Andrew Siwko's Blog #3

This is the first inspection with pictures of the year.  I’ve peeked in to make sure the bees were still alive from time to time.  I also restacked the hive so that the body is on top of the empty hive body and the super was on top.

The super didn’t align so I put 8 bricks on opposing corners to keep the seal tight some time ago.

Frames 1,2,3, 8 and 9 were pretty empty.  I knocked a hole in the bottom of the frame 1 foundation by dropping the cover on it.  Oops.

I found 3 small hive beetles in the comb on frame 4.  I flicked them out with a pine needle.

The bee population is quite low compared to last inspection.

Here’s how things look:

Frame 4 (out): pretty empty.  That hole is still there .

Frame 4 (in): some honey left here, hive beetles too.  About 30 bees crawling around.

Frame 5 (out): maybe 150 bees crawling about.  Capped honey left over, maybe 30 cells of sealed brood.

Frame 5 (in): capped honey on the left and right, about 200 bees, lots of sealed brood, some larvae visible, a big band of pollen, liquid in a U shaped band under the brood/pollen.

Frame 6 (in): similar to the facing frame, honey on either side, a band of pollen, brood in the middle with liquid near the borrom left and right of the pollen band.

Frame 6 (out): The queen’s right in the middle.  Maybe 300 bees.  This frame was like the last two sides except that there were far more larvae visible and the pollen was concentrated in the upper left.

Frame 7 (in): Another 200 bees, honey on either side.  No brood sealed, but plenty of larvae visible.  There’s a good stock of pollen here and liquid in a band all around.

Frame 7 (out): About 30 bees here.  This side’s pretty empty.  There may be a few larvae in there and there are some cells that look like they’re plugged with a white cap.

Pictures here: https://www.siwko.org/2010-03-25-inspection/

From October 2003 until today, I’ve been using Roller running on an old Linux box at the house.  All the posts from that blog are here somewhere.  All the old links to those posts redirect here so that you, dear reader, have some chance of finding them after I decommission Roller.

Here’s a copy of my search box for you to find that old post you were looking for:

Click on the blog title above if you just want to browse.

I’m copying off Roller posts and preparing to decommission.  The date in a post will be the original posting date from Roller.

[linode ~]# uptime
00:04:42 up 2 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.02, 0.03, 0.00

My linode is undergoing maintenance.  I’ve got to migrate it to another box.

[linode ~]# uptime
23:38:54 up 713 days, 23:55,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Pretty good!

I got another linode, copied the image to it and got it to boot by turning on the xen helper.

Now it’s time to migrate the original!

It’s been 23 days since I took a quick peek in the hive.  We haven’t had a freeze yet.  John affirms that the bees are there, “see bees, not dead.”

It was a nice day today.  Noah and I went out with the camera to do an inspection.

We found and killed 3 hive beetles.  I tried brushing bees off a frame to see what they were up to which they didn’t like at all.  I saw the queen.  There’s a lot more honey than last time and there’s even some pollen.  I’m encouraged that the bees will live.  Later I looked at the pictures and I didn’t see the queen in them.  She could be too quick for me.  I hope I didn’t get her with the brush.  I don’t think the brush really added any value.

I took the sugar water out a week or two ago and the bees have been living off the land.  There’s much more honey than in my last set of pictures 6 weeks and 2 days ago.  I hope it came from the land, but I can’t say for sure.  It looked like the bees may have been eating honey because there were bees inside some cells.

Let’s take a look at the changes since the October 8th inspection (6 weeks, 2 days):

Frames 1, 2, 3: no change

Frame 4 (outside): I think there’s more comb built out on this side, but the big change was that frames 4 and 5 were stuck together and there’s a big hole in frame 4 about 8 cells in diameter.  The bees appear to be either using the cells in the hole or repairing it.  We’ll see next time.

Frame 4 (inside): There’s a nice wide band of capped honey on this frame now.  It’s about 8″ wide and in the top half of the frame.  The cells below the band look like they have water or nectar in them.  There were more bees on this frame than last month.  They’re mostly on the cells below the capped honey.

Frame 5 (outside):  This frame is now about half capped honey.  There’s a ball of sealed brood in the center.  I see some larvae and some empty (maybe with eggs) cells.  Other cells appear filled with liquid as before.   There appear to be far fewer bees than last month.  There are few bees on the capped honey, they’re all on the other cells, so perhaps the bees are elsewhere in the hive.

Frame 5 (inside): Fewer bees on this frame, but lots of activity in a band around the brood.  Few bees on the honey.  The queen was on the very bottom of this frame before brushing.  I’ll bet she ran over to the other side!  This is the dirtiest capped honey I’ve ever seen.  This must be a high traffic area.

Frame 6 (inside): Capped honey extends almost to the bottom of the frame around the circle of brood in the center.  Last month is was just in the top corners with a little band across the top.  There was far more brood last month.  This is the largest brood patch in the hive.  There is sealed brood and larvae and some empty cells.  The honey is as dirty as on frame 5.  Not many bees here.

Frame 6 (outside): Almost the same as the other side of this frame.  Plenty of brood, honey almost to the bottom of the frame and dirty.  There are pollen cells.  Not many bees here.

Frame 7 (inside): Mostly honey on this frame.  There’s pollen where the brood would be.  Not too many bees on this frame.

Frame 7 (outside): Lots of bees here, many more than last month.  I can’t see what the bees are doing, but I suspect they’re filling this frame with nectar for honey.

Frame 8 (inside): There were fewer than a dozen bees on this frame last month.  Now there’s some good activity.  There may be some comb built up, it’s hard to tell.

Frame 8 (outside): No activity.

Frames 9 and 10 show no change.

I closed up and put in a jar of sugar and an overflow jar (6 cups 1::1 made more than one jar).

I heard from Naomi that Noah heard from Gabriel that Art’s bees are gone.  Noah was worried about our bees.  I was worried about our bees.  We both checked to see that they were coming and going nicely.

In the afternoon I put on the bee jacket and gloves and took a quick look at the hive.  I didn’t use smoke.

I saw, and squished, two beetles that were a bit like roaches in that they were flat and light brown.

Half the sugar jar has been consumed.

The bees seem to be smaller, but as the camera is in the car, I have no pictures and can’t compare.

I pulled frames 1, 4, 5 and 8 today.  Frame 1 is unused as before.  Frame 4 inside has a lump of capped honey about the size of a grapefruit in the middle of the frame.  Frame 5 was really, really heavy which I take as a good sign.  The bees don’t seem to be doing anything with frame 8 as in the past.

It’s been about 10 days since I fed the bees.  I figured the syrup would last about 6 days and after 10 it was pretty clear that it was long gone.

After I took out the old jar, one bee came out through the inner cover, into the feeder, roamed around a bit then went back down into the hive.  I guess she was just checking to see whether the syrup was back.

I did a quick inspection with no smoke this morning.

I had been worried about robbing, but I didn’t see any capping flakes on the bottom of the hive.

Frames 1,2,3 unchanged.

I scraped propolis off the spacers of all frames before closing up.

Frame 4 is showing a bit more comb on the outside.  I can’t tell, but I think there might be a bit of liquid in the cells.  The inside has yet more bees than than last time and possibly a little more comb drawn.

Frame 5 (outside): I’d guess there are about twice as many bees, but they’re all in the middle of the frame.  They seem lighter in color.  The sealed brood is lower on the frame.  There is now some capped honey at the top of the frame.  I see a few larvae, but not as many as before.  The bees are pretty thick, though.

Frame 5 (inside): There’s a little more capped honey on this side, but not much.  Many more bees, but clustered in the middle of the frame. It looks to me that the pollen stores are being consumed.  They’re deeper in the cells and look darker.  Even thought the bees are thick, there’s clearly more sealed brood.

It does appear that I reversed frame 6 last time.  I did not reverse again.

Frame 6 (inside): The queen is on this frame.  The honey is capped much farther down the left and right sides of the frame.  There are many more bees and as on other frames, they’re in the center of the frame now.  I didn’t see any pollen this time. but there appears to be sealed brood where there were larvae last time.  I don’t see any larvae this time.

Frame 6 (outside): As on the other frames, there are many more bees here this time.  There’s a bit more honey and perhaps some pollen, though it’s too thick to see through the bees.

Frame 7 (inside): More capped honey and more pollen.  Many more bees.

Frame 7 (outside): Fewer bees.  The liquid seems to have been drawn down.

Frames 8, 9, 10 unchanged.

I’ve seen a whole lot more pollen coming in to the hive recently.  I don’t know where it’s going.

Pictures here: https://www.siwko.org/2009-10-08-inspection

I got just over 3 jars of syrup out of a 10 lb bag of sugar a few days ago.  Today I checked on the jar I put out.  They’ve eaten about 1/2 of the syrup in 3 days.  Let’s assume that 10 lbs of sugar went into 3 jars, that’s 3 1/3 lbs of sugar per jar.  They appear to be eating about 9 oz of sugar per day.  At $4.50/ 10 lb bag, the bees are consuming about $.25 a day in sugar.  If they ate all year round at this rate, they’d consume the dollar equivalent of 23 lbs of honey in a year.  This is a worst case for my hive at current consumption rates.

I’m feeding the bees just to get them through the winter.

I do not want Domino sugar honey in the supers (there are no supers on now).