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Hive news!
Before I get into the main topics today, I’d like to give a run down on what’s been happening in my hives. We’re in the nectar flow now and the weather has been great for foraging so there’s lots that is going on in my colonies. Previously, when I’ve spoken about my hives, I go by date but this time I’d like to do a rundown of each hive so it’s easier to see how they’re progressing.
Hive #1 (Cerridwen, Ohio queen):
May 27th, hot and humid! 85F with a real feel of 92F. Afternoon inspection.
Queen, eggs, brood
Back-filling: time to make a nuc from this hive or split it (will discuss this later)
Moved 2 frames around to encourage wax build up
Still some burr comb issues; removed and cleaned up
Queen in top box
50% syrup consumed
Mite test: 0
May 29th, hot and humid, 80sF
Took 5 frames to make nuc #1
June 2nd, warm, humid in PM, sunny in afternoon
Queen, eggs, brood
Some queen cups on bottom of the frames
Still back-filling
Moved frames to condense the brood area as they were chimneying; moved brood frames from top box into the bottom box. Made sure brood had food stores bracketing them.
Took 1 frame of brood and pollen for nuc #1 (replaced with an empty frame)
Feeder still on
June 8th
Inspection day (did not inspect this colony)
Took feeder off as flow picking up
June 11th
Quick check of wax build in the top box
Rearranged 3 frames
June 14th
Queen, eggs, brood
Moved frames so that the bottom box is full with all filled comb and majority brood
Middle box, 90% waxed frames, 2-3 brood frames
Top box, mostly empty frames with some wax build
Queen was in top box on one of the few built up frames; carefully moved her down when I was arranging frames
Hive #2 (Macha, Southern queen)
May 27th
Queen, eggs, brood
Nice wax build up!
Beautiful brood pattern
Some queen cups on bottom of the frames
Queen in top box
Added extra drone comb (2 in total now)
Mite check: 1. Good!
June 2nd
Queen, eggs, brood
Queen in upper box and was hard to find today!
Noticeable increase in drones and queen cups on bottom of frames; swarm warning
Broke down all queen cups
Decided to make nuc from this hive soon (need to prep)
Have filled out frames ready to use but the girls seem to be avoiding them. Why??
Consider adding super
Feeder on
June 7th
Took 5 frames to make nuc #2
Replaced with empty frames
June 8th
Inspection day; brief look at a brood frame
Feeder off
June 11th
Queen, eggs, brood
Took 2 frames for nuc #3; replaced with empties
Less queen cups today
June 13th
Quick peek in top box to monitor wax build
Still have 4+frames to draw wax on
June 20th
Eggs, brood, queen
Queen in top box
Still some empty frames in top box
A few honey frames almost ready for extraction!
Queen excluder and new super soon?
Took 1 frame eggs/brood for nuc #2
Hive #3 (Saskatraz queen)
May 27th
Queen, eggs, brood
Beautiful brood pattern
Minor back-filling
Queen in middle box
Good wax production
25% sugar syrup left; big eaters!
Mite test: 0
June 2nd
Eggs and brood (queen alluded me)
Very busy and full
Beautiful wax production and brood pattern
Very sticky hive! Lots of propolis
Bottom and middle box have brood
Honey super not being used yet
Feeder on
A few queen cups on bottom of frames; broke down
June 8th
Apiary inspector visit
Went through the hive
He squished a bee by accident and the girls responded quickly and aggressively!
GORGEOUS brood pattern
Took one frame of mixed brood for nuc#3
Did not find queen beforehand and so later panicked about this, even though I was confident the frame taken did not have her on it
Honey super still no wax build
Feeder off
June 13th
Found queen. Phew! Eggs and brood.
Big increase in drones
Queen cups on bottom of frames; broke them down
Laying pattern still gorgeous
Still no wax in honey super but they’re showing interest now
Great stores in rest of hive
Capped honey frames!!
June 20th
Eggs and brood (queen hiding)
Less eggs than I’d like to see due to lack of space; they’re bringing in nectar faster than queen can lay
Will pull and extract honey frames soon
Queen cups on bottom of frames again
Wax build in honey super looking good! About 50% of frames being worked on with 2 full. Rearranged them to encourage greater build up.
Considering added queen excluder and an additional honey super
Apiary Inspector Visit
On June 8th, the county Apiary Inspector came out in the morning to see my hives. The state Apiarist/Entomologist also came along, although she ended up running late so I didn’t get to pick her brain as much as I wanted!
Why do inspectors come out to apiaries?
Mainly, they’re looking for diseases that could be damaging to all beekeepers in the area, as well as issues such as Africanized genetics. County inspectors work with State inspectors, who in turn share information with organizations such as the USDA.
Click here to go to the Ohio Apiary Inspection program website.
Under Ohio law, a beekeeper should register their apiaries, although not all do. It’s very affordable; $5 per apiary location with no hive limit, so you could have 100 hives in one place, and you’d pay $5. Conversely, you could have 50 hives in 2 locations and would need to pay $10 total. This is a yearly fee.
If you sell bees in any capacity (nucs, queen rearing, packages, etc), you are required to register and be inspected yearly per Ohio law in order to receive your permit. Again, it’s a minor fee.
So what’s the advantage to registering?
Well, aside from obeying the law (which is important, especially if you live in an area that might have some people who don’t want beekeepers nearby; demonstrating your are law abiding can go a long way to protect your right to keep bees), you are contributing to your state’s statistics about apiaries in the area. Using this information, and working with inspectors, your state can collect data such as how many apiaries there are total, how many have certain diseases, how many have varroa mites, how many have small hive beetles, etc. This is important information when attempting to learn what the overall health of a state’s apiaries are.
When you register, you agree to be inspected. For many, you might go years without ever hearing from your local inspector as they have thousands of apiaries to inspect. The benefit to you is that you are being visited by someone with the experience and training to identify disease in your colonies, as well as their overall health. They can advise you on treatment methods, as well as general management techniques. I was told early on that an inspection is a great educational resource and nothing to be worried about.
So how did the process work for me?
I received an email from the state inspector on June 5th, telling me he’d be out on Monday the 8th. I asked him for a general time as I wanted to be there for it, and he got back to me on Sunday the 7th. It was an early appointment so I dragged my butt up, had breakfast, and prepped my suit and smoker.
The inspector, Randy, was very nice and polite. We chatted a bit about my property and the hives. I explained I’d been into 2 the day before so he decided to skip those. I thought the inspection would be very detailed but, instead, he was mainly looking for healthy brood/eggs and, with no signs of disease or management issues, there was nothing else to be done. It was a bit underwhelming!
The state entomologist arrived just as we finished up. We spoke a little about mite tests (she thanked me for using the alcohol wash method due to its accuracy) and various treatments. She was also very surprised to find such a rural area this close to Akron! Oh, and she complemented the designs I painted on my hives, which made me very happy.
Two suggestions they made that helped me a lot:
I had tilted my hives so that water can run out the front if it built up over winter. They recommended returning to an even base now that comb building is happening as bees need gravity to make straight comb. This was a light bulb moment for me since I’ve seen a lot of burr comb this year, and this could be why.
I had a nuc with 7 queen cells in it and was chatting with them about whether to leave them all or knock down the smallest ones. Randy suggested I take some of them and start a whole new nuc! So I did. Can’t believe it never occurred to me!
Overall, it was a positive visit and I received my certificate of inspection. Nice!
Bee math!
Before I discuss how I built my nucleus colonies and how they’re doing, I wanted to cover a little bit of bee math. This is not ‘chicken math’ (like how you say you’ll get 10 chickens and somehow end up with 40) but the time between an egg to emergence of the bee.
When you split a hive or make a nucleus colony and do not add a queen, the worker bees will choose 1-2 day old larvae and build an enlarged cell around them; a queen cell. This cell has a vertical orientation on the frame, somewhere near the middle or top; not hanging off the bottom as you see with swarm cells.
Knowing that larvae is chosen to become a queen, we can look at our bee math and figure out when the new, virgin queen will emerge:
Queen bee: 3 days as an egg, 6 days as larva, 7 days as a pupa, which gives us 15-16 days from egg to emergence.
Worker bee: 3 days as an egg, 6 days as larva, 12 days as prepupa & pupa; 21 days to emergence
Drone: 3 days as an egg, 7 days as larva, 14 days as pre/pupa: 24 days to emergence
Knowing these numbers is important when attempting to raise your own queens, and/or allowing your hives to raise their queen. Just because queen cells are made does not mean a queen will emerge. Sometimes the worker bees will sense something wrong with the queen during her development and will break down the cell. If you check on a colony that had queen cells and see that they’re all gone before the 15-16 days we know a queen needs to develop then you will know that the colony chose to abort those developing queens. You will likely need to offer them more eggs/brood to work with in order for them to make more.
If you somehow miss the window and are unsure as to whether a virgin queen has emerged, you can do a little more math!
After the virgin queen emerges, she will take 5-6 days to mature. This involves hardening her chitin, working her flight muscles, and growing in size. Then she will take mating flights over a period of 1-5 days, weather depending. Next, she’ll take about 2 days to move all the semen collected into her spermatheca, and generally preparing to lay. So at a bear minimum, we’re looking at 8 days from emergence to laying but it’s much more common to see a longer period of 14-21 days until she lays.
Using this math, you can figure out the likelihood of whether your split/nuc has a queen. You can also assess the colony itself to know whether a queen is present. A queenless colony has a very different sound and feel to it. The bees are distressed by the lack of their queen and will fan more than usual in an attempt to spread the remaining pheromones around, which makes the hive loud and rowdy. They’re also more defensive and generally seem crankier. After a long enough period, you might find multiple eggs laid haphazardly in the cell (usually on the walls), which is a sign of a laying worker.
If you colony is calm and content, you likely have a queen. Virgin queens are smaller and quicker, which makes them hard to identify, so relying on bee math helps you figure out what the chances are that she’s present.
To quote Kim Flottum, “More bees in the air, louder sounds, and a greatly agitated state typify a short-time queenless colony.” From 'The Backyard Beekeeper'.
One thing to note is the presence of brood: if a queenless colony has brood to care for, they will be calmer than one without. Bees love babies! Brood pheromone is just as powerful, if not more so, than queen pheromone. It’s possible your nuc is queenless but the brood is keeping the workers calm. The best way to check for this is to add a frame of eggs/larva and see if they pull queen cells, which is what I did for nuc #2.
See the Honeybee Suite website for more information on bee math!
Nucleus Colonies
I decided early on that I wanted to make 2 nucleus colonies this year, and ended up with 3. I might even make a 4th if the flow continues to be strong.
Why did I go for nucs over splits?
A split halves the workforce and stores of a colony, meaning they have to spend more time building back up, and less time making honey. I wanted honey this year!
A split has 8-10 frames depending on your equipment. If you’re working with frames without wax on them, each split has to work on wax production with 50% of the original population. This might mean additional feeding.
A split will need a careful eye to make sure they build up fast enough and store enough honey to get through winter
This pressure of time makes getting a new queen in a timely manner especially important. If the split fails to raise it’s own queen, you might have missed the window to buy one and will have to merge the split back to a strong colony; undoing your work.
Nucs are small and so there’s less space to fill. Research indicates you need a 2 super nuc to get them through winter; that’s just 10 frames total.
Starting nucs in the Spring gives you more time to let your bees raise their queen. If it takes them a few tries, you have the time available without the pressure of the approaching dearth, and there are plenty of drones around for mating.
Starting nucs in Spring/early summer also gives you a greater chance of sourcing a queen from a breeder or fellow keeper if your girls fail to raise their own (IME).
A nuc started in Spring that requeens promptly and starts to build up is a great resource! You can take frames from it to boost slow/weak colonies, harvest honey, freeze honey for winter feeding, or to continue rearing queens. They’re also a good source of wax production and can be kept busy with combs to fill.
Nuc #1
Created Friday, May 29th
From hive #1 (Ohio queen)
3 frames eggs to capped brood, 1 frame honey, 1 frame pollen
Brushed in foragers and sealed entrance overnight
Opened entrance on 30th
June 2nd
1 frame with dead brood (cold snap; 44F degrees for 2-3 nights)
Just one queen cell being started
Added a new frame of eggs/brood/pollen from hive #1
June 8th
7 queen cells found! Some a bit small. On 3 frames.
Added a super with 2 frames and a feeder
Took 2 frames with queen cells and made nuc #3
June 11th
All queen cells gone. Early queen emergence (13 days) or the girls pulled them down?
Calm and activity colony
June 13th
No sign of virgin queen yet
Still calm
New foragers!
Good stores and build up
June 17th
Empty feeder; refilled
New queen cells! 3 large ones, looking good
What happened? Queen didn’t return from mating flight or no queen to behind with?
June 20th
75% syrup gone! Big eaters
Queen cells all on same frame, looking good!
Nuc #2
Created Sunday, June 7th
from hive #2 (Southern queen)
3 frames eggs/brood, 1 honey, 1 pollen
Super on top with 2 frames and feeder
June 11th
Multiple queen cells. 3+
Calm and active colony
June 13th
4+ queen cells, 2 a little small
Calm and active
June 17th
No queen cells. Only been 10 days so likely no virgin queen
Refilled feeder
Increase in foragers
June 20th
Still no queen cells
Added frame of eggs and brood from hive #2
Big drinkers; need to make more syrup!
Nuc #3
Created June 8th
June 11th
2-3 queen cells
Low population
Added 2 frames of eggs/brood from hive #2 (Southern US genetics)
June 13th
Only one queen cell of good size now; did they tear the others down?
Still have eggs to work with
Good stores
June 17th
3 big queen cells!
Calm and active
50% of syrup consumed
Not as many foragers as the other nucs yet but good number
June 20th
2 sealed queen cells, one about to be capped
Population looking good
Building wax on empty frames
Almost out of syrup; make more!
I hope this was clear and gives an idea of why making nucs might be of benefit to you. If you’re a seasoned keeper or newbee, tell me about your nucs! Let me know how things are going. You can reach out to me via email: homesteadhensandhoney@gmail.com or find me on Instagram (where I’m most active), Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay self isolated! And, as always, hug your hens and then wash your hands. Take care!
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