What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

[The15thMember]

I hope you have a good crop of Sourwood Reagan. I don't have to tell 'you' be careful with the temperatures and timing of you treatment. As "Van from Arkansas" (Mr Van) use to say; those "ding dang mites!"

We do have some cooler temps coming up this week, thankfully.  It is extremely hot here this weekend, and very humid.  Ideally, it would be a little cooler, but as bad as these colonies' counts were and with the possibility of DWV, I kind of have to take the risk. 

[Ben Framed]

Let us know the details of the circumstances when you do treat please. Temperature and amount of time the treatment is allowed to stay in place the resulting queen situation etc. I am still learning.. lol 
Thanks,

Phillip

[The15thMember]

Let us know the details of the circumstances when you do treat please. Temperature and amount of time the treatment is allowed to stay in place the resulting queen situation etc. I am still learning.. lol 
Thanks,

Phillip

Sure thing, I'll keep you posted.

[Ben Framed]

Thumbs Up!! And thanks Member..

[The15thMember]

It was a tiring day in the bee yard today.  It was very hot and robbing season is apparently in full swing.  It was a lot of work getting my heavy supers above my escape board and trying to keep the robbing to a minimum.  Plus I had to relight my smoker 2 times today, which hasn't happened to me in years.  I reduced hive entrances and put on some robbing screens.                 

[Ben Framed]

Instead of an escape board, have you tried the 'blower method' of removing bees from the supers?

I posted the following video on another topic recently Titled: "Comb Honey (How Tum Durham Does It)" I am placing the method  that Tim used below for the convenience of those who might be interested. Notice he did not have the blower vamped up to maximum capacity. I rather doubt that bees were injured at the rate of capacity he used...

https://youtu.be/idG9_DFnz_k

[The15thMember]

Instead of an escape board, have you tried the 'blower method' of removing bees from the supers?

I posted the following video on another topic recently Titled: "Comb Honey (How Tum Durham Does It)" I am placing the method  that Tim used below for the convenience of those who might be interested. Notice he did not have the blower up vamped up to maximum capacity. I rather doubt that bees were injured at the rate of capacity he used...

https://youtu.be/idG9_DFnz_k

I've never tried it, but I have seen people do it before.  I really don't mind the wait of the escape board, it's just that today it was a lot of lifting, since the one hive was 7 boxes tall, my tallest hive ever.  They should be down to 4 boxes by tomorrow.    This is the hive with the really cross-combed super, so it might not have been a good application for the blower anyway.

[BeeMaster2]

Reagan,
I use BeeQuick. It is very effective, smells nice and doesn?t bother the bees when used properly. Most of the time most of the bees move down in five to seven minutes. I usually have two fume boards on hives at a time to speed super removal up. If there are bees remaining I use a blower to remove the them.
When the bees do not move out of a super it usually means there is brood on some of the frames.
This method is much faster than using escape boards and safer. I cannot use them because of SHBs.
Jim Altmiller

[cao]

I do things a little different.  I don't lift a full super.  I start out with a fume board and set an empty box on it.  Then I harvest the honey by the frame. Pulling the honey frame shaking most of the bees off and the setting it in the empty box above the fume board.  Then cover with a spare inner cover.  As I add frames to the box above the fume board, the bees that were on the previous frames are ready to leave that box.  Once the box is full I put another on top and continue adding honey frames.  When harvesting from the hives I have at my house, I stack the boxes on a cart that I can pull around the hives and eventually pull it to my back door.

[BeeMaster2]

Cao,
I have tried pulling frames one at a time. My wife likes to do it that way to make sure we don?t take brood into the house. The problem is if there are any commercial hives within a few miles, the robbing gets really bad. I try to wait until they all leave. This year there is one commercial beekeeper about a mile from here that still hasn?t moved his hives. They are dying off one after another. Last I looked  I think he only has three hives left alive. He did the same thing last year.
Jim Altmiller

[Lesgold]

Yesterday I made a visual inspection of my hives to see what was happening. Before leaving for my holiday in may, I noticed that a few of the hives were low in stores and expected quite would struggle to make it through winter. 24 of the 25 hives in my home yard were active with bees bringing in pollen. One hive was not active so I opened it up for a quick check. It had only half a frame of bees and heaps of beetles. Spotted the queen and market her. She only had a few cells filled with brood. My options are to either  squeeze her and start a new hive or to add a couple of frames of brood from stronger hives, give them a feed and put a few traps in to reduce beetle numbers. What would you guys do?

[Ben Framed]

What would you guys do?

Depends; What is the season there? Is it warm enough for beetles to lay and reproduce? If so most likely your hive is totally infested with SHB eggs since you are seeing heaps of beetles and few bees. If this is the case, when the beetle eggs begin hatching, there  will most likely be more beetle larva than you will be able to count.
Under these circumstances, I would bank the queen, freeze all frames in this colony, (in order to kill any beetle larvae and eggs, including any beetles which are on these frames or hiding in the cells ); Regroup when your Spring arrives by borrowing a few resource frames from your other hives to create a new hive, giving the banked queen a new lease on 'colonization-hive' life lol; That is if the queen is of prime age for such.
If she is old, I would simply extinguish her.. I would still freeze the frames for future resources and reuse when and where needed..

Phillip

[cao]

With only a half frame of bees, I would reduce to a 5 frame nuc and add a frame of brood and bees from another hive.  That is if you want to save it. 

[Lesgold]

Good point Phillip. I thought about it overnight and tried to figure out what the problem is. I reckon there is a good chance that the hive has failed due to a lack of stores. There is no honey stored and even the beetles are struggling to find a feed. The bees are a little slow as there is no hive temperature. I think I?ll follow Coa?s suggestion and pop them into a nuc with a few frames of brood and see what happens. I?ve really go nothing to lose. I marked the queen yesterday just for reference.

[Lesgold]

Just finished inspecting the hives at the home yard. One weak hive and one dead out. All hives had eggs and brood. No sign of drone brood at this stage. Performed alcohol wash test on all hives for zero Verona (which is to be expected at this stage) The small hive will be moved into a nuc when all testing is complete and reported.

[The15thMember]

Combined two small colonies a few days ago, and today I fed another that is low in stores and a little low on bees.  I'm hoping the feeding will stimulate their queen to keep laying at a good pace, as many of the queens are slowing down already.  The combine freed up a bottom board and top, so I moved the poly hive colony into wooden equipment.  I'm very happy to have it out of my hair.   

[The15thMember]

I can't believe it's going to be October tomorrow!  I am in the process of getting all the colonies down to their wintering size and making sure everyone is packed full of food. 

[Lesgold]

I grabbed some frames today to prepare them for a hive. They were recycled frames that were steamed last season to remove old comb. Unfortunately they were not stored well and wax moth got into them. I know that they could be frozen for a day or two or run through the steamer again but I really wanted a simpler way to destroy eggs etc. The frames were given a brush to remove webs and obvious debris before being hit with the hot air gun. Slots and holes were given a quick blast and anything in the area of the hot air was basically cooked. I don?t know why I hadn?t thought of this before. It worked very well and took a few minutes to clean 10 frames.

[The15thMember]

I got my whole apiary winterized yesterday, because we are expecting our first cold temperatures this week.  I feel pretty good about everyone's stores and colony size, although I do have my newly-retrofitted hive top feeder on one colony still.  I also have a colony with a treatment on, so I wasn't able to winterize them.  Hopefully they'll be able to fend for themselves until the end of next week. 

[The15thMember]

I checked on the hives today following our cold weather, and one of the hives was empty.  The colony must have absconded before the cold weather hit, because the beetles had really done a number on the comb in there, and the cold killed them all.  I'm not entirely surprised I have to say; this colony had kind of a high mite count and I got a treatment on them late because of a mixup with the farm store ordering some for me, and they had had some beetle trouble too earlier in the fall, and I think the stress just got to them.