Queen Killa

"That was major drama at the hive" I said. "I think that was you who was being majorly dramatic"   Matt said. "No! The bees were the ones being dramatic!" I dramatically responded. "The bees were just being bees" Matt calmly replied.

There WAS major drama at my hive because there were swarm cells all over the frames in my hive! Ahhhhh!  Swarming is a bee phenomenon that happens when half the bees leave the hive with the queen to look for a new home when they feel like they don't have enough space in their hive. This is the natural way bees create more colonies, so it's not that crazy; for the bees it's normal.

The reason we don't like it though is for a few reasons. One, I don't want my queen to leave. We live right in a neighborhood and we want our bees to be gentle, and not aggressive. The queen I have produces very gentle offspring and that is good, especially for the four neighbor kids who live right behind us. Another reason is that if half my hive leaves, then I have a much weaker hive. Less bees to do all the work means less honey, less foraging, slower everything. And if they don't have enough honey, and enough resources, they might not survive through the winter. So ultimately, if they swarm, I could loose my hive. That may happen anyway, but not if I can help it!

When I opened my hive for a hive inspection today, I found queen cells. There are three different kind of brood cells that a bee can make: worker bee cells, drone cells, and queen cells. They are bigger and longer. See there in the middle of the picture?

To prevent the bees from swarming, the queen cells must be scraped off. BUT I had to make sure my queen was still in the hive. Sometimes if the queen dies or leaves, the bees will make a new one. I had to make sure that was not what was happening. That was a whole other drama: finding the queen. After a few frames of searching, I found her. Whew! So I scraped off about seven or eight queen cells. I was sweating in my bee suit. It was kind of sad because they die. I'm such a queen killa! If Matt and I lived out in the country and our bees were not near as many people, we might not manage them as closely.

 You can really see the five queen cells here (below). There is queen larvae in the bottom of them but they are not capped yet. When I scraped them off, there was lots of, what I am assuming was, royal jelly which looked white and creamy. Queen bees are fed only royal jelly for their whole entire lives.

Queen larvae (on the right) that we pulled out of the cell. 

That was super hard core.

 See that gooey orange stuff? That is propolis. It is everywhere. The bees use propolis to fill in cracks and make the hive waterproof. It makes checking the hive very sticky business. Propolis has antibacterial properties and the bees also use it to keep their hive healthy.

Also, we saw some drones, male bees. They are bigger and have bigger eyes than the worker bee.

See him in the middle there?

Grease Patties

 Tonight at bee club we talked about Integrated Pest Management. This a way of managing pests while minimizing chemical inputs into the hive. I will give an example: Tracheal mites are a pest that affect bees by living and breeding in their trachea. This makes it hard for the bees to breathe and work and eventually kills them. Booo! You could put a chemical in the hive that kills tracheal mites, but it also might leave chemical residue, the mites might become resistant to it, etc.

Through integrated pest management, one way of managing tracheal mites without using synthetic chemicals is to combine sugar with vegetable shortening and a few drops of peppermint oil. The bees eat the sugar and the grease gets into their trachea, making it impossible for the mites to hang on. Beekeepers have successfully using grease patties as a tracheal mite control for decades. We made some up and put them in our hives. 3:1 sugar to vegetable shortening with a few drops of peppermint or spearmint oil. You just put it on top of the frames like this. You can make a big batch and freeze it in log form, cutting off a patty when you need it. 

Drone Cells and Hover Flies

The weather has been rainy and in the 50s and 60s all week. BUT, it was nice enough today to check the bees.  We tried not to mess with them too much, but it looked like they were doing fine and working hard. My queen has been laying lots of drone eggs. The drones are the male bees. They don't do much but mate with queens. You can tell the drone cells because they are bigger and more mounded. See in the blue circles? They are sticking out more than the capped cells around them.

My hive also had tons of new eggs and so did Matt's hive. Another thing that was interesting was that Matt's bees made more burr comb but this time, it was a different color than the last time. Check this out:

We are trying to figure out why the wax is more yellow and one theory that Matt came up with is that they are eating more stored honey and/or pollen instead of sugar syrup. It's a mystery to me!

Here is the burr comb.

Here is a good picture of the hive tool that Matt is holding. 

Lots of things are blooming in the garden like Chamomile which is very popular with the bees and lots of other flying insects. There were a bunch of these flying insects which looked like bees, but then I thought they might be flies. It turns out they are Eristalis Tenax, a kind of hover fly but they mimic the look of bees. 

Eristalis Tenax

I also want to say that I never thought bees were cute before, but now I do. 

Here are some close-ups from today:

This bee is smaller than the end of my pinkie.

These bees are having a meeting.

On Matt's shirt.

On the strap that keeps my sleeve tight.

A Second Story Addition

The bees have built up their numbers enough now that they needed more space, so we decided to add a second deep (wooden box with frames) for the bees to live and work in. To add to the hive body we took two of the outer frames that were partially drawn out with comb and added them to the middle of the new deep to encourage the bees to hang out in there. We put brand new frames in the bottom deep to replace the ones we took out. If we did not give the bees more space, they would be tempted to swarm (half the bees take off with the queen to find a new place to live). 

Two old frames, eight new frames for the second deep.

This frame looks great with capped brood in the middle and some honey and pollen at the tops and sides.

On another note, the bees have been building comb in the feeders, especially Matt's. We had to get the bees and wax out and clean the feeders, but it turned into quite an operation. In the picture below you can see the white comb attached to the mesh screen.

Matt scraped out as much off the bottom as he could. It was a bummer, but we can't let them build comb up there because it makes taking care of the hive too difficult and they won't be able to access the sugar syrup.

Matt unscrewed the screen and scraped wax off the top. 

 We both ended up taking our feeders completely apart to get the bees out of the nooks and crannies. We washed them, put them back together and refilled them. Matt is trying his feeder with the inner cover under the feeder to discourage them from building comb. We will see if the bees can figure it all out.

After checking them today, they seemed to be feeding pretty well. We had to spill some of the sugar syrup on purpose so Matt's bees would know where it was now that the inner cover is on. 

These hives look too legit to quit! 

Lupine

Bumblebees and a Slug

This week in the beehives:
Well, Matt's bees are still building comb on the bottom of the feeder. We figured out a way to elevate the feeder on a topless table (ooh, racy!) so we can inspect it and scrape it off more easily. There is larvae and new eggs in both hives, and we saw Matt's queen but we didn't see mine. Those queens can be so elusive!

We also opened the hive reducer to the next biggest size. When we checked my hive, I found that there was a slug in there! Is there no where sacred that slugs don't go in this infernally damp state? The bees had killed it of course and they were trying to get rid of it somehow. I took it out. Other than that they seemed to be doing fine. In the garden, ever since I let the kale and cabbage bloom, the bumblebees have been all OVER the flowers! They are so fuzzy and fat. Go for it bumblebees!

Wild Comb and Hatching Bees

Booo! I got stung on Tuesday trying to help Matt adjust his hive. It was my fault because I didn't put my bee costume on and I had a navy blue shirt on. They don't like dark colors. It wasn't too bad not much swelling at all, but I wanted to have a sting free record for as long as possible. I guess I've been inducted into the official beekeepers club now.

Yesterday we checked our hives.  We both had burr comb between the feeder and the top of the frames. Whenever there is too much space, the bees will fill it with comb. It's not bad for the bees to build this extra comb, but it makes it difficult for us to work with them when things are all stuck together so we have to scrape it off. 

Matt's Hive

Kate's Hive

We also spotted Matt's queen which was good: 

We knew there would be a bunch of bees hatching soon, but when we pulled Matt's frames we saw that a lot had hatched! See all those empty cells that are dark? Most of those are empty from bees hatching out of them. Their first job after hatching is to clean out the little space they just climbed out of. Clean your room little bee! If you look closely at the very bottom left of the picture, there is a bee hatching with it's head showing. It is hard to see in this picture, but see the video for a better look. 

It was hard to keep holding the frame up while the bees hatched, and the bees were starting to get annoyed so we had to put them back in. One of these days we will actually see one climbing out. 

Bee Club, Burr Comb and Queen

We went to our first bee club meeting this week. Someone from the Washington State University Snohomish County Extension Program came to talk about bee diseases and to show us how to dissect the bees and to check for these diseases under a microscope. For one of the diseases, tracheal mites, you have to pull the head off the dead bee and find a certain part of her trachea. Crazy!! I hate tracheal mites, horrible. I didn't try to dissect, but I watched and learned. Needless to say, it was an informative bee club meeting. I also had fun people watching. I'm pretty sure Santa was at the meeting.

We checked the bees on Saturday and gave them more sugar syrup. Matt's bees were so busy that they built comb between the feeder and the frame. Matt scraped it off, it was filled with nectar/sugar syrup. Sticky! Matt moved some of the frames to encourage them to draw out more comb. Come on bees, make comb on the empty frames please!

There is a lot of capped brood too! 

My hive is doing well. I have lots of capped brood as well,

and it looks artsy where the bees have deposited pollen. 

AAAND, we saw the queen! She is marked with a white dot so she is easier to find. Can you see her? She is longer and more uniformly colored than the other bees with a white dot on her back. She was moving very fast. I think she was mad because she was interrupted and it was so bright. Matt's queen is not marked so we have not found her yet, but we know she is there because there are a lot of recently laid eggs! We are getting ready for lots of new bees to hatch.