worker brood, but only on about two frames??? I don't know what she is thinking. But maybe with less real estate to work with, she will start laying more.

The five frame that I placed the swarm in on 31 March, well, I think that I will take them down into the woods, shake all the bees off the frames, and let them find a way to make it on there on, or die trying. It took until 18 April before I began to see eggs, and now that they are capping, they are all drone. So I gave them a frame of worker brood from the good hive last Tuesday hoping that they would build a queen cell.

There is no sign at all on the frame of eggs I gave them of a queen cell, or any attempt to make a queen cell. I really do not think I could combine them with the split and end up with a decent hive of bees between the two.

In talking to a fellow beekeeper at work, He is stacking honey suppers like crazy. I will be lucky to get one, so I don't think these bees are real go getters. Maybe I have lazy bees

But, anyway, I will give the split a week or two to see what they do with less real estate, and see if the queen begins to lay more.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not experienced enough to split, and allow supercedure!! I don't know what I did wrong, but it obviously had a detramental effect on the split, as well as the swarm. And to be honest, I wonder if something I did on the 31st of March, triggered the swarm.

In Laidlaw & Paige's "Queen

Randall Austin — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:05:34 -0400

In Laidlaw & Paige's "Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding", they say, "The usual period between emergence and mating is five to eight days, and he interval between emergence and oviposition ranges from nine to fifteen days. Some queens may lay earlier and some later than the normal range."
So if you had a newly-emerged queen on the 31st, prime mating time was around Easter weekend, when we had snow & generally unseasonally bad weather. But if she was able to get out, you should expect to have eggs by the 15th. That doesn't mean you will have lots of eggs on the 15th, just that she should have started to lay. (FYI, a useful queen date calculator can be found here: http://queencalendar.markfarm.com/Default.aspx)
I raise one or two nucs at a time like you are doing now, and have gone into a nuc at the time that I should be able to see something and am sometimes very disappointed with the results. Then checking a week or two later I've sometimes found excellent laying with a large, tight brood pattern. So don't be too hasty to judge. But after a "fair" test period, if the queen just isn't impressing you, then replace her or combine the smaller colonies. If she's so-so, she won't get any better.
If you aren't sure whether you've got a laying queen or not (not sure if she's started laying yet or is just not there), you can put in a frame with eggs. If you don't have a queen, the bees should try to make one with some of the new eggs. Check back in several days to see if they've started queen cups. If so, you most likely don't have a queen. The safe thing to do then is either order a queen or combine this colony with another.
You could let the bees in this new colony make another queen from the eggs you've added, but the small colony won't have the resources to raise a nice fat highest-quality queen. Also, it will take at least six weeks before the new queen has matured, mated, layed eggs and had offspring emerge (see the calculator) so you'll need to add brood from another hive to offset natural attrition. However you could do it anyway, and see how things turn out! After all, we're doing this for the fun of it, aren't we?

Randall Austin

So if I hived the swarm,

Ronald Young — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:43:19 -0400

So if I hived the swarm, which came from a split, on the 31st. The queen, being either a virgin queen, or newly mated queen, may not have been laying on day 12? So if I check on Thursday of next week, which will be day 19, and find no eggs, what should I do then?

1. Give them a frame of eggs and brood?
2. Combine them with another colony?
3. Order a queen?

As for the split, the one that the swarm came from. All other queen cells are distroyed now. I did find eggs and larva. The remaining frames were being filled with nectar and pollen. I added a second deep, so they can start drawing out comb. I am expecting the poplar to start within the week here, so I wanted them to have plenty of room for her to lay, as well as store. I do not expect to harvest from them.

The parent colony was very strong when I split it.
I would guess 15-18 frames full of bees. I really could have made more than one split. I just do not want to manage more than two colonies. I will most likely sell the nuc, or maybe move it into a 10 frame then sell it.

Thanks for the advice.

A virgin queen must mate

Randall Austin — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:26:27 -0400

A virgin queen must mate within a week to 10 days. After that, she won't produce fertilized eggs (workers). This was demonstrated by Huber and has been confirmed since then. Bad weather will delay her mating flight. She'll need another few days to a week to begin laying. So be patient. I would wait a week after hiving the swarm to check to see if she is laying.
Once the cells are capped, it's easy to tell whether she is producing workers or shooting blanks (drones). Recently mated queens will often start by laying a few drones, so don't be too hasty in making a judgement. But within a couple of weeks after mating, you should be able to tell the quality of the queen from the brood pattern. You want to see a compact, fully filled area of capped brood. If there are a lot of empty cells, this could indicate that the queen was highly inbred and is producing a lot of diploid drones. These are detected and destroyed by workers, leaving a spotty brood pattern. Or you could have very hygenic bees (a desirable thing) and they could be cleaning out varroa-infested cells. You get to evaluate the situation.
I think it's a bit early to expect a new split to really take off. I've got some Russian hives that still haven't 'exploded' yet for spring. Give them a chance and see how they are doing a month from now. In our area, "spring" is a very subjective thing --- it has started in some respects but not in others.
Be sure to feed syrup to the new hives. I lost a nuc this week to starvation -- they were fine on Sunday, and dead on Friday. Oops! With the erratic weather we've had -- warm one day, then cold and rainy again -- the bees may not be able to keep themselves feed, especially in a new hive without honey reserves.

Randall Austin

More updated information,

jeffb — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:22:12 -0500

More updated information, from the CCD working group:

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pressReleases/ColonyCollapseDisorderWG.html

To better understand the cause(s) of this disease and with the hope of eventually identifying strategies to prevent further losses, a group of researchers, extension agents, and regulatory officials was formed. This group represents a diverse number of institutions including Bee Alert Technology, Inc. (a bee technology transfer company affiliated with the University of Montana), The Pennsylvania State University, the USDA/ARS, the Florida Department of Agriculture, and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

Broadly this group has identified its mandate as: â€œExploring the cause or causes of honey bee colony collapse and finding appropriate strategies to reduce colony loss in the futureâ€.

Here is also an article from the News and Observer that interviews our own Jeff Lee and Dr. Tarpy from NCSU:

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/543054.html

Well, I ended up just using

jeffb — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:54:31 -0500

Well, I ended up just using a crude double boiler system to melt our wax. I used an old, large sized coffee can to put our wax chunks in. Then I put this can into a large pot that was about 1/3 full of boiling water.

I attended to the wax until it was completely melted (periodically lowering the heat so the wax wouldn't catch on fire). Then I poured the wax from the coffee can into a large pyrex (4 cup) measuring cup so I could actually have a spout to pour from.

Then I poured the wax from the Pyrex cup through a nylon mesh filter (this was the exact one I used, although I think this is actually designed for filtering honey) into some paper cups.

I didn't pour the entire contents of the coffee can into the Pyrex cup because all the debris and brown goo sank to the bottom of the melted wax. I left that and a little clean wax in the coffee can.

Once everything cooled, I had a bunch of really clean wax in small paper cups. The wax easily pops out of the cup and you are left with a nice, small, workable sized piece of really clean wax.

I didn't have to boil the wax or anything. In fact, the only step I did before all of this was using a solar wax melter to combine all of our saved burr comb and wax cappings into one big block.

I have also looked at them,

Ronald Young — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 17:15:43 -0500

I have also looked at them, and have not really decided on them. I have talked to several people that use them and love them. I will probably try the ones from Betterbee on a couple of hives next spring.

I just finished making a

Randall Austin — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:37:26 -0500

I just finished making a bunch of slatted racks (using the Beesource plans) and put them on my 5 hives. I did so because this fall, I found that a number of frames that I had put new into the bottom brood chambers were only drawn out about 2/3 from the top; the bottom edge wasn't being used. According to CC Miller, queens will lay fully to the bottom of frames over slatted racks. So I am experimenting to see if it makes a noticeable difference.
A concern I have is whether the efficacy of my screened bottom boards will be affected, since the slats will likely catch some falling mites. But whether enough to make a difference is the question. Betterbee sells a slatted rack that runs the slats parallel to the frames rather than perpendicular for just this reason. But it may be that this is logical but not truly necessary. I'm anxious to find out.

Randall Austin

Slatted racks? Are you

jeffb — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:54:01 -0500

Slatted racks? Are you talking about this:

http://www.beesource.com/plans/bottomrack.htm

A Slatted Bottom Rack is a ventilation board that fits between the bottom hive body and the bottom board. It provides cluster space for bees, allows air circulation without allowing a direct draft on the brood, and helps prevent swarming.