February Peek

An unusual day in Asheville area beekeeping. Warm enough for the bees to fly about, but with snow still on the ground. It has been a strange winter. We've had snow on the ground every day since December 18, 2009.
The sun has finally come out after a long cold spell. The bees seemed estatic to come out and buzz around a bit. We decided to peek in the top of both hives and check to see how things looked.
The hive next to the garden fence (the one with snow in the background) is the hive we started from a nuc last spring. When we looked in, there was a nice cluster of bees (pictured above) on the top honey super. From what I could see without lifting any frames, they still have plenty of honey for the moment in this top super. Plus, this hive smelled FABULOUS...like wax and honey. One of my favorite things about keeping bees is the smell of a healthy hive.

The second hive is our ultra-combined hive. In 2008 we combined our original two hives, and then last year we combined again with the swarm hive we caught in 2009. There are far fewer bees flying out around the entrance, so I was surprised when I popped the top to find a good sized gathering of bees, pictured immediately above. We're feeding this hive bottles of honey from our own bees through the mason jar feeder. We'll do that until our honey runs out and then feed them with sugar water. It looks like they just might make it.

Body Structures of the Honey Bee I. A. 2.

The best source for drawings and details about the anatomy of the honey bee is a book called "The Beekeeper's Handbook" by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile: a book worth having for someone who wishes to become certified and to move on towards being a Master Beekeeper.

I also draw from WNC Bee School notes from a lecture by Greg Clements in 2008.

Questions (I. A. 2.): What are the three main body structures of an adult bee? What are their respective functions? What primary organs are contained in each?

HEAD
Contains sensory organs: the eyes, tongue, antennae
The jaws/mandible
Brain/neural systems
Food and pheromone producing glands
Glands for production of royal jelly
Five eyes: 2 compound and 3 tiny ocelli
(The Drone bee, or male bee has huge compound eyes)
The proboscis

THORAX
Center of locomotion, where legs and wings attach
Contains muscles for wings and legs and some muscles for breathing
2 pair of wings that interlock (with something like velcro for strength)
3 pairs of legs
Legs have pollen collecting structures--pollen combs, press and basket
(The thorax is longer in the queen and drone bees)

ABDOMEN
Reproductive organs
Sting (in female bees)
Digestive System
Wax glands (in female bees)
Scent glands
Circulatory system
Spiracles for respiration
(The drone has a rounded butt, the queen has a very long abdomen)

Link on anatomy from "How Stuff Works"

Also of interest: the bees attract pollen on their body with a static electric charge and then use their legs to pack it up for transport.

Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Arthropoda (segmented insect with a chitanous membrane)
Class: Hexapoda (six legs)
Order: Hymenoptera (can lock their wings together)
Family: Apidae
Genus: Apis
Species: Mellifera (the European/Western honey bee)

Stages of Bee Development I. A. 1.

I'm studying for the NC Master Beekeeping Program Certified Level written exam, so I thought I would blog my study guide.

Question I. A. 1. What are the four stages of honey bee development? How are they different? What is the purpose of each stage?

Above is my best picture of varied stages of development in one of my hives. The bee start out as a tiny white egg, laid by the queen bee in the bottom of each cell. They are long and skinny. You can see a few eggs in the bottom left hand corner of the picture if you blow it up to full size by clicking on the photo. The egg stays in the cell for three days, then hatches out into a larva.

The larvae are the white worm looking things. The larval stage is the eating and growing in size portion of a bee's life. There is some good size variation in the photo. The larvae are initially fed royal jelly, a substance that is produced from a gland in the worker bees' heads. Bees that will grow up to be queen get royal jelly for much longer. Regular worker bees and drones get a few days of royal jelly, then the nurse bees switch them over to a diet of pollen and honey.

The bees then cap the cell with the brown caps in the lower right hand portion of the picture. A queen is capped on day 7 1/2, a worker bee is capped on day 9, and a drone is capped on day 10. Capped brood become pupae, the stage in which the white worm becomes a white bee, and finally becomes a full grown bee. If you pull of the cap, you will find a bee in this process of transformation. (Photo on Wikipedia of pupal changes)

The bee finally emerges from its cell as an adult bee, ready to go to work, fully developed.

It takes 16 days to grow a queen bee, 21 days to grow a worker, and 24 to grow a male drone.

Snow Bees

Eleven inches of snow this weekend, much more than we usually get. The bees are snug in their hives, snuggled in a cluster of bees, shivering to maintain the constant temperature of the hive, eating honey.
Nothing really to do except clear the entrance of snow.

We also knocked that nice mound of snow off the top of each hive, but it looked good while it was there.

The view from the hive back toward the house.

Treating Varroa Mites in the Old/Combined Hive

We decided to test our hives to see if our varroa mites were at levels that required intervention. We did this by placing our plastic board under the screened bottom board for 24 hours. It was a sticky board test. The board was sticky due to a coat of vaseline. One of the bottom boards is pictured above, covered in pollen, tiny pieces of newspaper from combining the hives, and varroa mites.

The varroa mites are the little brown football shaped critters. I have a video of a couple of them walking around at the end of this post. The mites lay eggs in brood cells before they are capped and then treat the pupae in the capped cells like giant milkshakes, which needless to say, is not good for the baby bees. I took both the picture and the video through a magnifying glass.
The new hive had a low mite count, so we left it alone. The old/combined hive had more than 200 mites on the sticky board, so we decided to treat. First, we took off the top two boxes...the honey super and the top deep, using the black topped fume board and Bee Quick spray. The honey super had two frames with some honey, which I froze to give back to them later. The top deep was basically empty. All the action is in the bottom two deeps.
We're treating with Apiguard, a thymol gel that comes in little aluminum trays. I think thymol is considered a "soft" chemical treatment. Probably more than the "natural" beekeepers would use, but not one of the nastier chemical treatments.
We opened the tray and added a spacer so the bees will have room to access the gel. They will distribute it throughout the hive.
Then we popped our feeder back on top. We're down to two deeps, a spacer and a feeder for the old/combined hive. The top deep looked full of bees and honey. The newspaper that had been between the old hive and the swarm hive was completely gone, except for tiny little crumbs of it that we found on our sticky board. Watch the video below to see varroa mites tooling around.



Meanwhile, we took the plastic feeder off the new hive and replaced it with a mason jar feeder, more conducive to cold weather feeding.

For more info and more video, look at the varroa mite page at wncbees.org: http://www.wncbees.org/Pests/Varroa.cfm

Happy September!

Combine the Hives, Hope for the Best

From left to right: "New Hive," started this spring, "Old Hive," the combined hives from last year, and "Swarm Hive," also known as "Dying Hive with Two Queen Bees."

Having explored Old Hive yesterday and found it booming with bees, honey, pollen and capped brood...but showing no signs of a queen, uncapped brood or eggs, and having found TWO QUEENs in the poorly populated and poorly stocked Swarm Hive, we decided to combine the two hives and let them work it out.
So...here is Old Hive with a carefully chosen piece of newspaper (selected for interesting story and picture) topped with Swarm Hive. There is a honey super on top that we stole from Old Hive yesterday, hoping that its couple frames of honey would keep Swarm Hive from starving while we worked out a plan. (We poked pin holes through the newspaper so they can start getting to know each other by scent while they think about eating through the paper.)

We'll get things down to two deeps before winter. Goodness only knows if this is the best plan, but Swarm Hive was definitely not going to make it through the winter without reinforcements.
*
Oh, here's a bad thought. What if the youngest queen had not yet taken her mating flight?? Who knows? I'm always just happy to not get stung. Best wishes, Combined Hive.
*
[Combined hive=Rachel + Sylvia + Swarm]
*

Saw Bee Hatch, One Hive with TWO Queens!!??!!

****Old Hive****

Did a thorough inventory of the hive today. Capped brood and pollen in the bottom deep. Capped brood in the middle of the top deep. We actually SAW A BEE EMERGING from it's capped cell, all grown up and ready to work. Several frames of honey on either side of the top deep, and corners of honey in the brood frames in the top deep.

We used the fume board, took off the empty super. The empty super is on the party porch, for the bees to clean out before we store it for the winter.

We took off the super that had a couple frames of honey and gave it (without the bees) to the swarm hive.

****New Hive****

We've been feeding them with the plastic top feeder since we swapped the deeps and took off the supers. The plastic top feeder is great for summer, because you can dump a gallon of sugar water in, and they can access it quickly. We will go to a central mason jar feeder when the weather gets cooler. We did not bother them today, but have fed them over a gallon of sugar water in the last week or so.

****Swarm Hive****

Breaking news--we saw TWO QUEENS in that half-assed hive today. That hive is a mystery a minute. It is still looking pathetic, with no honey, very little capped worker brood, too many drone brood cells and a lot of empty frames. But there were TWO QUEENS, on the same frame. We decided to start feeding them with gusto and see what happens.

I bought half gallon mason jars this morning and am going to go to the hardware store later today to get some boards cut to make mason jar feeders that fit the wide mouthed jars.