It's been an interesting year so far. . .

[David Stokely]

This is a second go at beekeeping after about a 25 year pause.  I bought two hives last year and they both died out over the winter from lack of stores.  I fed them way more than 100 lbs of sugar (several times that in syrup) last fall.  They were sucking down syrup from feeder jars in unbelievable quantity.  For a time I had (4) 1/2 gallon jars in the hive and they would empty them every 2-3 days, but I think that kept the queen turned on in the egg laying mode and their populations were very very large late into the fall.  The one hive was out of stores and dead by the middle of December.  The other died early in March.  So chalk one up to an inexperience beekeeper. . .

This spring I bought (4) 3 lb packages with carniolan queens.  I placed the hives in 3 separated locations 1-2 miles apart.  At the location with 2 hives,  one of the packages promptly absconded the hive and moved in next door.  So that box had 6 lbs of bees, leaving the other box empty.  a couple of weeks later I bought a 2 lb package with an Italian queen and installed them.

There was some kind of problem with one of the carnolian queens.  Her brood patterns were very small, about the size of your hand and less than 50% filled with brood.  I watched and waited, hoping the bees would replace her.  I should have been more aggressive and replaced her myself as they dwindled away and ended up dieing out.

I was planning on doing a split about the first of July or so, so I buttoned up the hive, blocked the entrance in place and left it set for several weeks until I could do the split.

This past weekend my phone rang while I was in church.  It was my friend, at whose house my (2) hives are located.  He was on vacation a couple hundred miles away.  His neighbor had called him to see if he was OK.  His neighbor had been driving by his house and saw that the air in his front yard was completely full of bees. . . .So we have a swarm!!!

I immediately left church, went home, gathered some equipment and a friend and I went over to see what was going on.  There is a large maple tree in my friends front yard.  The swarm had chosen a low hanging branch about 1 inch in diameter on which to land.  I don't have lots of swarm experience, but this swarm was in my opinion - HUGE.  The bees covered about 4 feet of the branch, maybe 4-5 inches in diameter the entire length.  Just comparing it to the quantity of bees in a 3 lb package, I would guess that there were something in excess of 10 lbs of bees in that swarm.  It was a monster.

Picture of the swarm

Picture of the swarm #2


I set up a hive 4 supers deep, using the deeps from my hive that had recently died out, minus about half the frames on my friends driveway.  The branch was cut as I held on to it.  I wasn't fully prepared for the weight of it and it dipped somewhat when the weight fully came to me.  About 25% of the bees on the lower end of the branch fell off into the grass, but I put the branch into the hive and gently cut away as much of it as I could without greatly disturbing the bees.

We closed up the hive and left them to settle in to their new home.  I went back about 3 hours later and the swarm box was empty of bees, but the air in front of my friends house was completely thick with flying bees.  I've never seen anything like it. . .there were just so many bees in the air.

There was a little scrubbly mulberry tree on my friends property line.  It looked like the bees were forming a ball on a branch of this little tree, so again I left.  It was now about 4:30 and I thought I would give them another couple of hours and come back about 7 p.m. to try and again gather the swarm.

At 7 when I pulled into my friends driveway, the air was clear of bees.  There were no bees on the little mulberry tree and there were no bees in the hive boxes.  I walked about my friends yard a little bit thinking maybe they had chosen another tree to gather in, but could find nothing.

I was very disappointed, figuring that at the prices I paid for my packages in the spring, that the swarm represented maybe $300-400 worth of bees and it nicely replaced the hive that died out.  Anyway, I began tearing down the hive boxes getting ready to haul them back home.

I had noticed maybe 50 bees on the driveway next to the hive base.  I figured that some honey had probably dripped out of the supers and the bees were cleaning it up, but when I got down to the screen mesh bottom board.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  It looked like the base was full of dead bees. . . Where in the world had all those dead bees come from ???

It quickly became apparent though that the bees were not dead, but they just couldn't move very much.  They were very much alive.  The entire base was packed solid with bees.  The bees were outside on the blacktop because there just was no more room for any more bees in the base.

I can only figure that when the bees fell from the swarm as the branch was cut, that the queen was in the mass of bees that fell.  I'm guessing that she found the hive boxes, but rather than going in the front entrance, she entered the base where the mite board should have been and the rest of the swarm followed her into that space.

It appears to me that a good portion of the swarm may have returned to the hive they came from.  The quantity of bees didn't seem as great as what I saw on the branch. . . I don't know??? Do bees ever go back to the originating hive after being in a swarm???  It looks to me like that's what happened here.

Anyway that was Sunday.  Wednesday evening I checked on them.  The swarm seemed to be settled into the box. . .and I know it was too soon to really check them, but for some reason. . .I give thanks to God that I did look. . .I tore the hive apart looking at each frame. . .nominally looking for signs of the queen laying eggs, which I did not find. . .but what I did find was disturbing. . .

On 3 adjacent frames in one of the deeps, the honeycomb was a mess.  It looked slimy and smelt badly.  I could see what looked like grubs writhing in the honeycomb. . .Went home looked on the Internet for pictures of SHB (Small Hive Beetle). . .went back to the hive to compare what I saw on the Internet to what was in the hive and sure enough, those grubs were SHB larvae.  The diagnostic evidence, 3 pairs of front legs and a pair of spines on the rear of the grub, plus the strange/awful smell.

Some have said like rotting oranges, not being familiar with rotting oranges, I thought more like rotting moldy apples maybe, but a distinctive smell that I will not soon forget.

I scraped the 3 frames of honeycomb out and replaced the frames in the hive.  I went back last night did a complete inspection of the hive and all the frames and I cannot find any evidence of more SHB.  The bees have cleaned up the frames that I scraped off and seem to be doing well but this surely was a disappointment to me finding SHB here in northern Indiana.  I still didn't see any evidence of the queen laying eggs.  That has me a little concerned.  I'm not sure how soon I should be able to see eggs after housing a swarm?

I've gone back to all my hives.  I had the outer covers propped up a bit with little twigs on the inner cover, trying to give the hive more ventilation, but in reading about SHB it appears that giving the bees as little in the way of entrances to defend is key in keeping SHB out of your hives. . .

Anyway, a long story I thought I'd share.  Beware SHB is out there waiting for untended equipment. . .

Thank you in advance for your comments,

Dave Stokely







  

[FRAMEshift]

Wow, you've had some rough times.  The first thing I noticed is that you fed large quantities of sugar last year, had a huge population going into fall and at least one hive was dead in December.  So it looks like you must have been feeding 1:1 sugar:water and the bees cooperated by building comb and laying eggs.  So when winter came there were too many bees and they ate all the stores.  Feeding 2:1 in the late summer and fall might have encouraged more building of stores and a smaller, more survivable, bee population.

The other thing that seems strange is that a package hive with a brand new queen would swarm the first summer.  Again, maybe too much feeding and too much crowding.  Did you open the brood nest by adding some empty frames?  That would help prevent a swarm.

[David Stokely]

I've fed almost nothing this year (after my experience last year) since a week or so after they were installed, but the hive that swarmed is the one that had the (2) 3 lb packages in it from the one hive absconding and moving into it.  I had frames with drawn comb and some honey/pollen from the hives that died out over the winter.

I'll tell you the truth, I can't remember what ratio syrup I was feeding.  It may have been 1:1.  I thought it was 2:1, but I cannot really remember. . .I now know to change to 2:1 for storage in the fall, but I cannot remember about last fall. . .

The queen of the hive that they absconded from, was stuck in her cage and the workers left before they freed her.  The end was plugged with a mini marshmallow.  Supposedly I was told that the bees can chew through that in just a few hours, but the next day after installation when I went and checked the hive after installing them, the queen was still in her cage, almost dead (from a very cold evening) and all but maybe 20-30 workers were gone from the hive.

So anyway that's why the population was so huge in this hive in its first year.

[sarafina]

Wow - you have had a heck of a year!

I used to prop my top covers with sticks because they beard so badly here in the Deep South but this year I bought the vented covers shown in the first post and I really like them:

http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=10729.0

[David Stokely]

The things we have to worry about today in order to keep bees. . .it's unbelievable really.  The SHB are so nasty and they're so small.  I don't know, I've not had them get into an active hive box, but I know others have.  Success is about finding a balance between risk and advantage that works for your bees, for your style of beekeeping and for your area.

I got out of beekeeping 25 years ago due to AFB.  I just wanted a simple hobby.  I didn't want to have to medicate, etc. forever just to have bees, but compared then to today.  There was far less to worry about then. . .this summer I've had 2 bee kills, at the same hives where the swarm took place, due to a nearby lake association using a crop duster for mosquitoes about a mile away from my hive location.  Been in contact with agricultural extension agents, etc. to see what I can do, but the lake is across  the state line in Michigan. . . blah blah blah. . . It's just almost overwhelming the things you have to contend with and be an expert on just to have a few bee hives. . . .

Here's a link to the posting about my first go round with bees:

My bee experience 25 years ago.