Outside The Hive Inspections

Some good options I have found in preparing for a hive inspection or if I feel I need to get out to the apiary but the weather isn't cooperating - too hot especially - It is remarkable how much data can be collected from outside the hive:

Use your phone to video the coming and going of each hive for at least one full minute.

• Take a photo of that hive if you have many hives. It will help you recall how many and what size supers you need to prepare frames for.
• If you use BroodMinder - highly recommended - take a temperature reading of the brood box.
• Back at your desk go through each video reminding yourself of the hive history, dates of importance - like swarm date, swarm capture date, install date, last inspection date, what is or about to bloom.
• Record time of day and the weather. A snapshot at the same time on different days or different times on the same day is smart.
• Is pollen coming in? Strong indicator of a laying queen.
• Is there fanning for ventilation - bee butts down - or fanning for incoming foragers - bee butts up? Sometimes it is hard to tell but when I have just moved a bait hive into place or hived a swarm, it is reassuring to see the nasanov signal in good use.
• Are drones present? Drones return to eat quite frequently from close by DCAs. Sometimes it is a strong indicator of swarm preparations.
• Count approximately how many bees enter the hive in that one minute and how many bees are on the landing board along with any interesting behaviors.

 

Having several colonies helps tremendously with this exercise. If you know, for instance, the traffic of a colony that has swarmed and see another colony in your apiary with similar traffic while all others are bustling to a different tune, it could indicate a swarm event happened for that hive without your awareness. By reviewing each colony on its own merit as well as in comparison to others helps me come up with a plan to target the hives that need my attention the most.

 

 

Do the math on swarm event colonies:

• I presume a virgin queen exist on the swarm date in the parent hive and count how long it will be before expecting capped brood from her. Keep in mind there may be capped brood from the queen that swarmed that by day 21 will have hatched out. I wait until the new queen has had time to mate, lay, and shows open brood growth to capped brood before an inspection. That's about 16 - 18 days. 5 to get her legs under her, 2-3 days to mate, 9 to the first capped brood. Leaving the bees to settle in after a swarm departs avoids unnecessary interference. Doing the math can also relieve you of concerns that you've gone in too soon to see evidence she successfully returned from mating. You should still have time to buy and install a queen if needed. In the meantime colonies without brood have little more to do than store honey. 
• If I caught the swarm, I presume the mother Queen is on the job from that date, laying new brood. The population of that colony will not increase until the first hatch or in 21 plus days. I give them time to settle in. Pollen coming in tells the tale but keep an eye on that population if it does not rebound. Adding brood & bees from another colony may help.
• One last thing I can do is slip in a sticky board below the screened bottom board to see if cappings wax appears and where as an indicator that new brood is hatching. I have a routine of slipping this board in for a 24 hour period before the day of inspection.

Depending on how many colonies you have this data can form a respectable view of their status and fill several pages in your notebook. I find it empowering to help me put a good plan in place before I go in on a good weather day and rock their world. 

Quick Update:

18 days turned out to be exactly correct to a hive with a swarm virgin on July 1st; but I did not see any evidence of a laying queen! So I drove out to a beekeeper who had one and did not get back in to re-queen until day 23  Much of this math was presumed based on the day the swarm left the hive, but instead of finding developing and capped brood - now it is day 23 - I actually now discovered about two day old larvae! They had a queen! I can only guess that heat and rain delayed her mating flight and laying in safe temperatures. Luckily, beekeeper friend, Kelly, needed a queen! All is right with the universe.

Dandelions

It's been a long, long, winter. So happy to see colors in nature again. Many of us had significant hive losses and for myself this is the first time in more than four years I've purchased bees. This land has been good to my colonies and my bees have returned the favor. 

Through years of drought and rain they have thrived. The winds this winter, however, were not just from the north, and not just in high-speed occasional gusts; but sustained winds in double digits shook our own house as well as the beehives from what seemed all directions. 

Hives were wrapped, quilt boxes on, in the same configuration that has served the girls so well over the years. It may have been I took my foundations and hive stands for granted, so I'll work on rebuilding and perfecting those things. Maybe a more significant wind block on all sides. 

All we can do is the best we can with what we know and even in my 18th season there are new lessons to learn.

Meanwhile, the willows and alder bloomed with much less of a hum to cheer them into spring. The cherry and service berry trees lost their blossoms too soon; but our old cider apple tree is pretty good at waiting for the last frost of the season. 

It is so cold now, this 19 day of May, that frost could be around the corner. 

Prunella coats the landscape side by side with wild violets and strawberry flowers. Lots of rain may bring summer nectar in abundance. Beekeepers can always hope.

No matter what the wind or weather, dandelions are the faithful flowers thriving in the background of these sometimes catastrophic times for the beekeeper. Dandelions don't necessarily need bees as they are capable of pollinating themselves; but apis mellifera, our honey bee, is just one of many bee species that need dandelions. 

I was reminded most recently at our Dandelion Festival in Wonalancet last weekend that dandelions share a heritage with honey bees of healing and repair of our heavily cultivated lands

To begin with it is important to note that honey bees are the only pollinators that over winter as a family. In our northern climate these families can be 40,000 members strong. That's a lot of mouths to feed!

Both honey bees and dandelions arrived in the 1600s with our European ancestors, but while timber was harvested and land cultivated to build our towns & cities, nearly 140 species of native North American bees were suddenly at risk of losing habitat and forage necessary for survival.

Interestingly, large honey bee families took up the slack, so to speak, as their need for nectar & pollen, containing essential carbohydrates & proteins, moved them to source a wide variety of New World plants.

As a result, Honey bees fortuitously restored nearly lost native floral sources that would in turn invite these valuable native bees and other pollinators back to our lands. In this way, now centuries later, as we’ve expanded development across the country, researchers believe honey bees to have earned status as a keystone species. So why are dandelions so important to this generalist pollinator?

While native bees are solitary insects preferring specific nectar and pollen sources, sometimes only active when certain flowers are in bloom, honey bees start spring as a robust colony with nutritional needs to satisfy all season long. They are there on the earliest flowers as the snow melts, moving on to the blossoms of fruit trees, as well as maple, birch, oak and other deciduous tree flowers, always scouting the landscape for the next big bloom. 

While our flowering plants and trees take turns looking for attention, some offering nectar, some pollen, some both; weather and climate are a constant challenge to all our pollinators, but reliably, the humble dandelion is there, much like the honey bee, having journeying across continents, picking up the slack, surviving in the most unlikely of places wherever the soil has been disrupted for fields, farms, and cities, on the road edges, sparkling in the sun on our lawns, all late spring through summer.

The dandelion offers pollen and nectar in abundance for a hard working family of bees feeding their young. The dandelion root runs deep, healing disturbed ground, bringing nutrients in abundance as a medicinal plant with all parts having value.

For the bees, dandelions are not the most supreme source of nutritious pollen and nectar, but they are there during times of drought and rain, scarcity and transition, reliable as long as we support their growth to the benefit of all bees. 

Since this day of the dandelions I've looked more closely at where I see them grow on our own land; They are in the mowed paths, where the fence post holes were dug, all around the ground that was leveled for my beehives in the apiary. I have to watch where I step! 

The girls know too, where and when the dandelion blooms for them.

Also to note: Two of the presenters at the first ever Wonalancet Dandelion Festival were Ethan & Amy of Again and Again Farm. They are fellow vendors at the Tamworth Farmers Market, humble farmers with a wealth of information to share for the good of the soil. Always a good place to visit good people.