Bees: Winterizing my Hives

I tuck my bees in for the winter.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

I moved to my new place in Malaga about six weeks ago and fetched my bees soon afterward. During the month they’ve been living in their new home, they’ve pretty much settled in. Although there aren’t any food sources right now — we’re well into the autumn season — they get out and about on warm days, which we had plenty of until very recently. I’d been supplementing their honey stores with sugar water in outside feeders that I filled every two days. Now those feeders were starting to freeze and leak. With temperatures dipping into the low 30s at night, it was time to prep my hives for the winter.

Because of my beekeeping goals, it’s vital for me to ensure that all of my hives survive the winter. With an average winter hive loss in this area of about 50%, statistically I stood to lose one or two of my three hives. I wanted to beat the odds and keep all three. That was my challenge.

Bees in Winter

Although bees don’t hibernate in winter, they do slow down their activities to a near hibernation state. They bunch together for warmth in the middle of the hive. The queen stops laying eggs — or lays very few –because the workers, who don’t really do any work outside the hive in winter, live a lot longer. The drones are generally kicked out; they serve no purpose at all in the winter and can eat precious food stores.

The food, by the way, is the honey and pollen they’ve been storing all summer. Beekeepers “steal” this honey, although a smart beekeeper will leave enough behind for the bees to eat during the winter. I harvested honey very early in the season with hopes that my bees would make enough to take them through the winter. For various reasons — hive strength, availability of food, etc. — I don’t think they made enough. That means I’ll have to feed them. More on that in a moment.

The bees will go out on warmish days, mostly to stretch their wings (so to speak) and poop. But because there’s nothing flowering, there’s no work to do and they don’t stay outside long.

Mite Control

Mite infestations weaken bees, making it more difficult for them to survive the winter. My friend Don is convinced that he lost his bees last year because of mites. I’m not going to make the same mistake.

I blogged about mites back in August; you can read more about varroa mites in that post.

This year, I used three techniques to control mites:

  • Drone frames – These are special frames with cell sizes that encourage the hive to produce drone eggs. Since mites prefer drone larvae, you can simply remove a full drone frame and freeze it to destroy the mites and the drones. This works, as I detailed here. It’s a great spring/summer solution because it requires no chemicals so you don’t have to worry about contaminating any honey that might be destined for human consumption.
  • Screened bottom boards – When mites move around the hive and when bees clean themselves, mites fall to the bottom of the hive. If there’s a flat bottom board, the mites can climb back up into the hive or hitch a ride on a bee entering the hive. But if there’s a screen bottom, the mites fall through while the bees can come and go by walking on the screen. This is a great year-round solution — no chemicals and no extra effort on the beekeeper’s part (although you could add a sticky board if you were interested in capturing and counting mites). I’d installed screened bottom boards on all three of my hives when I moved them in early October.
  • Apiguard – Recommended by another beekeeping friend of mine, Apiguard is a thymol based miticide that’s used after honey season but before it gets cold; it requires temperatures of at least 60°F to work. I treated all three of my hives when I moved them in early October.

I should mention here that when I checked my hives for mites in late August, I learned that my original hive and the split from that hive had serious mite issues while the captured swarm had hardly any mites at all. In addition, that swarm capture hive is the strongest of the three. Interesting, no?

Some Notes about Feeders

Entrance feeder
Here’s an entrance feeder on one of my hives.

I’d been using entrance feeders on all my hives since mid summer, although I didn’t always keep them full. When I moved them to my home in Malaga, I was able to tend to the feeders regularly and make sure they were never empty.

Entrance feeders utilize a jar with a perforated cap that sits on a plastic tray. One end of the tray slides into the corner of a hive entrance; bees can enter beneath the jar lid and feed through the perforations. I like entrance feeders because I can always see how much feed is left. They’re also easy enough to refill — just pull off the jar, brush off any bees on the lid, open the lid, fill it up, close the lid, and replace the jar on the plastic tray. I don’t even have to suit up to get the job done.

Entrance feeders were not practical for the winter. I’d discovered that with temperature fluctuations — low 30s at night vs. 70+ in direct sun during the day — the feeders would leak. In addition, once the temperatures dropped below freezing, the contents would freeze. Not only that, but I planned to put entrance reducers in the hive and I could not do so with an entrance feeder blocking part of the entrance.

Two more alternatives include frame feeders and top feeders.

Frame Feeder
Frame feeder as illustrated in the Mann Lake catalog.

A frame feeder is shaped like a standard hive frame and is designed to slide into the place of one or two frames. Bees enter through the top where there are holes with “ladders” the bees can use to access the contents of the frame. Frame feeders can typically hold one to two gallons of feed. As a new beekeeper, I bought a frame feeder like the one shown here, thinking it would be the best solution for my hives when it came time to feed them.

I subsequently rethought that idea. The trouble with a frame feeder is that you have to open the hive and expose the bees to cold air to refill it. It’s also difficult to see how full it is. And because I initially thought I’d be spending the winter away this year, I realized it simply wouldn’t hold enough feed to keep the bees fed all winter long.

Top Feeder
Top feeder as illustrated in the Mann Lake catalog.

As my collection of hives expanded from one to three and I began seriously thinking about my winter strategy, I invested in two top feeders. A top feeder sits inside a hive box at the top of the hive, just under the inner cover. Bees enter from the bottom, through holes between two center wells. A screen enables them to crawl down to the level of the feed. Although a top feeder works with a shallow hive body, it can also work with a medium or deep hive body; I already had plenty of medium bodies.

There are three main benefits to top feeders. First, they sit on top of the hive so you don’t need to expose the bees to cold air when refilling them. Second, they hold a lot of feed — four gallons. There was a pretty good chance I could fill them each once and not have to worry about them for the entire winter. And that brings up the third benefit: it’s very easy to check the level of remaining feed because the feed is clearly visible in the wells. Oh, and how’s this for a fourth benefit: You can fill just one well with liquid feed and use the other well to provide pollen patties or some other supplement. A little bend in the screen on one side will give the bees access.

So as I got ready to prep my hives for the winter, I had three feeders for my three hives.

Prepping the Hives

On Thursday, the weather was warm enough to open the hives and prep them for the winter. I began with my weakest hive (a late summer split) and worked up to my strongest hive (a swam capture).

Before I could do any of that, however, I needed to open up the back of my bee shelter. I’d built it using good quality wood screws so I could easily disassemble and reassemble it when I needed to. Since the bees were coming and going out the front, I figured I’d access the hives from the back. (This is something my beekeeping friend Jim taught me early on.) So I used my handy battery drill to remove the six screws holding the back on and laid the plywood panel aside.

Then I suited up. I debated lighting my smoker and then decided against it. First of all, there weren’t that many bees flying around. Second, when you smoke bees, their instinct is to go into the hive and gorge themselves on honey. Although they’d eventually put that honey back — don’t ask me how; I just know that they somehow do — I didn’t think it was a good idea to encourage them to eat when they had a limited amount of available food. Besides, the suit would protect me and I really didn’t mind dealing with angry bees when I was suited up.

I got all the equipment I needed and laid it out nearby. Then, hive tool in hand, I got to work.

Split Hive

This hive has only one deep box with nine frames in it. I learned during the hive move in October that it had very little honey stored. If any colony was going to die over the winter, it would be this one. My goal was to make sure they had as much food as possible. To that end, I’d retrieved a full frame of capped honey that I’d pulled out of another hive that summer when I extracted honey. It was the seventh frame and I simply didn’t have time to extract it when I did the others. (The extractor holds three frames at a time.) I figured that I’d pull out an empty frame and replace it with this full one.

That turned out to be pretty easy to do. I found three empty frames — out of nine total frames! — in the hive. These poor bees would definitely starve if I didn’t feed them. I pulled out one empty frame on the left side of the hive box and slid the full frame into its place. Then I pulled out the two empty frames on the right side of the hive box and slid a frame feeder into their place. I had prepared a quart of sugar water and I poured that in, too. It wasn’t enough for the winter, but it was enough to get the bees started.

Before closing the hive back up, I removed the Apiguard tray, which was almost empty, and repositioned the remaining grease patty. I had at least six more of those patties in the freezer; I’d add another one when I topped off the feeder on the next nice day.

Original Hive

My original hive came from a nuc I bought back in June. It was an extremely healthy nuc that took to its new hive very quickly and produced 2-1/2 gallons of honey in a month. I consider myself very lucky to get my start with such a great colony of bees.

After extracting the honey in July and splitting off half the brood frames to a new hive, however, the health of the hive seemed to suffer. Honey production dipped and although I’d hoped the bees would produce enough honey for winter, it soon became clear that they would not. I think mites were part of that problem; when I did a mite count in August, it clearly showed a serious infestation. I can only hope my October treatment helped resolve that issue.

This hive had two boxes: a deep brood box on the bottom and a medium honey super on top. There was drawn-out comb in most of the 10 frames in the honey super, but there was no honey. I removed the entire box. Beneath that was a spacer that I no longer needed; I removed that, too. In the deep hive box, all the frames seemed full with either honey or brood cells. I didn’t want to pull any out to check more closely; there was no reason to expose the bees to the cold air more than necessary.

I removed the Apiguard tray and adjusted the remaining grease patty. Then I pulled the frames out of the medium hive box and positioned the empty box on top of the deep box. I laid in one of my top feeders and fiddled with the screen to ensure that the bees would have access to both wells. Then I took a break to make about 3 quarts of sugar water back in my RV. I brought it back to the hives, poured it into one of the wells, and closed up the hive. I’ll top off the levels on the next warm day.

Swarm Hive

At the end of June, I captured my first swarm. This became my second hive but it is now the strongest of the three. As mentioned earlier, it has very few mites.

The setup of this hive is almost identical to my original hive: two boxes with a spacer between them. I followed the same process to winterize them. There were two differences, though.

First, the honey super’s frames were nearly all built out with comb and there was some honey in several frames. None of the frames, however, had been capped. I suspect the bees were eating this honey. There was not enough honey in the frames to leave them in.

Second, when I pulled the frames out of the honey super, bees were clinging to the bottoms of several frames. I suspect this is because this hive has a much larger population that the other hive, which had no bees in the upper box at all. I used my brush to brush them down into the deep bottom box.

After removing the medium frames, spacer, and Apiguard and adjusting the grease patty, I laid the top feeder in place. Then another break to make another 3 quarts of sugar water. (I was now out of sugar; I’ll need at least another 20 pounds to top off all the feeders.) I poured the feed into one well of the feeder and closed up the hive.

Reducing Entrances

Entrance Reducer
Entrance reducer image from Wikipedia.

Each of my hive bottoms came with an entrance reducer. This is a piece of notched wood designed to fit into the entrance of a hive. You rotate it to allow a tiny opening or a larger opening.

At the bee chat I attended the other night, I got into a discussion with another beekeeper about how to set the entrance reducer. His concern was dead bees blocking the entrance to the hive, so he planned to use the smallest setting and rotate it so that the hole was slightly elevated. This would (theoretically) prevent dead bees from blocking the entrance. I thought long and hard about this strategy. I was counting on my bees to keep the hive clean by dragging out their dead. (This is what bees normally do.) Setting the entrance reducer the way he described would make it very difficult for the bees to do this.

After some internal debate, I decided to set my entrance reducers with the wider entrance in the normal position. Not only would this make it easier for the bees to drag out their dead, but it would make it possible for me to reach in with a tool and scrape dead bees out for them. The drawback: a bigger opening that could let in more cool air.

The decision made, I implemented it. First, I removed the entrance feeders. Then, using my hive tool as a lever when necessary, I slid the entrance reducers into place. Because two of my hive bottoms had non-standard width entrances, I had to use a saw to shorten two of my entrance reducers. Not a big deal.

Finishing Up

Semi-Winterized Hives
My three hives, almost ready for winter.

Finished with most of the winter prep work, I closed up the back of the hive shelter again, replacing some of the (too) long screws with shorter ones that would be easier to work with in the future. Then I gathered together all of the frames I’d removed from the hives — a total of 19 medium frames and 3 deep frames! — and packed them up in my truck. Later in the day, I’d drive them out to my hangar for winter storage with the rest of my beehive components.

I also made a list of things to do to finish up winterization:

  • Top off feeders. There was no reason why I shouldn’t fill them up to the brim on the next warm day to minimize the number of times I needed to open the hives. For now, they had enough food to keep them for at least a few weeks.
  • Wedge tops open. One of the issues other area beekeepers have had is with condensation in the winter causing mold to form inside hives. This can be remedied by inserting a stick under the hive’s top cover to allow a small amount of ventilation.
  • Consider burlap blanket for weak hive. One of my beekeeping friends, who lives in the mountains where the conditions are considerably harsher in the winter time, used a medium box filled with burlap on top of each hive for additional insulation. I didn’t think I needed that since my hives had a roof over them and two of them had top feeders which would form an additional barrier to cold air. My weak hive, however, didn’t have this top barrier. I had everything I needed except the burlap. I needed to think about this and get my hands on some burlap.
  • Colony Quilt
    Colony Quilt as illustrated on the B & B Honey Farm website.

    Cover hives with “colony quilt” blanket. I’d ordered the insulating covers from B & B Honey Farm earlier in the week but they hadn’t arrived yet. I liked the idea of the cover because I knew the dark color, when exposed to the sun, would help warm the hives. The insulating quality would help keep the warm when the sun wasn’t on them. I can’t comment on these beyond that yet; will blog about them once I’ve had a chance to check them out.

  • Place insulation under screen bottom boards. Right now, two of my three hives have nothing beneath the screen bottom boards except the palette on which the hives sit. I need to slide in some foam insulation to prevent drafts from coming up from below.

With luck, I’ll be able to finish up all these tasks this week. Only then will I feel as if I’ve done everything in my power to keep my bees alive for the winter.

Bees: Moving Them to Their New Home

I bring my bees to my Malaga home.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

Although I started keeping bees back in June 2013, I didn’t have my own place to keep them until much later that summer. Some beekeeping friends of mine generously offered to let me keep them on their very large lot in North Wenatchee. Jim set up an area for me that included a raised platform and even went with me when I bought the bees, in a nuc, and brought them back to their new home. I blogged about that here.

Later, I caught a swarm, which gave me a second hive. Because that happened right around the time I was moving to a friend’s property in Wenatchee Heights, I set that hive up there. Still later, when I decided to split my original hive to prevent them from swarming, I set up that third hive at my temporary home in Wenatchee Heights. Later in the summer, the lack of food there made it more practical to keep all my hives together in North Wenatchee where there was ample clover as a food source. So I moved the two hives there to be with the original hive.

In the beginning of October, I finally moved my RV to my 10-acre lot in Malaga. It was time to move my bees to their permanent home.

The Bee Shelter

Knowing that my bees would be facing a cold winter in a place that might get a lot of wind, I prepped a site for them prior to retrieving the hives from my friend’s house.

I chose a location close enough to my RV to make it convenient to visit them but not directly in my view of the valley. Because there’s a tall cliff to the south of my land, sunlight during the winter months is limited; I chose a location on the northern edge of my building area — a place that would get sun as early as possible in the day.

Once the site was chosen, I built a shelter on it. I had a very nice oversized palette for the floor. I set it out on the site at a slight slant that would ensure the hives would drain if they ever got rained in. I bought some lumber at Home Depot, cut to my specifications. I also bought some high quality wood decking screws; I wanted to be able to disassemble and reassemble the shelter without stripping screw heads.

My Bee Shelter
My completed bee shelter (with tiny dog for scale).

I’d bought a good battery operated drill earlier in the year and I took it and its spare battery out to the bee shelter site. I used it to drill pilot holes for the screws and to screw the shelter’s pieces together. Within an hour or so, I had a very basic shelter built: a frame with three walls and a slanted roof.

I’d bought some indoor/outdoor spray paint with the idea of using it to paint the shelter; I wound up using it to paint the 2×4 frame. Much later, after the bees had been moved in, I painted the plywood panels with outdoor paint and a roller.

The shelter faced south so when the sun reached it, the front of the beehives would be bathed in sunlight. That would help keep the bees warm and encourage them to go out.

Moving the Bees

Late one afternoon when the shelter was finished, I drove to my friend’s house where my bees were living. By then, most of the bees had gone in for the day. I stuffed rags into the hive entrances to secure them inside. I’d move them in the morning.

The next day, I returned with my pickup truck and a new package of ratchet tie-downs. I used the tie downs to secure the hive components together. One of the hives, which had just one deep hive body, was relatively easy to move; I lifted it onto the bed of my truck without much trouble. I figure it weighted somewhere between 60 and 80 pounds. The other hives were heavier. Each consisting of two hive bodies — one deep and one medium — filled with frames, they probably weighed in at over 100 pounds each. Although my friend was keeping me company while I worked, she was unable to help me due to a back problem. So I called a friend who showed up within 30 minutes. Together, we lifted the hives onto the back of my truck. (Thanks again, Bob!)

I drove to Malaga, making a quick stop at the supermarket along the way. That’s when I realized that some of the bees had escaped from one of the hives. There were about 500 of them clinging to the side of the hive box. Another hive had shifted off its base and bees were escaping. I drove the rest of the way to Malaga watching the other drivers’ reactions every time I stopped at a light. I hoped no one had a car window open — bees were flying all around the back of my truck!

At my place in Malaga, I backed my truck right up to the bee shelter. By then, hundreds of bees were flying all around the back of the truck. They were not happy. But I didn’t rush. I took my time pulling my bee suit, veil, and gloves on. I filled the smoker and lighted it. And then then I got to work.

I didn’t need to lift the hives out in one piece. I could take them apart and reassemble them on the floor of the shelter. I actually wanted to do this — I’d purchased two screen bottoms for the two hives that had standard bottoms. The only way to put the new bottoms on those hives was to reassemble the hives on top of the new bottoms.

I did the hives one at a time, ignoring the angry bees swarming around me. Penny kept her distance. (Smart dog.) It probably took about an hour. I did a mini hive inspection while I was at it, trying to gauge the health of each hive and the amount of stored honey the bees would have for the winter. I also treated each hive with Apiguard to kill any mites. That required the addition of a spacer on each hive.

My Bees in their New Shelter
By early the next day, the bees were all settled in.

When I was finished, I went back to the RV, leaving the truck where it was. Once I was sure I hadn’t been followed by bees, I stripped out of my bee suit and had lunch. Later, I went back to the truck, gathered loose items together, and moved it away from the bees. Still later, when they’d calmed down a bit, I filled their feeders and put them at the hive entrances.

The next morning, after the sun hit the hives, I went out to take a look at them. The bees were flying around like normal. But what made me very happy is that they’d found the sagebrush flowers on the plants that grew along my driveway and seemed to be feeding on them.

The move had been a success.

Bees: More about Mites

My own observations prove another beekeeper’s theory true.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m concerned about varroa mites in my beehives. Mites can weaken a colony to the point that winter survival is impossible. Since I’d like all my hives to survive the winter, I’m starting a war on mites now, before it’s too late.

My Setup, as it Relates to Mites

There’s a few points I want to make here without spending a lot of time on a long narrative.

  • My three hives come from two sources:
    • My original hive was a nuc I purchased from a beekeeper in Peshastin. That hive grew and thrived very quickly, producing 2-1/2 gallons of honey in about a month. When a hive inspection showed signs of swarm cells, I split it off to form my third hive.
    • My second hive was a swarm capture. The swarm came from a colony living in the wall of a friend’s shop building. These are as close to “wild bees” as you can get.
  • My hives aren’t all set up exactly the same way. As I experiment with different hive components, I use them on different hives. For example, my first and second hives have standard wood bottoms while my third hive has a bottom with a varroa trap screen drawer. When setting up this third hive, I placed a sticky board in the drawer and left it there for about a month (which is really too long.)
  • My first and second hive have drone frames installed. As I discovered earlier this month, the drone frames work — once they’re adopted by the bees — and my first hive was confirmed to have mites.

Mite Count

On Wednesday, after a normal hive inspection, I placed sticky boards (with screens) in my first and second hives. Remember, I’d already learned that my first hive had mites; the idea behind the sticky board was to see how bad the mite problem was in each hive. Because I’d left the sticky board in the third hive so long, I couldn’t really gauge the mite problem. So I got serious for this test and left the boards in for just two days. If I had a third board, I would have tested that third hive again, too.

Mites on a Sticky Board
I’d say this hive has a mite problem, no?

When I pulled them out yesterday morning, I was surprised to find that the sticky board from Hive #1 was full of mites. Here’s a magnified image of just one square inch of the board. The dark ovals are dead mites — you can even see the legs on a few of them. The light ovals are also mites, but I don’t know if they’re some sort of shedded skin or exoskeleton or the actual mite itself after being dead for a day. The other dots on the image are mostly litter from the hive as well as some propolis that the bees laid down between the holes on the screen. Keep in mind that this sticky board has 176 square inches and although not all of them are as full of mites as this one, some are a bit worse.

All this was gathered in less than 48 hours.

But what was even more surprising to me — at first, anyway — was that the sticky board for Hive #2 had very few mites on it. In fact, because I pulled it out first, I thought that I’d pulled it out too soon. It wasn’t until I pulled out the other sticky board that I realized that the boards had done their job; I just had far more mites in one hive than the other.

Why the Difference?

Last night, I was at a BBQ gathering of helicopter pilots and mechanics who are based in the area for fire season. One crew — pilot, mechanic, and fuel truck driver — are based in a really nice house in a farm just down the road from where I’m currently living. They had a fire going in the fire pit and grilled up some steaks and brats and corn. It was a really nice night out.

I got to talking to one of the pilots, a guy who flies the Cessna Skymaster “push-pull” used for observation and direction to fire crews. He lives in the Snohomish area of Washington and keeps bees at home. We got to talking about mites and he asked me where I’d gotten my bees. When I explained their source, he told me that commercial bees always had mites.

I thought about what he said. It completely jived with what I had observed. The hive from the nuc had a bad mite problem. The hive from the swarm had very few mites at all.

He said that because so many hives were moved around for pollination, the mite problem spreads. He keeps mites out of his hives by keeping them away from commercially available bees.

Certainly something to think about.

Three Means of Attacking Mites

Because I’m serious about eliminating — or at least greatly reducing — the mite population in my hives, I’m currently using a two-prong attack:

  • The drone frames, as I discussed in another post, can help concentrate most of the mite reproduction on one frame, where they can be easily removed. Unfortunately, the queen is far less likely to lay drone eggs as the summer season comes to a close. In addition, only one hive (so far) has adopted the use of the drone frame.
  • I’ve purchased a miticide and dosed each of my hives with it. Although it can’t be used when the bees are producing honey for human consumption, using it now, before winter, should help reduce the number of mites and make a stronger hive.

The third method, which I hope to be able to institute soon, is to have sticky boards beneath screens on the bottom board of each of my hives. While it would be great to do this via a varroa trap with drawer for each hive, the $27 price tag makes that a bit more than I want to spend. So I’ll likely cook up my own solution using some “hardware fabric” I already have on hand to make the screen. I’ll talk to a beekeeper friend to see what we can rig up.

In this area, bee colonies have a 50% overwinter survival rate. I have three hives. I want to have all three colonies survive the winter. That’s going to take some work — and I’m willing to do it.

Bees: The Drone Frames Really Do Work

A component of my integrated pest management system.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

A while back, I installed a so-called “drone frame” in two of my beehives. A drone frame is a special frame with large cells embossed on a plastic foundation. The bees supposedly see this frame, realize that the big cells will be perfect for drones (which are larger than workers), build out the cells for drones. The queen lays drone eggs in each cell and the workers feed and cap them like any other drone cell. Varroa mites, which prefer drone brood, enter the cells before capping and do their parasitic mite thing — including laying eggs — on the drone larvae. The drones hatch and carry more mites into the hive to mix with the other brood.

Varroa mites are a bad thing for beehives and supposedly every beehive in North America has them. Not only does their blood sucking weaken the bees and possibly cause deformities in newly hatched bees, but they have been tied to colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has been getting a lot of press lately because of it’s potential to do serious harm to the food chain humans rely on for survival.

I checked the drone frame each time I opened my main hive. I try to inspect my hives every 10-14 days. The first time I looked there was no activity. The bees didn’t seem interested in the frame. The second time I looked, the bees had begun to draw out comb. A good sign. The next time I looked, the frame had been partially filled with capped and uncapped honey as well as a good number of capped drone cells.

That was August 11. I was unprepared. I should have brought along a second drone frame so I could have swapped them out. The idea with the drone frames is to remove the frame once it contains capped drone cells and to put it in the freezer for a few days. This kills the drone larvae as well as the mites. (Drones don’t do anything except fertilize the queens — kind of like some men I know — and my queens were already fertilized.) After a while, you put the frame back in the hive, the workers see the dead bees and clean them out, and the queen lays new eggs.

I went back with an empty drone frame only five days later. I was late. The drones had already begun to hatch. In fact, more than half of them were gone. Others were hatching as I watched.

Drone Frame
Here’s the drone frame as it looked today after a week in the freezer. You can see the capped cells where drones were emerging. The dark empty cells are where the other drones hatched from. There’s honey along the top of the frame. The reverse side looks pretty much the same.

I have to admit that it made me sad to do what I had to do.

I brushed the workers and newly hatched drones off the drone frame and back into the hive. Then I put the drone frame aside and replaced it with a brand new one. I have four of them and three hives so if I time everything right, I’ll only have one in the freezer at any time; I’ll just keep circulating the freezer one to replace the one I pull in a hive.

I put the drone frame in the back of my truck and went on with my day. I secretly hoped the drones would all hatch and fly away. I didn’t want to kill them.

But the next day, when I inspected the frame, I found that many of the drones had half emerged and died there. I also saw the mites — they were quite easy to spot with my glasses on. There were a lot of them.

Varroa Mites on a Drone Frame
Here’s a closeup of some of the cells in the drone frame. Although my camera focused on the outer edges of the cells, you can clearly see the dead mites. The bottom-right cell has a dead drone bee that died while emerging from its cell. If I’d waited just one more day, they all would have hatched.

I put the frame in a plastic bag and stowed it in my landlord’s freezer. (I wonder if he noticed.)

I spoke to another beekeeper at a recent meeting of the North Central Washington Beekeepers Association. I admitted how I’d screwed up by pulling the drone frame late. He made me feel a little better when he admitted that he’d done the same thing.

This afternoon I pulled the drone frame out to take some photos. Tomorrow, I’ll bring it to my hives. I’ll check the second hive with a drone frame to see if there’s any capped drone cells in it. If there’s any, I’ll pull it and replace it with this one. Otherwise, I’ll put this one in the one hive that doesn’t yet have a drone frame at all.

I suspect that my mite problem is worse that it should be. I also ordered a miticide from the bee supply place. I need to get the mites under control before winter sets in. My friend Don blames the loss of his hive last winter on mites. I’d like to beat the odds of a 50% winter survival rate here in Central Washington and have all three hives make it through the winter.

Wish me luck!

Bees: Mid-August Update

I thought I’d take a moment to bring readers up-to-date on my bees and their hives.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

I haven’t blogged about my bees in almost a month. That’s because there hasn’t been anything terribly interesting happening with them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to report.

Hive Move

I have a total of three hives. Two of them were with me where I’m camped out along the side of Squilchuck Canyon in Wenatchee Heights. The third (which was really my first) was at a fellow beekeeper’s house in Wenatchee.

The one in Wenatchee was doing great. So great that they filled seven frames of a deep hive box with capped honey. I extracted honey from six of those frames in July and got a total of about 2-1/2 gallons of honey. I replaced that deep hive box with a medium box and 10 new frames for the bees to continue making honey.

I used the deep hive box that had been on that productive hive as a home for the new hive I’d created a few days before via a hive split. The bees had been living in a nuc box until I could get a deep hive body for them. I set them up in Wenatchee Heights beside the hive I’d created by catching a swarm earlier in the season. I divided the extracted frames and partially filled frames between those two hives, removing any empty frames I had. The bees, I knew, would clean the beeswax cells of those frames and start using them for brood or honey storage. At least that was the idea.

As I discovered on two subsequent hive inspections, however, the bees weren’t producing much honey at all. They cleaned out those sticky frames very quickly, but didn’t refill the cells. One look around the area made it pretty clear why: there simply weren’t enough flowering plants to give them the food source they needed. Even though I was feeding them regularly with a 1:1 sugar water solution, they just weren’t making a noticeable amount of honey.

My beekeeping friend, Jim, confirmed this when he and his wife came over for dinner one night. He suggested that I move the hives down to his place with my other one. He had lots of clover in his grass and there were plenty of gardens in the area. A much better source of food.

My Three Hives
My beehives are currently in a friend’s backyard.

So one late July evening, after the bees had gone in for the night, I stuffed rags in the hive entrances to lock them in and used ratchet tie-down straps to secure the bottoms and tops to the two boxes. In the morning, I loaded them onto my pickup truck and drove them down to Jim’s place. I set up some scrap wood to form a platform and positioned the two hives side by side on it. Then I removed the rags, added sugar water to two feeders, and left them.

At this point, all three of my beehives are in Jim’s backyard in Wenatchee.

I have to admit that I’m a bit worried about how they’ll fare when I move them to my future home in Malaga. Although the property is full of wildflowers in the spring and early summer, in late summer it’s about the same as Wenatchee Heights. I suspect that I’ll be feeding my bees quite a bit until my gardens are established.

The Main Hive

I’ll always consider my first hive my “main hive” simply because it’s the healthiest and most active. But I noticed a definite decline in honey production since extracting honey in July and replacing brood frames in the bottom hive body with empty frames when I made my hive split.

Indeed, the bees have yet to produce any comb or store any honey in the medium box that’s now their second level. And it’s been about three weeks.

Yesterday I did an exhaustive hive inspection. Although I didn’t see the queen, I did see fresh brood. And I was very pleased to see that they had begun putting brood in the drone frame. I could kick myself — I should have brought along a fresh drone frame to replace it with. I’ll have to go back sometime this week to do that; the idea is to freeze the frames with drone brood in them as part of a varroa mite prevention strategy. Of course, the frame won’t fit into my RV’s freezer. But there is a freezer in my “landlord’s” garage; I’ll ask if I can store it there.

I removed the queen excluder and Ross Rounds box from that hive to store them for the winter. There’s no way they’ll fill the Ross Rounds before autumn comes. At this point, I doubt they’ll fill the medium frame.

The Hive Split Hive

I blogged about my risky hive split back in July. The way I did the split was admittedly haphazard. I pulled brood frames that included swarm cells out of my main hive and put them in a nuc box with all the bees that were on them. Then I moved them away from the main hive with hopes that a swarm cell would hatch into a queen and the hive would continue. I also hoped that the queen was not among the bees I moved.

I was certain I had failed. The hive was not very active and didn’t seem to be growing. It certainly wasn’t producing much (if any) honey, as I reported above. Every time I inspected it, I’d look hard for a queen or eggs in cells. I did see developing and capped brood but never saw anything fresher.

But in yesterday’s hive inspection, I did something I never did before: I wore my reading glasses. Yes, I’m of “that age” when glasses are necessary to bring tiny things into focus. And what’s tinier than a bee egg?

Surprise, surprise! Not only did I see freshly hatched eggs, but I also spotted a queen. My risky hive split had been a success!

Now if only they’d start storing honey for the winter.

The Swarm Hive

I thought the swarm hive might have stored enough honey for me to add a medium hive body with frames to it. I even brought the hive body with me and unboxed it prior to making my inspection. But the bees simply aren’t working hard enough. There are plenty of empty areas in the frames in their deep hive body. Adding another box on top might coax them into storing honey in the top box before they’d filled the bottom one. I needed to wait.

I also checked the drone frame I’d put on that box. They’re just starting to build out comb. So I’m not very sure how effective the drone frames are for mite control. It seems that the bees are slow to accept them.

Prepping for the Winter

I know it’s only August and the summer’s hottest days are barely behind us. But I do need to plan ahead for the winter. That means ensuring that the bees store up enough honey to feed themselves during the coldest months. This will be especially important since I plan to spend much of the winter traveling and won’t be around to feed them.

With luck, however, I’ll find a good, sheltered spot for them on my new property. That’s one of the chores I face in the months ahead.