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

Population Dynamics at Summer Solstice

There are so many variables to beekeeping that sometimes it can be hard to predict what's going to happen next in a hive because it also depends on whats happening outside the hive.  In general you want warm sunny days for good forage, but too much sunshine and the ground dries out and plats produce less nectar.  Usually in June we have a tug-a-war between rain and sunshine and the nectar flow is pretty good.  This year, in the city, it seems that June is turning out to be a so-so nectar month and we need a bit more rain.  Then by July (July 5 we always joke) we really start to dry out and the flow ends and there isn't much change until early fall.  That's a long time for them to survive on a few garden flowers and it forces hives to conserve resources and scale back.

Over the last month it seems like there has been something bee related going on every other day so my hive notes are getting a bit crazy.  However now that solstice has past we are at the top of the roller coaster and hopefully colonies can really shine in the next few weeks to bring in everything they can to get them through to the next spring.  There a few trees still coming in the neighborhood I'm looking forward to, mainly the chestnuts.  If you are reading between the lines I'm basically saying the beekeeping season will be switching in the coming weeks into dearth survival mode and winter planning for city hives.

Collecting nectar from wild Geranium.

Catmint (Nepeta) is a favorite early summer nectar source.

Spiraea japonica is a nectar producer and liked by many pollinators.

In addition to nectar, Blackberry also produces light gray/brown pollen.

Rockrose (Cistus) is a popular pollen source.

Shrub Ragwort (Brachyglottis x jubar) is another nectar source.

Hive checks (6/3/2014)
Rosemary Hive
Pulled some frames to make nucs for queen cells I got from a fellow beekeeper.  All part of the quest to try and find and promote successful queen lines that have survived several generations in the area.  Granted you loose a little bit of the original with each mating but my hope is that I'm also adding a little back into the local gene pool that doesn't get too washed out with CA genetics.  Besides my drones are plentiful and they should be able to out compete the few drones raised on foundation in CA packages.

This hive is raising a lot of worker brood to replace their losses.  Didn't see the queen, but it was late in the day and they weren't happy I was robbing frames from them.

Hive checks (6/7/2014)
Dyno
This is a new name for the Sand hive in a new location.  The theme for all the hives at this location will be based on rock climbing terms because of the high wall they are are located on top of.

Picked up a tiny swarm in North Queen Anne not far from where I used to host hives.  I didn't see the queen and have a suspicion that it's a secondary swarm and she may be a virgin.  Will check them in a week to confirm and see how they are doing.  They are getting several frames of honey left behind by Sand.

Tiny, about the size of a kids foam football.  Maybe 1 pound of bees.

Hive checks (6/8/2014)
Plum Creek
They have drawn 2 full frames and 2 partial frames and cleaned up the old comb I gave them.  They also transferred all the syrup into comb. Spotted the queen and she looked healthy and there were a few frames with open brood soon to be capped.  This swarm is off to a good start.

Here's the queen, and they seem to like her.

Luna
They are doing great and the hive is full of comb and the bar I gave them last week was almost finished.  Found 3 empty cups, and signs of backfilling.  The queen was well attended and my plans are to split them next week.

Getting a lot of attention.

Several frames of healthy looking drones.

Hive checks (6/11/2014)
Ballard
They are using most of the hive now and there is a good amount of brood coming.  There are stores of nectar but the frames seem light for this time of year so I'm hoping with all the brood coming they either start bringing in more nectar or start cutting back.  Lots of empty queen cups and not making much effort to build comb yet.  Saw one bee with a varroa mite on it.

The queen is looking good.

Hive checks (6/14/2014)
Nucs
It looks like of the 4 nucs only two have queens. One is a Rebel daughter and she was laying frames full of eggs and looked like a clone of her mother.  The other queen is from a local line and she looked big but her abdomen wasn't very long yet.  Hopefully both mated or mate well.  Combined the two queenless nucs with the local queen to give them a boost.  Maybe that will get her laying.  I noticed that one of the emergency cells they made was actually from drone larvae and saw a large drone emerging from it.  Talk about ugly.

This queen is big and could knock around those drones if she wanted, however she hasn't elongated yet.  Hopefully she mates and starts laying soon.

This is the Rebel daughter queen.  She looks good and already has a few frames full of eggs.

Plum Creek
They are still trying to make crazy comb.  Queen and brood pattern looked good.  They are off to a good start and the queen seems to be aggressive to build up quickly.

Nice looking queen.

Laying pattern isn't perfect but overall seems good.

Rebels
Found the new queen and was less than impressed with her size.  I couldn't find any eggs either but the hive is big and I could have easily have missed a patch on a frame so will give her another week.  If that doesn't work I'll combine them back with the sister queen that looks good and is laying.  Saw several drones with mites and a few drones with DWV.  I'm hoping the brood break will reset them.  Usually emergency queens are in better shape especially from a big hive like this.

Sadly that's the queen, barely bigger than a worker.  I don't have high hopes she will last very long.

Hive checks (6/15/2014)
Luna
My plan was to artificially swarm them today however with the crappy weather and upon what I saw in the inspection I decided against it.  It looks like they converted a fair amount of resources to raising brood and the hive population should triple in the next 2-3 weeks.  The queen is laying out full frames and avoiding the queen cups and the very edges of the frames.  I noticed that if it was a drone frame that she would lay right to the last cell but if it was worker there was a 3-4 cell buffer that she didn't touch.  My guess is that this is the setup for a massive buildup so they can issue multiple swarms and I will see those queen cups fill when the first wave of buildup starts emerging out.  The hive dynamics keep surprising me and they are doing well so I've held off splitting them assuming they know best.

Dyno
Did a quick check and found a queen and she had laid a solid small patch of eggs and brood.  Some larvae were close to being capped which would indicate that she started laying right away and that this was the existing queen that swarmed and not a new virgin queen from a secondary swarm.  For a small swarm like this my guess is that someone was overfeeding a package and also wasn't expanding the broodnest and thus triggered swarming conditions. If the bees were smaller I might have assumed they were from a tree or wall, but they are not regressed so likely a beekeeper mistake.

Hive checks (6/16/2014)
Rosemary
They are using about half the hive right now and they are in buildup mode again after having donated several frames to make nucs.  The growth has been slow and not as robust as what I was seeing a month ago.  The queen looked good, however the brood pattern seemed a bit spotty.

Another queen shot.

Hive checks (6/17/2014)
Picked up a decent sized swarm that I would guess to be about 5 pounds in Lynnwood at an office park near Scriber Creek.  It was about 12 feet up in a cherry tree and had started making comb.  Mostly light colored bees, but I did see a percentage of half black and half yellow and a few all black bees which I almost never see.  I'm curious what they are mixed with for those dark bees.  Not sure what hive they are going to go into so they are in a nuc for now.

Fortunately I had a step latter that allowed me to lift my nuc right up into that mass.  I still had to scoop them into the box by hand because that branch was unshakable.

Hive checks (6/19/2014)
A swarm picked one of the empty hives (well not completely empty it was full of comb) in my apiary today.  There was an eye witness account of a cloud of bees and then a massive backup/cluster as they all rushed to get into the hive.  Apparently they did in minutes what can take an hour or more on a swarm catch.

I'll leave them alone for a bit and take a peak in a week to see how they are doing.  I often hear people talk about swarms being free bees but fail to account for all the effort it takes to get them.  I'd have to say these were truly free bees and took no effort to get.  The report was that they came from a SE direction which makes me wonder if they might have crossed the lake to get here.

Hive checks (6/20/2014)
Nucs
The non-laying queen I saw in the nuc last week was nowhere to be found.  There are a couple frames of bees I'm going to combine with the Scriber Creek swarm pickup.

Rebel Daughter Nuc
Took a quick peak and the queen looks good.  Hard to comment on the laying pattern just yet as they wanted me out of there after looking at a couple frames.  It was getting late in the day and these are still the feisty workers from the old Rebel queen that only tolerate me under ideal conditions.

She looks just like her mom.

Hive checks (6/21/2014)
Ballard
They are using the entire hive at this point minus two empty combs at the very back.  They are slowly building comb, and are far more stubborn about it than the Luna hive has been.  The queen is still being conservative with her laying pattern and avoiding the worker cells along the edges of the frames like in the Luna hive.  The slow buildup strategy seems to have paid off so far for them, so now the test is to see if they can bring in nectar this late in the season.  Any surge in nectar producing plants will likely trigger them to swarm.

There's the queen, and off to the left is a bee with varroa mite.  

Hive checks (6/21/2014)
Luna
Basically the same status as last weeks inspection.  Lots of drones where flying today during the inspection which slowed things down as drones are harder to nudge out of the way.  Due to the recent swarms and the hive shuffling it was good that I could hold off another week before doing anything with this hive despite that having been my plan.

The queen pushing her way through the crowd.

The boys are heading out for some air.

Hive checks (6/22/2014)
Quickdraw
This is the new name for the old Surf hive at it's new location.  I've moved the swarm from Plum Creek into this hive.  They built 2-3 combs in the last week and the pattern is looking very nice.  They also have nice reserves of pollen and nectar built up.

The first wave of new bees are emerging out.  Most of the frames looked like this with a nice honey and pollen arch.

The two darker areas of this comb are the original lobs they made as they started building this comb.  The queen laid those cells before the comb was even built out and what I'm looking at here is the larvae are all approximately the same age in that first wave.

Here is the queen.

Dyno
The queen has been busy and is stretching them as far as she can.  I have a feeling this hive will take off with all the old comb and honey resources I left them.

Nice sized queen that is waiting for bees to emerge so she can grow this little hive further.

This was the edge of the brood nest and she has a nice solid pattern.  The other frames were all partial as well, but equally well defined.

Scriber Creek
This is what I'm calling the swarm I picked up last Tuesday.  They have drawn 6 combs in the last week.  Almost all the new combs and the three donated combs were filled with nectar or pollen and I saw NO signs of brood.  If I hadn't also seen the queen I would have thought they were queenless, however I did so I'm guessing she might have been virgin queen perhaps taking a primary swarm with her based on it's size.  Maybe the existing queen couldn't fly for some reason.  Either way hopefully she starts laying in the next week.  I combined them with a frame of bees that came from the nuc that had the non-laying queen a week ago that has since disappeared.  They are now in one of my largest nucs and are getting an additional 8 frames of drawn comb that should give the queen motivation and a place to lay.

Here she is.  She is a little smaller but looks like she is ready to lay.  Perhaps in the next week.

Back to the bees,

- Jeff