Breaking Down the Little Top Bar Hive

Marty had said that the colony died before the first cold snap, so I'd been assuming that mites were the problem. Breaking down the hive, this is what we found.

• Was too much honey harvested? Honey was plentiful with at least 2 "frames" of pollen.
• Cappings on the brood combs looked normal, so I ruled out AFB. There was no discernible "brood nest" but I believe the spotty pattern is a result of good housekeeping.
• DWV. I didn't see deformed wings among the dead, but with a hygienic colony that's normal. A thin layer of dead bees on the floor is a sign IMO that our bees were good housekeepers. 
• Mite Count. There were plenty of dead mites in the debris pile, which is to be expected with any Winter colony. As the bee population drops toward the end of the year, the mites-per-bee ratio goes up. Then as the bees die, the number of mites on the floor will seem disproportionately high.
• Mite Poop. Loads of it! At first glance the brood combs looked clean. When I rotated one so I could see the cell roofs… totally different story. Look at the 11th photo in the slideshow.

I have a theory that colonies started from packages will fail no later than their second Fall. How to prevent this in the future? I've already decided that our next colony will be treated with MAQS and/or Fall requeening every other year. I'm determined to be a better beekeeper, and for me that means keeping my hives close. The outyard thing isn't working for me but since I haven't gone through enough VIT to not anaphylax (?) due to bee sting, I'm on the fence. 

Emergency Feeding in February

Bees won't move down in Warre.
Help needed getting bees to build into bottom box.

The problem of getting a colony to grow in a Warré hive is discussed frequently in the beekeeping forums. The conversations address why they stall and what might encourage them to build down (or up), but Warré beekeepers tend to subscribe to a somewhat laissez-faire method of beekeeping, and advice on feeding a single-box colony is vague at best.

Today's post is a progress report of sorts, depicting our feeding program. We gave our colony their first solid meal on Thanksgiving and have been taking the roof off the hive every 10 or 15 days since! Not ideal, but it's been necessary. At first it was maintenance feeding (with just fondant) but now I'd call it emergency feeding, with both fondant and MegaBee Hybrid pollen substitute. By rule of thumb, February and March is when colonies starve; they're growing, stores are depleting, and there are no natural foods sources yet. Our colony will not survive without help.

I chose the images in the slideshow to illustrate a) how much food fits inside a feeding rim and b) how quickly the bees consume fondant and pollen substitute patties. It's been driving me crazy that all I can find is general instruction to "replenish as needed." How is that helpful? I hope you find this information useful.

P.S.: I've had some trouble with my fondant, which I'll fess up to later.

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P.P.S.: Here's a Note-To-Self in my Google beekeeping calendar that you might find helpful:

Basic Beekeeping Lesson 30: bees need pollen patties no later than Feb. 1st. Pollen patties will stimulate the queen to start laying more, while providing the bees some nutrition. N.B.: Once you start feeding, you must continue until natural pollen and nectar is available. ANOTHER NOTE: by fooling the colony with patties and sugar water, hives may came out of winter overcrowded, ready to swarm. Be prepared to split.

Read George Imirie's paragraph on STARVATION: http://pinkpages.chrisbacherconsulting.com/2004_Mar_-_March_is_a_VERY_IMPORTANT_Month.html

Go-Between

I just love that the Backwards Beekeepers in LA and an accidental beekeeper in FLA are working together to hive a colony of ferals.



Thanks to the Internet, Cristina found me and a couple other TBHivers, and ultimately the Backwards Beekeepers. They've cutout bees from mailboxes, squirrel boxes, and enjoy warm "Winter" temps similar to Cristina's backyard. A great fit, I thought. After a flurry of PMs/Picasa comments/emails and a couple of sleepless nights, her bees were hived last night. Not only did she hive this colony of bees, but she already has another TBH ready for a second colony! Talk about jumping in with both feet.

Last 2010 Manipulation

This post is a bit tardy. We have a rule about completing winterization tasks by Halloween, so this post is about 2 weeks after the fact.

With a horizontal hive, if the bees have not backfilled the combs so the honey stores butt up against the brood nest, beekeepers are told to consolidate the space in the hive by removing empty combs and pushing the honey stores toward the bees. As our colony had several unused combs between the stores and the nest, this was the advice we'd been given by the biobees forum and by Marty Hardison. But we weren't comfortable with the amount of manipulation required.

First, we weren't sure just how many empty combs there were and we didn't want to be in the hive long trying to find out. Second, bees tend to be protective at this time of year, meaning prone to sting, so we weren't keen on trying to loosen and move 6 heavy honeycombs. Instead we simply pulled out a couple of empty combs and replaced them with drawn comb and honey we had in our freezer. If we'd had more resources, we'd've swapped out more than just two; there are still several combs between the nest and their stores. While devoid of brood, these combs do hold a few pounds of honey for the bees, and we hope it entices them to move deeper into the hive.

We are currently experiencing our first cold weather and the bees are very tightly clustered at the very front of the hive, with the bulk of the honey stores 4-6 combs away. All bees store some honey within their broodnest itself, but I don't know how long it lasts. If they consume it all, they will have to move closer to the honey stores. If they don't move in the next couple of weeks, before the real cold weather settles in, they could end up starving just 6 inches away from ample food.

Ahead of the Curve

2010 Spring Cleaning = 12 lbs. of Honey

A year ago today, we were installing our package bees. It's amazing how far ahead of the curve we are in this beekeeping season, having successfully overwintered a colony. Instead of feeding and keeping our fingers crossed that our 10,000 bees won't fly away, our queen has been laying eggs for weeks, if not months, and we already have what looks like thrice that many bees. Additionally, our colony benefited from having their hive inside a greenhouse. The few degrees of extra warmth enabled the queen to lay earlier than in a hive left out in the elements, which explains the incredible Spring build-up we're seeing. With a strong force already out foraging and returning to feed lots of developing brood, our worries this year turn to swarm prevention. Removing surplus honey was just the first step. Here's what else we did to Spring Clean.

Spring Inspection & Early Swarm Prevention
Click to start/stop the slideshow.

The To-Do List:
1) remove entrance reducer: allows free-flying now that it's warm and nectar is flowing
2) look for queen cups: potentially a sign of swarm preparations
3) look for drones: they won't swarm without 'em
4) old combs out: good housekeeping (and an opportunity to Sugar Roll 'em)
5) move brood forward = reversing hive bodies

What's reversing hive bodies, you ask? It's a maneuver Langstroth beekeepers do in the Spring to get their bees to the bottom of their stack. Over the Winter, bees eat/move through the honey (up in a lang stack) and then they don't like to leave the nice clean combs. If they get to the very top of the stack, they might feel that the house is too small and start swarm preparations. So Lang keepers switch the (empty) bottom and (full) top hive bodies and their bees are set for the year ahead (sort of).

In a horizontal hive, the bees move backwards. They leave empty combs in the front, and if you time it right you can pull out combs that are dark or misshapen while still broodless. Then you push the nest area forward, give 'em fresh bars in the back, and the bees can start their annual migration anew. Nobody swarms and everybody's happy.

Comb Management

A few posts back, I mentioned that the honey combs were going off-course and that a comb management system had to be put in place. The plan was to keep opening up space between the straightest combs and to put fresh top bars in-between. The construction on the blank bars would be restricted to the space b/n existing combs, and therefor new comb wonkiness would be mitigated.

The only remaining problem would be the falseback. I think it should be designed to mimic the face of another comb. Since it's more like a piece of foundation, the bees have ample room to make a nice fat comb next to it, before beespace becomes tight.

Fat combs hold more honey - no complaints there - but the falseback is so close to the actual back of the hive, we barely have room to get our fingers in to work the hive. If the girls put up honey right up to it, it could get really messy in the Spring when we do our first inspection. To prevent that, we decided to put a finished (i.e.: already capped and not being expanded) comb there.

Update 9/1:  tapping on the top bars, the blank ones still give a hollow sound. We'll give them 'til the end of the Fall flow – according to my allergies there's a lot of something blooming out there – to build and fill a comb there. If they don't make significant progress, the bar will have to be pulled out to reduce air space that needs to be kept warm through the Winter.

Eventhough the Farmers Almanac says it's an El Nino year, we're not too worried about breaking the propolis seal or cold drafts. BackyardHive.com says the latest to move the false back into position is Halloween. And besides, the greenhouse will keep them safe.