tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16663925640283519892024-02-19T04:55:45.646-08:00Queen Anne BeesWelcome. In this blog you will find posts about my beekeeping experiences as well as what's going on in the plant world around us. I try to write my posts so that everyone from a gardener to an experienced beekeeper will be able to relate to them. Also I'm in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, WA so keep in mind the timing of things will relevant to my area.Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-54065464021843988092017-07-06T00:42:00.001-07:002017-07-06T00:46:00.302-07:00Blog Update: What Have I Been Up To<div>
I haven't had much time to write in my blog since I took over as President of PSBA, but I think about writing all the time. Sometimes I start and stop because I don't have time to finish, either way I keep hoping to find some time somewhere. I'll do that tomorrow... right?</div>
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So what happened last year (has it been a year)? I invested a lot of time and energy in testing out mite biting bees. I strongly believe that a trait like this is the direction we need to aim for if we want bees that can control the mite levels without help (or much help), but sadly getting and keeping those genetics ultimately didn't work out. The daughters didn't show the trait and failed to survive the mites/winter in the hive dense Seattle area (they did better outside of the city in rural locations). However there was a silver lining... I may have found a line that is able to survive treatment free in a hive dense Seattle area. I'm currently working on testing out more from this line and will see how well that works out this season. Research is so slow...</div>
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As for the rest of this post I'm going to repeat my thoughts from the latest PSBA newsletter... </div>
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I'm having a moment of feeling caught up (don't worry it won't last). Despite the late start to the season the flow has been really good this year and I've been hearing from people they have been picking up a lot of swarms. This includes packages and even swarms picked up less than two months ago that are already trying for another round. It's especially important to continue to check hives every 7-10 days to keep the broodnest open. We all must work together to prevent swarms and keep bees from becoming a public nuisance.</div>
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While our summer is just starting this is also the time of year to start thinking about how you are going to prepare your hives for winter. In just a months time, hives will start raising winter bees and you want to make sure those bees are well fed and in the best health possible. We are now at a tipping point where hives must start to decline to conserve resources which makes them more susceptible to climbing mite levels.<br />
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One option is to think about creating a brood break, and to replace a package or old queen with a young queen having locally adapted genetics. A mistake that is often made is waiting too long to replace a queen with local genetics. If you are replacing genetics you need to allow enough time for the new queen to turnover the hive to her genetics in time for those bees to raise winter bees. Unfortunately even with the best genetics you still need to stay on top of the mite levels and be prepared to take steps to knock the levels down when needed.<br />
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Those are the things I'm thinking about and hopefully now you are as well. The bees are always planning a season ahead, so don't loose track of that now that our beautiful Seattle summer weather has arrived.<br />
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Quick cell shot of the girls all over Onion flowers just before sunset today.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- Jeff</div>
Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA 98109, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-60146722497078903252016-05-05T17:59:00.002-07:002016-05-05T17:59:09.736-07:00Blackberries Are Starting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I knew the blackberry bloom was going to be early this year, but I wasn't thinking it would happen the first week of May! Everything is early again this year, and while last year we were an impressive 2-3 weeks early we've blown that record away with them being 4-5 weeks early. Usually blackberries start about the second week in June and from what I can tell all the other typical June flowers are coming out now as well. </div>
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So why does it sound like I'm concerned? Last year this setup left us with a LONG dry summer which created weak hives and great conditions for disease to flourish.</div>
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Blackberry bloom</div>
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The other benchmark of both the maple and blackberry flows are that they align with swarm cycles. I've heard of several swarms already this season due to the early maples and would expect without the normal spring lull before blackberries the swarm that urge will be compounded in the next few weeks. If you want to catch them before they do something you really need to be in there every 7-10 days right now.<br />
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Here a swarm in a thorny bush. Ouch and not from stingers!</div>
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The queen is in the box and everyone is slowly moving in.</div>
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This is the buildup from the swarm pictured above after about 12 days. The gap you see was left by the pollen/nectar they placed around the initial broodnest as the queen started laying eggs. Not to be slowed down she skipped over the cells that weren't empty and kept laying. Now that the food is used up from feeding the brood there is a hole or wave in the pattern. As those cells are cleaned up she will go back and fill them in. <br />
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This comb is more of the text book look for how honey, pollen and brood should lay out on a comb. Keep in mind this is a flipped view and the comb is actually upside down in the photo.<br />
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The below are couple photos from the overwintered Quickdraw hive.<br />
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You are seeing big drone cells at the bottom of a comb here. Notice how they point upwards and not down like a queen cell would. I get a lot of questions from new beekeepers that see these and think queen cells because they are big and at the bottom of the frame. Queen cells always point downward and would be even bigger than these!<br />
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Some nice mixed pollen stores are building up. I don't usually see them store pollen in drone sized cells and you can see the bigger cells on the right have nectar or drones. I often see them when they are trying to box the queen into a smaller broodnest area.<br />
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA 98109, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-10166356603997697482016-04-26T17:16:00.002-07:002016-04-26T17:16:09.467-07:00The Multi Queen SwarmIt's warm, flowers are blooming, and nectar/pollen can be found in abundance which leads hives start their natural reproduction cycle called swarming. When things are this nice it is highly likely that strong hives will issue not only a primary swarm but also secondary swarms. The primary swarm is generally headed by the existing queen and any after-swarms will be headed by newly emerged virgin queens.<br />
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I recently picked up a 6ish pound swarm (18K bees) that was half on the side of a raised bed and half on the ground inconveniently located under a bush. My guess is it started out on a branch that drooped down to the grass. When they are on the ground you mostly have to scoop up bees until you get enough of them in the box to attract the rest, or the queen goes into the box. <br />
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So away I work and as I'm scooping I noticed several bees clustering around one spot in the grass. Thinking the queen might have been there or still be there I gently moved the bees around and my heart sank at what I saw. There in the middle was a dying queen. I carefully helped her into a queen cage and added a few attendants and put her in the hive box hoping the scent of her dying body would be enough to get the workers into the hive. </div>
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Wondering what happened I kept scooping up bees and then again at that spot were I found the dying queen a new small cluster of bees was forming. I brushed the bees around once more and to my surprise found another weak queen but maybe not dying. Not having a second queen cage on me just put her in the box. Then shortly after that everyone else started going into the box and no new clusters formed. </div>
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I didn't find a single dead bee on the ground besides that one dying queen so it wasn't an accident she was dying. I suspect what happened is a secondary swarm issued from a hive and in the departure the new virgin queens became confused who was actually leading the swarm and all left together as one group. Typically I hear about several small swarms on nearby branches that each have a queen, and sometimes they all end up in one mass and eventually work it out. What surprises me is that the queens would fight inside the swarm like this. </div>
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I suspect there were at least three queens in the cluster and hopefully the final victorious queen will be able to mate this week. It'll be another week or so before I can start looking for eggs.</div>
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Sadly the photo's I would like to have posted aren't great since some rude bee was always flying in front of the lens, but not to leave you with nothing here's some related bee photos.<br />
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This was left over from someone's swarm and didn't have a queen, but is what I would expect to see if there were multiple queens leaving in little swarms.</div>
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Here's a photo of new comb that my overwintered hive is making. The swarm will be making several frames of new comb like this while we wait for the queen to mate.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- Jeff</div>
Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA 98109, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-49813500707898579492016-04-01T18:10:00.001-07:002016-04-07T13:14:51.316-07:00The Warrior Bees Are Early This Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Flowers are out everywhere at the moment with some things blooming months early. With the early warm weather and mild winter some things that usually would die back didn't and are picking up where they left off in fall. To think just a few weeks ago I was saying how I would be worrying about swarms before I knew it, and now I am. This is another early year and I've heard of a few swarms in the area already. I will still try to stall the process in my hives for more reliably warm weather. While I've had queens mate early in the year they never perform well. I get reliably better queens if I can hold them off until a few weeks before blackberries start blooming and we are getting 65F+ days a few times a week.</div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">After several years of looking at bloom times and different flowers I think I finally have figured out what plant makes this bright yellow pollen mark (not to be confused with the pale white one I've pointed out in <a href="http://www.queenannebees.com/2016/03/the-boys-are-back.html" target="_blank">other posts</a>). </span><span style="text-align: center;">Hyacinthoides hispanica has just started blooming and it's difficult for the bees to "hold on" to the flower and they appear to get the pollen all over themselves. After they clean up they are left with a mark on their back. I'm hoping to get some samples under a microscope to confirm soon.</span></div>
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This girl is getting a lot of attention from her sisters as she dances around.</div>
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Spanish Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) are just starting to bloom.</div>
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English laurel is in bloom.</div>
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Tulips are in bloom.</div>
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I found this nearby hardy fuchsia at over 10 feet tall and it was already in full bloom and will keep blooming through fall. Usually they die back to the ground in winter and then the bloom cycle starts again late summer. However our winter this year was mild so they are just picking up on last years growth.</div>
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Trillium ovatum is in bloom.</div>
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Raspberries are forming buds really early this year.</div>
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Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is in bloom.</div>
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Redwood Sorrel (Oxalis oregana) is a native that likes shade.</div>
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Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria lanceolata) is another native in bloom.</div>
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California lilac (Ceanothus) is in bloom.</div>
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Rosemary queen.</div>
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The Quickdraw queen. Notice there is a bee in the lower right part of the photo that has a varroa mite on her.</div>
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This frame looks pretty good for a hive in spring buildup. Better brood patterns will come as the nights get warmer.</div>
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This is what backfilling looks like. They should be putting those resources around the edge of the comb not in the center where the queen wants to lay. By doing this they are forcing her to lay along the edges of combs. If every comb looked like this then swarming would be soon to follow.</div>
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Lots of empty queen cups starting to show up along the edges of frames. If the broodnest is backfilled the queen gets forced into laying here.</div>
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In the center of the photo is a new adult be emerging from the cell. It's the only time you will see a head poking out of a cell.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-18982235211731012982016-03-22T11:57:00.000-07:002016-03-22T11:57:33.900-07:00The Boys are BackIn a northern location like Seattle I find that the long summer days sneak up pretty quickly. Sometime in June I'll be working in the yard and get caught off guard that it's already 10PM, and it's still light out! Beekeeping has a similar parallel for me as I check on them throughout winter to make sure the cluster has food hoping they will survive, and then in a blink they are making plans to swarm.<br />
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During my last inspection over the weekend I saw drones in my strong hives. Drones are a sign that the hive is on a stable buildup cycle and can invest extra resources beyond just making workers. However with the waves of sun/rain we've been getting, the hives can't take advantage of the nectar sources available and brood combs are currently looking light. I consider a comb light when I don't see a 2-3" band of honey/nectar and another 1" band of pollen along the top.<br />
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I do hear about March swarms every year and yes that could happen this year if the sun were to come out for a few days. A few hives get lured into early swarming by the surge in blooms and lack of early spring management to open up the broodnest. Based on what I've been seeing I have started doing swarm management inspections every 7-10 days to stay ahead of them. As long as the weather keeps up this pattern I'm not too worried, but if we get more than 3 days of sunshine in a row everything can change.<br />
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The plums were in bloom a couple weeks ago, and are mostly done now.</div>
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Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis). This is one of my favorite bee friendly herbs with flower colors varying from white, blue, pink and purple. Around here they usually have a robust bloom coming out of winter lasting into spring, but they also tend to bloom whenever they want any month of the year. On a spring day in the sunshine these bushes will be covered in bees working them for pollen. I've observed the flowers leaving a white/pale pollen mark along the thorax of workers which isn't quickly cleaned off and can be found during inspections. These evergreens are usually hardy enough to survive our winters, but can be damaged by deep freezes or extended winter storms over time. Plant in a well drained sunny spot and they will thrive. They also respond well to hedging and can be easily propagated from cuttings.<br />
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Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) is in bloom and tends to be more popular with bumble bees than honey bees.</div>
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Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica) is one of those wonderful blue pollen plants that will have you wanting to plant fields of them after you see the bees with blue pollen baskets.</div>
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Purple Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum) is an early nectar source.</div>
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Red Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) is actually more pink and is very appealing to humming birds.</div>
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Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) is in bloom and a nectar source.</div>
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Quince is in bloom and a good pollen source.</div>
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Nice patch of brood in Rosemary hive.</div>
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Look at all the young fuzzy bees and drones in the Rosemary hive!</div>
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Pollen and nectar coming into the hive.</div>
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A drone warming up in the sun. Some of them are mature enough to fly.</div>
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This is the Dyno hive queen. They are still pretty small.</div>
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Emerging brood in Quickdraw.</div>
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Another patch of brood in Quickdraw. It's hard to tell why it's spotty, but I suspect it's normal early spring buildup and will correct itself.</div>
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They were carrying a few dead bees out like this. I couldn't tell when/why they died, but suspect they might have got left behind when the cluster condensed last fall.</div>
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The Quickdraw queen. This hive has a lot of diversity in bees and it's nice to see that they like their queen.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjatL8lv1MtldexciNIFbmT1vbn2y6BJW6IB073cALuPOpiHQRx63U9g3cxVoUWy7MkBvO6dsv5uxeSVS0sNSfXoNpkPLZGTTQss1Je2a4HLtXxgwvEaY_Hh7-J1-Za2Mf65hMPN68Xpmw/s1600/P1130154.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjatL8lv1MtldexciNIFbmT1vbn2y6BJW6IB073cALuPOpiHQRx63U9g3cxVoUWy7MkBvO6dsv5uxeSVS0sNSfXoNpkPLZGTTQss1Je2a4HLtXxgwvEaY_Hh7-J1-Za2Mf65hMPN68Xpmw/s400/P1130154.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-68562551554012748132016-03-10T18:47:00.000-08:002016-03-11T08:24:35.836-08:00Hello Maples<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Beekeepers tend to get really excited for the maple bloom every year, but usually it turns out to be a flop. That's not because the maples aren't blooming, but because here in the Northwest we typically have periodic rain showers throughout the day during Spring (yes the whole season). Sometimes if the Blackberry bloom is early that nectar flow can get dimmed as well. However everyone still hopes for a 3-4 day period of sunshine during the peak maple bloom. Just the other day I found myself thinking I needed sunglasses and an umbrella because I had the sun in my eyes and somehow was also getting rained on.</div>
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Seattle is a bit earlier than other parts of the Puget Sound, but I snapped the below photo today of a tree across the street from a few of my hives in Queen Anne. Not all the trees are out yet, but they aren't far behind this one. The maple flow is not exclusive to the native Big Leaf Maple and I've also seen other varieties of maples coming into bloom as well. </div>
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Sadly I don't see any days without rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future, however if it does happen I would also expect to start hearing about swarms.</div>
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Big Leaf Maple bloom.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJnC7CMMmL2onQIeGupEJjm86Y69FMsWi9YoTWyS2FBpfRj6Z2iWphUcFqew8T7mHSBjnIXEAtdkXg4dTVyKrAoOk_l-Et4njD_S8oGkuNiBCtkdMdI3hGIa0aKMHbicG3Dqk4EUUjvQ/s1600/20160310_171452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJnC7CMMmL2onQIeGupEJjm86Y69FMsWi9YoTWyS2FBpfRj6Z2iWphUcFqew8T7mHSBjnIXEAtdkXg4dTVyKrAoOk_l-Et4njD_S8oGkuNiBCtkdMdI3hGIa0aKMHbicG3Dqk4EUUjvQ/s400/20160310_171452.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-85476797187040368572016-03-05T19:36:00.002-08:002016-03-05T19:36:52.055-08:00Spring Is Early<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Officially spring is still a couple weeks away, but things don't appear to care what the calendar tells us. It's been warm the last few weeks with daily temps getting above 50F+ and also very wet! There is a ton of stuff blooming, but getting out there between rainstorms is making it hard to get good photos. Plums came into full bloom this week which is the first big tree and the bees are definitely noticing. </div>
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I was lucky enough to get a few hours of sunshine this morning and was able to check all the hives. Some are weak and have tiny patches of brood, but two stand out in particular and will be my breeder queens this year. Unlike previous years I plan to replace all the queens of week hives this year rather than try and keep them going and waiting to see how long they will last before mother nature kills them. Often these weak hives will build up and look great by the blackberry flow and it's easy to forget they almost didn't survive winter. Last year I picked one of these queens to be a breeder queen because I got distracted by their great buildup and as a result I lost all the daughters over winter.</div>
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One of the hives I want to breed from this year is the Rosemary hive. I like this hive because they stored a good amount of honey and have kept the hive bottom board spotless all season. The hive was split early spring last year and didn't have any other brood breaks. My main concern is that the daughters from winter 2014 both died leaving queenless hives. Other concerns are that they build crazy comb, and don't ignore you during inspections. Sometimes that can turn into aggression with daughter hives.</div>
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The other hive I want to breed from is Quickdraw. They already have capped drone brood and are building up very quickly and I'll be needing to do swarm management before the end of the month. These bees are a little different from the other hives in that they stored a LOT of pollen mid summer and then had a big buildup during the dearth and then somehow replaced all the pollen with honey going into fall. They build straight comb and ignore you during inspections. However they didn't dry all the nectar and some of it fermented leaving the hive bottom board a bit "wet". I also found a fair number of dead bees in the back of the hive on the bottom board. Perhaps the dead bees were from trying to remove the fermented nectar. </div>
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Sadly my camera battery died and I didn't get any hive photos today. </div>
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Crocus are a great pollen source.</div>
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Calendula tends to start booming a little before the dandelions.</div>
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Lawn Daisy is already out in bloom.</div>
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Winter Daphne (Daphne odora) is a delicate shrub starts budding during the peak of our winter and is in full bloom by early spring. These evergreens have thick waxy looking leaves with varieties ranging from either solid dark green, or yellow variegated. The long lasting pink/white flowers are sweetly scented and tough enough to hold up in our late winter storms. Plant in well-drained soil that can fully dry out between watering as they will quickly die in soggy or deeply watered locations which is why they have a reputation for being short lived plants. A key to getting great blooms is to plant them in a location that gets morning sunlight and afternoon shade. Pruning should be minimal and focused on removing diseased or dead branches keeping in mind that this is an open branched bush that needs airflow. They can be easily started from cuttings, but will not transplant.<br />
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Most varieties of the Which hazel are just finishing up their bloom.</div>
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Dandelions are in bloom and are great pollen and nectar source.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-28350177087583692902016-01-17T17:32:00.002-08:002016-01-17T17:32:58.906-08:00Planning For 2016<div>
The last few months haven't been great bee watching weather with just 8-9 hours between sun rise and set. Combine that with the usual non-sunny weather and sometimes it feels like you missed a day. Either way the days are slowly getting a bit longer as we march towards spring. I was pleasantly surprised to see the girls out in force the other day when somehow it got up to 49F and the sun was out! In my excitement I was foolishly standing too close to the hive entrance and got pooped on.</div>
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They don't poop in the hive, and thus need to hold it for the nice weather so when the suns out they go on what is called cleaning flights.</div>
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Here's a shot of one warming up it's wings in the sun, probably after pooping on me.</div>
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I'm switching to different way to track my hive notes this year that should save me time and will just be posting big observations. I'm hoping that will allow me to post more often and focus on highlights that will be easier for readers to follow and digest. </div>
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The big mistake of 2015 was that I picked a bad breeder queen (Ballard). It was her third year and she had gone through two winters with no treatments. The hive was calm, built mostly inline combs with few attachments, had great spring buildup, and they stored a good amount of honey. The mother hive she came from (not mine) was also a survivor without treatment for as many years. I raised 6 daughter queens from them and put them in my production hives. Sadly the mother queen and all the daughters failed either due to varroa or late season queen loss. </div>
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Optimistically thinking, I had ignored in my selection process that they always came out of winter looking beat up with low numbers. If there had been any late winter storms in March the last few years they would have been goners. I haven't seen late season queen loss like this before and suspect that whatever virus was getting passed around by varroa included something that affected queens.</div>
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Not to beat myself up too badly last summer was brutal with the drought and longer varroa breading season. Mother nature was really doing her best to weed out anything with weak genetics and I've heard that even beekeepers using treatments are having higher than usual losses. Also in-city mating is dicey when it comes to keeping the quality traits you want.</div>
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I still have 5 unique queen lines left of which two are shining. I've been reading a lot about a genetic trait were bees cripple or kill varroa mites by biting them, thus stopping them from spreading disease or reproducing. I addition to hygienic behavior this is another attribute I will be looking for in hives before I select them for breeding this year. </div>
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Hope everyone's 2016 is off to a good start!</div>
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Back to the bees,</div>
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- Jeff</div>
Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-20306264705800546732015-10-18T14:28:00.001-07:002015-10-18T16:21:03.526-07:00The Smell of Hives in the Fall<div style="text-align: left;">
Fall is here and I find myself reflecting on all the things I was going to do over summer that I never got around to. This was an unusually hot and dry summer and it was challenging at times to suit up in full sun and do more than general hive inspection. As a result didn't do all the queen breeding I was hoping to do. On the plus side I did have a chance to put together a simple solar wax melter that melts wax beautifully. I'll write up details in a future post.<br />
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Looking around the garden I'm seeing leaves starting to pile up and mushrooms popping up everywhere. The hives are also starting to give off a familiar fall smell as they dry primarily ivy nectar. I sometimes get asked what ivy nectar tastes like and it tastes just like it smells if you crush a leaf. I find ivy to be a bit of a repulsive smell and I have found I need to limit how much time I spend pulling it out of the garden for removal projects. Ivy honey also doesn't take long to crystallize so it's easy to spot and avoid. I'm glad something finds it useful but if you have garden space there are much better fall blooming plants to plant.<br />
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This is also the time of year that hives are tested, especially if they are in the cities that have a high colony density that almost assures exposure to all the nasty stuff out there. My hives all get 1-2 brood breaks a year and I generally don't simulate feed, which should mimic the opportunities that wild hives have for brood breaks. When I see mites eating up a hive I think of them as wolves. Nature has many ways to flush out weakness and mites are one of them. I have hives that look beautiful, strong, and healthy and I have some that get sick. Some genetic lines get sick every fall and still pull through, but in general once a hive gets sick it will crash. Swarms are my biggest unknown and also my highest loss rates. I could requeen with my stock, but I feel doing that limits the possibility of identifying new good genetic lines. Instead I think of swarms as a test hive for the next year, and give them all the resources they need to survive winter.<br />
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I also never got around to posting last month so a few plants I took photos of are pretty much done blooming now as noted below. </div>
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Caryopteris 'Dark Knight' is mostly done blooming now. The bees love this one.</div>
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Dahlia flowers are still going strong, and a small Agapostemon bee has found this one.</div>
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Hardy Fuschia has been blooming all summer and loved by the humming birds. The bees have only lately been attracted to it and this girl was collecting the white pollen.</div>
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Sedum is done blooming now.</div>
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English Ivy is in bloom and getting a lot of attention.</div>
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Seven Sons Tree (Heptacodium miconioides) is a late summer bloomer that is desirable to both bees and gardeners. Flowers are fragrant and typically found in small clusters of 7, which gives us the common name. After the white flowers fade a berry forms surround by deep red calyces that last late into the fall. This tree also has attractive tender looking curled green leaves and exfoliating grayish bark. Typically multiple trunks will sprout, but they can be pruned back to a single trunk allowing the tree to reach 15-20 feet tall. These delicate looking trees are actually fairly hardy and can survive in a variety of garden conditions, however they do best in full sun with moderate soil moisture. New plants can sometimes found in nurseries, or propagated by seeds or cuttings.<br />
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Impatiens omeiana is blooming.</div>
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Some Asters are still blooming.</div>
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Camellia sinensis (Tea) is blooming as well as many other members of the Camellia family.<br />
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Osmanthus fragrans is another great fall bloomer.</div>
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Hive checks (8/24/2015)<br />
Roma<br />
They have been very conservative in growth, however they have good numbers and bees deeply cover all the frames. They also have good stores and a nice brood pattern. The hive looked clean and no signs of disease. Saw a few drones as well.<br />
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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Hive checks (8/28/2015)<br />
Queen Castle Slot 4 and Slot 2<br />
I moved them into a double nuc for winter. Didn't inspect closely, but saw nice patches of brood in both colonies. Saw the queen in Slot 2 and she looked good.<br />
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This is a robust queen.</div>
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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Queen Castle Slot 1<br />
I moved them to a new location and put them in the old Icon hive. They had a few frames of brood as well, but looked like they were low on stores. They will take a hit losing some workers to Slot 2 that were left behind on on the sides of the walls of the queen castle. This is the "mean" queen that is a machine when it comes to raising a LOT of brood when she wants to, and I'm curious to see how they build up with ivy and knotweed starting to bloom.<br />
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Hive checks (9/9/2015)<br />
Rebel<br />
Broodnest was not very tight and there were 2-3 bees with DWV. The queen looked good, but was not seeing much nectar/pollen coming in.<br />
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Attis<br />
Things actually looked good minus the fact that they are still a small cluster.<br />
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Double Nuc<br />
South - The south side was acting slightly defensive and didn't inspect, but gave them an extra empty comb to maybe fill.<br />
North - They were building comb! Didn't inspect either and gave them an empty comb to work with.<br />
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Hive checks (9/19/2015)<br />
Echo<br />
Did a cleanup inspection to fix cross comb. They have done a good job of holding onto their honey stores. Didn't make it to the broodnest area, but fixed the worst of the cross comb.<br />
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Rosemary<br />
Same inspection as the Echo hive actually, spent all the time fixing issues and didn't get into the broodnest. I'll harvest the junk frames from both hives I don't want them to reuse next year and those have mostly been moved to the back now. I needed to be in and out without causing robbing otherwise I would have went through the entire hive.<br />
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Hive checks (9/26/2015)<br />
Luna<br />
The hive is in great shape for winter and they have lots of young healthy bees and I even saw a few drones. They have good stores and the broodnest didn't show any signs of disease. I would have liked to see more pollen reserves, which I'm sure will change with the return of more rain and flowers.<br />
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There are some mites in this hive as seen on the worker bee in this photo.</div>
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Solis<br />
Typical of this queen line I found DWV and signs of mites which is typical for them in the fall. I've come to expect this problem with this genetic line and sometimes they make it and sometimes they don't. They have good honey reserves and a good population of workers. I've kept them around in hopes to breed more resistance into them, but did not raise queens from them this year like I have in the past.<br />
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This is a new young queen and I'm optimistic they will pull through.</div>
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Plum Creek<br />
They are in good shape for the winter. I was hoping they would have built up more, but it's been a tough summer.<br />
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The queen is still looking huge.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
I was happy to see that all the frames that used to be stored pollen from summer have turned into honey stores. They are being slow to cap honey though. The queen is still going strong and the broodnest is still about the size of two basketballs. There is a little surplus pollen, but not much. I also saw drones in this hive.<br />
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Another good looking queen. This line of bees was treatment free.</div>
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Icon<br />
They were a tad pissy (I suppose that's an improvement) and didn't want me in the hive. The broodnest looked good and it looked like they might be trying to build comb. There is a lot of brood on the way for this small hive.<br />
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Another young, stubborn queen that keeps going.</div>
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They have a nice pollen arch on this frame for the brood they are raising.</div>
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Dyno<br />
Found DWV, mites and some melted brood. This was a swarm from a beekeeper that treats and I suspect they don't have any natural resistances. There are a good number of bees and they weren't happy to have me around. Yellow jackets are bad at this location and I closed down the entrances on all the hives.<br />
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Hive checks (9/27/2015)<br />
Loyal Heights Nuc<br />
Wow this girls get more pissy every time I look at them. I requeened over summer in hopes that they would calm down and they are just as bad as ever. I'm starting to wonder if they raised a queen from the old mother brood and killed the queen I put in there. Either way they are in great shape for winter and the bees are two levels deep on the combs. The broodnest looked good and there were no signs of disease. They are light on stores.<br />
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Split Nuc<br />
Side A<br />
The broodnest was looking good and no signs of disease. They were building comb, but also looked light on stores.<br />
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Side B<br />
They are light on stores. They are raising a good amount of brood, and no signs of disease.<br />
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Hive checks (10/4/2015)<br />
Titan<br />
Signs of DWV and the queen seemed weak. There are a good number of bees in this hive and didn't see melted brood so perhaps they might pull through.<br />
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Ballard<br />
They were looking great and no signs of disease. Nice tight broodnest and signs they are ready for winter.<br />
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Roma<br />
They were looking great and no signs of disease. Nice laying pattern and showing carniolan winter tendencies with a smaller colony size. They also had a pollen surplus and several frames of capped honey which is pretty good for a swarm.<br />
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Queen is looking good.</div>
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The broodnest is still looking good in this hive.</div>
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Back to the bees.<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-60766363433260295752015-08-14T10:38:00.002-07:002015-08-14T10:38:40.728-07:00Endless Summer Fries Seattle ForageFor the most part foliage around the Puget Sound has mostly shriveled up with the lack of rain this summer. We've already had more 90F+ days on record than ever and it's early August. This is a very unusual summer with trees and shrubs going dormant early or in some cases dying. There are a few sources producing flowers but unless there is a reliable water source they aren't making much nectar/pollen. The only sliver lining of being in the city is that people water their yards/gardens and that does keep a few things going.<br />
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Besides keeping a close eye on hives to make sure they aren't starving, this is also the time of year that disease can take hold. This is in part due to increasing mite population levels and the slowed brood rearing rates. The treatment free way to address this is to create a brood break so that hives can "reset" and raise healthy winter bees. If disease takes hold over the next 6 weeks hives won't be able to raise healthy winter bees and will die. <br />
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Many beekeepers miss these signs and end up pinning the cause of hive death on yellow jackets, queen failure, or starvation. So if disease is happening NOW, here are a few scenarios that might play out:<br />
<ul>
<li>Disease will hit fast and kill the hive by the end of September. You will find a queen running around with eggs in cells but insufficient bees to support her. There might be some patches of capped dead brood from rapid brood-nest collapse. You may see PMS as well if you look early enough before things start to mold. </li>
<li>Same as the above except yellow jackets will sweep in and clean up the hive with no resistance. You find an empty hive with a few dead bees and probably yellow jackets.</li>
<li>Disease kicks in and the queen also gets sick and dies. They are unable to raise a healthy new emergency queen with the high disease levels in the brood and lack of nurse bees. They become a laying worker hive and die out early winter.</li>
<li>Same as the above except the yellow jackets clean up the doomed hive when they don't have enough workers to defend it anymore.</li>
<li>The hive will battle and overcome the disease. However they will not have raised enough healthy winter bees. They will go into fall with what looks like a good sized cluster, and then as summer bees die will be left with a tiny cluster. The first freeze will take them out and it may look like starvation. It will look like small moldy cluster if you find them in early spring.</li>
<li>An alternative of the above is that they go into winter still trying to raise a lot of winter bees, but can't keep all the brood warm in the cooler weather with so many summer bees dying and the hive collapses.</li>
<li>The hive manages to make it through several freezes but the cluster size isn't viable for them to ever build up in spring.</li>
</ul>
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Basically there are many ways this can play out and I don't want to say that yellow jackets aren't a menace, especially with queen rearing and nucs, but the point I'm making is that I see them getting a lot more credit than they deserve. I believe strong healthy hives can usually protect themselves from yellow jackets. While starvation is another very real concern, it also gets blamed as the cause of death when it can also just be a symptom of an underlying disease. Addressing issues now is the single most important thing you can do to get your hives through winter.</div>
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Hebe is blooming. This variety is a late summer bloomer and a huge bee magnet.</div>
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Catananche caerulea is in bloom.</div>
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Fennel is in bloom and attracting all kinds of pollinators.</div>
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Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' is in bloom. I watched this poor bee struggle to wedge herself into flower after flower trying to get down deep enough to reach the nectar. It's hard to say how successful she was.</div>
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Toad Lilly is blooming.</div>
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Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro)</div>
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This mid-summer flower will have bees falling over themselves to work, and it is not uncommon to see multiple types of bees, and butterflies working a single flower head in harmony. Globe Thistle has spiked looking spherical blue/indigo flowers that are "hedgehog like" or Echinos in Greek. While the common name says thistle this plant is actually in the aster family, and it's leaves do not have any spines that you would expect from a thistle. However because the leaves are rough looking with deep cuts, and green on top with undersides that are slightly hairy and sliver green they can appear to resemble thistles. This perennial is low maintenance, drought tolerant, and likes well drained soil which makes it well suited for local gardens. Plant in full sun and water regularly to initially to establish plants. New plants can be started from seed or root cuttings, while mature plants can be fussy when moved and do best when foliage is only cut back in spring.<br />
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Oregano is in bloom.</div>
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Butterfly bush is in bloom. I've never noticed it to be a huge honey bee attractant.</div>
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Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) is finishing up it's bloom cycle.</div>
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Bee Balm (Monarda) is in bloom.</div>
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Russian Sage is mostly done blooming now.</div>
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American Chestnut was blooming early July this year.</div>
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Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ just finished blooming.</div>
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Lilies are blooming.</div>
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Ginger is blooming.</div>
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Fireweed is in bloom.</div>
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Hive checks (7/11/2015)</div>
Luna<br />
The hive was very calm and was showing signs that the nectar flow was over. They have several frames of capped honey and have started condensing the broodnest. They built out the three bars I gave them a couple weeks ago, but I didn't add more as it looks like they are scaling back to deal with the dry weather.<br />
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The well liked queen.</div>
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Solis<br />
Much like the Luna hive they were also in good shape and the queen has a good laying pattern. I saw a few newly emerged worker bees as well from the new queen. This hive was giving off a more floral scent than the Luna hive which was smelling more like Chestnut honey.<br />
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Nice patches of brood.</div>
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Good looking queen.</div>
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Hive checks (7/12/2015)<br />
Queen Castle - Slot 4<br />
If you are following my notes closely I never noted that I put bees in here when I did the join with the Loyal Heights Nuc and the Queen from Slot 3. I originally broke that Loyal Heights Nuc into 4 parts, but actually ended up pulling another two frames out of it to make room for the merge that I had planned to use to raise new queens from one of my other hives (that I haven't had a chance to do yet). Despite the fact I just threw a couple frames of bees in here they managed to make a new queen and she looks great. I also found a nice area of 5-7 day old larvae. Maybe she won't be pissy like her mother. In general it's not a good idea to let little nucs make queens but these girls pulled it off.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice looking new queen.</div>
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Roma<br />
The hive looks good. The queen is scaling back and they have great honey stores for a smaller sized hive going into blackberries. They have some pollen reserves.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen is looking good.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice frame of capped honey.</div>
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Queen Castle - Slot 2<br />
They've filled up the space and are running out of room. Things look really good.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Good looking queen.</div>
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Queen Castle - Slot 1<br />
Still pissy, but the queen is a workhorse when it comes to laying and they are building comb. They don't have much in the way of stores. I will eventually replace this queen for calmer genetics. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Another great looking frame of brood makes it hard to get rid of this queen.</div>
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Her evil majesty.</div>
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Loyal Heights Nuc<br />
There are still some pissy bees in here, but overall they are MUCH calmer. The queen has been busy and the hive is full of bees again.<br />
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The queen is getting used to her new home.</div>
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Attis Nuc<br />
I found a single nurse bee with DWV, otherwise it looks like the new queen has cleared up the issue. They don't have much honey stored so I will need to keep an eye on them to see how they fare over the next few months. The bees are very calm in this hive.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen looks good.</div>
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Hive checks (7/13/2015)<br />
Plum Creek<br />
They looked good and are still building up. They have a little honey stored. The queen looked good.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
She's a big queen.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
Not a lot of extra honey, but LOTS of pollen of many colors. It seems that they got a gene that prefers to hoard pollen over honey. The queen had also laid out the hive with brood and they are about to explode in numbers (not that they are small by any means already). Like the nucs, the queen looked big and ready to lay a lot of eggs. What I've been noticing in the mature hives is the queens have slimmed down a bit as they cut back.<br />
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I'm not really sure what to make of them since they seem to be out of alignment with the seasons. On the one hand I like that they work a variety of floral sources, and on the other they are raising a lot of brood going into a dearth and they didn't store enough honey. I fear that they could easily starve themselves planning for a nectar flow that isn't coming.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Lots of colorful pollen.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen is looking good.</div>
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They started to tear up their frame and then they changed their mind and started using it for worker brood. You can see it used to be drone brood and there are still a few holes left.</div>
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Nice frame of brood on the way.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Took measurements of new brood comb they built and it measured in at 5.3mm. This is quite a bit bigger than I would expect for a regressed hive to build.</div>
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Dyno<br />
The hive is full of bees and I was happy to find that they scaled back on the brace comb a bit (still more than I would like but better). There is a LOT of honey in here that they are drying. They also had a lot of burgundy pollen and a good amount of brood. Rearranged a few frames to help condense the broodnest and gave away one frame to Plum Creek to make a little more room. The broodnest in this hive is about halfway back in the hive with the front frames being pollen, nectar, and honey which is a little unusual. This is a hot/sunny location so perhaps it's easier to keep the back of the hive cooler.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice frame of brood.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen is looking good.</div>
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Hive checks (7/14/2015)<br />
Rosemary<br />
There was some bad cross comb that I couldn't completely fix and only got halfway through the inspection before stopping as not to upset them too much. I did see the queen, larvae, and eggs, but my guess is most of the broodnest is in the front of the hive. There is a good amount of honey in the hive but it was spread out all over and there were very few full frames.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
This queen has been going for at least 3 years.</div>
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Hive checks (8/8/2015)<br />
Attis<br />
The good news is there was no sign of DWV or disease and the hive was calm. I didn't find any drones. The broodnest had a nice solid pattern but was small and only covering a few frames. They also have poor stores of honey and pollen.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
This queen is not very robust.</div>
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Rebel<br />
This hive is doing well and all the frames had nice looking pollen and honey arches. She has a nice laying pattern as well and they were calm. No signs of disease and lots of young bees which is great because that was an issue for this hive before swapping out the queen. Honey stores are spread out over many frames. Only saw a few drones but they are raising more.<br />
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Titan<br />
Found a pile of dead bees on the ground in front of the entrance that mostly looked like drones. I saw an occasional drone in the hive, but there weren't many. They were also calm and there were lots of young healthy bees with a solid brood pattern. There is honey, but they aren't capping it yet.<br />
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This could be a sign of good hygienic traits in response to illness, that they are conservative/sensitive to food shortages, or a warning that they aren't able to raise healthy drones. Most of these drones looked like they were pulled from brood cells. I didn't see signs of disease on them and suspect they pulled them in response to the dearth.</div>
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The queen is looking good and they have brood over many frames.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-15776906769257273482015-07-03T15:25:00.000-07:002016-02-04T16:01:12.112-08:00Knowing When to Retire a QueenWhen I first started beekeeping I used to try and "save" every queen. My mistaken thinking was even the little dink hives just needed a little help (from me) for them to flourish. However the reality is that Mother Nature is ever working to correct for weakness. Hives need to do more than survive. They have to be several steps ahead of the competition, and trying to "save" a weak queen is futile. Ideally you want to propagate from the best queens to replace queens that show signs of weakness.<br />
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When it comes down to it, the hive and worker bees are only as good as the genetics of the queen. If the queen is weak then the hive will stagnate and succumb to disease, predation, or the elements as soon as the opportunity presents itself. A good queen needs a genetic mix from breeding with drones from other great hives. Eventually through the supersedure process hives may correct problems on their own, but odds aren't great. If you want better odds than what mother nature is giving you can stack the deck by breeding from your best queens.<br />
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Lavender is in bloom.</div>
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Poppies are in bloom.</div>
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Phacelia Tanacetifolia is a good pollinator flower. This year it bloomed during blackberries and I rarely saw honey bees working them.</div>
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Senecio Silver Sunshine (Brachyglottis) is in bloom.</div>
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Borage is in bloom and a honey bee favorite.</div>
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Linden is already done blooming!</div>
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Privet is a popular shrub that produces clusters of small white flowers that are highly desirable to honey bees. Most varieties of privet are evergreen, drought tolerant once established, and grow quickly making them an ideal shrub to use in hedges as a fence alternative. Privet responds well to shaping but flowering may be compromised if hedged too aggressively. Under ideal conditions they can grow into a small tree, and do well in full sun or partial shade. The Chinese Privet (Ligustrum sinense) produces a clear colored honey with a light sweet taste. However some varieties of privet have been known to add an undesirable flavor to honey crops.<br />
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Hive checks (6/7/2015)<br />
Luna<br />
They are building up fast and the hive is in great shape. Added several bars for them to build out to help prevent backfilling.<br />
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The brood pattern we all want to see.</div>
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The hard working queen. Hopefully her new daughters are equally impressive.</div>
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Solis<br />
It's taken all season but the hive is now full of bees and they are starting to store nectar. There is a pollen surplus building up as well and the queen still isn't laying robustly enough for them to use it up. The brood pattern is getting more spotty and I found a single capped supersedure cell on a frame near the front of the hive. I'm not too surprised by the supersedure cell based on everything I've been seeing. I'm happy to see that they are identifying the issue while the queen is still laying. I worry that with the heavy re-queening 1-2 times a year that commercial operations routinely run that some of the genetic sensitivity to queen weakness is getting lost.<br />
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The queen is still well liked.</div>
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Supersedure cell on the way.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
The hive is looking good and I'm not seeing any new signs of Chronic Paralysis Virus (CPV) on nurse bees. There is a bigger range in worker bee size than I usually see with swarms in that I'm seeing more tiny bees. I expected this from a swarm of already regressed bees, but it's still nice to see. I forgot to bring a tape measure with me for the inspection, but I want to check the cell size on the new combs they built to see what size they are building. Added bars to help with the backfilling from the flow.<br />
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Bees of many sizes.</div>
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Dyno<br />
The queen is laying aggressively all over the hive and they have built up quite a bit. I'm slightly worried they might try to swarm again this season. I gave them several bars to build out to keep them from backfilling.<br />
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Hive checks (6/8/2015)<br />
Ballard<br />
Saw the new queen and they were just starting to cap worker brood! We know this daughter was born around 5/24 and for there to be capped worker brood already means she started laying around 5/31. That's about 6 days to emerge, mate and start laying. I don't see that kind of turnaround on early spring queens.<br />
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This is the new daughter queen.</div>
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Queen Castle<br />
Slot 4<br />
This was the one with the failing queen I was testing. She was still there with a small patch of workers. She was laying drones in worker cells as I expected but wanted to confirm. Removed the queen and combined the bees with Slot 3.<br />
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Slot 3<br />
This is another Ballard daughter and while she doesn't have as many bee to support her, she also already had capped worker brood.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
This new queen looks like her mom.</div>
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Slot 2<br />
This was the tiny swarm I picked up a week ago and they already have larvae. They also have somehow managed to make a new comb! Since they have a mated queen this was not a secondary swarm like I thought based on their small size. My best guess is that someone put the original queen in a nuc with bees that also had swarm cells, or the queen was far enough long in the swarm process that she was set to leave.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen looks good.</div>
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Slot 1<br />
Like her sister in Slot 3 she also already had capped worker brood.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
This one also takes after her mom and isn't quite as big as her sisters.</div>
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Hive checks (6/9/2015)<br />
Rebel<br />
Saw the queen and she was camera shy and I couldn't get a good picture of her, but she's tiger striped like several of her sisters. There was a good amount of capped worker brood as well. Not surprisingly there wasn't any sign of disease which I was happy to see.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Capped brood.</div>
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Titan<br />
Apparently the name of this hive has gone to the queens head because I was amazed at how much brood was on the way. She had 12 or so frames with capped worker brood. I suspect this is going to be an amazing queen.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
She is well liked and huge.</div>
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Plum Creek<br />
They also had several frames of capped worker brood and things looked really good.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Another monster queen.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
There are frames of brood that look like this already! Clearly they need to build more comb for her to lay in.</div>
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Hive checks (6/14/2015)<br />
Attis<br />
I pulled the queen out of this hive. There is a decent enough looking brood pattern and the broodnest covers several frames, but they just haven't done anything all season. I also saw a couple bees with DWV. I will replace with on of my extra Ballard daughter queens. I don't know if the new queen can keep the DWV under control, but it will be a good test for her.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The old queen.</div>
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Roma<br />
This hive is looking awesome and they are storing/capping honey and drawing comb. The first big wave of workers has emerged and the queen is filling up every cell available with larvae. Rearranged some of the frames to consolidate the broodnest and added extra bars for them to build out.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Brood is hatching out and they are backfilling this frame with nectar.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen looks good.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Another frame hatching out that they are backfilling with pollen and nectar.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
They are building comb and storing honey. They are still raising a lot of brood. Some of the new comb they had built was crazy comb. Gave them more bars to work on.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Going strong.</div>
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Echo<br />
The hive looked good and it looked like they were finally starting to grow. Had to do a lot to fix crazy comb. Gave them some more bars to work on and hopefully not mess up.<br />
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Hive checks (6/15/2015)<br />
Queen Castle - Slot 1 & Attis Nuc<br />
Combined the two colonies together.<br />
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Hive checks (6/16/2015)<br />
Loyal Heights Nuc<br />
The new workers from this queen are far more aggressive than the workers that made up the original swarm. This was a virgin queen so it makes since that her daughters would have a different temperament. Broke them up into four parts with the queen going into Slot 1 of the Queen Castle to prep it for raising new queens. My plan is not to keep her around too long because I want to be rid of aggressive genetics, but she is an awesome layer and can build a hive out of nothing quickly so will use that to my advantage.<br />
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Ballard and Rebel got the other two parts, and the Nuc kept the last part. I will give the Nuc a day of being queenless before I combine them with the queen from Slot 3 of the Queen Castle.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Bearding outside the hive.</div>
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The queen.</div>
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Hive checks (6/18/2015)<br />
Queen Castle - Slot 3 & Loyal Heights Nuc<br />
Combined the two colonies together.<br />
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Hive checks (6/19/2015)<br />
Roma<br />
The hive looks really good and they have started to build another new comb. They aren't quite to a point where they can exponentially build up yet.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen is looking for places to lay.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Laying in cells on the sides of frames. I saw this in another hive this year as well. These are not going to be queens.</div>
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Ballard<br />
Rearranged the broodnest to consolidate the brood together. The queen is looking good and there is a lot of brood on the way.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The new queen is looking really good.</div>
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Attis Nuc<br />
Rearranged the broodnest to consolidate the brood together. The new queen in this hive is looking good.<br />
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The new queen.</div>
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Rebel<br />
Saw a freshly laid egg in a queen cup that I removed. Also saw several newly emerging workers with DWV. Perhaps there is some carryover disease that hadn't fully cycled out. I'm curious to see if it gets better or worse in the coming weeks. Rearranged the broodnest to consolidate the brood together.<br />
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She has her work cut out for her in this hive.</div>
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Queen Castle - Slot 2<br />
This tiny little nuc looks great and they have started building another comb on the last empty bar. They should build up quickly once the first generation of new bees start to emerge.<br />
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A nice looking queen.</div>
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Hive checks (6/21/2015)<br />
Dyno<br />
They are doing awesome except for the fact that every comb was firmly anchored to the sides. The inspection took forever because I had to cut each comb free from the sides. Despite that fact they were still pretty clam.<br />
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Another strong queen.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
The hive looks great and the bees are so calm. They also build beautiful perfect combs that they don't attach to the walls! The queen seems conservative with her laying and perhaps is sensing a summer dearth.<br />
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Here's the queen.</div>
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Plum Creek<br />
There is a lot of brood on the way and they seem to be stalled on their ability to build up any more until they get a fresh wave of workers.<br />
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This queen is going strong.</div>
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Luna<br />
They are building up quickly and starting to store nectar. Signs of backfilling have me worried they might try an attempt to swarm.<br />
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Solis<br />
Saw a few 1-2 day old eggs in cells and a dark new queen. I know there was a capped supersedure cell 14 days ago. Give or take a week for the new queen to emerge from her cell that's a pretty good turnaround on mating and starting to lay. I did keep looking for the old queen to see if she might also be there but did not see her. I also didn't see any open brood so I'm guessing that the new queen eliminated her when she emerged. I have seen the old and new queen laying side by side before, but so far that's not very common. Something else that I was noticing about this hive was that most of the bees were not as regressed as I've seen previously in this hive.<br />
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The new queen is huge.</div>
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The empty queen cell.</div>
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Hive checks (6/22/2015)<br />
Rosemary<br />
Added some empty drawn comb and fixed some bad comb as best I could. The straight comb should help take pressure off the need to build new comb quickly and give some them room to store nectar while they draw out other combs more inline (wishful thinking). At the same time the new combs are straight so it gives them a new template to work against rather than letting them repeat an "off" pattern.<br />
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Honey comb is getting super wide right now. The picture doesn't do this Franken-comb justice.</div>
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Another shot of this great queen.</div>
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Echo<br />
Same adjustments as for the Rosemary hive and I wonder if part of the crazy comb is coming from them being in a good location. I also noted that the bees in this hive seem bigger or "less" regressed.<br />
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I was checking this hive in the evening about 7ish and I noticed towards the front of the hive that all the drones were just huddled up for the night on the side wall. I suspect they are staying out of the way as to not overheat the brood in this warm weather.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-58855759033253107082015-06-04T15:52:00.002-07:002015-06-04T15:52:15.013-07:00When Best Efforts Don't Go According to PlanIt's only been two weeks since I last posted and as you can see below, my notes go on and on! This is indeed a busy time of year for beekeepers with the blackberry nectar flow underway. Add to that a mild winter and LOTS of beautiful weather here in Seattle and any hive that has an opportunity is trying to throw swarms (yes that's plural) which brings me to my story.<br />
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Once upon a time a queen bee decided things were good and it was time to leave on a new adventure. She set a process in motion for the arrival of several princesses and then departed with a portion of staff to build a new home. The princesses were then expected to emerge and compete with each other so that only the strongest is left to run the kingdom. However sometimes things don't always go according to plan and instead several strong princesses left to build new homes of their own instead of competing with each other.<br />
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So yeah the later happened...<br />
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I made a controlled split to move the existing queen to a new home and then I went back in about 13 days later cut down the cells to the best 4. The other extra cells I moved to other hives I'd made queenless or to the queen castle. So why leave more than 1 cell in the hive? Well when a hive makes 10, 20, 30 queen cells usually a few of them aren't viable and there really isn't a way to know this if the bees are covering them. So if you chose poorly you end up with no queen for the hive. I did have two cells I put in the queen castle fail that otherwise looked good and were covered in bees.<br />
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So atlas I've been debating with myself what I should have done and the best answer I can come up with is that I should have left 1 cell or no cells. What no cells? Yes my thinking here is that I should have hatched all the cells in nucs or the queen castle and then once I had a mated queen then introduce her in the hive. Besides doesn't everyone miss that one hidden cell anyway. <br />
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While that is a lot of work it would have prevented the secondary swarm coming off a hive I wanted to keep extra strong for the nectar flow. That also means you need gear for the old queen to live in and gear to raise the cells. At the end of the day if the cells all fail you still have the original queen to combine back into the hive after the flow.<br />
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Keep in mind this is usually "rare" and a seasonal/genetics based predisposition. However I'm hearing the same story from too many other beekeepers this year, and I have also already picked a few secondary swarms myself. I would say until the end of the flow this is going to be less of a "rare" occurrence to one that is more common.<br />
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Japanese Snowbell Tree (Styrax japonicus) is a good nectar/pollen source.</div>
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Bumble bee getting nectar from Lupine (Lupinus).</div>
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I usually have a hard time finding honey bees on Blackberry around my neck of the woods, but not this year.</div>
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Kiwi (male flower).</div>
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Kiwi (female flower).</div>
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Hebe is a native New Zealand shrub that is low maintenance and adapts well to our Northwest climate. Depending on the variety you can get blooms at various times between late spring and early winter. Leaf color and structure varies greatly, and blooms colors include white, pink, purple and crimson. Not all varieties overwinter well here, and optimal locations are well drained, sunny, and protected from winter winds. These compact evergreens also make great container plants and only need occasional watering during droughts. Propagate by seeds or late summer cuttings.<br />
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Lilies are in bloom.</div>
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Japanese spirea is coming into bloom and a good nectar source.</div>
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Calendula officinalis is blooming.</div>
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Raphiolepis is popular with the bees as well.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/15/2015)<br />
Solis<br />
The hive is looking really good and they are storing nectar. You almost wouldn't know they almost died of disease last fall. I did some rearranging of combs to consolidate all the worker combs together to make the broodnest area bigger. This was a "problem" I caused by moving honey next to the small cluster in early spring that they didn't need. Now that they have grown this honey has created a wall that the queen won't cross to find empty cells to lay in. Added an empty bar to see if they are ready to start drawing new comb. <br />
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She has her head in a cell looking to see if it's clean and ready for an egg.</div>
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Brood pattern</div>
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Something else I noticed in this hive was that one of the workers started making a piping sound when I inspected a comb. I've heard queen piping before and this was a little like that, but it wasn't coming from a queen. I'm not sure why a worker would make a sound during an inspection and it didn't seem to agitate any of the bees like you might expect from an "alert" like sound.<br />
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Luna<br />
They are off to a good start and they were even building a little new comb. The queen has wasted no time getting things in order and has laid eggs in almost every open cell she could find. In just a week there is a nice patch of capped worker brood on the way. I'm also happy to note that there are no signs of a disease spike post split that I sometimes find.<br />
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This queen just keeps going.</div>
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Lots of brood on the way.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/17/2015)<br />
Loyal Heights Swarm (Nuc)<br />
The queen has started laying. Saw a few capped worker cells. They have only made one new comb.<br />
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She has gotten pretty big and should be a good queen.</div>
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Titan<br />
The queen was barely laying and I found queen cells off a frame of drone comb. I suspect the old queen is wearing out and with her inability to clear up the virus issues in the Rebel hive I've decided to replace her. I added a comb with capped queen cells from the Ballard hive. I also moved all the capped drone brood to the Rebel hive. <br />
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Rebel<br />
They had already torn down several of the queen cells and I opened the only two left. One had a small developing queen that likely wouldn't have amounted to much and the other was just goo. I pulled both out and gave them a comb with capped queen cells from the Ballard hive.<br />
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Ballard<br />
They had 9 combs with capped queen cells on them and most combs had at least 2-3 cells. I pulled 2 combs out for Titan and Rebel. I still need to reduce the number left down to prevent after swarms, but I have a few more days to do that and figure out where to put them. I likely will try the queen castle again which usually is a disappointment.<br />
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This could be either an emergency or swarm queen cell. They would have made both based on the timing of the split.</div>
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Roma<br />
Picked up a smaller swarm in Wedgewood that looked to be about 10,000 bees. The bees are smaller in size and likely came from an old tree, structure, or a foundation-less hive. They may have been living in the nearby greenbelt. Based on the smaller swarm size and the description for how long they were around there is a chance this is a secondary swarm. <br />
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Hive Checks (5/20/2015)<br />
Setup the queen castle with three slots and pulled more cells out of Ballard. I don't usually have good luck with the queen castle as most of the bees move to one of the slots or fly home, however I'm hoping that since the cells are going to emerge any day now they might have a bit more success. <br />
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Bee math: I made the split on 5/9 which would put day 15-16 on 5/23 or 5/24. However I've seen them turnaround a queen faster than that using 3 day old eggs which would give us 5/21. If you are raising queens in a controlled way and grafting 1-2 day old larvae you should be able to accurately estimate the exact day of emergence. However for splits there is a little wiggle room so I play it safe, plus it only takes one queen to be early to wipe out the rest. Speaking of nice weather the coming week is looking very nice for mating weather.<br />
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So now Rebel, Titan and Ballard all have 3-4 good cells each. All the cells in Ballard are next to each other so I'm hoping that will prevent any type of secondary swarms (Dun-Dun-Duuuun!).<br />
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Hive Checks (5/23/2015)<br />
Roma<br />
Found the queen and 2-3 day old eggs. The queen did have the look of an older queen based on how she walked around and her abdomen was elongation. I'm guessing she took a few days to start laying as the timing seems too fast for a virgin queen to be laying already. Also found some almost all black worker bees in the mix. I think darker bees have an advantage in our cooler weather to possibly warm up in the sun faster.<br />
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One of those mostly black bees.</div>
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The queen is laying in a cell.</div>
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The queen moving around.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/24/2015)<br />
Quickdraw<br />
The hive looked good and they are building up. They have a wave of brood that is coming and they should really explode soon. I did notice slight backfilling but I think that is due to lack of space and bees while they are trying to turnover the first generation of bees post swarm and are having to balance between building new comb and keeping brood warm. <br />
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Another interesting observation was that much of the new wax they are drawing is more yellow than white. They must be working something different from my other hives for them to be getting yellow wax. Usually I see white wax when it's new, but I have also seen new wax that is slightly tan as well. I generally assume if a hive is working an uncommon nectar source that likely can give them an advantage. <br />
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Dyno<br />
The hive is full of bees and they are all the way in the back. They are storing nectar and have built out several new combs.<br />
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Lots of brood coming in this hive.</div>
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Solis<br />
There are bees all the way in the back of the hive now. The queen has places to lay in the broodnest area but doesn't take advantage of the space. I also noticed that she wasn't laying every cell and saw eggs and empty cells next to each other. This could be a sign of disease, but I suspect it has more to do with the queen wearing out herself. They built out a new comb with the empty bar I gave them. They have the highest ratio of drones to workers than any of my other hives, which is typical for this queen line. Gave them a couple more empty bars to build.<br />
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This queen gets a lot of attention.</div>
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She has some bright yellow pollen on her.</div>
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Luna<br />
All the combs have good solid pattern of brood and they are building two new combs. When the brood hatches out they are in a good position to explode. I hope the new daughters of this queen are equally impressive.<br />
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Still looking good.</div>
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Nice solid textbook brood pattern.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/25/2015)<br />
Ballard<br />
Sadly my efforts to prevent an afterswarm by removing most of the queen cells failed. They swarmed to a spot 30 feet up in a nearby tree. At first there were three small groups and now they have merged into one mass (could still have multiple queens in the cluster). I have a bait hive out that is drawing a lot of interest from the swarm with about 30 bees a minute visiting to check it out. I hope they move down in the morning despite the fact it's so close to the parent hive location.<br />
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So high up.</div>
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Queen Castle<br />
Checked the three slots and found two had emerged queens. The last one still had two unopened cells that I suspect are dead.<br />
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Opened queen cell.</div>
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The new queen is ready to go mate. She is not her full size yet.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/26/2015)<br />
Plum Creek (Swarm)<br />
I was able to get the swarm down and put them in the Plum Creek hive.<br />
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Zoom shot to see the cluster better.</div>
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Moving into the hive.</div>
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Hive Checks (5/31/2015)<br />
Rosemary<br />
Things look good and they are building up. A good amount of nectar is getting stored. They are raising plenty of brood and drawing new comb.<br />
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She is showing her age a bit by her tattered wings.</div>
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Echo<br />
The hive isn't growing very fast and they are being stubborn about drawing comb. It looked like they were storing nectar, however I would have liked to see more happening with them by now. There are a lot of colors of bees in the hive and I'm noticing some that are more brown or dark caramel colored that aren't as common to see. Based on all the colors it would seem she mated with a variety of drones.<br />
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She is a big queen and should be laying up a storm.</div>
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Lots of color variations in these bees.</div>
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Queen Castle<br />
Slot 1 & 3 have queens that look to have mated. Slot 4 still had two unopened queen cells. I pulled these apart and found them both with dried up larvae. Ironically the drone laying queen we pulled yesterday at Field Day was still alive in my suit pocket without any attendants! I released her into this tiny cluster of bees to see if she would be able to squeeze out any more worker brood or if she really was done. Usually fading queens die within hours after pulling them out of hives so to see that she pulled through the night without any heat source is impressive.<br />
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Plum Creek<br />
Saw the queen and she was good sized and looked like she would start laying any day now. They are building comb. I checked this hive because I wanted to make sure the queen wasn't lost in the swarming process.<br />
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I didn't check the other sister hives (Ballard, Rebel and Titan) for new queens as there isn't much to learn from them yet, and it would be easy to miss a queen in the bigger hives without any other signs of a queen (brood) to look for. I'll hold off a week to check those hives when I can at least look for signs of a queen as well.<br />
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It will be another 10 or so days before we know how well she mated.</div>
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Roma<br />
They are trying to turnover a new generation but otherwise not much has happened in here since last inspection.<br />
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New comb with a patch of brood.</div>
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She is a smaller queen, but seems to be off to a good start.</div>
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Attis Nuc<br />
This is the sister to the queen in the Echo hive. She doesn't look to have mated as well, and most of the bees in here look Italian. They don't seem to have much vigor to build up or store nectar like the nearby hives.<br />
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She is good sized, but I don't think she mated as well based on the worker colors.</div>
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Brood area.</div>
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Loyal Heights Nuc<br />
Wow they are going crazy. There is more brood than it seems possible for them to keep warm. They are also drawing new comb. They are going to need to move into a full hive soon.<br />
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New comb with nice brood pattern.</div>
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Lots of nice brood on the way.</div>
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Hive Checks (6/1/2015)<br />
Queen Castle<br />
Got a swarm call for a tiny swarm (about 1 to 1.5 pounds) in South Lake Union under the freeway. They looked like they had been hanging out all weekend unable to find a suitable new home based on the small amount of wax they had started to build. I put them in slot 2 of the Queen Castle with a few drawn frames. Based on the small cluster size I'm guessing they are a secondary swarm with a virgin queen. Assuming the queen mates well they are still going to need a little help to build up.<br />
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The chain-link fence gives you a good idea how small they are.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-75142423941339192242015-05-15T01:20:00.002-07:002015-05-15T01:20:50.174-07:00Ideal Weather Conditions Are Driving A Strong Swarm ImpluseBlackberries have just started to bloom and we have a slight storm passing through giving the ground a good soak. If things work out we could have a very good blackberry nectar flow this year. Usually the ground my neighborhood gets too dry by the time the blackberry bloom starts for them to be a good nectar source and the bees work Black Locust instead. However with the shift in our normal weather patterns things have been strongly stacked in favor of good nectar flows from everything this year.<br />
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Another unusual trend occurring this year that is a result of beneficial weather patterns is all the early swarms in the area. I've picked up a few already and from observations I'm seeing in my own hives I think a lot of beekeepers that split early, or caught early swarms are going to be caught off guard that those very hives could already be restarting the swarm cycle with the onset of the blackberries. <br />
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I'm often surprised at the number of city beekeepers that do relatively little to control swarming. If you live in the woods miles away from urban areas, then swarms likely aren't creating any issues. However in populated urban areas where there are only a few old hollow trees, swarms typically make homes in peoples walls/attics (or other creative spots) that are difficult (expensive) to remove them from. There are several methods to control swarming and they all involve creating an environment where the queen has a broodnest area with empty cells to lay in. This is not the same thing as providing them empty space to build comb, although sometimes it might appear that's what you are doing. <br />
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Too control swarming and build bigger colonies you will want to look into one of these methods:<br />
<ol>
<li>Checkerboarding </li>
<li>Demaree Method</li>
<li>Broodnest Expanson</li>
</ol>
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A fourth option to consider if you also want to increase colonies, or you can't commit to one of the above methods is that you can split a hive. There are various ways to make a split, but the result is you have two or more hives. This reduces resources and the population in each hive and thus creates room for the queen to lay. </div>
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If a hive was split and left to make queens, or already issued a primary swarm you can still get another swarm (about a week later) when the new queens emerge. While secondary swarms (there can be multiple) are less common they can happen when you have multiple queens emerging and the hive still feels it is too populated. The virgin queen(s) will leave with more bees to each find new home, instead of fighting each other. This can go on until there is just one queen left in the hive or one queen left that removes any remaining competition. To help limit this possibility I usually only leave 2-3 good looking queen cells that are close to each other.</div>
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Raspberries are still drawing a lot of attention.</div>
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Crimson clover is blooming. </div>
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Poppies (Papaver somniferum) are blooming and full of black pollen.</div>
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Camassia quamash is in bloom.</div>
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Rosa nutkana is in bloom.</div>
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Columbine is in bloom.</div>
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Blackberry spikes are starting and are both a pollen and nectar source.</div>
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Black Locust is starting to bloom and is an excellent nectar source.</div>
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Sage is in bloom.</div>
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Hive checks (5/1/2015)<br />
Quickdraw (Wallingford Swarm)<br />
Installed a swarm from another top bar beekeeper into this hive. This is my first time coming across a swarm of regressed bees. I'm curious to record the measurements of the cell size for the new worker comb they create.<br />
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It's hard to take a picture that can capture their organization. Upon transferring them into the hive they very quickly spread out along the walls. It is sort of like when you have metal shavings on a piece a glass and run a magnet underneath and everything lines up like magic all at once.</div>
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Fanning at the entrance to help them orient to their new home.</div>
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Hive checks (5/2/2015)<br />
Solis<br />
There are a decent number of bees in this hive and I couldn't find any signs of disease. However I found more drone brood than worker brood which concerns me and might be a sign this queen is running out of steam. Something else interesting I noticed was that they had a few worker cells on the comb edges which I've never seen in a hive before. There were also signs that they were backfilling and the queen is ignoring the combs in the rest of the hive which could be a swarm setup.<br />
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Still a little spotty, but better.</div>
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Backfilling on this frame.</div>
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Capped cells on the edges of the frame.</div>
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They really like this queen. Despite all the issues I've had with this queen line I still want to keep them going.</div>
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Dyno<br />
Saw the queen and she looked good. Found eggs and a patch of 1-2 day old larvae which means that this was a primary swarm and the queen started laying a day or two after she was installed into the hive. I staggered drawn comb and empty bars and they had started on three new combs. Oddly they were mostly drawing large honey cell sized comb.<br />
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Drawing new comb. Mostly honey/drone cell sized.</div>
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She looks like an older queen.</div>
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Hive checks (5/3/2015)<br />
Nuc (Swarm in Loyal Heights)<br />
Got a swarm call for a smaller swarm that was maybe 2-3 pounds of bees (6,000-8,000 bees). I put them in a nuc as I think it will take them all summer to build up.<br />
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A small swarm not too high up in the tree.</div>
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Rebel daughter & Rebel (Titan)<br />
I removed what I thought was a tiny daughter queen that was similar to the one I removed from the sister nuc. I only found drone larvae in cells and several in-progress queen cups that looked to be made from drone cells. Since the Rebel hive is still having issues with DWV I moved the queen in a cage with a marshmallow plug to try and introduce her back to her original hive. I'm hoping that since she is the mother of all the workers she will be easily accepted and preferred if I did miss a drone laying queen somewhere. I'm going to call this hive Titan so it's easier to keep track of from Rebel which is now queenless.<br />
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The mother queen.</div>
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Nuc Combo (Attis)<br />
This is the nuc I made up with cells from Rebel (Ballard daughter) hive that didn't make it and I introduced a virgin queen. I found drone brood on combs in the back and worker brood on combs in the front of the hive. I'm hoping that the drone cells in the back are from the frames that came from the tiny queen in the other hive. I am going to call this nuc Attis.<br />
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Keeping my fingers crossed that this queen mated well.</div>
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Hive checks (5/4/2015)<br />
Ballard<br />
They are now at the back of the hive drawing comb. The queen has been laying eggs everywhere and I found several new cups with eggs in them. I also found what looked to be several emergency type cells along the edges of the frames. I think the hive is now in reproductive swarm mode and while I'm not seeing backfilling I'm also not going to be able to stop them much longer since I'm out of space. I did pull out all the cells with eggs to force them back another week and will plan to split them in the next few days.<br />
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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Queen cups (empty) and a few Queen cells (with larvae).</div>
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If you look closely you can see a small egg standing on end at the bottom of the cell.</div>
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Hive checks (5/9/2015)<br />
Nuc (Loyal Heights Swarm)<br />
They were fairly defensive today despite the fact it was beautiful out. Took a look at what they were doing and found the queen and saw her drop an egg walking around on the frame. Hopefully she figures it out that they go in the cells. No signs of any brood yet, but that's inline with my thinking that this was a secondary swarm with a virgin queen. They aren't building comb very quickly, but they aren't all that big either so it balances out.<br />
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Its hard to tell in this picture, but she hasn't fully filled out yet and has the look of a new queen.</div>
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A little new comb.</div>
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Attis Nuc<br />
The queen is getting her bearings now and there is more capped worker brood in the hive! So far the pattern looks good and there is potential for her to be a good queen. I'm curious if the workers will all be the same color (maybe poor mating) or if there is some variation (signs she mated well).<br />
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Ballard<br />
Pulled the queen and about 7 frames of bees and resources and moved her to the Luna hive. I tried to get as little capped and open brood as possible. I am doing this because I want to give her a reset for disease levels/mite load which can hide in capped brood. I saw several queen cups and a few with larvae in them. I'll go back in a week to cut down or divide up the capped cells to prevent a secondary swarm which is likely from a large hive like this.<br />
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Nice laying pattern.</div>
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Uncapped queen cell with larvae in it. Mostly what you are seeing is the royal jelly, but there would only be royal jelly like this if there was something in there.</div>
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When the cells are just starting they can be easily missed.</div>
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
Saw the queen and she looked good. I can usually tell the different between an older laying queen and a virgin or newly laying queen and she was definitely an older queen. Based on the age of some of the brood she started laying a few days after installing the swarm which also confirms this was a primary swarm. They were building comb and off to a good start.<br />
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One interesting observation I noted was that there were several workers with hairless thoraxes. Sometimes this happens during robbing and the hairs get pulled out, or it can happen with age and they get worn away. However in both cases you can still kind of tell hairs used to be there. The few bees I saw in this hive didn't look like there was ever hair there (much like a queen). I will watch for this on young nurse bees to see if any are born that way. This could also be Chronic Paralysis Virus (CPV) which makes the bees hairless.<br />
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This bee may have Chronic Paralysis Virus (CPV). It is also an older worker looking at how much it's wings have been worn. I saw 5-6 bees throughout the hive like this. If this is CPV the usual cure is to re-queen. Since this is a swarm, I'm going to wait and see what happens. I want to find this on younger bees before taking a corrective action as the swarm cycle can reset a lot of issues.</div>
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I find it interesting that this comb is large honey cell sized. They must think they need drones or storage space. Usually I find more drones in swarms so maybe they are trying to restore a natural balance. I saw the same thing in Dyno last week.</div>
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This is another new comb and I was happy to see that it was worker sized. I wanted to draw attention in this photo to where the two initial comb lobs met and they left a passage. They don't always do this, but the odds increase the closer they are to the entrance.<br />
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Great looking queen.</div>
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Hive checks (5/10/2015)<br />
Rosemary split with the new name Echo<br />
The new queen is doing great and has laid several frames of worker brood. She has also filled out and is much larger than I noticed previously. Now that I have a laying queen in this hive I'm going to name the hive Echo. This is the sister queen to the queen in the Attis Nuc.<br />
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The new queen is laying.</div>
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Nice area of worker brood.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
They were slightly defensive today. I found them starting to draw new comb. The queen is laying everywhere in the hive and I saw them making several queen cups. The broodnest still looked open and I added some empty bars for them to build out with the next flow about to start. No signs of disease anymore.<br />
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This queen is still going strong.</div>
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Hive checks (5/12/2015)<br />
Titan<br />
The good news is that I found the queen released and she was roaming around looking for places to lay. I'm not sure when they released her, but I couldn't find any young larvae or eggs, not that there was more than a handful of empty cells to lay in. Most of the drone brood that was laid by the old drone laying queen had been capped. I added an empty drawn comb to give her a spot to work with. This will also help to confirm there isn't another issue. I'm also thinking I might move all the drone brood out as it could lead to a disease buildup.<br />
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The queen is back home with her children. </div>
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Rebel<br />
They actually made several queen cells. It also looks like most of the sick brood has been cleaned out.<br />
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-76457289072484868752015-05-01T16:03:00.001-07:002015-05-01T16:09:43.680-07:00The Blackberries Are ComingI've been surprised to find a common theme from conversations with fellow beekeepers recently that many have been essentially following a calendar timeline for hive management. We have had unusually nice spring weather for months here in the Puget Sound and many hives have already built up. Without some level of swarm management most hives will be in a position where they are ready to swarm,<i> if they haven't done so already</i>. This is the time of year to be doing inspections every 7-10 days to keep space open in the broodnest.<br />
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Blackberries are days away from having the first bloom spikes opening and we should be peak flow in the next 2-3 weeks. If the weather stays on course this may also be the last nectar flow until fall and like the bees we should be thinking ahead for what is coming in the next 2-3 months.<br />
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Things I will be planning for:<br />
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<ul>
<li>A long summer dearth</li>
<li>Brood breaks to interrupt the disease cycle</li>
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Centaurea montana (Bachelor's Button Cornflower) is a good nectar source.</div>
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Sun Rose (Helianthemum nummularium) is in bloom and a good pollen source.</div>
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Ornithogalum umbellatum are in bloom.</div>
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Rock Rose is starting to bloom. This is a popular pollen source.</div>
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This is a great time of year to start training bees to use a local water source before they find one in your neighbors yard.</div>
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Double crimson Hawthorn blooms.</div>
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Raspberries are coming into bloom.</div>
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Wisteria is blooming.</div>
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Dicentra aurora are still blooming.</div>
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Golden Chain tree is in bloom.</div>
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Sweet Cicely is in bloom.</div>
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Common Lilac is starting to bloom.</div>
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Apples have finished blooming.</div>
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Scotch broom has been blooming for awhile.</div>
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Viburnum plicatum 'Summer Snowflake' is in bloom.</div>
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Viburnum is filling the air with it's sweet scent.</div>
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Catmint (Nepeta) produces long lasting flower spikes that are highly appealing to honey bees. They are members of the mint family and do best in sunny locations with moderate water requirements and also show good drought tolerance once established. Unlike many other perennials Nepeta is tough and can flourish even if neglected for many years. Both the foliage scent and flowers will benefit from short dry periods between watering. Trimming back spent flower spikes mid-summer will help keep new flowers forming all summer long. Many of the newer varieties of Nepeta you will find are sterile hybrid crosses that need to be propagated from division or cuttings. They are great plants for use in rock gardens, along pathway edges, or as companion plants in rose gardens.<br />
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California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is in bloom.</div>
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Some varieties of Lavender are already blooming.</div>
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Mock Orange or Philadelphus coronarius is a nectar source.</div>
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Chives are blooming.</div>
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Honeysuckle is coming into bloom. Humming birds will out compete the bees for these.</div>
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Iris are blooming.</div>
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Iceland poppy is starting to bloom.</div>
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Hive checks (4/12/2015)<br />
Nuc 1<br />
Looks like the queen cell they had to work with was bad. I found part of a developing queen on the floor of the hive and she was still white. Added a virgin queen from another hive to give them a chance to get a mated a queen.<br />
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Virgin queens.</div>
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Picture of one of the virgin queens on the comb.</div>
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Nuc 2<br />
The cell was open, but I didn't see the queen. Will check again in a week and see if she has started laying.<br />
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Rosemary split<br />
Lots of fanning and most of the cells were full of nectar or pollen. No signs of a queen. I split them with about 4 day old larvae (day 7) in queen cells on 3/22. I expected new queens about 9 days later on 4/1. The new queen has had 12 days to start laying but with no sign of her or signs of queen activity and the excessive fanning I'd say it was a good bet they were queenless. I added a virgin queen from another hive to give them a second chances to get a mated queen.<br />
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I believe horse chestnut is the likely cause of this yellow mark. I had the pollen checked last year and it didn't "match" known samples of horse chestnut, but I still think this is caused by horse chestnut and need to get better samples from the pollen baskets and flowers for a more accurate ID.</div>
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Horse chestnut flowers.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
The queen is building the hive back up again and there is a good amount of brood coming. I did notice some brood disease, and I'm hoping that doesn't turn into a bigger issue.<br />
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Busy queen. She has gone through as least 2 winters and perhaps more.</div>
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Hive checks (4/25/2015)<br />
Nuc 1<br />
The queen I introduced is still around and I saw a few eggs. No idea yet if or how well she mated.<br />
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They seem to like the virgin queen. Hopefully she mated well.</div>
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Nuc 2<br />
Also found a few eggs in this hive and the saddest queen I've ever seen. If this hive wasn't just a few frames of bees I would never have been able to pick her out. Small queens are fine but that is not what she was. When they aren't any bigger than a worker they usually don't survive long or don't mate and become drone layers. Rather than wait for the inevitable I pulled her out and combined with Nuc 1 that at least has a good sized queen.<br />
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Sad looking queen. Sometimes this happens with splits and emergency queens.</div>
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Rebel Daughter<br />
Saw a few eggs, and didn't see the queen. This is a big hive and it would be easy to miss her. I tried to get them to draw new comb and they are being stubborn. Also everything they did start they wanted to make perpendicular to the existing comb. Argh! Also saw what looked to be an old capped queen cell in the front which wouldn't be a good sign.<br />
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I think this is old, but you never know.</div>
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Rebel<br />
Still seeing DWV in this hive, but they are increasing in numbers slowly. I'm surprised how hard of a time they are having bouncing back in this hive. This hive gets almost no direct sun and that might be part of the issue.<br />
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She is trying to build up again.</div>
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Ballard<br />
They have been slow and steady and have built up nicely. They are using about 75% of the hive and are on the verge of increasing 3 fold in the next 1-2 weeks. I found a few queen cells with freshly laid eggs in them that I removed. Most were empty so I may still have some time to delay them. I added some spacers to see if I can get them to draw comb instead of swarming. I would like to delay until the second week in May, but sometimes you have to compromise. <br />
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Over the years I have seen newly laid eggs in random queen cups too often for it to be a coincidence and I think this is more common than people think. I think queens lay eggs everywhere and workers decide when they want to let them turn into queens. However there is no way to know which is the case if you should happen to see one.<br />
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Most of the frames look like this, she has a great brood pattern.</div>
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Here is the queen.</div>
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Another bee with the yellow pollen marks.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
The laying pattern is a little spotty but the signs of disease I was seeing before appears to be clearing up. They seem to be building up nicely again.<br />
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She look huge in this picture.</div>
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Brood frame is well covered.</div>
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Rosemary split<br />
Saw the new queen and watched her fly off the back frame I was looking at and fly back in through the hive entrance. Watching a queen fly off a frame is not something you want to have happen! She hasn't started laying yet like her sister, but this is a bigger hive so could have easily missed a few random eggs. They were polishing cells for her to start using which is a good sign and where I will look for her to have started laying next inspection.<br />
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Hopefully this young queen starts laying soon.</div>
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Hive checks (4/26/2015)<br />
Dyno<br />
Caught a swarm that I suspect might be a secondary swarm (virgin queen) and put it into the old Dyno hive. This hive is full of half combs of honey and should get them off to a good start.<br />
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This swarm was wrapped around the trellis and grape vines making it necessary to scoop them off into the box.</div>
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What they looked like after I transferred them into the hive.</div>
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Blackberries are close. Just a few more days.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- Jeff<br />
<br />Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-79112265621303229712015-04-09T23:22:00.000-07:002015-04-09T23:22:56.959-07:00Earth Day Is Coming and Updates on Hive SplitsIn most years the Puget Sound area goes into a summer dearth just after the blackberry bloom wraps up. A dearth is a period of time where hives have limited food sources available to forage for pollen or nectar. By planting Summer and Fall flowering trees and shrubs you can help mitigate this dearth and provide food for hives when it is most needed. Celebrate this Earth Day by planting a bee loving tree or shrub!<br />
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Below are a few examples to consider for your summer garden:<br />
<ul>
<li>Bee Bee Tree (Tetradium daniellii, Evodia daniellii, or Euodia daniellii)</li>
<li>Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)</li>
<li>Chaste (Vitex agnus-castus)</li>
<li>Chestnut (Castanea dentata)</li>
<li>Crepe Myrtle (Lagerstroemia)</li>
<li>Golden Rain (Koelreuteria paniculata)</li>
<li>Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)</li>
<li>Japanese Snowbell (Styrax japonicus)</li>
<li>Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia)</li>
<li>Linden (Tilia)</li>
<li>Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus)</li>
<li>Seven Sons (Heptacodium miconioides)</li>
<li>Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin)</li>
<li>Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)</li>
</ul>
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Linden tree seedling.</div>
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Nectar and pollen is still filling the air and many types of berries have started to bloom. The weather has been good and there is still an abundance of food available. A few of the new queens from the splits should have emerged and it's just a matter of time to see how well they mated.<br />
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Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) is in bloom.</div>
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Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) is in bloom and a good pollen source.</div>
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Strawberries are in bloom.</div>
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Blueberries are in bloom.</div>
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Thyme is in bloom.</div>
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Pacific Blackberry (Rubus ursinus) is our native blackberry and it has already started to bloom.<br />
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Hive checks (4/4/2015)</div>
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Solis</div>
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Hive activity was light. There were some possible signs of nosema (a gut microsporidian/fungus) around the entrance as well. Expecting the worst I opened the hive and found that things actually looked pretty good inside. They are building up slowly, and the broodnest looked well defined and was just starting to extend over 4 combs. The slow buildup tells me they are still dealing with something, but are currently outpacing the issue.</div>
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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Another dark bee with a white pollen mark. This is a better photo than the one in my <a href="http://queenannebees.blogspot.com/2015/04/calendar-says-april-mother-nature-says.html" target="_blank">last post</a>.</div>
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This queen has made a nice comeback from where they were.</div>
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Some streaking on the front of the hive.</div>
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Hive checks (4/6/2015)</div>
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Rebel</div>
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Small broodnest and noticed some varroa and DWV on bees. I see this often when I split a queen off a large hive. Hopefully the partial brood cycle break will reset the issue. Gave them a few extra frames of bees from the original hive. There were several emerging drones that all looked healthy and varroa free so I think they are able to keep the issue under control.</div>
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Here is the queen.</div>
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Rebel Daughter</div>
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They ended up making 3 emergency queens cells, but only 1 of them was a huge cell like I would hope to see. Perhaps that's for the best. I really don't want a secondary swarm off of them and because this is such a big hive I am thinking I will go back in on Wednesday and pull the 2 other small ones to put in a nuc. I find I have better luck splitting the cells up right before they emerge. </div>
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My guess is that there was something wrong with the larvae and they stopped work on this emergency queen cell.</div>
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Hive checks (4/8/2015)<br />
Rebel Daughter<br />
Made up two nucs with the extra cells that should emerge in the next few days. <br />
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Queen bee math check: <br />
The split was made on 3/26 or 13 days ago. If they were picking the best larvae to turn into queens they could up to 1 day old larvae (which is actually day 4 if you count that it was an egg for 3 days). This means that we are at day 17 if they picked the oldest they could, or at day 13 if they picked a freshly laid egg. Queens emerge around day 15/16 so we should have queens emerging any time now with Saturday (4/11) at the VERY latest.<br />
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Back to the bees,</div>
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- Jeff</div>
Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-13119907932051380862015-04-03T13:00:00.001-07:002015-04-03T13:27:38.753-07:00Calendar Says April, Mother Nature Says It's May around the Puget SoundUsually in April I'm thinking of the saying "April Showers Bring May Flowers," but this year we already have May flowers at the start of April. Maples have been in full bloom and I've been watching the Blackberry growth for the start of flower spikes which I anticipate will be in bloom by the end of the month. <br />
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This year is warm and something I find interesting is that some plants are able adapt to the warmer weather and start early while others seem to be on a calendar schedule. If this is any indication of things to come I would expect those plants that can start early to have an advantage. When we have a surge in blooms like this the bees will favor the flowers that are easiest and most beneficial for them to work which could leave entire groups of plants ignored (at least by honey bees).<br />
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With all this nice weather I've had to split two hives already and one will have a queen mating in the next few days. We are getting at least one 60F+ sunny day about every week, so as long as there are enough drones around she should be able to mate. I'm not holding my breath for well mated queens and suspect I'll either have to recombine or replace the queens again midsummer, but you never know. If nothing else I am creating an early brood break that will help the hives to reset from the long brood cycle over the warm winter. When you have an extended season, varroa and disease are going to have more cycles to buildup and cause problems sooner in the season.<br />
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Bleeding hearts are in bloom.</div>
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Ceanothus are starting to bloom. The common Lilac hasn't even started yet.</div>
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Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria affinis) is in bloom.</div>
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Lawn Daises are in bloom.</div>
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Mexican Orange (Choisya ternata) is in bloom. I've seen the occasional flower on these since late fall.</div>
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Madrona trees are blooming.</div>
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Spanish Bluebells are in bloom.</div>
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Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) is in bloom.</div>
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Silver Dollar (Lunaria) is starting to bloom.</div>
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Archangel (Lamium galeobdolon) is in bloom. Plant these where nothing else will grow, they will take over your garden otherwise.</div>
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Siberian Squill is still coming up.</div>
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Wild Geraniums are just starting to bloom.</div>
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Collards are in bloom.</div>
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Trilliums are blooming.</div>
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Crabapple is in bloom.</div>
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Osmanthus delavayi smell great, but the girls have to work to get down to the bottom of the flower for the nectar. With the abundance of flowers blooming and nice weather they are getting ignored for easier to work food sources. </div>
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Rhododendron is in bloom. Nectar from this source is just for the bees as it contains Grayanotoxin.</div>
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The Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) is a versatile native plant that has the ability to grow in either full sun or deep shade. When in a full sun exposure these bushes can get to 10 feet tall, and in low light locations may only grow a few feet tall. New leaves are initially reddish and will darken to thick green leaves that are evergreen year round. These plants like acidic soils and are often seen growing out of nurse logs or stumps. Spring flowers will produce editable berries that will turn dark blue/black when they are ripe. Birds and wildlife love to eat the berries as well so be quick to harvest when they are ready.<br />
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Hive checks (3/22/2015)<br />
Rosemary Nuc<br />
Inspected the hive today and it was packed with bees. They had even built pieces of new comb filling up the empty gap in the back. Unfortunately they had started on several queen cells that had pools of royal jelly and what I would guess to be 4-5 day old larvae. My original plan for today was to install them into a full sized hive with old combs for them to use for buildup. I had to adjust my plans slightly to split the hive. <br />
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She has been busy.</div>
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Since the cells weren't capped I might have been able to get away with just cutting them out and giving them space. However I didn't really want to worry about missing a cell or having them swarm anyway so I split them into two new hives. The queen in one hive and all the cells going to the other. The old location with the cells will get all the foragers and I will recheck the queen right hive in a week to make sure I didn't miss any cells and they aren't still building new ones.<br />
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Another interesting note. About half the queen cups had larvae in them the other half had newly laid eggs. This is a hive I've seen try to issue secondary swarms in the past and that would be an excellent setup to stagger a set of cells a few days behind a first wave if they were trying for such a thing. I removed all the cells with just eggs in them which should help prevent this from happening.<br />
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As for mating this time of year, that's a risk. I know one of my other hives has mature drones so it's possible other hives further away may have mature drones as well. <br />
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<ul>
<li>Will she mate with 30 drones from a variety of hives or just 4 all coming from the same hive. </li>
<li>Will the weather be sunny and at least 60F in 10-14 days for good flying... actually it might the way things have been. </li>
</ul>
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So it really comes down to the current drone coverage and if she can mate with a variety of genetics from different hives. Increased genetic diversity of the workers in a hive has been shown to improve overall hive robustness and health. On the bright side she would be mating with drones from other over wintered hives and not imported package drones. <br />
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I expect the new queen to emerge around April 1st. I'll keep my fingers crossed that mother nature doesn't pull the April Fool's day card out and actually gives the new queen a chance to succeed.<br />
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Hive checks (3/26/2015)<br />
Ballard Daughter hive<br />
The hive is filling up with nectar and they have started to draw wax in the only open space left against the back wall. Everything I saw said they should be prepping to swarm. However every queen cup I checked appeared to be empty, but I might have missed an egg or two since some of them were pretty deep and hard to see into. However, since there is no room left for them to expand into and all signs are pointing to the swarming impulse kicking in, I moved the queen to the old Rebel hive with a few frames of brood and resources. I'll check back in a week to see if any of those cups actually turn into queen cells or if they have to draw emergency cells.<br />
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Entrance activity.</div>
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New comb</div>
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Bees hanging off the back wall of the hive.</div>
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Fresh nectar and pollen backfilled into the broodnest area.</div>
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The queen. </div>
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More pollen and nectar backfilled. </div>
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Nice frames of brood.</div>
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Here's a worker is helping a drone out of a cell.</div>
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Lots of empty queen cups.</div>
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Hive checks (3/30/2015)<br />
Ballard Daughter in Rebel Hive (I'm gong to refer to them as the Rebels going forward)<br />
They were still sorting themselves out and cleaning up comb in their new home.<br />
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The queen getting her bearings in the new hive.</div>
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Ballard<br />
Slow buildup and a very conservative tight pattern. This hive is on track and looks good.<br />
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You can see how the broodnest has expanded here.</div>
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Now that she is back to laying her color seems to have lightened again. Looking at the pattern and her current coloring I'm pretty sure she is the same queen from last year.</div>
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Nice solid frame of brood.</div>
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This looks like a lighting issue, but it's not. That darker bee has a streak of white pollen on it's head that almost looks like someone marked her with paint. Around this time of year I also start to see the same effect with a more noticeable yellow pollen (I have a photo in an <a href="http://queenannebees.blogspot.com/2012/05/punk-bees-grass-wastelands.html" target="_blank">older post here</a>). I found that Rosemary flowers make this white pollen streak, but the jury is still out on the yellow pollen source. What does surprise me is while Rosemary blooms all winter I only rarely see it leaving the white pollen streaks on them like this. Perhaps the difference is in how the bees are working the flowers. usually the lighter bees only get a dusting and the darker bees get this more defined mark.</div>
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Her sisters appear to be admiring the pollen infused hair style.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
The queen is laying and the hive is on the road to buildup again. The new empty combs that they got had a nice pattern of young brood. Both hives were unusually pissy today so listening to my better judgement I didn't check the queenless hive that is raising a new queen.<br />
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The queen. </div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-14725241125359124712015-03-19T23:59:00.001-07:002015-03-20T09:39:42.686-07:00Spring Buildup And An Early Maple FlowSpring has officially arrived and we are well ahead of the curve here in the Northwest. Some plants are blooming almost 2 months early which is creating an additive effect with our typical blooms for this time of year. The weather has also been unusually nice and we haven't seen any of our typical late season storms. This is an optimal scenario for hive buildup and with the maples starting to bloom we are heading into our first seasonal flow. This means many hives will try to take advantage of that surge in food and try and reproduce through swarming.<br />
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I've already heard of a swarm catch on March 5th which is the earliest confirmed case I know of for Seattle. Now is the time to be using swarm management practices on strong hives in the area, if it's not already too late. This is not an optimal time of year for new queens to mate so if you can, you will want to avoid splitting hives or loosing them to swarms.<br />
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All this nice weather could also mean we will have a long dry summer which would be hard on the bees. Blackberries will be early. How early is hard to say, but I am thinking we will see the first bloom spikes around the city before the end of April. Yeah I'm not joking about that. Everything is shifted forward and we need to listen to what mother nature is saying and be thinking ahead. Doing the usual management things based on what the calendar tells us would be a mistake in a year like this.<br />
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Winter Heather has been going strong and tends to always have a few girls collecting nectar.</div>
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Anemone blanda is coming up.</div>
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Cherries are still holding up, but are now past their peak.</div>
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Leopard's Bane (Doronicum orientale) has started blooming although it's hard to convince people these any different from Dandelions.</div>
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Big Leaf Maple is starting to pop.</div>
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Grape hyacinth is in bloom.</div>
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Petasites are in bloom.</div>
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Evergreen huckleberry is blooming.</div>
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Brunnera macrophylla is in bloom.</div>
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Flowering Red Currant is in bloom and has been drawing a lot of attention from humming birds.</div>
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Forsythia usually kicks off spring with amazing color, but it is not getting much attention with all the early competition this year.</div>
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Tulips are already blooming. Even the tulip festival is needing to start early this year.</div>
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Laurel is in bloom.</div>
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Wallflowers are blooming.</div>
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Photinia is in bloom and another early nectar source.</div>
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Kerria japonica is in bloom.</div>
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Purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) is in bloom as well.</div>
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Hive checks (3/1/2015)<br />
Hive checks today were to monitor the food supply and make sure the queen had room to lay.<br />
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Ballard daughter<br />
They have a giant broodnest covering 17 frames. There is honey in the back of the hive, but the broodnest is looking pretty scarce as far as food reserves. Frames are well covered with bees and there were several frames of drones on the way. From what I could tell the drones were not getting well cared for and I suspect they had to cutback due to the still chilly nights.<br />
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This frame is all drone cells.</div>
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This one is all worker brood.</div>
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Here is the queen.</div>
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Another frame of worker brood.</div>
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Rosemary Nuc<br />
The nuc is full of bees and brood covered 8 or the 10 frames. Stores were also light in this hive. I also saw the same issue with the drones not being well cared for.<br />
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A frames of worker brood.</div>
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The queen is hard at work.</div>
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Another nice frame of worker brood.</div>
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Hive checks (3/7/2015)<br />
Another nice day today hovering around 60F with the sun shining.<br />
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Ballard Hive<br />
The boost from the remains of the Rosemary daughter hive has paid off and they had a small but decent cluster of brood on 4 frames.<br />
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They are building up slowly.</div>
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Nice section of worker brood.</div>
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Solis<br />
This hive also benefited from the extra bees coming from the Rose Nuc. It has a broodnest over 2-3 frames and they looked to be in good shape to build up.<br />
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The queen is slowly rebuilding.</div>
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Dyno<br />
The cluster was not big enough to stay warm through the recent cold nights. They were also still trying to cope with disease and had lost too many bees.<br />
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Hive checks (3/14/2015)<br />
Ballard daughter<br />
If I had to sum up this hive with one word I would say "bees!" There have been a few times when I really could use a top bar hive bigger than 4 feet and this is one of them. There were bees poring out the back of the hive when I pulled out the last comb. <br />
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Nice frame of worker larvae on the way.</div>
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Nice frame of capped worker brood.</div>
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This queen has been busy.</div>
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The broodnest hasn't increased much since the last inspection and it currently covers 18 frames, but the older frames in the back have been cleaned up and are ready for use. I pulled one frame out that they either tore up or had sealed with propolis. I also saw a few random cells closed with propolis on other frames. I usually see them tearing up comb if there was something bad they didn't want but this is a first time for seeing them sealing up cell with propolis. This could be due to something they couldn't remove or remove safely.<br />
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These cells appear to be sealed with propolis.</div>
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You can see the pollen in the neighboring cells.</div>
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It may be hard to see in this photo, but this was a different frame at the back of the hive they started to tear apart. The white/yellow is old pollen from last year they were having a hard time getting out. The cell walls are ripped down in many places and you can see a hole starting to form.<br />
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I am not seeing any white wax yet for a hive this size, which would be a sign of surplus nectar coming in. However there was an abundance of pollen in a variety of colors getting stored. Without nectar the hive has to cut back on brood production that would normally use up the pollen. Also foragers will continue to work and if all they find is pollen it starts to pile up quickly and could trigger a swarm impulse as soon as the Maple nectar flow starts. Some maples are starting so it's just a matter of a few sunny days and nice weather to change everything. I was also seeing plenty of newly emerged drones and several older mature drones in the hive so if nothing else there are drones available for other queens to mate with.<br />
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Lots of pollen getting stored right now.</div>
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You can see the pollen filling in around the brood. Need to keep an eye on this as it can trigger swarming. A week of sunshine with all forage blooming and a hive of this size can fill up any empty combs in a matter of days.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-8257956685116574352015-02-27T17:23:00.000-08:002015-02-27T18:05:54.444-08:00A Seasonal MalfunctionLast year spring was a little early. This year we seemed to have missed the end of winter all together and are now experiencing spring conditions. Not only are the usual late winter flowers in bloom but we also have a slew of things that are blooming a month or more early. There are blooms everywhere and food is plentiful if the hives can get to it. Daytime temps are in the 50s with nighttime temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s which is the only thing holding back an explosive hive buildup. <br />
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As for whether this warm weather is a good or bad thing for the bees is hard to say. On the plus size they are building up faster. On the down side we could end up having a longer and drier summer than last year. I also worry that warm weather will allow for predators to get an earlier start as well and having already seen a few yellow jackets around that's not a good thing. There is also a real concern that we will get a storm that will cutoff the hives food supply for a few days. Hives are using about a 100% of what they are bringing in to raise brood and don't keep much of a reserve for bad weather.<br />
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Rosemary is always attracting the girls.</div>
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Euphorbia characias 'Wulfenii' is a another food source.</div>
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Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' are just coming into bloom.</div>
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Plums are in full bloom right now and a good food source.</div>
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Oxalis Oregana is in bloom right now.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmyLWYKnruQIqajECfEnjPfdtGxtdSNA81Xn-zsjLso_-OLT90jBjyTFOP6ZI2Brlc5MDwoLQ-zCzxX92CyZVdIv6nrB5qSAukX3Lr0z6iFVxxHiqFN_lFF84QBkEENgRJNXfiitQWFc/s1600/DSC_0638.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmyLWYKnruQIqajECfEnjPfdtGxtdSNA81Xn-zsjLso_-OLT90jBjyTFOP6ZI2Brlc5MDwoLQ-zCzxX92CyZVdIv6nrB5qSAukX3Lr0z6iFVxxHiqFN_lFF84QBkEENgRJNXfiitQWFc/s1600/DSC_0638.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Cornelian cherry is already in bloom.</div>
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Here's a picture of both Hazelnut catkins and blooms (tiny purple flower) that are open right now.</div>
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Daphne x transatlantica 'Eternal Fragrance' is in bloom.</div>
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Most Magnolia trees are usually further behind the Star Magnolia, but this year they are almost ready to pop.</div>
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Crocus blooms appearing at the end of winter are a sign that spring is on the way and are an excellent pollen food source. They are easy to grow and like well drained soils that get a good amount of sunlight. If you are relaxed about your lawn care, Crocus can even be naturalized into yards for a splash of early spring color. Crocus come in a variety of colors and they bloom from fall to spring. If you are a fan of saffron, it is made from the dried stigmas of the fall blooming Crocus sativus. Unlike bulb flowers the Crocus corms gets completely absorbed into the flower and leaves during the bloom cycle and then will make new corms as the plant goes dormant again, so be careful not to destroy the plant during the growing cycle.<br />
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Evergreen clematis is in bloom.</div>
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Spring Hebe are coming into bloom.</div>
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Daffodil are in bloom.</div>
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Lonicera fragrantissima is in bloom. It didn't even loose it's leaves this year.</div>
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Oregon Grape is starting to bloom.</div>
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Scilla siberica is coming up with it's elusive blue pollen.</div>
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Red maples are in bloom.</div>
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Indian Plum is usually one of our earliest blooming natives.</div>
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Quince are in bloom.</div>
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Hive checks (2/8/2015)<br />
<div>
It was supposed to be raining today, but we had a "bright sky" break this morning (I'd say sun break, but there was a high layer of clouds filtering it) and temps were around 55F.</div>
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<div>
Rose<br />
I saw some eggs in the center of cells, but I suspect this is the work of a laying worker at this point. No signs of a queen present.<br />
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Rosemary daughter<br />
There are several frames of bees and I did not see the queen or signs of the queen.<br />
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Ballard daughter</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
I saw some drones flying from this hive. The broodnest is now covering 10 frames. I wanted to take a peak at this hive to see if anything had happened with that s<span style="text-align: center;">upersedure cell I saw last inspection and I was pleasantly surprised to see it not capped. Taking a close look it also appeared to be empty this time. I did notice some work on queen cups around the frames, but I'm not seeing any white comb or a nectar excess yet. However with the way this season is going we could have an early maple flow in March and they may try to use that window to swarm so I will need to keep an eye on things.</span></div>
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The queen looks good and has a nice following of nurse bees.<br />
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Brood nest.<br />
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New bees are emerging.<br />
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Hive checks (2/9/2015)</div>
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Ballard Nuc & Rosemary daughter</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Combined these hives together. The Ballard queen had a small patch of brood, which should be very appealing to the queenless Rosemary hive. I'm not too worried about this combine as this is a fairly common way to get a queenless hive (without laying workers) queen right again.<br />
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Small brood nest.</div>
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Hive checks (2/10/2015)<br />
Solis & Rose Nuc<br />
Combined these hives together. The Solis hive had a small patch of brood which was good to see. There weren't many bees in the Rose Nuc, but their addition doubles the population of the Solis hive. Having been queenless they should take to the new queen since laying workers hadn't started up yet.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Another small brood nest.</div>
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Hive checks (2/16/2015)<br />
Dyno<br />
Quick peak at entrance activity and saw a few foragers coming back with pollen. Can't say much more without looking inside, but based on my previous observations they have a long road ahead to rebuild their numbers.<br />
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Hive checks (2/21/2015)<br />
Rosemary-Ballard Hive<br />
The queen looked good and the broodnest was larger. I moved several frames of honey from the back of the hive forward because the front frames were empty and they looked like they needed more food close by.<br />
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The broodnest has grown, but stores are looking low.</div>
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- Jeff</div>
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Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-15668196144497206302015-02-03T13:17:00.001-08:002015-02-03T14:17:58.588-08:00Indications Of An Early Buildup Due To Mild WinterWinter has been mild this year! I've been able to open and inspect hives on nice days several times this year when typically I would be lucky to get a peak before mid March. Looking at my flower photos you might think Seattle is a tropical oasis at the moment, especially if you are under a blanket of snow! However it's not spring... yet, but we do have some late winter blooming plants that are moving full steam ahead. I also have seen some late fall plants that should have shut down with winter that are still going. This means a good amount of pollen and nectar is available for hives to use for buildup. The worry now would be a winter storm cutting off that food supply for more than a couple days and a hive dying because it had over extended it's resources.<br />
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Crocus are coming up and are great pollen sources.</div>
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Camellia's are still going strong and the late winter varieties are starting to pop.</div>
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Winter Heather is going strong and a good nectar source.</div>
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Snowdrop (Galanthus) is coming up.</div>
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Bergenia cordifolia seems to bloom whenever the weather is mild.</div>
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I came across a whole hedge of English Ivy in bloom the other day. You can see some older blooms that are fruiting but new blooms should have wrapped up last fall.</div>
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Vinca minor is starting to bloom.</div>
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Hazelnut catkins (three long parts) and flower (tiny bud coming off the branch with a touch of pink at the tip) are getting close to blooming.</div>
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Dandelions didn't take much of a break this year and are already coming back into bloom.</div>
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Iris Reticulata is coming up.</div>
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Mushrooms are everywhere right now. I don't see bees on the mushroom bodies, but have read that they do collect the mycelium, which would explain cases where I have seen them in soil.</div>
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Jasminum nudiflorum is almost finished blooming.</div>
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Garrya elliptica (Coast Silk-tassel) have impressive catkins right now offering up polling and nectar.</div>
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Helleborus are in bloom and a good pollen source.</div>
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Daphne odora is starting to bloom.</div>
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Collard blooms are a great food source.</div>
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Viburnum tinus (Laurustinus) is still going strong. They have been blooming all winter.</div>
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Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) includes several different species that are native to Eastern North America, China, and Japan ranging in colors from yellow to red that bloom during winter on bare branches after the leaves have fallen. Looking around our northwest gardens the species we typically find are from Japan (H. japonica) and China (H. mollis) or crosses between the two. The American species start blooming in late fall between October and December, and the Asian species typically bloom between January and March. They start blooming while the previous years seeds are still on the branches and thus get the Latin name hamamelis which means "together with fruit". The seed pods contain two black seeds and will pop when mature throwing the seeds a short distance away. When not showing off their impressive winter blooms, they have attractive soft green leaves in summer. They need to be planted in a sunny or mostly sunny spot that has fertile soil, and will also need regular watering during dry summer months.<br />
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Rosemary is still going and loved by the girls.</div>
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Sarcococca ruscifolia flowers might not be noticed, but their vanilla scent is hard to miss.</div>
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Hive checks (1/6/2015)<br />
Today was around 53F and did visual entrance activity checks on the hives.<br />
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<li>Rose, Rosemary Daughter, Ballard Daughter, Rosemary, Solis and Dyno all had entrance activity. </li>
<li>The Ballard hive didn't have any activity but did have a robber or guard bee hanging around the entrance. </li>
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Hive checks (1/19/2015)<br />
The weather was so-so today and a few bees where flying from Rose, Rosemary Daughter, Ballard Daughter, Rosemary hives. <br />
<ul>
<li>There was no activity in the Ballard hive, so I pulled the back frame and there they were, and sadly they weren't equally as happy to see me. I pulled the last frame of comb (empty) out and replaced it with a frame of honey and added a cup or so of dry sugar in the back. Usually they are like kittens during inspections so I'm second guessing that something is wrong other than they really didn't want to see me today. Perhaps it's a lack of food or maybe the queen is dead. Will need to wait for a bit nicer weather to investigate further and for now I know they have food and hope they have a queen. </li>
<li>Rosemary hive also got a frame of honey. They had an empty bar in the back so there was room for another comb of honey. Rather than putting it in the very back placement I moved it one frame in (there was still honey on that frame, but not the back side. This way they will be able to cluster around the new frame if they should need it, although the cluster looked to be covering several frames forward. </li>
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Hive checks (1/25/2015)<br />
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The sun was out today and temps were over 60F!</div>
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Rose<br />
There are several frames of bees and they have a good amount of stores left. I did not see the queen or signs of the queen.<br />
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Rosemary daughter<br />
Same situation as the sister in the Rose Nuc. There are several frames of bees and they have a good amount of stores left. I did not see the queen or signs of the queen.<br />
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Ballard daughter</div>
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This hive is not typical of what I usually see for overwintering behavior. Brood production never shutdown and they are using over half the hive. I would also think that a big hive like this would burn through resources and starve, but to the contrary they actually have good stores. Not only do they have stores, but they have either uncapped honey or fresh nectar in the brood area. There is also a little surplus pollen being stored, but mostly anything that comes in is getting used for brood production. <br />
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The broodnest extends over 5 frames and is at least double the size it was when I inspected in early December. The brood nest starts 6 frames in from the entrance. One concerning issue I saw is that they have what looks to be a supersedure cell on a frame. The angle of the cell made it very difficult to see into it to determine if there was anything in there besides royal jelly and sadly the photos I did get only add to the uncertainty, but I doubt they would waste royal jelly on an empty cell this time of year. I saw a few drones in the hive, but I doubt there would be many other hives around with drones for mating. <span style="text-align: center;">However if you need a new queen, then you have to try. Fortunately the old queen is still going, so they likely wont get rid of her until she gives out or they have confirmed the new queen is laying well. </span></div>
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Supersedure cell with royal jelly.</div>
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Here is the queen. She looks good, but they think something could be wrong. Maybe 5 frames of brood isn't good enough?!</div>
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Lots of pollen coming in.</div>
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More pollen.</div>
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There were 5 frames of brood like this. Most hives have small patches if anything.</div>
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Ballard</div>
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I like to think I know what my queens look like, however when I saw the queen in this hive I was thinking, who are you. While she doesn't look all that dissimilar from the photos I have I am still left feeling like this might be a late fall supersedure queen. I last saw the queen in here on my 10/4/2014 inspection. <br />
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There were hardly any stores left in the hive and I have them several frames of honey on each side of the broodnest. There was a tiny patch of brood and many cells with eggs in them. There aren't a lot of bees left in this hive but they are trying.</div>
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Hard to see but there is a little royal jelly and little larvae in this patch of cells.</div>
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Here is the queen.</div>
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Rosemary<br />
This nuc is full of bees and they looked to be in good shape. They have good stores and the broodnest covers 3 frames.<br />
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Small patch of brood.</div>
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Solis<br />
They are alive but struggling. I cleaned a lot of dead off the bottom of the hive. Didn't see much of a brood area but did see the queen. They have a few frames of bees and good stores. Bottom of the hive was damp and opened another ventilation hole. This hive is in a damp location in general.<br />
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The queen and several cells of crystallized nectar.</div>
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Dyno,<br />
Saw the queen and a small patch of eggs. They have a few frames of bees and have plenty of stores. Lots of dead bees on the bottom of this hive as well that I cleaned out. Sadly I also saw a small yellow jacket trying to get in!</div>
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The queen was being photo shy, but she has a tiny cluster with eggs.</div>
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Back to the bees,</div>
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- Jeff</div>
Jeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-27931243446115728152014-12-21T18:09:00.001-08:002014-12-21T23:30:52.705-08:00Winter Solstice and Hive ActivitySo far winter here in the Puget Sound has been warm and we even broke an all time record with 66F degrees on Dec 10th. A few cold snaps have also blown through that took out pretty much everything that wasn't supposed to be blooming for this time of year, and forced plants into their winter dormancy.<br />
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One perk of the warmer weather is I was able to do a full hive inspection to see what they were up to for this time of year, and likely will have another chance to do another full inspection this season. A downside is that I suspect they are burning through food reserves being so busy right now. Another risk they could run into is that they could get caught in period of freezing weather with a lot of brood to keep warm.<br />
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I'm not sure how often people look around the site, but I've updated the <a href="http://queenannebees.blogspot.com/p/bee-plants.html" target="_blank">Bee Plants</a> page to bring it up to date! Here's the newest profile:<br />
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Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) is a small evergreen tree that adds an exotic look to our Northwestern gardens with it's large glossy leaves. This plant is a native to south-central China and while it does need slightly warmer weather than our area can provide to produce mature fruit, it will still flourish as an ornamental. New leaves will be fuzzy red to yellowish in color and slowly mature to a dark green. Stems of the tree are light brown and also slightly fuzzy and while it looks delicate is actually pretty tough in our climate. In December it will produce clusters of whitish flowers that give off a sweet scent that can smelled for a distance. Once established trees will show a degree of drought tolerance, however they have a shallow root system and care should be taken to not disturb the soil under the canopy.<br />
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Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica)</div>
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Here's the Ballard daughter hive on 12/5/2014. If you can't see the video, use the following link:</div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efljOTnXEKY&feature=youtu.be">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efljOTnXEKY&feature=youtu.be</a></div>
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Crimson clover is slowly growing in my planters as a winter cover crop, and am thinking I should start it earlier next year. Hopefully the birds and squirrels let some of it survive till spring so that it can do it's magic to amend the soil, and maybe bloom to provide an early nectar source.<br />
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Bodnant Viburnum has come into bloom.</div>
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Mahonia powers through our winters essentially immune to whatever mother nature throws at it. They are amazingly drought tolerant as well.</div>
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Hive checks (12/5/2014)<br />
Ballard daughter<br />
It was 52F today with calm weather and I did a full inspection. This is the latest point in the year I've ever done a full inspection on any hive. The queen looked good and I found a patch of brood across 3 frames. Largest patches of brood were on the sides of the comb facing the back of the hive away from the entrance. The brood nest started on frame 5 in from the entrance. I saw a few 7-8 day old larvae in the brood nest as well which means they were raising brood during the last cold snap. On the very last frame of the brood nest I found a small cluster of dead/dying bees that couldn't get around the comb to the warmer parts of the cluster. The side of the comb there were on also didn't have any honey stores left. They are currently robbing honey from the Roma hive and I moved some of the best frames into the hive to save them effort. These bees definitely have Italian traits.<br />
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Dead bees at the end of the cluster on a side of comb with no food reserves.</div>
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They have drones! There were more than just these two.</div>
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The queen is laying!</div>
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I often find wax moth larvae trying to hide in the grooves above the top bars. They don't actually get into the hive and are usually safe unless I'm inspecting which exposes their hiding spots.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE_ND2iXyzhyphenhyphenH-Ez6ydpmCSWHUMn_a3I8ajfxjcckvnMy1H8bPrOrTh9eqYDfIVUEjxGK2Fd4rFP2yVpVr_ImbutQtR_XZRBy20Et5QYo49LNH30MEScryla-KijWemcGDoH1c4oQUG0s/s1600/P1120384.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE_ND2iXyzhyphenhyphenH-Ez6ydpmCSWHUMn_a3I8ajfxjcckvnMy1H8bPrOrTh9eqYDfIVUEjxGK2Fd4rFP2yVpVr_ImbutQtR_XZRBy20Et5QYo49LNH30MEScryla-KijWemcGDoH1c4oQUG0s/s1600/P1120384.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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There were a few frames like this and I didn't want to brush off the bees for a better photo but the brood is there in the middle and there was also uncapped larvae.</div>
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Roma<br />
Sadly they didn't make it. I moved the best frames of honey to the Rosemary daughter, Ballard daughter and Rose hives. <br />
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This is what it looks like when comb is torn open to get the honey. Oddly I never see this rough behavior when they are opening their own combs to get honey. Perhaps they just clean it up better when it's their own comb.</div>
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Scriber Creek<br />
I thought it was odd there was no activity and when I took a look was surprised to find they died in the last cold snap. I last inspected them on 10/5/2014 and they looked great and didn't see signs of disease. There didn't seem to be very many dead bees on the bottom of the hive and I did notice what think were a few zombie bee flies (Apocephalus borealis) running around. I find it interesting the flies survived freezing weather without the benefit of a warm bee cluster. I pulled a few random dead bees from brood cells and a few did have varroa and signs of DWV which I had never seen in this hive before. In October they really would only have had one more brood cycle for winter bees which seems odd they would have crashed that fast.<br />
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Rose<br />
No inspection, but swapped an empty frame in the back for one with capped honey and pollen.<br />
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Rosemary daughter<br />
No inspection and filled the back of the hive with honey bars.<br />
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Hive checks (12/6/2014)<br />
Visual Checks on the Ballard, Rosemary, Solis and Dyno hives and they all had entrance activity.<br />
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-88607757157562274992014-11-30T12:45:00.000-08:002014-11-30T12:45:00.411-08:00Winter Storms Have Arrived<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Winter storms are here and we have just started our second below freezing cold spell for the year. If hives aren't setup with food near the cluster these long cold spells can quickly starve them. The tricky part about overwintering in the Puget Sound area is we bounce around during winter from warm to cold weeks. This means they are burning more energy looking for forage on warm days and they are also breaking up the cluster. Studies have shown bees do better when they have a consistent cold that keeps them inside most of the winter with an occasional nice day to do cleansing flights. On the plus side these long cold spells are also good for finishing off other pests like the yellow jackets that don't have a food reserve to keep them going.</div>
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Snow on the Aster stems.</div>
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A good roof should keep the hive body dry. Another perk to the top bar hive is that we would need about 4 feet of snow before it would be high enough to start blocking the entrances.</div>
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Winter blooming Camellia provides pollen.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8nWa3TZzMU-RqXIghA2WQHWGDMgwksVd8swWcIL2iN1SV17sc1hyphenhyphenkky1mJruQxBNmX7LRyEkQ28G7XIiOTO42ZiUUZLn0iOqqfczR2COvjgNSRVwsx4o4FSvywjcjqnFL5dEaA_8Lzfc/s1600/P1120362.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8nWa3TZzMU-RqXIghA2WQHWGDMgwksVd8swWcIL2iN1SV17sc1hyphenhyphenkky1mJruQxBNmX7LRyEkQ28G7XIiOTO42ZiUUZLn0iOqqfczR2COvjgNSRVwsx4o4FSvywjcjqnFL5dEaA_8Lzfc/s1600/P1120362.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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False holly (Osmanthus heterophyllus) is a good mid November bloomer.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsaE1L-VEBjgia99fzXcUNFENV296WJmfjUP1sVhwrI8aIfZznk_KpfTDZzSH72-pw_lg51874137PdnwHrxjZM7qmADczDU_tOHg1667hhghey1CXMJH6y9YpUH1mUp_DKpaCu67oP-8/s1600/P1120368.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsaE1L-VEBjgia99fzXcUNFENV296WJmfjUP1sVhwrI8aIfZznk_KpfTDZzSH72-pw_lg51874137PdnwHrxjZM7qmADczDU_tOHg1667hhghey1CXMJH6y9YpUH1mUp_DKpaCu67oP-8/s1600/P1120368.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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With a few warm days we've seen some Dandelions come back into bloom.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZLgRBc9JM-cJPQlwAcOIS-mNk05wwo291HaDPwgHrk-feG-VU-ZkPYIk3O7mbO_I1y7DHjVsFoNr55tpwfeBvpBKr_mSd3tYY1qUmaffQSzkF7k4iBcApKRWAwgK1bOghUhXHNyvmYs/s1600/P1120345.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZLgRBc9JM-cJPQlwAcOIS-mNk05wwo291HaDPwgHrk-feG-VU-ZkPYIk3O7mbO_I1y7DHjVsFoNr55tpwfeBvpBKr_mSd3tYY1qUmaffQSzkF7k4iBcApKRWAwgK1bOghUhXHNyvmYs/s1600/P1120345.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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This Fennel plant is putting out blooms a bit late in the season.</div>
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Hive checks (11/8/2014)<br />
Rebel Daughter<br />
The brood diseases I saw last inspection have killed them. I split up the resources between the Roma and Ballard Daughter hive. This hive and queen line had struggled every year just to survive.<br />
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Every year I find a few overwintering yellow jacket queens. Usually they are under the hive roofs in living hives. In spring they will wake up and start new colonies assuming nothing squishes or eats them. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWavGXP8FxbhuleBbawY2zv17Ki2FDo4DgfE2K5OJTLWXEjk-es9brk-ler1DNmto9v3R4Yzb8iyKf9jApQIH9X1MHYwrx4oWIF4dXRKJre0S_NbFw7A_O-GobXZgqPnbV6en8_NgL-kQ/s1600/P1120332.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWavGXP8FxbhuleBbawY2zv17Ki2FDo4DgfE2K5OJTLWXEjk-es9brk-ler1DNmto9v3R4Yzb8iyKf9jApQIH9X1MHYwrx4oWIF4dXRKJre0S_NbFw7A_O-GobXZgqPnbV6en8_NgL-kQ/s1600/P1120332.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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If you see brood like this in your dead-out, your hive was sick.</div>
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Ballard Daughter<br />
I checked a few frames in the cluster and they still have a good amount of brood coming and also saw larvae. There are a good number of bees in this hive, and I was surprised to see this conservative hive still raising brood.<br />
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Brood in November.</div>
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Roma<br />
They are still holding on, an I didn't look much past the last frame they were clustered on. Moved the best honey frames from the Rebel Daughter hive next to the cluster.<br />
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Solis<br />
They looked like they were doing good and have gotten ahead of the brood diseases. They appear to have a good setup for winter and the hive is now full of comb they inherited from the Luna hive. Now the question is whether they have enough bees to keep the cluster warm during storms.<br />
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An Assassin bug hiding under the cover. I've been seeing these around everywhere this year.</div>
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Luna<br />
I was surprised to see them already gone. I knew they were sick, but they had a lot of bees and I was thinking they would make it a little later into winter.<br />
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Quickdraw<br />
They didn't make it and the hive was getting robbed. Brood disease took them out quickly.<br />
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Plum Creek<br />
They weren't able to recover form the brood disease either and were gone. The queen was oddly still alive, but she was alone minus a few robbers and yellow jackets. I stuck her in a cage and she's on my desk at the moment. There isn't anything I can do with her unless I stumble across queenless hive in the next day or so which is not likely to happen since I don't plan to inspect anyone else right now.<br />
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Dyno<br />
They appear to have gotten ahead of the brood disease and had a good number of bees. Didn't inspect further than the last frames and they were robbing out the other hives. The hive is now full of the excess honey frames from both Plum Creek and Quickdraw.<br />
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Hive checks (11/27/2014)<br />
Roma<br />
Saw robbing activity between the Ballard daughter and Roma hives, but didn't inspect with the weather changing. I suspect the Roma hive either died during the last cold spell or is too weak to stop robbing.<br />
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-79134419779931593052014-11-03T22:24:00.002-08:002014-11-03T23:58:43.301-08:00Halloween Brings Gloomy Weather to the ApiaryUp until a week ago we still has some summer flowers blooming and now after being soaked with several inches of rain there is hardly any sign of them left. With the recent weather change I think it is safe to say summer is officially gone and the hives aren't going to get too many good foraging days again until March. Hives are still raising brood and have managed to build up good stores of honey and pollen for the winter. The surplus pollen doesn't keep forever like honey, but will last a few months and will help fuel winter brood production giving hives a head start on spring buildup. I typically see brood production until mid-November in hives. However we don't have enough warm sunny days between late Nov and Mid-Jan that I can get in enough inspections to definitively say when (or if) brood production ever completely shuts down.<br />
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There was interest in keeping bees treatment free at the meeting this month and I wanted to reiterate a few important points related to getting started (based on my opinions) that help to make some people successful when others might fail:<br />
<ul>
<li>You should start with bees that are adapted to the local climate. Local bees will in general outperform bees imported from somewhere else and will respond quicker to the season changes to build up and will overwinter better.</li>
<li>In addition to locally adapted bees you want to get genetics from lines that have been kept treatment free if at all possible.</li>
<li>Avoid using wax foundation that retains chemical residue. Let them build comb and allow them to regress the cell size. The thought here is that smaller bees reach adulthood faster which may give them an advantage. Also there is a lot of research yet to be done on the overall micro-flora of the hive and clean wax will provide a better foundation for this to develop like it would in nature.</li>
<li>Having an semi-remote apiary, which is not possible in an urban environments. I have found that there are on average 50-75 other beekeepers within a mile radius anywhere in the Seattle city limits. With so many people importing bees every year this creates a wave of foreign drones which can and will wash out any localized genetics you have with each queen mating. </li>
<li>Luck. You can't plan for this. Perhaps this means you luck out with a great genetic line. Or perhaps this means your bees don't get exposed to a pest or disease and ultimately do very well for awhile. It may take you awhile to realize which kind of luck you have.</li>
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The take away here is that there are a lot of variables with going treatment free and some of them exist outside of your control, especially in an urban area. To be successful it is necessary to work with other beekeepers to achieve common goals knowing that it may take several years to identify good genetic lines. Simply applying treatment free approaches to the CA package you purchased is not likely to yield rewarding results in the long run. With that said local queens are next to impossible to find in spring so you will likely need to start with a non-local package with plans to re-queen as soon as local queens are available in summer.</div>
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Chrysanthemum "Hillside Sheffield" is a good pollen and nectar source. Finding bee friendly mum's is a challenge in a market saturated with all-petal varieties.</div>
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English Ivy is a plentiful fall food source around the city and offers pollen, nectar, and an unmistakable musky scent.</div>
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Rosemary blooms pretty much all year round if in a sunny location and is a good nectar source.</div>
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Hardy Impatiens (Impatiens omeiana) is another nectar source.</div>
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Tea (Camellia sinensis) is in bloom and a good pollen source.</div>
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Viburnum tinus "Laurustinus" is an evergreen shrub native to the Mediterranean with a long winter blooming period that starts in November and can last until late spring. They produce slightly fragrant clusters of white and light pink flowers that stand out against their dark glossy green leaves. These shrubs are fairly versatile and bloom best when given a sunny or partially sunny location with regular watering. When plants become established they can even show drought tolerance qualities during our long dry summers. They need minimal pruning to maintain shape over time and can be a good pick for low maintenance hedges. Their shiny dark blue berries are a food source that attracts birds and other wildlife.<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">Viburnum tinus is a winter food source.</span></div>
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Seven-Sons-Tree (Heptacodium miconioides) is an early fall bloomer and buzzing with bees.</div>
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A few Dahlias are still hanging on.</div>
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Choisya ternata is actually a spring bloomer, however it's pretty common around the city to see them putting out a few flowers in early November.</div>
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I think this one is a Chrysanthemum "Redwing" and it's another good option for bees.</div>
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Fatsia japonica is a nice evergreen shrub with large maple tree sized leaves that does surprisingly well here in the Puget Sound. They are just starting to come into bloom and are a good pollen and nectar source.<br />
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Toad Lily (Tricyrtis) is a nectar source.</div>
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Asters are still providing pollen and nectar.</div>
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Hardy Fuchsia (Fuchsia magellanica) is a nectar source.</div>
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Hive checks (10/11/2014)<br />
Moved the Ballard and Rosemary Nucs to the p-patch about 5 blocks away. I put grass in the entrance holes to help them reorient, to prevent loosing too many foragers back to the old location.<br />
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Watching the next day it looked like a few foragers still came back to the old location circled around and joined with the Scriber Creek hive that was the closest hive to where their hives used to be. Both hives had a good number of bees so loosing a few hopefully shouldn't put them back too much.<br />
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Their new home.</div>
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Hive checks (10/12/2014)<br />
Dyno<br />
Overall the hive looked pretty clean and they were trying to be very hygienic. I did see some varroa and signs of DWV. I also noticed a varroa running over the queen (yuck) and got a picture before they cleaned it off of her. That's never a good sign. The hive has done a great job building up stores of honey and pollen from running lean all summer. Noticed some crystallized honey as well that is likely ivy.<br />
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This is a nice looking frame of brood.</div>
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Another good looking frame of brood at the edge of the broodnest.</div>
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Hard to see but a varroa mite is running over this queen. </div>
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Here is a good shot of the nectar crystallizing before they have a chance to even cap it. I suspect this is ivy nectar.</div>
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Plum Creek<br />
I was surprised to see DWV in this hive and it looks like they are struggling with it a bit. This is a hive that pulled out of a bad DWV outbreak last fall and then did wonderful all spring and summer. Seeing how both the child hives are also fighting DWV. I'm thinking that perhaps the genetic line just isn't quite got what it takes. The hive has good stores of honey and pollen. Closed them down to one entrance hole.<br />
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The queen is still trying to pull them out of it, but you can see a few varroa on worker bees in this photo.</div>
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Quickdraw<br />
Like the other two hives this hive is also dealing with DWV. Their population has dropped off significantly from what it was at last inspection. Decent stores of honey and good stores of pollen. Closed them down to one entrance hole. Like the other hives I was seeing good hygienic behavior in the hive.<br />
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Lots of pollen stored to use in late winter.</div>
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Hive checks (10/19/2014)<br />
Roma<br />
There are a good number of bees in this hive and they have good stores of pollen and honey saved up. They are still dealing with DWV and the brood nest is just a small area on a few frames.<br />
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You can see a bee in this photo with a varroa on it. </div>
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Rebel Daughter<br />
There are just a few frames of bees left in this hive and it doesn't appear they were able to get ahead of the DWV issues. The bees that are left all look healthy, but the cluster just isn't going to be big enough to survive a winter storm. I've been nursing this line of queens along for several years and perhaps it's for the best. They were never much fun to inspect being so aggressive and have never produced a surplus of honey.<br />
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-55495148849485213122014-10-07T23:41:00.001-07:002014-10-09T23:31:08.452-07:00Treatment Free Bees and Assessing Hives for Winter SurvivabilityThe long days of summer have faded and hives are making the last push to; raise winter bees, pack in pollen, and cap/dry nectar. Unfortunately this is also the time of year that newer beekeepers start to panic because there might not be enough food for winter, or they are seeing disease take over. As a treatment free beekeeper I get a lot of questions about what do when someone sees one of these issues occurring in the hive. The answer almost always comes back to the fact that if you are seeing something in October, then you are already too late. Winter planning should be underway by August and waiting until October is too late to do anything from a treatment free approach. Switching to last minute treatments plans to fix already sick winter bees is likely to do little to help them survive.<br />
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I often run up against this "idea" of treatment free beekeeping and desire to not use chemicals, vs. the often cold reality of what treatment free really means. Mother nature is not kind and will kill the weak, so by going treatment free what you are doing is letting genetically weak hives die. This is made difficult by the fact that there are a lot of bad genetics out there so if you aren't getting queen genetics from someone that is having success with treatment free you are likely going down a difficult road and are going to loose a many hives along the way. <br />
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For me, having successful treatment free bees means that I am able to get the same genetic lines of bees through multiple winters. Everything in the Northwest is a race to winter, so often there is not enough time to breed a new queen in June, then have the workers of the hive turnover with the new queens genetics, and then assess hygienic traits of the offspring before fall with enough time to try and replace a queen again to prevent total hive death should the hive not have desirable traits. The assessment period for all practical purposes is really from Summer to following Spring.<br />
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Having a single hive that survives for a few years is not the same as having a lineage survive multiple years. Sometimes excellent hives only produce 10% good queens/hives and sometimes it's 90%, but rarely do you get 100% that are as good as or better than the mother hive. The odds of a treatment free locally raised queen surviving a Seattle winter are better than the odds of say an imported CA queen, however that doesn't mean you can't get great CA queens and crappy local queens. For this reason you never really get to a point where you have that perfect apiary of treatment free bees. You are always working to breed from the strongest hives and working to maintain those good genetics from year to year. This is especially true in the city where you have a saturation of foreign genetics every spring from imported bees. My solution to this is that I make multiple nucs in summer from my best hives to take into winter which improves my odds for getting a few good queens/hive through winter.<br />
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Passion fruit vine provides nectar and actually overwinters well here.</div>
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Getting nectar from the last of the Lavender blooms.</div>
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Knotweed is a good nectar source if you have it around.</div>
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For some reason they really like broken granite pieces over all other types of rocks. Maybe it's just easy to hang onto, or maybe it's leaching some trace minerals.</div>
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Asters are the winners for fall blooms and a great nectar and pollen source.</div>
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More Aster blooms.</div>
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Romneya coulteri is CA native poppy and provides pollen. However this one is growing next to a patch of Feverfew which will likely keep the bees away.</div>
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Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) is biannual herb and NOT bee friendly.</div>
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Another type of Aster in bloom (Aster frikartii), and one of my favorites. This one blooms a little less densely than the others but seems to start blooming sooner and doesn't stop until it freezes.</div>
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Cosmos can stand out in fall.</div>
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Some varieties of Sunflowers also last into fall.</div>
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Another Knotweed photo and in this case she is collecting pollen.</div>
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Clover is blooming and a good nectar source.</div>
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Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) is a nectar source.</div>
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Kangaroo Apple (Solanum laciniatum) is in bloom.</div>
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Stonecrop (Sedum) can be a nectar source. I think they can be stingy when they give out nectar and I've only see bees on these when they are in direct sunlight.</div>
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Catmint (Nepeta) has been blooming since spring and is still going.</div>
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Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus)<br />
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The Rose of Sharon comes to life in late summer with a long lasting display of tropical looking flowers that last until fall. This late summer blooming shrub provides both pollen and nectar for hungry bees trying to find food at the end of the summer dearth. Mature plants can get to 10-12 feet tall and are hardy in the northwest if planted in a sunny location that gets regular water during dry stretches. There are many varieties and colors available to pick from, but try to avoid the double petaled varieties that make it harder for bees to access the pollen and nectar. Another plus is that blooms are produced on new growth so winter pruning isn't going to set them back for the season. The only negative is that they are deciduous and often stay in a long dormancy period coming out of winter and may look dead until early summer.<br />
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Crape Myrtle<br />
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These fast growing trees add a tropical look to our northwest gardens with their sweet smelling blooms at the end of summer. The flowers of these trees range in colors from red to white, and have also evolved to attract pollinators by producing two types of pollen. One is a false bee friendly pollen that is well suited for bee digestion, and that other pollen is used for fertilization. These trees have also been known to produce honeydew if aphid infestations get out of control, which would also attract bees when nectar is scarce. Originating from southeast Asia, they have moderate water requirements and some newer hybrid varieties are able to perform well here in the northwest if given a full sun location. Crape myrtles produce flowers on new growth and will need light pruning to keep them in shape. In addition to their late summer flowers they also have striking fall color when their leaves change as well as attractive multicolored pealing bark.<br />
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Hive Checks (8/31/2014)<br />
Solis<br />
Both the hives at this location are under heavy patrol by yellow jackets. Did a quick inspection of Solis and they are light on resources and I will need to steal some from the Luna hive to get them through winter. There were some signs that DWV had returned.<br />
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Luna<br />
Closed up one of the entrance holes so that they only have three now. They were a little on edge because of the yellow jackets so only did a quick inspection. They have good stores, but mostly older from early summer and it didn't look like any new stores had been added recently.<br />
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This queen still seems small to me.</div>
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Dyno<br />
Contrary to what I've seen previously they were storing nectar. Not much capped yet, but it's a good sign to see nectar coming in this time of year. The population looked good with an excellent brood pattern.<br />
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Plum Creek<br />
This hive sits at ground level and was being targeted by yellow jackets over the other hives. I cleared some weeds so there would be fewer places for them to hide. The hive is clearly in defensive mode and I skipped inspecting them.<br />
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Quickdraw<br />
Lots of brood in this hive and they have a decent amount of stores. They look to be in good shape for winter.<br />
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Hive Checks (9/30/2014)<br />
Roma<br />
Gave them some crushed comb pieces to lick clean. Inspection looked good. Saw a few bees with DWV but they seemed to be keeping it under control. Good stores of pollen and honey. Most of their stores are towards the front of the hive with the brood towards the back.<br />
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Still going strong.</div>
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Nice frame of brood.</div>
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Still raising drones!</div>
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Here is one of the all black bees. Also notice the drones are still allowed in this hive. Seems that this queen mated with a lot of drones form different places.</div>
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Some nice frames of pollen which they will put to good use in late winter and early spring.</div>
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Hive Checks (10/4/2014)<br />
Ballard Daughter<br />
Activity has been slow for this hive much like the mother hive in the Ballard Nuc. They have condensed down and have a tight broodnest with an excellent laying pattern. I would like to see more stores around the broodnest. The combs are mostly empty with the top 3-4 inches capped honey. The whole hive is like this which isn't a good clustering setup for winter unless they can keep moving back all winter from comb to comb. I'd also like to see the hive more densely populated. They could easily be stuffed in one of my nuc hives. I pulled 6 mostly full honey frames from the Rebel hive and put them next to the broodnest. Saw a few bees with DWV.<br />
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Very nice brood pattern.</div>
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The queen looks good.</div>
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Here's a winter bee just emerging. Winter bees tend to look slightly wider than summer bees.<br />
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Rebel Daughter<br />
Things aren't looking good and it seems that DWV is getting ahead again. It wasn't looking good in spring and then they seemed to turn things around over summer where it was pretty much gone. However now it's back and the broodnest is small and I don't think they will make it through an extended cold spell.<br />
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Here is the queen.</div>
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Ballard Nuc<br />
The nuc is populated with bees and they seem to be in good shape for winter. I almost think this queen would do good in a nuc most of the year as they really haven't done much this year. Saw some signs of DWV.<br />
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This old queen is still going.</div>
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Tight brood pattern.</div>
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Rosemary Nuc<br />
The hive looks awesome and the bees have that healthy glow/shine to them. Frames are heavy with honey and covered in bees. There are some pollen stores building up as well.<br />
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Brood in any open space. I'm not going to be too critical here because the hive is out of space and they are backfilling.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The queen looks good.</div>
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Rose Nuc<br />
For a late swarm they are doing great and surpassing even their mother hive in the Rosemary Nuc. The frames are heavy with honey and the bees are looking great. They are even building comb with surplus from whatever sources are still producing nectar.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice brood pattern. They are filling in a little better than in the mother hive.</div>
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Now that's a honey arch!</div>
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The queen looks well cared after.</div>
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They are drawing new comb! </div>
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Hive Checks (10/5/2014)<br />
Solis<br />
Things looks good and they have been storing nectar and pollen. The brood pattern looked good and only saw a couple bees with DWV. Gave them a partial frame of capped honey so they should be in good shape for winter.<br />
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This queen seems to have gotten a little darker.</div>
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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Luna<br />
Unlike the sister hive I don't think they are going to make it. DWV has taken hold and they are really struggling. This was the stronger hive of the two and still has a good number of bees, but they don't look like healthy winter bees. This hive looks like most of the other queens I've had in this line going into fall with the exception of the sister and mother hives.<br />
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The queen is trying to pull them through.</div>
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Scriber Creek<br />
There are a lot of bees in this hive and they look great and are super clam. The brood nest is looking solid and they have pollen and nectar buffering the brood on practically every comb. There are a few combs at the back that are empty and the combs in the front are mostly pollen stores. I don't usually see them pack pollen back into the broodnest frames like this, but I think it's a great trait to have and will benefit them well in the spring buildup or if the weather is cold. Also interestingly this hive has a small patch of winter drone brood, and also a few drones hanging around. This hive seems to have a lot of qualities that would benefit it coming out of winter in the Northwest and has the potential to do great next year. I'll likely have to watch them for early swarm attempts.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice brood pattern with pollen and honey arch.</div>
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She is a well liked queen.</div>
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Drone brood coming.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Lots of pollen surplus.</div>
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They like their drones.</div>
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Rosemary Daughter<br />
This is looking like a great line of bees. Like the mother and sister hives, this hive is also doing very well. They have a good number of bees in this hive, a great brood pattern, and good stores. I haven't noticed aggressiveness outside the hive, but there weren't very happen to get inspected today.<br />
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Very nice brood pattern.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Vz5xdeyKBNxLr2xAM8V1DmV5SMytE3FRszLAv1TTcV2KZW61jUjpOEHBZwI9W0KQD_IBVFEBRwiLhplgEvmFDoiiGmseO1E8HH3fdoJqaCGNC-aMWKcRNaT2LjJlYuausKSbheTe36Y/s1600/P1120287.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Vz5xdeyKBNxLr2xAM8V1DmV5SMytE3FRszLAv1TTcV2KZW61jUjpOEHBZwI9W0KQD_IBVFEBRwiLhplgEvmFDoiiGmseO1E8HH3fdoJqaCGNC-aMWKcRNaT2LjJlYuausKSbheTe36Y/s1600/P1120287.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Another well liked queen.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyHxoX07E4iIEKTxdiStV0RtuiImxYj_6uqx7FdypTmlJbQGoVzBRNn7iFOpOrEJwlPPnpN9kGCchyphenhyphenhMxEa3zWrezIht4_c29Xi1lJDl7uE3x1YG1G2gSlbKsvC7LLlaYZa7FTYBYCwo/s1600/P1120291.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyHxoX07E4iIEKTxdiStV0RtuiImxYj_6uqx7FdypTmlJbQGoVzBRNn7iFOpOrEJwlPPnpN9kGCchyphenhyphenhMxEa3zWrezIht4_c29Xi1lJDl7uE3x1YG1G2gSlbKsvC7LLlaYZa7FTYBYCwo/s1600/P1120291.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-21779855184102890482014-09-02T16:49:00.001-07:002014-10-04T23:52:09.465-07:00Late Summer Flowers Are An Ossais in the DearthPreparing for winter and surviving the summer dearth can be challenging for hives. Hives have to conserve resources and try to find as much food as they can all while trying to avoid predators. Yellow jackets circle around hives this time of year like sharks, waiting for a weak bee to fall to the ground or get knocked off balance while entering the hive. Dry soils also make finding nectar rich flowers a challenge and bees need to visit more flowers to find food. All of this is happening while hives are raising bees that will need to survive months until spring rather than a few mere weeks which makes good nutrition even more important. <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Copse; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">Malva sylvestris 'Zebrina' is a desirable pollen and nectar source.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmtutrA7cHmTm0mMdEDAdNP1mrLEUElyWmwKYSV_v2f5hG_B8kaGUI8bayipl0ej4BLhBt9FAainIlNcCT4hrOy_RH0a7cMAEVx34I1iBeYsC_pEmDyQZsmfE673KfUC11weOuEhniFM/s1600/DSC_0326.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmtutrA7cHmTm0mMdEDAdNP1mrLEUElyWmwKYSV_v2f5hG_B8kaGUI8bayipl0ej4BLhBt9FAainIlNcCT4hrOy_RH0a7cMAEVx34I1iBeYsC_pEmDyQZsmfE673KfUC11weOuEhniFM/s1600/DSC_0326.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) is a nectar source.</div>
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Fireweed is a great nectar source if you have a lot of it around.</div>
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Heather is in bloom and a nectar source.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-gjp-7snQfwoBA5SEL5KS-akzr_Ws2c5Lu_lUpuboW0lhZrmHRSumYkuPAg4zsEseeQbOoAqkshqY_SIclf3cv41i9NULTmTGyKVTijwZmMihVABZIdpMxptE3dGMiYJ9EtIQAqRq4I/s1600/DSC_0297.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-gjp-7snQfwoBA5SEL5KS-akzr_Ws2c5Lu_lUpuboW0lhZrmHRSumYkuPAg4zsEseeQbOoAqkshqY_SIclf3cv41i9NULTmTGyKVTijwZmMihVABZIdpMxptE3dGMiYJ9EtIQAqRq4I/s1600/DSC_0297.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Sunflowers are a good pollen and nectar source.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwo023M3QqFCUs4AdTRXPnA_8uJomXfgnlE56oEts1i7kkFdb6SwJ443QUekUNc_2OWWmsr5HtCnJLN-c89uhE5dmHQUXyR-YQClJu8Y_ei9wF-YWcwluDJyfpeTcFzw4Qglqz0KH2k0/s1600/DSC_0298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwo023M3QqFCUs4AdTRXPnA_8uJomXfgnlE56oEts1i7kkFdb6SwJ443QUekUNc_2OWWmsr5HtCnJLN-c89uhE5dmHQUXyR-YQClJu8Y_ei9wF-YWcwluDJyfpeTcFzw4Qglqz0KH2k0/s1600/DSC_0298.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Knotweed is a good nectar source if you have any around. This is usually a #1 suspect to eradicate on noxious weed lists.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdt1yquUzxkxRHBF6dX-5dcJCTQIY9z_fUl5o94kw8Iya_pcNdQlix0BHhBKv67RhNkLe5OBkzIhhuhGOdq4vqeZ0IGDtfGSnCcyrFwyLabp4bhzw9z6wvBXWOTqwj-kMY2MdYhn8N5I/s1600/DSC_0299.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdt1yquUzxkxRHBF6dX-5dcJCTQIY9z_fUl5o94kw8Iya_pcNdQlix0BHhBKv67RhNkLe5OBkzIhhuhGOdq4vqeZ0IGDtfGSnCcyrFwyLabp4bhzw9z6wvBXWOTqwj-kMY2MdYhn8N5I/s1600/DSC_0299.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Calendula officinalis is easy to grow and attractive to the girls.</div>
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Oregano is still blooming in some areas and covered in bees.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR41qKcqCPtLEVbIDNhyYyCSzUDMbd_uh_e7a2jQZoUsog12ZbvIn2VWCZR5uOszE3JQyknnLtGO9zErGiq-EaRSxnh6FjrpFYZzIAISW7vkDrR5AEzNCuYe-kkLdeHSS3o5H0rXExN48/s1600/DSC_0336.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR41qKcqCPtLEVbIDNhyYyCSzUDMbd_uh_e7a2jQZoUsog12ZbvIn2VWCZR5uOszE3JQyknnLtGO9zErGiq-EaRSxnh6FjrpFYZzIAISW7vkDrR5AEzNCuYe-kkLdeHSS3o5H0rXExN48/s1600/DSC_0336.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Borage is an excellent nectar source.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeQ7isu3IN5K2Q-rcsKsDjXtN8w296b-6PId4GfoPwgwKR5W0eZLuqUcR1R4LIptj8Oipt4WsGVxDmAt79cZL7sOm2tlm9bQ-ABy4fulPC3yo2rQagcP5VlhLRczgAcPmzcdxDcUs_W0/s1600/DSC_0340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeQ7isu3IN5K2Q-rcsKsDjXtN8w296b-6PId4GfoPwgwKR5W0eZLuqUcR1R4LIptj8Oipt4WsGVxDmAt79cZL7sOm2tlm9bQ-ABy4fulPC3yo2rQagcP5VlhLRczgAcPmzcdxDcUs_W0/s1600/DSC_0340.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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Mint is a good nectar source.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ygZrMshxyry-lZPd7C6PGC3aGqJll5sE-6iGXLhL5ABQ0U6n85SSZceSvWQy9yjN_RiUwU3J210P-Nv2mDZGj2t23BC6Ta3aug2thiTxqeT10-zG9Uo7FnJYkrn4ZnR4PRKZA3lWFEw/s1600/DSC_0346.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ygZrMshxyry-lZPd7C6PGC3aGqJll5sE-6iGXLhL5ABQ0U6n85SSZceSvWQy9yjN_RiUwU3J210P-Nv2mDZGj2t23BC6Ta3aug2thiTxqeT10-zG9Uo7FnJYkrn4ZnR4PRKZA3lWFEw/s1600/DSC_0346.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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I don't often use cell phone camera pictures because the dimensions don't layout as nicely on the page, but it seems like the bees were posing for me so here are a few I snapped recently. <br />
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Dahlia flowers can be attractive to pollinators if you get the right varieties. If you can, resist getting the ones that are all petals and try to select varieties where you can see the pollen. I snapped this photo because of the mostly black honey bee next to what I would say was an typical Italian breed of honey bee. I have one hive with a small percentage of dark bees like this but on average Carniolan bees look more like the bee in the second Dahlia picture.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD7tRl8zcFAlQuAEjA0MxS5HZbpujS6m3e0bCc8lW11kHoD11knG93GnHJ6LJODQBK7R_6325PUI0DshjkRBMARqq21FzveyR1TNNZCeCjAfoestjx4rHOQtE3Xt7iwMU2TN473E4U96s/s1600/20140807_175749.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD7tRl8zcFAlQuAEjA0MxS5HZbpujS6m3e0bCc8lW11kHoD11knG93GnHJ6LJODQBK7R_6325PUI0DshjkRBMARqq21FzveyR1TNNZCeCjAfoestjx4rHOQtE3Xt7iwMU2TN473E4U96s/s1600/20140807_175749.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
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Another Dahlia photo with a metallic green bee and a Carniolan looking bee in flight.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqYIEPkqC_wjy4mdPFMAokYoBCP8_is0CF4XBwLUvA5pLisBtUp17nICcAkl7Lp4Vi3ecRhRESt1NpxYLWo7Obl9glp5X1C1xx4hAy5imk8aZsOR_e7Y4SrGvmjRBe4cqtSJx8mOJobSM/s1600/20140808_135951.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqYIEPkqC_wjy4mdPFMAokYoBCP8_is0CF4XBwLUvA5pLisBtUp17nICcAkl7Lp4Vi3ecRhRESt1NpxYLWo7Obl9glp5X1C1xx4hAy5imk8aZsOR_e7Y4SrGvmjRBe4cqtSJx8mOJobSM/s1600/20140808_135951.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
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Zinnia is a popular nectar source.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-WysxB9x9MjDMsLLkMR9a6oqHWp33p0nIbiTM1obJa_gjFzPsE3ntPST3S-KwNdtMMl-r3z_zJi-SqOoz1lcAny8ncktAy6ueGRDN8ZE8Nb5KuD1NZ1mcism3OkaXn5C9coj1HulNrE/s1600/20140808_131711.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-WysxB9x9MjDMsLLkMR9a6oqHWp33p0nIbiTM1obJa_gjFzPsE3ntPST3S-KwNdtMMl-r3z_zJi-SqOoz1lcAny8ncktAy6ueGRDN8ZE8Nb5KuD1NZ1mcism3OkaXn5C9coj1HulNrE/s1600/20140808_131711.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></div>
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This huge Artichoke flower is easily a feast for multiple bees at once.</div>
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Chitalpa tashkentensis 'Pink Dawn' can be a good nectar source.</div>
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Hive Checks (8/3/2014)<br />
Swarm<br />
They have gone through the 1/2 gallon of syrup I gave them in the last few days. It looked like they had mostly transferred the syrup into existing comb and they have built a new half comb in the last week. No signs of eggs yet, but I did see the queen and she looked large and ready to start laying any day now. Will keep the syrup on in an effort to help them build comb and build up.<br />
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If nothing else she is a good sized queen.</div>
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Hive Checks (8/9/2014)<br />
Solis<br />
This new queen has a tight broodnest across three frames. The queen looked good and they were making good use of the pollen and bee bread I gave them. I would expect the first of the new bees to be emerging this week.<br />
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The new queen.</div>
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Brood pattern looks pretty good for a smaller sized hive.</div>
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Luna<br />
Like Solis this hive has multiple frames of capped worker brood now as well. The pattern is solid and I even saw a few newly emerged bees (mostly light colored). I'll have to do some balancing next inspection to give the weaker hive a boost. Between the two hives there is enough food for winter at the moment and the challenge will be to raise enough winter bees to make it till next spring.<br />
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Nice brood pattern.</div>
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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I posted previously about how I saw a higher percentage of bees requesting to be cleaned in this hive than what I see in my other hives. A commenter asked what this looked like and I thought that it was a great question, but it's not easy to describe so here is a video. What you are looking for is the bee vibrating in place and not dancing in any direction or pattern.<br />
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In case the embedded video doesn't show up (I'm pretty sure it doesn't in email) I also posted the link to YouTube here: <a href="http://youtu.be/eX0MpvlUW6M" target="_blank">Cleaning dance</a></div>
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Ballard daughter<br />
Saw the new queen and she is a tad darker than her mother. She still has that young queen look but she doesn't seem to be wasting any time either and had laid a nice cluster of eggs and there were even a few 1-2 day old larvae. So that means she started laying on 8/4 and since the split was done on 7/12 that gives us 22 days, or 15 to emerge and 7 to mate and start laying.<br />
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I like to see a large group of bees form around queens when they pause like this and tells me she is a desirable queen.</div>
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Hive Checks (8/10/2014)<br />
Rose<br />
I'm going to call the swarm from the Rosemary hive Rose because the landed next to an old climbing rose. I gave them two frames of pollen and beebread I stole from the Rebel hive and have been adding syrup to help them build up resources. I was quite surprised to see that they already had capped brood. I'd say it was maybe 2-3 days into having been capped as well. Doing the bee math this is quite an impressive turnaround. Split on 7/13 and capped brood lets say in the last 2 days which means that eggs were being laid around 8/1 or just 4 days after the swarm. She is definitely ahead of the curve compared to what I've seen from other hives this year. Perhaps that is being driven by the urgency to buildup before winter and the fact that every day counts.<br />
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The queen is looking good and also well liked.</div>
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Rosemary daughter<br />
This is the sister hive to Rose and while they aren't as far along as the Rose hive there was a good amount of young brood coming and just a few cells that looked like they were a few days away from getting capped. I thought the Ballard daughter hive was being quick when I looked at them yesterday but these two queens are both a few days ahead of their pace.<br />
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A good looking light colored queen.</div>
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Hive Checks (8/15/2014)<br />
Ballard Nuc<br />
Upon opening this hive my first thought was, hey they aren't dead. I did see a few bees with DWV, but overall the larvae looked healthy and there were a lot of young healthy bees. It looks like the split gave them the boost they needed, and helped pull them out of the DWV issue that was starting to take hold. There is a lot of brood on the way and a lot of young bees in the hive. Hopefully they can make the most of fall nectar and pollen sources. Stores were low and I likely will have to give them a frame of honey.<br />
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Still going her usual slow pace.</div>
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Roma<br />
The hive looked like it was in good shape and the broodnest and honey arches looked good. I also now know which hive the completely black bees are coming from (they look like the bee pictured earlier in the Dahlia photo)! The make up maybe 1-2% of the overall population but they are impressive to see especially with bright yellow and orange pollen baskets.<br />
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This big queen is still going strong.</div>
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Hive Checks (8/18/2014)<br />
Rosemary Nuc<br />
The nuc is doing well and the queen has been busy. The frames are crammed with bees and there is plenty of brood on the way. Honey stores are still a little light.<br />
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Scriber Creek<br />
Similar to the Rosemary nuc there is a lot of brood coming and frames have good honey arches, however there is not much surplus anywhere for winter. They are going full steam ahead through this dearth and are burning stores which is more typical of what you would see with Italian strains for this time of year.<br />
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Another shot of Borage that captures late summer well.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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- JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1666392564028351989.post-3358685736555717642014-07-31T16:54:00.000-07:002014-07-31T16:54:10.625-07:00A swarm in July"A swarm in July ain't worth a fly"... at least that's what they say. In the Seattle area I would agree that swarms this time of year or later are basically doomed unless a beekeeper makes an effort AND some investment to save them. A big swarm could build enough comb but are unlikely to fill it unless they are near huge patches of Knotweed (which doesn't exist in many areas in the city) or maybe you haul them up to the mountains for Fireweed. You could also steal honey and comb from other hives or get a couple 50lb bags of sugar and feed it as syrup over the next two months and hope they store enough for winter and also raise good winter bees. However who says hobbies have to make money and if bees need saving then go for it. If you are wondering where this is headed, read about my recent swarm adventure below in the hive notes.<br />
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Echinacea is now in bloom and a good nectar source.</div>
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A bumble is resting on this Dahlia flower. Dahlia varieties with open petals can be good pollen and nectar sources. Hint - if you can't see the pollen then the bees probably can't get to it or the nectar.<br />
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Caryopteris x clandonensis is another summer favorite that is a very popular nectar source.</div>
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Asters are in bloom and provide pollen and nectar. A lot of the bright orange pollen coming is will be from asters.</div>
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Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin)<br />
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Many gardeners are surprised when they hear that we don't have many late summer flowers blooming in this area. Blooming bushes and trees make up a large portion of forage for city hives which many gardeners forget about when they think of flowers. To counter this I encourage people to plant trees and shrubs with late summer blooms to help provide abundant food sources. The Silk Tree is a good example of a late summer nectar source and can also be very appealing in the garden. These trees can range from 15 to 30 feet tall and have wide arching branches with wide flat crowns. The leaves are fern like that droop downwards at night and the wispy flowers have long silky treads that are white with pink or red colored tips. Like many good honey bee food sources the trees can be invasive in some areas. These trees can also be messy in fall and are also susceptible to several disease which can make them short lived, but fortunately they grow quickly. They prefer full sun and produce nectar in the morning hours which is often why you won't see many pollinators on them in the afternoons.<br />
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"Black & Blue" Salvia (Salvia guaranitica) has attractive deep blue flowers and also a good nectar source.</div>
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Hive checks (7/20/2014)<br />
Solis<br />
Found the new queen and she is a little smaller but looked like she had mated. I couldn't find any eggs or brood yet. Part of that might be due to the fact that the hive is smaller and doesn't have many workers left.<br />
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The new queen.</div>
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Luna<br />
Similar to the Solis hive the new queen in here looks mated. The two queens look really similar so I'm going to have a hard time telling them apart in pictures. I found some larvae laid in drone cells, but only eggs in worker cells so far. Will have to check back in a week or so to determine how well she mated.<br />
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The look-a-like sister.</div>
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Hive checks (7/26/2014)<br />
Solis<br />
The queen looked a little bigger and finally has started laying. There was a small patch of young brood and eggs in worker cells. The hive is just a few frames of bees so I stole a couple frames of bee bread from the Luna hive to help them along. Looking at my estimates this marks 22 days since I pulled the queen. Assuming they made a queen from 1-2 day old larvae a queen would have emerged about 11 days later. Seeing that I have probably 1-2 day old larvae now she would have started laying 4-5 days ago which means it took her 6-7 days to mate and start laying. Perhaps I was a bit eager last inspection to hope for eggs/brood.<br />
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Looking a little more queen like now.</div>
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She is looking for places to lay which is always a good sign.</div>
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Luna<br />
This queen also looked a little bigger and is about the same size as her sister and mother. Overall they are all slightly smaller than what I typically see for queens. Also because of their striped markings they are much harder to spot and blend in well with the workforce. <br />
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There are several newly capped drone cells (laid in drone sized cells) and she has now started laying in worker cells as well. There were multiple frames with brood in worker sized cells coming and she has the majority of the work force so it doesn't surprise me they are jumping ahead of the Solis hive. No worker brood capped just yet though which will tell me how well she actually mated. What I find odd is that she started laying almost a week ahead of the other queen and was laying drone eggs initially.<br />
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This queen started laying drone eggs right away that are already capped.</div>
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Frame of bee bread that has been fermenting to break down the pollen to release nutrients.</div>
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Dyno<br />
They have built up really well and the queen has an excellent brood pattern. She stubbornly lays out as many cells as the hive can support. Hopefully they start to bring in stores because they don't have much to speak of at the moment. They are even starting to raise drone brood.<br />
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Nice laying pattern.</div>
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The queen is looking good.</div>
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Despite the damage the queen is still using this comb. A stronger hive would have fixed the holes first and it does make me worry that they are still focused on buildup and not winter preparations.</div>
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Plum Creek<br />
They have several frames of brood on the way and a good amount of stores for winter. I'm curious how much they will build up in the next month of it they will try to maintain their size. As always they are still raising drone brood.<br />
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This is the mother queen for Luna and Solis.<br />
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Quickdraw<br />
The girls were in my face today telling me to go away, however they were not trying to sting. As with the other two hives at this location there is a decent amount of brood coming. They have stores but not enough for winter yet, and are using a good percentage of the hive for brood. Hopefully they scale back from the buildup cycle and start prepping for winter rather than burning through the little reserve they have saved. I suspect that this South facing, full sun, location is encouraging them to buildup more than I'm seeing at my other locations. I curious to see how they winter here and buildup next spring. I may have to watch for early spring swarming plans.<br />
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The queen looks good and has done a great job of building up.</div>
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Hive checks (7/27/2014)<br />
Rebel<br />
The hive is full of comb and most of it is either bee bread or nectar/honey. The nuc I introduced to the back of the hive was still the active broodnest area and the queen didn't have many options for expanding being behind multiple frames of honey. I resorted the hive combs from the entrance so that there were a few frames of honey, bee bread, broodnest, bee bread and then most of the nectar/honey stores. The laying pattern looked good and they don't seem quite as reactive as the mother hive was. No signs of the DWV that was taking a heavy toll on this hive in the spring.<br />
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Nice laying pattern on this new queen.</div>
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She looks like her mother, perhaps slightly bigger.</div>
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Rosemary Nuc<br />
The queen is aggressively laying brood to rebuild the hive. The laying pattern looked really good as well and I expect them to buildup well.<br />
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She is doing well in the nuc.</div>
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Ballard Nuc<br />
Saw signs of DWV on a few bees. The queen is being conservative as usual in her laying to repopulate the hive. I'm curious to see how they deal with the DWV now that they are in a nuc. That seems to be an ongoing issue with this queen. What I've seen is borderline hives like this don't prep for winter well and die out in November. Hopefully the new daughter queen will work out better.<br />
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She is still going at her usual slow pace which is going to make fall survival risky.</div>
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Scriber Creek<br />
The hive is full of comb and for the most part it's all in use. There seemed to be a good amount of honey stores on each frame, but no full frames of honey stored anywhere yet. The laying pattern looks good and the new daughters of this queen all look very light colored which seems to support my thoughts that this was a virgin queen. They were very clam today and I could have easily worked them without any protection.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Nice laying pattern.</div>
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A big healthy queen.</div>
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Hive checks (7/28/2014)<br />
Rosemary Split and Swarm<br />
I split the Rosemary hive on the 13th and on the 28th rather than having a new queen killing her sisters I had a new queen that decided to be a pacifist and leave the hive in a tiny swarm. Having already done a split the hive was depopulated and being that the nectar flow is now over I was surprised to discover that they would even try to swarm. <br />
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While I call the queen a pacifist for not wanting to kill her sisters the reality is that this wasn't a queen decision but rather the collective workers. Maybe they aren't localized enough to know that we have a long dearth coming, or perhaps that genetic instinct has been washed out because beekeepers always step in to prop them up with late summer feeding efforts. Another thought is that the heavy rains in the last week might have created a surge in plant nectar production that is misleading their instinct that a dearth is here. Who knows, maybe they know something I don't and it's going to be a rainy August and flowers will be plentiful. Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket.<br />
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The small swarm hiding in the branches.</div>
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The swarm was about 1.5 pounds and I hived them with some old comb, but have no idea how they would expect to build comb and fill it with stores this time of year. Not to mention with a virgin queen still has to successfully mate. I will give them a few resources and see how they do in the next few weeks. I'm curious to see how they fare and if the risk pays off. I'll give them some honey and syrup to keep them alive to see if they can survive the winter. <br />
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After hiving the swarm I looked through the originating hive and found another queen running around killing the others and piping quite authoritatively. There were a few queens cells in the process of emerging that had not yet been killed and I was able to cage them as a backup. I had one fly off while I was trying to get her to go in a queen cage and I stood still watching her go up up and away into the air. She never did come back and I held still waiting so she could orient to me. Having not come from a hive I have no idea where she will end up but wouldn't be surprised if she tried to enter one of the queen right hives nearby, which would not end well for her. However being that is was evening I also wouldn't be surprised if a bird found her before morning.<br />
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The new queen was running around piping. She would momentarily stop on the comb and vibrate against it when she made the piping sound. The rough pattern was about 15-20 seconds running and 1 second stop to pipe. I did see her cautiously inspecting the outside of a queen cell with stinger ready to make sure no one was home.</div>
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Back to the bees,<br />
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JeffJeff Steenbergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01511063123637255176noreply@blogger.com0East Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA47.6388234 -122.348867847.6174249 -122.38920829999999 47.660221899999996 -122.3085273