The Multi Queen Swarm

It'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.

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.

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.  

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.  

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back to the bees,

- Jeff

When Best Efforts Don't Go According to Plan

It'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.

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.

So yeah the later happened...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Japanese Snowbell Tree (Styrax japonicus) is a good nectar/pollen source.

Bumble bee getting nectar from Lupine (Lupinus).

I usually have a hard time finding honey bees on Blackberry around my neck of the woods, but not this year.

Kiwi (male flower).

Kiwi (female flower).

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.

Lilies are in bloom.

Japanese spirea is coming into bloom and a good nectar source.

Calendula officinalis is blooming.

Raphiolepis is popular with the bees as well.

Hive Checks (5/15/2015)
Solis
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.

She has her head in a cell looking to see if it's clean and ready for an egg.

Brood pattern

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.

Luna
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.

This queen just keeps going.

Lots of brood on the way.

Hive Checks (5/17/2015)
Loyal Heights Swarm (Nuc)
The queen has started laying.  Saw a few capped worker cells.  They have only made one new comb.

She has gotten pretty big and should be a good queen.

Titan
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.

Rebel
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.

Ballard
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.

This could be either an emergency or swarm queen cell.  They would have made both based on the timing of the split.

Roma
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.

Hive Checks (5/20/2015)
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.

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.

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!).

Hive Checks (5/23/2015)
Roma
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.

One of those mostly black bees.

The queen is laying in a cell.

The queen moving around.

Hive Checks (5/24/2015)
Quickdraw
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.

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.

The queen looks good.

Dyno
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.

Lots of brood coming in this hive.

Solis
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.

This queen gets a lot of attention.

She has some bright yellow pollen on her.

Luna
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.

Still looking good.

Nice solid textbook brood pattern.

Hive Checks (5/25/2015)
Ballard
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.

So high up.

Queen Castle
Checked the three slots and found two had emerged queens.  The last one still had two unopened cells that I suspect are dead.

Opened queen cell.

The new queen is ready to go mate.  She is not her full size yet.

Hive Checks (5/26/2015)
Plum Creek (Swarm)
I was able to get the swarm down and put them in the Plum Creek hive.

Zoom shot to see the cluster better.

Moving into the hive.

Hive Checks (5/31/2015)
Rosemary
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.

She is showing her age a bit by her tattered wings.

Echo
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.

She is a big queen and should be laying up a storm.

Lots of color variations in these bees.

Queen Castle
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.

Plum Creek
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.

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.

It will be another 10 or so days before we know how well she mated.

Roma
They are trying to turnover a new generation but otherwise not much has happened in here since last inspection.

New comb with a patch of brood.

She is a smaller queen, but seems to be off to a good start.

Attis Nuc
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.

She is good sized, but I don't think she mated as well based on the worker colors.

Brood area.

Loyal Heights Nuc
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.

New comb with nice brood pattern.

Lots of nice brood on the way.

The queen looks good.

Hive Checks (6/1/2015)
Queen Castle
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.

The chain-link fence gives you a good idea how small they are.

Back to the bees,

- Jeff

A 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.

Echinacea is now in bloom and a good nectar source.

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.

Caryopteris x clandonensis is another summer favorite that is a very popular nectar source.

Asters are in bloom and provide pollen and nectar.  A lot of the bright orange pollen coming is will be from asters.

Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin)

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.

"Black & Blue" Salvia (Salvia guaranitica) has attractive deep blue flowers and also a good nectar source.

Hive checks (7/20/2014)
Solis
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.

The new queen.

Luna
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.

The look-a-like sister.

Hive checks (7/26/2014)
Solis
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.

Looking a little more queen like now.

She is looking for places to lay which is always a good sign.

Luna
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.

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.

This queen started laying drone eggs right away that are already capped.

Frame of bee bread that has been fermenting to break down the pollen to release nutrients.

Dyno
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.

Nice laying pattern.

The queen is looking good.

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.

Plum Creek
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.

This is the mother queen for Luna and Solis.

Quickdraw
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.

The queen looks good and has done a great job of building up.

Hive checks (7/27/2014)
Rebel
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.

Nice laying pattern on this new queen.

She looks like her mother, perhaps slightly bigger.

Rosemary Nuc
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.

She is doing well in the nuc.

Ballard Nuc
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.

She is still going at her usual slow pace which is going to make fall survival risky.

Scriber Creek
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.

Nice laying pattern.

A big healthy queen.

Hive checks (7/28/2014)
Rosemary Split and Swarm
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.

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.

The small swarm hiding in the branches.

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.

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.

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.

Back to the bees,

Jeff