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

[The15thMember]

I just finished watching your videos, Terri.  I would definitely adjust their winter entrance next year to be sure they can remove dead bees.  The fact that you were seeing dead bees on the frames says to me that the undertakers are just completely overwhelmed by the amount of bodies they are having to remove.  I would also be concerned with those dead bees potentially spreading diseases to the colony. 

I noticed you put that big empty box on the top and that the bees have access to it.  That's fine for now, but be sure that isn't set up like that when the bees start drawing, or they will make a huge mess of that gaping empty space. 

As far as harvesting some honey for yourself, when you are anticipating your first flow?  The fruit trees are starting in my area, which will give my girls a decent steady flow until the brambles come in, provided we don't get a late frost.  If you are expecting something similar, I would say you can definitely take some of those nice capped frames for yourself.  If you don't know or if your area doesn't have a reliable spring flow, then I would wait a little while longer, just to be safe. 

[NigelP]

Depends what is in those capped frames. Did you feed them sugar syrup pre-winter?
Any fully capped brood frames on my hives in the spring are assumed to be syrup.
They are stored and used for feeding nucs etc during the summer.

[Terri Yaki]

I?ll have to check with my local club on our flow situation. And saving capped honey for swarm and split sounds like a good idea to me.

[The15thMember]

I totally agree with Nigel.  Since you are planning on splitting, Terri, that is a better use for those frames. 

[Terri Yaki]

OK, I went through the videos again and there looks to be a shortage of room in the bottom box, which they are pretty much brooding in. I'm thinking that this will cause them to swarm and pretty soon. Should I pull some frames out of the center of the top box and put some comb in there? Should I do that in the bottom box?

[The15thMember]

Well they had plenty of room in the second box, didn't they?  I mean, there was open comb for the queen to move up, right?  I don't remember thinking they looked congested as I was watching.  You can open the brood nest if you want too, but just don't do that before your threat of very cold weather is passed.  The video doesn't give me a super good view, but nothing indicated to my eye that swarming would be imminent.  My girls won't think about swarming until April typically, and I'd imagine I'm ahead of you. 

[Terri Yaki]

The second box has goofy wax patterns and is pretty much filled with honey. There are a couple of empty frames but for some reason, they don't want to build on them.

[The15thMember]

But your bees haven't even started drawing yet.  I mean, they could swarm before drawing starts I guess, but in my area that is pretty rare.  Do you even have walking drones yet?  If not, they can't swarm because a new queen can't mate.   

Unless they are stubborn about your foundation for some reason, I would assume they would start filling in those frames once the flow starts.  Again, it's fine to open up the brood nest if you want to, but you are also looking to split, so I don't know why you wouldn't just split once it's warm enough, the flow has started, and you have flying drones.       

[Terri Yaki]

No capped drone brood yet but there were some pretty big larvae. And what do you mean by 'open up the brood nest'? And will they build comb and move honey around to enlarge to brood area if they need to?

[The15thMember]

Opening up the brood nest just means inserting empty frames into the brood nest to give the queen more room to lay, like you described doing. 

Comb building is triggered more by the presence of a flow than the need for space. Workers that have full stomachs will secrete wax, they cannot help it. So it is possible for a colony to swarm before drawing starts if the brood nest is really congested, but the queen running out of room to lay is not the only thing that triggers swarming. It is also congestion of adult bees, the presence of drones, and a flow often is what pushes these conditions to the breaking point as workers backfill the brood nest with honey in the absence of enough space. I could be wrong, but I would be surprised if bees are at this point in your area.

[The15thMember]

I inspected the rest of my colonies yesterday.  I have a colony that was a very small swarm last season, headed up by Queen Ariel.  I didn't get any honey off this colony, since they just spent the whole year catching up, but they made winter weight on their own without any donations, which I was very pleased with.  They didn't need any feeding over the winter, and when I opened them up yesterday, they were rockin'!  Two boxes of brood and still almost a full super of honey.  I gave them and their also very successful neighbor, Queen Cinderella, another box. 

Next I gritted my teeth and prepared to face the fury of my mean hive, led by Queen Tiana.  This is the hive that was leaning over the winter, so I needed to disassemble the entire hive and move them to the neighboring level stand.  I also wanted to find the queen and remove her so we could get going on requeening this colony.  The bees were flighty and bumping me right away, but thankfully the colony wasn't as built up as the rest, so I was able to manage them pretty well with smoke.  My moving the hive over to a new position seemed to confuse and distract the foragers enough that they didn't pay me much mind, which was also helpful.  Lucky for me, I quickly found Tiana on the second brood frame.  Surprisingly, I also found 4 queen cells in various stages of development, so apparently I'm not the only one who was unhappy with her performance last year.  I noticed she seemed to be laboring when she walked, so something was definitely not right.  I removed all the queen cells and gave the colony a frame of eggs from Queen Cindy. 

I did a couple things differently over the winter, and I am very pleased with the results.  Every colony this year had an inner cover between the top box and their moisture quilt, which decreased the upper ventilation a bit, and every colony had 2 8-frame mediums of honey instead of 1.  I was feeding two colonies after the calendar turned, but only one really needed it, and that wasn't because they were out, it was because they got separated from their food.  I'm trying to get away from winter feeding, so this was a step in the right direction.   

[Terri Yaki]

Forgive me father, for I have sinned...I have gone against the experience and wisdom of my senior beeks and rearranged my center box as my gut told me to. It's a deep with nothing but honey in it (about 65% full) and some blank frames. I pulled the blank frames, pushed the honey to the outside and inserted three frames of comb. One of those frames is a medium that I stuck in a deep and they filled in below the frame. That section has a good bit of drone comb on it. I also found one frame of empty comb to the outside of the box so that gives them four (4) frames of empty comb to party in as they please, in the center of the hive. The three frames that I pulled are in the freezer for sterilization of pests. I also pulled the top box, which is/was completely empty to facilitate feeding. And they were starting to build burr comb. Not in the top box, in the middle box.

[The15thMember]

That sounds like a very normal thing to do to me. Especially since they are starting to draw. 

[Terri Yaki]

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

[Terri Yaki]

And so far, the hive has been amazingly docile. I smoke 'em to drive them off the top of the frames but they're not getting cranky on me and today, there is obviously a storm looming. I thought that might make them want to be left alone but it didn't make any difference.

[The15thMember]

In my experience, colonies are typically very happy and easy-going in the spring.  Once the first flow hits, they are very busy trying to build up as fast as possible and nobody is thinking about robbing or winter.  Colonies also aren't very big yet, so they are easy to manage.  Spring is when I like to have guests in the apiary, because I'm reasonably sure no one is going to get stung. 

[Terri Yaki]

I got back from camp today and just had to see what the clan was up to. They have utilized one of the empty frames that I gave them in the second box either moves honey and pollen up into it or they just started putting it there when they brought it in. And the queen was up there cruising around. I also gave them a medium box full of empty plastic frames the last time in case they felt like making room for more honey. Whilst there were bees climbing on it, there are no signs of comb being built on it yet. I did find some burr comb down below though. Still no capped drones yet.