Spring is Here - sorta

We checked our city hives 10 days ago, and one queen is laying like crazy while the other one still appears to be on winter vacation!   Both hives have lots of bee bread, so brood is imminent.  So, is it that much cooler in the corner where the "lazy" queen is or is she just running out of eggs?  We'll take a peek in the hives again on Sunday if it's warm enough.

I hate the idea of replacing a queen we have raised from an egg and who has served us so well for over two years, but it's a fact of life that we may have to dethrone her and find a replacement.  We have three queen cells on frames in the queen castle, but we won't know if they are viable for a few weeks so the old queen still has time to prove she's worth her keep.  She has been a fantastic queen -- lots of eggs and friendly bees.  I'm hoping she starts filling up those frames by Sunday!

I checked my hive at the farm, and the bees have barely started making bee bread.   It's odd, because some plants around the farm like Forsythia are ahead of the ones here, but other plants still look dead.  Why can't spring give clear signals?   It was a little too cool to go into the hives that were not in the full sun, so I guess we'll check those next trip.

Hubby bought pollen to try to jump-start the hives, but the bees don't seem to like it.  At least, they don't like it at this minute!  We know that bees want what they want when they want it and select the flowers that provide the micro-nutrients they need at any given time.   They might want our pollen next week, or they'll crave something that's blooming.

After buying the pollen, we read about the downside of trying to create queens early in the season -- it doesn't matter how many queens we produce if there are no drones with whom they can mate.  Bees kill drones when going into winter as their only job is to mate with queens.   So, no drones, no fertile queen -- and the bees will kill a queen, or at least kick her out, if she doesn't start laying eggs as quickly they think appropriate.   Our strongest hive had many drone cells 10 days ago, but are there enough from other hives for a successful mating flight?

As I've found out with seedlings over the decades, you can't rush nature.   It helps to get a little jump-start with the greenhouse, but trying to move nature's time-table up by a month isn't in the cards.  Once again it all comes down to patience, which I may learn eventually!

Living on our land.

RV moved onto our land.

Thanks to BIL, BIL's friend, and BH, our RV is now on our land and we went to sleep and woke up looking at tree tops -- our tree tops!   Having never moved an RV before, I don't know if it's always such a bear to get one set up, but I do know that the new scissor jack that looks prettier than the others but refuses to work makes everything more complicated.   We also thought the pad was more level than it actually is, so if we ever do this again I'll actually break out the level and see where we may need to add more gravel before parking the behemoth.   We've enjoyed sitting outside drinking our morning coffee and sitting outside at the end of the day watching the sun set.   It's easier to notice all the wild life when we just sit still for a while.  We've also withstood our first thunderstorm, so we know that the fibreglass remained intact over the leaky roof bits.   We still have the other roof coating to put on, but it requires 24 hours of dry time, which means that we won't be able to run the A/C once we paint it on.  The plan is to put it on when we have a dry morning before heading back to the city.   The plan may turn into putting it on when it's cool enough to not need A/C.   After working outside in 98 degree heat the last few days, that sounds like a better plan to me.

Checking the English hive

Being out there first thing in the morning made it easier to check on our bees.   All of the hives except one are doing okay, but the dearth is definately upon us.   The queens are not laying and there is very little nectar in the hives.   There's still pollen coming in, but no nectar.  We found the same thing happening when we got back to the city, although one queen is still laying well.  The new queen in my English hive is very active, but has not laid any eggs yet.  We put some sugar water out and hope that jumpstarts all the queens.  

We had opened the English hive shortly after our new queen had hatched.  It was clear that she had dispatched most of her sisters, but there were two queen cells intact that we had hoped we got to before she did.   No dice.   The two-frame section of the queen castle in which we installed the cells with a couple of frames of bees from another hive contained only a few dead bees, some hive beetles, and wax moth trails.   We were disappointed and took the frames over to the shed so that we could put them in the freezer as soon as we took the suits off.   Hubby put the smoker and hive tool up, took off his jacket, turned around to pick up the frames, and, lo-and-behold, there was a brand new queen searching the frames.   Of course, all the queen isolation stuff was in the garage, but we did manage to get her into a queen cage and installed into the castle with a couple of frames of bees, larvae, and honey.     We're pretty sure we have a drone congreation area in our yard as we have found an abnormal number of queens and I've even had mating bees clinging to my tshirt!

Figs, July 11, 2016

Finding the queen would have been enough excitement for one day, but we also picked 3 pounds of figs that ripened while we were gone.   I currently have mason jars sterilizing in the dishwasher and will start making jam just as soon as I finish my second cup of coffee.   I want to try using honey instead of sugar (or using a mixture of the two) this year, but I'll do that with a small batch later.    Honey-whiskey ribs are already a big hit in our house.   I have an entire book of honey recipes to try, so we'll keep feeding the bees in hopes that they will feed us in return.  

Bees in slow motion

A friend who is hosting some of our bees in an out-yard sent us a recording of some bee-acrobatics this afternoon.   He slowed the video down -- it's so interesting to see them, but even more so to hear them, in slow motion.   (The audio is so much better on my phone than on my laptop speakers.)  As much time as we've spent watching the critters land, take off, and collide, we are still fascinated with this clip.   In fact, it's taken me far too long to type this small paragraph because I keep going back to watch the video again.

Other updates from today: 
We are pretty sure we have a new queen.  We saw her, and then lost her.  She was on a packed frame and the bees were animated, so we moved that frame to a Nuc along with some brood, nectar, and honey, and we will check on them again mid-week.  We didn't see any eggs yet, so maybe we imagined a queen or maybe she hasn't started laying yet.

The queen in our second strongest hive is laying at an incredible rate, so we filled the newly vacated slots in the queen castle with some frames from that hive -- partly to try to grow another queen, but partly to discourage the lady from swarming.  

The one worrisome hive in one of the out-yards had even fewer bees yesterday, so hubby evicted them and then gave them a twig to climb up to reach their new home in an established hive.  As temperatures hovered around freezing last night with a wind chill that only made things worse, those guys probably would not have survived the night in their old hive.  We still have no idea what happened to the queen.   If we see evidence of a queen in the new Nuc, we'll move that Nuc to the out-yard and shake some additional bees into it to get them off to a good start.

Our foster-parents are wonderful.   One offered to build fires close to the hives to keep them warm last night, but hubby assured them that the bees would be able to stay warm enough on their own.   We are so enjoying the interest that others are showing.  I know we're new at this ourselves, but we sometimes feel like old hands.  We see both ourselves in these initiates and see how much we've learned in the past year.  I'm still a little jumpy when bees are determinedly bumping into my veil, but I also think some of that is due to my going cross-eyed as my bi-focals try to focus concurrently on the bee, the veil, and the frames that are all at different distances! 

Strong Hives and Wax Moths

On the day hubby returned to the city to check on our new hives, I walked down to BIL's hives between rain storms and saw something that looked like a cross between sawdust and the orange peel that comes in spice jars piled up around the front of one Nuc and even seeping out around the rest of the entrance reducer.  We had looked at all the hives together the prior evening, refilled the top feeders, and even looked in a few hives at BIL's request as he was out of town on business and concerned about a couple of them.  So I knew that this was something new, but there was good traffic in and out of the hive, loads of pollen was coming in, and the bees didn't seem in the slightest upset.

After checking the other hives, I went back to this one and looked a little closer.  In the "sawdust," I saw little white "commas."   One of the other Nucs had not survived the cold as it had too few bees to keep the brood warm on the only cold night, so we surmised that maybe some brood had died in this hive and the bees had cleaned up.  That didn't quite make sense, because there were clearly plenty of bees to keep each other toasty on a night that was cold but still above freezing.

BIL checked the hives after we'd left, so we didn't get to see the inside ourselves.  However, what I thought was a pending disaster was actually a good thing of sorts.  There was clear evidence of wax moth intrusion into the hive, but the hive was strong enough to destroy all the larvae and clean up the mess.   We and BIL have seen how a wax moth can decimate a hive, but this is the first time we have seen what happens when a hive is strong enough to fight back.

All that made me feel better about killing a wax moth with my shoe one day (understand, I don't even kill spiders or cockroaches -- that's hubby's job) and I stopped accusing myself of being a butterfly murderer.  I will squish any future wax moth that is moving slowly enough for me to not look like a fool hopping around around on one foot waving my clog in the air without good reason!

Back in the city, all but one of our new hives are doing very well.  Hubby couldn't find a queen or any brood in that one hive and there were also considerably fewer bees in there.     Of course, this hive has to be in the out-yard that is furthest from our house, but anything that gets us out of the house and away from grading on a Sunday afternoon is a good thing!   We appeared to be close to having a queen in the castle last time we looked -- it should be warm enough to check this afternoon or tomorrow.  If we have one, she may just go for a ride in the country with us.