Late Afternoon Orientation Flights of my Bees

Yesterday I came out to visit the hives to a wild amount of activity.  A considerable number of bees were flying around one of the hives. 

Orientation flights are done by young bees who are experimenting with flying outside the hive.

They are easy to recognize as they are young and fuzzy and take small flights off the landing board.

You can watch them take small flights, just off the board with subsequent flights going just a little further!

Orientation flights will cause a lot of activity at the hive, sometimes this is confused with robbing.

When you watch orientation flights though you'll realize that in the buzz of activity everything is actually quite calm.

Many beeks initially confuse orientation with robbing behavior, robbing bees will typically be in a frenzy, wrestling on the ground and causing damage to combs.  Look for pieces of wax dropped through your screened bottom board.

Omano microscope for Beekeeping

The Omano is pretty cool microscope.  I'm planning on doing a nosema check next weekend.
Did a sugar sifting yesterday, put tupperware beneath the hives and checked today.

The color and shape matched varroa, but when magnified it was a severed ant head...very odd


I counted 8 varroa under Hive 2


I've got an ant in Hive 3


I think a 20-40x stereo dissecting microscope would be better for helping my eyes recognize varroa for counts, but the higher powers are necessary for nosema.

Omano Microscope First Inspection

I finally have a microscope that has sufficient power to really look into things!  I'm looking forward to learning how to do nosema counts and other great beekeeping stuff...however for now I'm on the hunt for varroa.

I went with an OM36 so I had the right magnification for nosema in the future and still retained the ability to play with viewing varroa.

There is lots of information on using a microscope at scientificbeekeeping.com

I gathered up the oil board from hive 3.  Hive 3 is strong and overflowing with bees.



I found lots of pollen, which is really cool under magnification.  Definitely little pieces of plants all over the place.

Unfortunately I found a varroa mite.  While it's only 1 that is 1 too many and indicates they are present in my apiary.

Varroa destructor is a menace to beekeepers across the globe.  They are a very real part of CCD as it seems varroa + neonicotinoids cause a severe problem for bees.  Maybe the neonic's make the bees too weak to sustain attacks from varroa based virus attacks.  I think the scientists are still out on exactly the mechanism.

I'm going to run oil boards under all three hives to generate my 24 hour hive count this weekend after doing a good sugar shake on all the hives.

It's about to rain sugar my girls, prepare yourselves.

Damn varroa, I'm after you now suckers.

Neighborly Relations

Recently we went to all our neighbors on each side for 2 houses to give away honey.  We figured it'd be a good opportunity to talk to them about bees.  What a great idea it turned out to bee!

We had a great time talking to our neighbors, shared our experiences battling wild coral snakes and why bees are so important.
Our neighbor closest to the hives said he sometimes fogs for mosquitoes while mentioning it doesn't work all that great.  I asked him to just let me know when he was spraying so I could keep the bees in that day and he said he'd probably not spray then....

Clearly they're at the top of next years honey list!

All our neighbors seems psyched up about having honey bees in the area.  Not one mentioned having any negative reactions!

We're definitely hoping for honey next spring so we can bring jars to the neighbors again.

National Honey Bee Day

This weekend is National Honey Bee Day and there are quite a few events here in High Springs!

War against Small Hive Beetles, Battlefield High Springs

Due to the location of my house my yard is not exactly a sunny open field, so hive beetles are a challenge.

I've been modifying screened bottom boards so I can slide a tray of vegtable oil under the hive which is doing a good job and increasing casulties for the the little monsters.  Unfortunately their communications network with SHB headquarters is still in place and they keep calling in for reinforcements.

I've managed to reduce my SHB count from around 50 in two days to a more manageable 5 for one hive, my other two are sitting around 1-3...but I'm a stubborn adversary and want complete destruction.

The trays are also kind of a pain to manage and I figured I'd try a product called the BeetleJail screened bottom board.

Once it stops raining I'll be installing this one in my weakest hive.

The bottom board has a slide out veggie oil trap that looks easy to clean and refill,  I'm looking forward to seeing how effective it will bee.

BeetleJail Bottom Board



*Also allows for varroa checks using the slide in white board.


And here it is installed in my hive

 

 

My First Cut Out!

A cut out is when you have a group of bees living in the wall, floor or some other void space in a building and need to remove them.  In order to remove the bees you need to cut open the structure and pull out the bees...but of course it sounds MUCH easier than it is to do.

I've watched just about every JP the Beeman video on youtube 
He does some awesome cut outs, typically without any protection and it looked like great fun.

The best way to do them is to FIRST LEARN FROM EXPERIENCED BEEKEEPERS.  In my case I told the leaders at the Alachua County Beekeepers club that I'd be more than happy to help...and on Friday they called me up to join them.

The bees were in a corner board of a beautiful victorian house down in Gainseville.  I was told to only bring a veil however I wanted to do more than watch and showed up with my jacket, full suit, tools and bee box...which turned out to be a great idea.

We showed up and identified the bees location, low and behind bushes.  Once some branches were cut away we were able to get close to the bees and they seemed pretty calm.

I put on only my jacket and gloves and figured, heck, everything is cool like fonzie.

The bees cool vibe quickly dissipated as we took a hammer and crowbar and began peeling boards away from the building.  They flew out like bruce lee and began stinging everyone...our mentor got nailed a bunch of times in succession and had to retreat to get some space and clear off the phermones.
I thought I was fine and it was just a bit humorous until I realized that some bees flew into my jacket and were now buzzing around inside with me.

bam bam bam, three stings to the back of my neck confirmed my lack of attention to detail and it was time to take a walk to the car.  I had neglected to tie up the bottom of my jacket and they just flew right in. 
There were still a couple bees flying around inside my hood and I was able to calmly remove myself from them at the car.

I thought, ok, gals, time to suit up for a real battle and put on my full suit, boots with velcro and thick gloves.

The guys had a bee vacuum and we began sucking them out.
We peeled the wood away and cut out a bunch of brood and honey.  Everything went well and soon we noted the bees grouping up on the nuc box...a sure sign the queen was inside.

We continued cleaning up the bees however some honey got into the vacuum tube which causes their wings to be damaged, and they will die...total bummer for the last of the bees. We tried to remove all we could as the resident wasn't as fond of bees as we were.

Once the bees were loaded up we secured the hives and took off for the day.
It was a heck of a good time, always nice to save bees that someone may just decide to kill.

There are a bunch of important components to doing cut outs...the MOST IMPORTANT is to have insurance and LEARN WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
After this job a report came in that a team tried to do a cut out in Ocala and botched the job, requiring someone experienced to come in and make it right.  That type of thing just gives responsible beekeepers a bad name.

There are a bunch of experienced folk at local beekeeping meetings.  Come on by and learn how cool beekeeping can be!

Finding Queens and getting Stung!

The inspection of hive 1 was going great.  There were a few small hive beetles behind the frame arms and I was smashing them to the clear happiness of surrounding bees.  

Checking out frames with the optivisor and I could see details of eggs, capped and uncapped brood...and there she was, the queen!

I was super happy to have found her, however I didn't have my queen clip on me and wasn't able to mark her.

I managed to get a video showing the queen.  She is on the right middle part of the video, near the right edge of the frame, and has a much larger body than the bees around her.  She is a critical part of hive function and is constantly laying eggs.

I reassembled the hive and did a quick sugar treatment. 

Since that went so well i figured, heck, why not inspect hive 3, my ten frame with two supers/levels...what could go wrong?

I placed the super on the stand between hive 1 and 2...without a top or bottom...so you know, the bees start getting robbed but it's fine, because I'm busy with the bottom super having a great ol time looking for signs of the queen and don't notice anything wrong.

The bees were super friendly.  I removed 6 frames and found plenty of evidence a queen was laying.   I assembled the bottom super and was feeling super confident, using little to no smoke, everything was going great.

...until i looked right and noticed the super.  It was clear that bees were very unhappy about the situation.  I thought, I'll just go over there and quickly move them back....there was a quick nagging feeling that may not be so smart...naa it'll be fine.
bam bam bam three stings to my right hand.

While walking away I thought of ways to cover the supers while doing inspections.
Went and got some gloves and a suit, came back, smoked them good and reassembled the hive.

I'm thinking that next time I'll have a screened bottom board and top cover ready to stack the supers.

Bringing Home the Nucs!

The safest way to transport bees would NOT be in the rear of a hatchback. 

While this is obvious to anyone moving bees some of us don't have trucks. 

Let me be real clear, it takes around 1,400 bee stings to kill a person, each of those nuc boxes contain over 5,000 bees.
We have them covered in screens however all hell would break loose if we rolled the car. 
It'd be ugly. 

The safest way would be to drive with jacket on..or just use a truck.

Once we arrived home we let them sit for a half hour to relax.  They weren't too pleased with the drive but we kept the ac on and protected them from the sun.

I have a ventilated jacket as well as a full suit.  The full suit is pretty cool for dealing with unknown bees.  When I installed my first nucs I was fully protected with gloves and all. 
This is an unnecessary level of protection as I soon found out.

I really like my hive frame holder which keeps removed frames clean and safe while I'm working.

I installed the hives onto concrete blocks, inserted the five frames into the middle of my 8 frame deep hive bodies and moved onto the next nuc.

It is really fascinating watching the bees.  I spent some time looking at the frames and was able to identify drone and worker brood cells.  I have a ton to learn as I didn't find the queen...I'll keep looking!