Hive check July 4th

So much had happened since the 2nd swarm.
1) the equipment arrived from mann lake and brushy mountain.

2) the swarm hive was moved to the backyard

3) a few dozen forager bees were confused and were coming back to where the swarm rested for three days. I've hunted for the clump at night to move them over but with no success. I also tried adding leafy branches in front of both give entrances to force reorientation flights. Which worked and significantly reduced the confused foragers.

4) Hive check; both were full of bees. Saw both Queens. But no brood in either hive. I suspect they've not had mating flights as it has been chilly. Concerned the older hive is backfilling with nectar, will need to keep an eye on this. I checker boarder a little and dropped some frames with capped honey and empty cells for broad to the new hive. And some bees switched hives as they came along for the ride. I took the three the foundation free frames where the swarmed had started to build comb and used them for a honey super in the old hive.

The old hive now has a deep for broad, checked medium for brood, and then an excluder with a medium that has fresh foundation frames and foundation free comb frames on top.

The new hive has a screen ipm board, then the medium and some of the frames I added for the swarm checkered with fresh frames. On top is a second medium with fresh frames checkered with comb and capped cells from the old hive.

Swarm #2 details

Sitting at my desk working from home, I suddenly became aware of a loud humming outside the upstairs window. I looked up from my computer to see the entire back yard filled with bees. Not just orientation flights (it was about that time of day) but a swirling tornado of bees 40 feet in all directions. I ran out to see what was going on and it became apparent that my hive might be swarming (AGAIN)!

I stood in the middle of the massive ball of bees and watched it drift slowly across my neighbors yard. The bees coming and going from the hive to the ball seemed to become less and less the further away it moved, and it seemed to become tighter knit, maybe 20 feet wide.  For a minute it looked like they might start settling in a beautiful ornamental maple about 35 ft from home. I could clearly see bees landing and nudging one another on the leaves, but then the buzzing ball gently floated south to land in a plum tree just over the fence of a neighbor but one away, 45 ft at most from where they started. Watching several beards of bees formed and then slowly coagulate into a larger one was amazing.

Then my real fun began. Swarm harvest time. I'd watch three or four of videos a few years back and had a good idea what was needed. I grabbed my gear, a bucket, a step ladder, and some clippers. I got set up, climbed up and dropped two of the smaller branches into the bucket quite skillfully for a first timer. Particularly considering, I was on my own up a ladder with tens of thousands of bees in tree, clippers in one hand and a bucket in the other. Then I got ready to cut biggest clump, probably 2lbs of bees. With the clippers on the branch, I lifted the bucket, and click.... missed the bucket. The bees CRASHED onto a patio table and went everywhere. They weren't mad, just confused. So I picked up the branch, placed it in the bucket and started to scoop up the other piles and dump them in too.

The bucket 'o' bees was quickly carried to my ready and waiting hive. I'd splashed some sugar solution around and set up what I could, bottom board, 5 frames and a sheet of ply for a lid.

One quick dump and shake and they settled right in. Fifteen minutes later they switched from humming to that "ahh peace" everything is alright again. Second hive, thank you very much!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NAJX77Eqt83BVuAw8

Swarm day summary

Hive swarmed. I caught them 50ft away in a plum tree, and I've moved them into a hive.

Hive check - growing and healthy

Went into the hive for a check and also to switch the rubbermaid lid. We put in the rubbermaid as a mote to stop the ants, but with so many bees drowned we wanted to switch to individual tupperwares under each leg of the hive stand. Unfortunately from the picture below I had to substitute the 4 tupperware I'd brought for this with 2 others. I'll go and add the ones at the back later. 

In the hive was thriving. Previously, I set it up with a fresh medium, deep (built out), and another fresh medium on top. The top medium had six frames packed with brood, pollen, and nectar/sugar solution. All eight frames of the deep were also packed. The lower medium was empty. Both boxes with brood had queen cells, probably around 10-15. I crushed all them as I went through the frames. The medium also had some frames with small patches of bullet shaped drone cone. There was also small patches of burr comb in a few places.

I pulled a foundation from one medium frame, and shoved some burr into the corners, with the intention that this can be a drone comb space for them. Given the density in the upper two boxes, I put the deep back on the bottom, and checkerboarded the two mediums. 

Hive Check

The hive was humming, when I walked up. Clearly, the baby bees from a few weeks ago had hatched. Going thru the frames 1 on the edge was empty (not even comb). The other seven frames were packed with egg, c-shaped brood from one to three days old, and lots of capped cells. All in a beautiful semi circle.



The neighbors, and kids all came to look and learned a little bit more about bees.



We even saw the queen, on the first brood frame I pulled!

I added the purple hive stand to give them some landing room, and drilled into this to rigidify the nice ultimate stand we have. We also swapped out the bottom board for the screened bottom bottom board as summer is coming. As the brood chamber was pretty packed, we added a medium above and below the deep.

Current setup looks like this.



More pics of the bees and neighbors here.

Pretty boxes

More hive prep, as we made the hive stand and deep that arrived the other day. I also heat gunned our the other (old) mediums. Then we painted everything, because I heard it rains here.

Refed

Added 3 jars of 1:1 sugar solution to the feeder.

5 Minutes after closing up the hive

Hive check and re-up on feed

Checked on the queen today. Didn't see her but there was definitely baby bees is the c shape of approximately 6 day old 4th instar larvae. I also saw some eggs that would be around 1 day old on another frame. So she is busy laying and building her brood. Mostly in a nice pattern, but disrupted a little right now by the early filling of comb with sugar solution. 

The bees were super chill. I didn't use smoke as I pulled out every frame. Then I switched out the front boardman feeder with my homemade 6-jar feeder that sits in the inner cover. The feeder has mesh so the bees can get from the inner cover out to the jars but not into the empty boxes that are protecting the glassware. This means I can switch them out hassle free. I can also add 1 to 6 jars depending on how much sugar solution I make. We moved away from using the boardman feeder because it was dripping on the path and attracting ants.  With the boardman gone, I also removed the block of wood I had set up to protect and limit the entrance. Now I have the entrance reducer in on the smallest setting. 

Bees fed

Switched out their sugar. There was less than ⅛ cup left. Also ordered some be great to switch to a top feeder set up.

Coming and going

The bees were very busy this afternoon as the sun came out and it warmed up. There was a bunch of what looked like orientation flights. Here's the view above the hive entrance.

Keep an eye out for several laden with pollen pants in all the hustle and bustle.

Releasing the queen

Since there was no candy plug. And the cork was jammed sideways and a total disaster to get out. I put the queen cage up on top of the frames to watch, while I checked the hive.

Several frames near the queen cage had comb that was being drawn. There was sugar solution in most cells and some others with pollen.  The larger gap from the queen cage between the frames had lead to some burr comb on either side. Both pieces were empty of resources (the larger piece is on the inner cover in the pic). So I broke them off, smoothed them flat, and dropped them next to the pollen patty to be recycled. Overall looking good.

The bees continued to cluster around the queen. It looked like they were trying to feed her. Given the state of the queen cage, I popped one staple off the netting, and peeled it back gentle just above the frames. I glimpsed her red dot and then lost her in the mass of bees.

Watching the hive this afternoon, they've been crazy out by the entrance. Either they are gathering pollen, getting robbed, or hunting for a new home. I'm hoping it's just the warmer weather had made everything bloom.

Bees fed

They were running out of 1 to 1 sugar.  I switched in another 4 cup ball jar.

Hiving Experiment Result

So reading around suggests the bees move out of the package in a few days. Leaving enough time to get out and move over to the queen on the frames. And not enough to start making burr comb in the package itself.

So in I went, on a Saturday evening as it was cooling down from the mid-sixties. Two a half days after we'd dropped the package in.

The result was about half the bees had gone to the queen on the frames. The rest were still hanging out in the package. Uh oh. Now I had to do the shake and dump anyway. Plus it was a little chilly so they were all sluggish and ended up not wanting to come out. Huge pain in the neck to shake them into the hive. And to get the rest to move off the ground and sides of the hive where they'd flown.

Result was easy to hiving, but then recovering the package was a pain. Next time, I'll do it straight away.

Hiving the bees

This time we tried something a little different. Previously, we pulled a few frames and dumped them in. As seen here, here, and here.

However our local PSBA Capt sent sound an interesting approach that we decided to try. It's the #3 option on this post.

Basically, you pull out and attach the queen cage as normal. But instead of the big bee dump, you simply place the package inside the hive, and leave a few frames out. A few days later, you pull out the empty, and replace the frames.

Will report back on how this goes!

So we all suited up and headed to the hive.

And put the bees in. It was incredibly way and low stress to just drop in the package rather than dump.

Collecting the NewBees

Tonight, the kids got fries and milkshakes in the car after gymnastics. Then we trekked out to Woodinville and the foothills of the cascade mountains. Driving along the forested roads, with mansions peek out between the trees, we were in a world away (or 30 minutes) from our urban Seattle life.

Matt from Cascade Apiary meet us in his driveway. There were several dozen nucs and a whole bunch of 3lb and 4lb packages too. Night was coming on and the warm air from the sunny spring day was disappearing as quickly as the light. This meant the bees both in and out of the packages and nucs were settling in for the dark hours. The noise from the nucs was astounding, a constant exciting hum, like rain quietly rustling dry leaves.

The trailer has most of the bee's, some had already be unloaded. By a quick back of the envelop, there are still around half to three quarters of a millions bees, in the 3lb packages, 4lb packages, and nucs shown below.

Our bees, before being loaded into the trunk for the drive home. 

Bee food - check

Making a one to one sugar solution for the bees that arrive tomorrow. This is 4qt of water and 16 cups of sugar. And results in ~6.5qts after boiling. Hopefully this will encourage the package to Chow down and stay. And also stimulate drawing or comb on the frames.

Hive prep Part 2

On a rainy day with the family visiting, the 4yo and her cousin helped paint the hives.

Hive prep

This weekend, we started cleaning up the boxes and frames. Prepping for the bees arriving next month.

Step 1 has been to scrape off the crud; old brittle comb, propilis, dead bees, and other detritus, like wax moth and spider webs. Step 2, shown below, is using a paint stripping heat gun to sterilize the surfaces and joints.

We brought exterior paint from the remnants shelf at Benny Moore's. $5 for a gallon of blue, and $6 for two quarts, one purple and one green. Next, we'll clean the outsides of the boxes and paint them. We'll also clean the frames too. Our cleaning solution will be washing soda (if we can figure out where to buy it).

Cherrywood Bee Farm becomes Borealis Bee Farm

We sold our hive in Austin before we moved in the summer of 2016. Now mostly settled in Seattle we a renaming the blog and starting over. We just ordered a package of bees from Matt at Cascadia Apiary. So excited to start beekeeping again, and to harvesting delicious honey.

Now we need to clean and sterilize our old hive equipment and get the kids suited up. Here is a pic from 2012 of our son in his suit that is now probably too small.