Andrew Siwko’s Blog #2

I opened up the hive yesterday.  The hive smelled like Elmer’s glue.  The bottom board (now watertight) was filled with slime and SHB larvae.  The combs are largely destroyed.  The queen has not been seen.

Last night I put one comb in the hive for the bees and put the rest in a cooler with dry ice.  My hope is to kill all the SHB and larvae.  There’s more honey left than I initially thought.  There’s also some pollen.  I’m hoping that the bees will be able to survive on the freeze-cleaned comb.

Pictures and updates to come…

The hive has been infested with hive beetles for as long as I can remember and this summer the infestation has grown.  I’ve been puzzling over this for some time to see whether there was anything I could do.  I tried SHB traps with oil with little success.  The beetles hide mostly in the cracks at the corners of the hive and at the end of the frames.  They also hide in the corners of the inner cover and before I removed them, under the metal strips (rails) supporting the frames.

The old bottom board that I was using had a huge gap between the boards with plenty of SHBs hiding in there.  When I took it off, there were bees underneath, so it appears that the crack was wide enough for bees to walk in and out of the bottom.  The bees were trying to gum it up with propolis.

I have the idea that I’d like to build a better hive to eliminate SHB friendly crevices, but that’s going to take more thinking.

While thinking about the SHB problem, I read the Bush Bees pages on top bar hives and on top entrances.  I decided to go to a top entrance and to replace the bottom board with a cleaner, tighter bottom board.

OK, so I didn’ t plan it quite that well.

The first step was to build a new bottom board.  I used a 2′ x 2′ plywood board with 1″ x 3″ strapping flat around the sides with 45 degree joints.  Noah and the girls helped and it came out nicely.  There was no place that I could see that a small hive beetle could hide.  We installed the new board and noticed all the SHBs on the old board with all the bees underneath.

This is when phase 2 of the plan became more obvious.  I hadn’t planned for any entrance at all.  The solution was to invert the old bottom board and put it on top of the hive with the old cover on top.  The next day, we got another bit of plywood (conveniently sitting in the garage waiting) and mounted more 1″ x 3″ strapping, but this time perpendicularly.  We then drilled three holes in the front board and mounted it on the top of the hive.  The board was longer than a hive allowing for a overhang above the entrance.  It strikes me that this is much more like the hive that was in my house a few years back.

Here’s the result:

I put the branch and the wood strip there so that the bees would reorient.  I don’t know whether it did any good, but I don’t think it did any harm.

From bottom to top here’s how it stacks up:

• bottom board
• brood box (standard 10 frame deep)
• inner cover
• top cover (with three entrance holes)
• old cover (not essential)

By the way, I didn’t spot the queen in the last inspection so I took a look again during this operation.  She was on the outside of frame 4.  Phew!

New worries:

• Will the hive overheat?
• Is there formaldehyde in the new bottom board which might bother the bees?
• Are three holes enough for the bees?  They previously had a big front gap and an unknown gap under the hive.

New hopes:

• The hive will triumph over SHB finally.
• The hive will have better climate control with fewer gaps
• The hive will have fewer pests with fewer entrances.
• Fewer bees will have to spend time gluing things shut with propolis.
• The hive will grow strong and winter over well.

Time will tell.

Saint Ambrose, patron of bees and beekeepers, pray for us.

Description later.

Pictures here:

http://linode.siwko.org/2010-08-28-inspection/

I don’t have an embedder.  I melted a hole in my foundation when I tried to use a soldering iron.  I thought to myself, hey why don’t I just wire both sides of the frame for strength and skip the embedding.

Well, after we found a queen cell on frame 7 and sent it over to Art’s house I put in a frame with wiring on both sides.  Here’s the result:

I guess that’s why there’s no information on that technique.  My current thinking is to put a strip of foundation at the top of any new frames.  As of today, it’s worked once and a second frame is in the hive.

The hive’s pretty full right now and I’m thinking of putting another deep on.  If I do, this frame’s going upstairs and a new, “starter strip” frame will be going in the main box.  I know these aren’t exactly starter strips, but what should I call these frames: one inch top foundation strip frames?

My apologies to the true starter strip beekeepers who don’t have a box of wax foundation lying around from an overenthusiastic (and knowledge-free) start.

Yesterday, on the Feast of St. Augustine, I took frame 10.

Here’s the outside of the frame.

Here’s the inside of the frame.

I cut some squares of comb and crushed and strained the rest.

The leftovers went into the double boiler.

Where I melted them.

Then poured them into a silicone mini-brownie mold.

Here’s the result.  One jar of honey, one jar of cut comb, three squares of beeswax and one square of comb for Fr. Joseph-Mary.

Not too bad.

I started with a regular deep frame and cut an inch wide strip of deep foundation which I wedged as usual.

Here’s the result.  I think the bees did a pretty good job of building out comb.  It’s some of the prettiest that I have.

This is the outside of frame one at the extreme left of the hive.

This is the back side (the inside of frame 1).

The cells look larger than in the rest of the hive.  I have a hunch that the larger cells are for drones.  I do see more large bees in the hive, but, time will tell.

I harvested frame 10 yesterday and put in another frame with a strip of foundation.  The bees will have an opportunity to build what they want there also.

This is getting interesting.

I never did post on this inspection (it’s August now and I’ve backdated the post).  Pictures here:

http://linode.siwko.org/2010-06-13-inspection/

That’s the one when I wore shorts, got stung and slashed myself with my hive tool.

Noah and I went out to inspect today.  Just as I was closing up, Noah said, “Hey Daddy, did you see that on frame 1!”  So I pulled frame 1 out again.

Noah says that I squished something.

Bees came out.

I was wearing shorts.

I got stung.

Worse, I slashed myself with my hive tool more times than I was stung.  Those things are sharp.

Action items:

1. wear long pants
2. don’t pull a frame out for a second look
3. put the hive tool down

Update:

Bee sting:

Hive tool wound:

Noah and I went out to check the hive today after the split on Thursday.  The new frame 7 was stripped of much of its foundation and there were rectangles of partially built comb falling off and some on the floor of the hive.  I’m interested in the idea of letting the bees build their own comb without foundation so I’m not going to replace this frame.  We’ll see what happens with the bits that are left.

This week I stumbled across this video on a beekeeping Trappist monk done by Virgina Currents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izvcXXoxQMQ

It looks like his frames don’t have foundation on them, but perhaps there are wires.  Interesting.

Back to the inspection.  We found the queen on the outside of frame 2.

When I opened the hive, a carpenter bee fell in.  It was surrounded by bees immediately.  I fished it out and one bee stuck with it for quite some time before it got away.

I saw and killed two hive beetles in the top brood box.  I’ve only got 5 frames up there now and the box is otherwise empty.  I guess it’s hard to defend all that open space from the beetles.

Pictures here:  http://linode.siwko.org/2010-06-05-inspection/

Art came over Thursday night between thunderstorms and we pulled out frame 7 and sent it home with him.  There was what we thought was a queen cell there during the last inspection and thought it best to allow the cell to mature in another hive.

Working with bees at night was very interesting.  The hive was full of them and they were quite docile.  When I put a replacement frame in for #7, it sane in slowly under its own weight as into molasses.

We looked in the new hive for the queen, just in case she hitched a ride.  We couldn’t see here and Art reported the next day that she was not there.  (I found her at home later).