So weather ended up being really nice for getting in my hive yesterday. I was able to look for all the things I mentioned a few posts ago
Igneus wrote:1: Queen release. - When the queen comes in the package, she is not yet these bees Queen. She is in a cage and is trying to win the bees over with her pheromones. Upon installation you hang her from a top bar and remove an entrance cover. That cover is covering a sugar block, after a while the attendant bees will chew her loose from that block. If she has not been released yet I will help that process along.
2: Comb - I am making sure that comb is started to be built. If it isnt, there may be a problem with the strength of my hive. If there is comb, is it going the right way, if its not going along the groove line is it going across multiple bars. If it is across multiple bars, cut it out or try to gently reform it the right way.
3: Food level - If its low, add more.
4: Ants - How bad are they? I have some tree tanglefoot on order to put on my leg posts.
5: Does anything look odd*
1: Queen Release. The queen wasn't out yet, so I popped the other seal. She should be laying eggs shortly.
2: Comb - I had two nicely formed comb starters going. One was about 6 inches along the bar and 4 inches down. The other about 4 and 2.
3: Food is being consumed at a good pace. I topped it off.
4: Ants seemed to be not much of an issue. I didnt see any in the hive body, and a couple on top of the bars.
5 Did anything seem odd, yeahp all of it.
Why would ants be a problem that you have to deal with? Would the hive not take care of it themselves, or does that only happen in a mature hive?
My wife and I had been talking about putting in a hive for many years now, but children and life and the backyard chicken project got in the way. We had gotten into that cycle of always putting it off for next year. This thread help provide a much needed kick in the pants to get this project started.
We have an active beekeeping community in our area (Sacramento/Northern California). It's a weird mixture of backyard farmers, Ag research scientists, hipster hobbyists, expat Ukrainian farmers, and commercial nut growers.
Got a two box langstroth hive. Earlier in the thread, I said I wanted to start with two hives, but finances didn't permit. If this goes well and and the colony establishes itself, I'll see about getting another set of boxes next year.
I believe I am getting a package of bees, rather than an established nuc. When it arrives, our local bee keeping supplier will be holding a short class on how to get it started properly. We'll see how it goes.
Why would ants be a problem that you have to deal with? Would the hive not take care of it themselves, or does that only happen in a mature hive?
So I am going to answer these in reverse of you asking them.
It is not so much an issue in mature hives. The hive seals things up pretty tight and can keep them out. Now what I have is not established, they are just starting out. If ants establish the hive as a food source they may do several things:
1: Rob them blind. Ants will take honey, dead bees, eggs and larvae. If you have a particularly aggressive type of ant it can even kill bees. The big issue here is the food and egg robbing. Right now they are mostly eating sugar water and building comb, the queen hasn't started laying because she was just released from her cage. With a poor hive the honey stores might be hit by robbing so bad they wont survive the winter. If the eggs are taken then there wont be any brood.
2: Take up residence. Like bees and most other colony based insects, they spread and establish new residence in places. This can be a hive. If an ant colony takes residence it will push/kill your bees out of their hive. This scenario isnt as likely, but can happen.
3: Just be a general nuisance when trying to work on your hive, get on you and your equipment.
The best way to deal with ants in any situation is to kill them out right. Mostly done with some sore of chemical food that they take back to their colony. Anything though you use can travel with them and may be brought into the hive. That is bad news. If it can kill the ants, it might be able to kill or sicken the bees. Now my hive is at the edge of some woods, out in a field. For the most parts I say, "hey ants you do your thing but leave my bees be." So I will be just using a physical barrier to keep them out. Tree Tanglefoot Is a sticky compound that you place on trees to kelp keep ants from getting up in it. I feel like if its good enough to put on trees, I can put it on my pressure treated legs. Its sticky so some will try to cross and die. But eventually it will stop them from trying to cross, in turn they will have no interest in the hive.
*To Add to it bees have enough to deal with already. I am going to do everything I can to help them along.
*EDIT
My wife and I had been talking about putting in a hive for many years now, but children and life and the backyard chicken project got in the way. We had gotten into that cycle of always putting it off for next year. This thread help provide a much needed kick in the pants to get this project started.
I kinda hope the conversation for this went a little like "So lets get the bees, we've been talking about it and now some random weirdo on this forum I'm a part of is doing it. I mean if he can do it I most certainly can."
polq37 wrote:My wife and I had been talking about putting in a hive for many years now, but children and life and the backyard chicken project got in the way. We had gotten into that cycle of always putting it off for next year. This thread help provide a much needed kick in the pants to get this project started.
I kinda hope the conversation for this went a little like "So lets get the bees, we've been talking about it and now some random weirdo on this forum I'm a part of is doing it. I mean if he can do it I most certainly can."
Yeah, that was kinda how it went.
Bee Time Fun Time
“We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Well that's depressing,
Bees are weird, take a look at them if you dont bee-lieve* me. First off bees have 5 eyes, 5! Two of them are compound eyes, meaning they are made up of lots of little eyes (lenses) that allow them to see in multiple directions at once. These eyes are trichromatic and bees base their color vision on blue, green and UV. This means bees cannot see red, what they do see is the UV pattern of the flower. They also have 3 simple eyes called ocelli. These eyes are positioned on top of the head because they are sensitive to light and its polarization.
Plus on their head they have a gland the secretes the enzymes that make proteins for royal jelly. Dont forget the proboscis that sucks up the nectar. Dont even get me started on the antenna.
Just weird
*obligatory pun
So I was able to get into my hive some more. I am unable to notice the queen. I notice eggs, So I am pretty sure she is still there. I just have to get better at seeing her. I have some nice looking comb, 6 bars worth. They are building more and more.
The trick to TBH hives is managing the combs. I am very lucky so far all of my comb has been straight on the bars right where I want it to be. I have read a lot of stories about people having to cut/break the comb and press it or ziptie it how they want it on there. So far all I have done is with the good sized straight comb I separate them with an empty bar in between, then because they want to maintain spacing they also build on the empty bar straight. My biggest comb is about 6-7 inch long on the bar and about as deep.
When I am at the hive I like to stand in the midst of the bees and watch them come in and out of the hive. I have been noticing them bringing in the pollen. There have been two very distinct colors. A bright orange (classic what people expect pollen to look like) and a very dark grey. Supposedly good beekeepers can tell what plants they are from, but alas I cannot. Still very cool to watch.
I am going to attempt to take pictures, but I have been to nervous to get into the hive without the big bulky gloves on. If I can, I will snap some of the comb.
So, I still cannot see the queen. Maybe I am just oblivious, or she is not there. I see good signs though. One egg per cell. When I pull the comb, I am not seeing any workers laying eggs. I don't think the brood cappings are drone. So I have high hopes. If there is no queen at this point the hive would be a loss.
Pictures!
On another note, I got my first sting. So that was fun.
So bee update.
I have had to expand my hive. Currently I had 12 bars in my hive. At this point in time all of my bars have at least 6 inches of comb on them going across the top. With a couple bars having comb going the entire length. Thats great. There is good clear evidence of honey production. My comb I am 75% certain is worker brood comb. There continues to be good looking eggs and larva. Pretty soon all of my original bees will be die off. If they were young bees at the time of receipt then they are nearing their life cycle end. So having new worker bees is important.
While not beeing able to identify the queen has not been good, the evidence is pretty good for her.
Maybe, just maybe this will all work out.
Polq37
Have you gotten your bees yet? How are you making out?
My bees will be arriving in the first week of May. Right now I'm still painting the hive and thinking about where I should put it. I'm pretty excited about the project.
Also, Science!
I always had so much trouble spotting queens. My boss was really good at it, but that's the difference that 30 years makes. The only queens I could spot were the ones marked with a coloured dot. But if someone's laying eggs and they aren't drones, she must be in there somewhere!
In my experience, if you think it's brood comb it probably is, as it (especially drone comb) looks pretty different from honeycomb . Does your hive have screens or something to restrict the brood to a particular area, or does everyone have free rein?
I always had so much trouble spotting queens. My boss was really good at it, but that's the difference that 30 years makes. The only queens I could spot were the ones marked with a coloured dot. But if someone's laying eggs and they aren't drones, she must be in there somewhere!
In my experience, if you think it's brood comb it probably is, as it (especially drone comb) looks pretty different from honeycomb . Does your hive have screens or something to restrict the brood to a particular area, or does everyone have free rein?
Yeah, that is just it. I have a month of experience so me not finding the queen isnt to surprising, issue is the queen I bought had a bright yellow marker. So unless there was an extra queen in the package that was unmarked (which can happen) and the bees killed the new queen once she was released, which can happen. Then I don't know why I cant find her.
Yeah the issue with the comb, is I don't have any drone cells in it so far to be able to directly tell the difference, so I am basing it by picture only. One of the descriptions of the pictures though that even with the drone comb together they will still have the pronounced bumps. When the worker cells are made they kind of have a round surface, but when all together in a comb they end up getting flattened together, which is what I am seeing. I am getting into the hive today after a week of bad weather. So hopefully I will have some pictures.
So my hive is doing great. I was able to get into the hive on Friday. The comb is looking amazing. It is all looking nice, straight, and full. The first round of eggs are beginning to hatch into bees and I was able to watch a new bee chew through its capping. The new empty bars I put in a week ago had some great growth on them about 6 inches across the bar and 4-5 inches down in the hive. Most importantly though, I found my queen. I was also able to get some good pictures of her. As usual the pictures will be behind the spoiler tag to make for easier page scrolling.
Here you will see the queen in the upper right of the comb. She is the awkwardly long looking one. She has a faint yellow mark on her, looks like most of the paint rubbed off. Her brood pattern is not as clean as I would like but then again there is not as much room to work with since the hive isnt filled out yet.
Another picture of the queen.
Here is something I think is pretty nifty. As we talked about before, all the bees have roles. One of those roles is the Undertaker bee. Now this isn't the now retired WWE undertaker who goes in a wrecks the joint during a royal rumble (by the way I remember watching that PAY-PER-VIEW, back in the WWF days). The bee on the right is dragging the bigger dead bee directly behind her.
Here she is again. She dragged that body up the side wall while I had it open, and discarded it off the side of the hive, then flew away.
So cool!
Those pics are great. I'm really enjoying following your progress!
Picked up my package of bees yesterday and installed them in the hive today. The process was a little intimidating, but it all went smoothly and nobody got stung.
I was surprised to see how quickly the bees seemed to acclimate to the hive and discover the entrance.
Picked up my package of bees yesterday and installed them in the hive today. The process was a little intimidating, but it all went smoothly and nobody got stung.
I was surprised to see how quickly the bees seemed to acclimate to the hive and discover the entrance.
Awesome can't wait to hear more.
That package is really intimidating the first time. I was surprised by how hard i had to shake that thing to get the bees out of it.
Hiving the bees.
Awesome
and I was able to watch a new bee chew through its capping.
Even bees, it would appear, are gamers.
It's been a long time, but I remember queens being hard to see sometimes because the other bees are constantly crawling around and over them, so you have to kind of look for a small lump of bees and find the one with her butt in a cell. And there are a lot of clumps of bees in a hive...
It has been a pretty awful this past week. I haven't been able to get into my hive at all due to all the rain. Hopefully today. On Saturday I was supposed to have a "Sustainable Beekeeping" class but it was canceled. I was really looking forward to some of the techniques that were going to be shown for verroa mite mitigation. I have no idea what I am going to do for them. I may just try to sugar dust them.
As of last Monday my Hive was looking great. They were in need of more sugar water, but it isnt a make it or brake it issue that they haven't had any all week. The main reason I am still feeding them it to encourage rapid comb building. Currently I should have about 16 good 8+ inch combs. Eventually they will almost fill the hive width and depth, 12 inch X 12 inch per bar with a total of 25 (I think) bars. At that point I will have to work to keep them from building where I don't want them to, like onto the sides of the hive. Next year I will get at least one more Top Bar Hive and probably 2 regular Langstroths.
A week in and our bees seem to be doing great. It's really tempting to check out what's going on inside the hive, but I have to force myself to hold off and avoid disturbing them too much.
Our kit included a hive top box feeder - an odd contraption with two large trays for sugar water and a screened-in central ridge that the bees could access from the bottom without risk of drowning in the sugar water pools. We initially had a bit of bad advice on how to place the feeder and the hive inner cover (obviously, these issues don't matter for a top bar hive). We were told to put the inner cover over the feeder, with the feeder directly over the deep box. This led to a bunch of bees accessing the sugar pools from the notch in the top inner cover and drowning in the pools. I cleared out as many survivors as I could and removed the top inner cover and placed the outer telescoping cover directly over the feeder, cutting off top access.
However, the bees also began building out a bunch of wax comb on the mesh and plastic feeder molding. So, on the first major hive inspection, I removed the feeder box entirely and put the inner cover directly over the deep. I scraped a really lovely perfect wax comb out of the feeder and left the feeder box by the hive so that the thousand-odd bees that were hanging out in the feeder box would have a chance to return to the hive. An hour later, they had all returned to the hive and I cleaned the inaccessible bits of wax off of the feeder box with some boiling water. I reloaded the feeder with sugar water, put it back on top of the inner cover, and then put the outer cover over the feeder. Now, things seem to be working properly. The bees are taking sugar water, but they aren't building comb in the feeder or drowning.
Watching the hive is kind of like watching a very busy airport. Bees are totally fascinating.
That's scary about the drowning bees! Glad you figured it out.
Great to hear you had your first issue and it was so easily fixed. I deal with drowned bees more than I like. Feeders in TBH's are not all that great. Unless I want to put one in that may interfere with the combs.
On a second note, while I was doing some research I came across a digitized book call Gleanings in Bee Culture. It talks about people haveing conversations with Mr. Langstroth and different experiments trying to feed bees. It is pretty long, but fascinating. Oh yeah, published in 1879, and it was volume 7. This used to be the bee news and they were discovering things we just do now cause that is how its done.
*EDIT* Looks like you can read a slew of these Gleanings in Bee Culture books online via Google. This is pretty interesting history.
I was able to get a couple pretty nice pictures of some new fresh white comb, and a pretty cool look inside the hive. As usual to save scroll space they are behind the spoiler.
*Edit* you may notice a white dot in some cells. Noticable on the bottom left parts of the comb. Those are bee eggs.
This to me is the pretty cool picture inside the hive. That big comb is about a foot across and almost 9-10 inch down. You cant really see behind it an additional 10 combs. That real dark color is honey being made, with brood also in it.
Wow, those are some really cool pictures. I'm going to have to show them to my kids.
Wow, those are some really cool pictures. I'm going to have to show them to my kids.
Agreed. Beautiful and frightening!
My daughter says "wow, that is awesome!"
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