Late Summer Drone Eviction

I'd read on the newsgroups from other beekeepers that they'd noticed that their drones were already being evicted by the workers.

Every fall it's customary for the workers to force the drones from the hive. It's kind of sad really. The drone can't feed himself - he doesn't have a long enough proboscis to dip into a flower and steal some nectar. He has no stinger so he's completely defenseless but he's awfully cute to look at and he has a purpose and that's to mate with a queen.

Despite all his good looks and loud buzz that always identifies him as a drone, he'll be evicted. He's a hungry stomach in the hive that doesn't give back by helping out. The bees must live off their winter stores and the drones not only create extra work because they must be fed by the workers, they also eat from their precious stores. So out they go....

Whenever I see a drone wandering around on the ground, like the drone in the photo above, I always pick him up to say hello. We visit for a while and I admire his furry thorax and long sleek back legs. It's an opportunity for a photo op for the drone and a chance for me to observe him close up.

This other drone in the next photo I found on top of my Varroa Mite sticky board--how the hell are they getting in there??? I've got it closed off - the only thing that should get through that narrow screened bottom board is a mite!!! There must be a tear in the screening or something but the only way to find out is to take the whole hive apart--that I'll be doing when winterizing.

I stopped by yesterday just to say hello to the bees and to observe from the outside. I recharged the sticky mat with Crisco. I was glad to see no additional mites dropped so that's a good sign.

The drone was barely alive and I presumed he was probably really hungry. Nothing else about him looked harmed in any way. I set him on the boards in front of the hive. And guess what happened? Two workers immediately grabbed him and struggled mightily but they dragged him to the edge of the board and threw him over the side where he dropped to the ground.

I did notice there were no other drones around, coming and going from the hive at all. That drone was too far gone for help, really nothing could be done for him anyway.

Since he couldn't fly or move I took him home. Once I was sure he was dead I added him to my collection of bees in an alcohol jar. I keep them because when drawing and painting bees it really helps to be able to see the real thing so I see how the parts of the anatomy work together. I know it's kind of morbid, but it's a good way to learn.

I'll have to make enquiries about whether I should feed the bees--I've certainly been thinking about it. With new queens laying I want them to boost egg production. The only problem is I have my honey super on and I don't want sugar syrup stored there. It very well might be wise to opt out of honey for myself this year entirely and leave it to them.

I'll be doing an inspection Sat (today there's a severe storm warning) and hopefully after that I'll be better informed.

Dwindling Bees

They aren't doing so well. They are dwindling down to a few bees. Why? As best I can tell it's because all the open brood have now been capped and hatched and there's no new eggs or larvae. At least not until the new queen sits her throne (sticks her butt down into a cell) and lays some eggs.

(Photo of Hive2 which varied from 10 to 25 bees on the porch).

And I'm worried. If you are a new beekeeper like me then you understand totally the overpowering desire to just crack the lid every few hours for a peak. I just wanna know what's going on in there!

But I'm trying to do things differently than in the past. Years ago I kept salt water fish and I was constantly messing around in the tank, changing and adding new things. If the fish had territory problems, I interfered. I was trying to help them. My heart was in the right place, but wisdom didn't always prevail and many times things didn't go well. In retrospect I know who to blame: Myself.

At first I thought they may have swarmed, and it is possible that they did… but both hives? I haunted the Beesource and BeeMaster forums, reading threads of emails about queens, supersedure and swarms. I trolled the internet looking for answers. The best I can think based on the scenario at hand is that they are dwindling during the wait time between the old queen and the new getting into action.

Interesting how on many of the threads the originator after opening the hive and tearing everything down, adding a new queen, doing this or that comes back and reports that things were fine all along and they just didn't know it and probably they shouldn't have interfered in the first place and just been patient to wait. I must give the bees credit that they know what they are doing.

This is why I don't want to tear the hive apart because there probably won't be eggs yet and so the only thing left to look for is the queen herself and I don't want to risk injuring her by removing lots of frames right now whereas if I wait a few more days I should be able to pull a frame and see eggs.

I feel like I'm parenting new children--bees, but I'm the one who doesn't know what they're doing. And just like those parents I want to crack the bedroom door open every hour just so I can watch or see them breathing, cuddled up in their little cells. I think I'd feel better if my new stethoscope had arrived - it was an E-Bay purchase and it's "in the mail". Then at least I could spy from the outside. Yes, I think about web cams, spy cams and GPS for my queen all the time… but

I don't think the technology is foolproof enough against that propolis or I'd seriously be installing them. It's pretty sticky stuff. After visiting the hive and washing my hands, my fingers and nails will be stained yellow for a few days. It makes me look like I've taken up smoking again--NO I have not!

(Photo of Hive1 which had more bees than Hive2 but not a lot of action).

I worry. I fret. Are they going to be okay? Now I totally get the part about beekeepers talking about downtime and catching up and building their numbers. It's all bee math which is clearly pointed out on Michael Bush's website (Bush Farms). Just like a human pregnancy, it takes a set number of months, days, weeks. It will take a set number of days until the hive is built up again to sufficient numbers to harvest the late summer and fall nectar and pollen and to prepare for winter.

Dear God, I pray the weather will favour us the rest of the season. Just please send that rain out to BC because they could really use it! I do think the supersedure was encouraged by our bad weather this year, especially since both queens appeared to be laying well in a nice football shaped pattern and both were superseded at the same time.

As I think about them constantly and start to feel down because I know their numbers are down, I have to remind myself that this is natural for them. It is part of the process. I understand that destroying the supersedure cells that they build and then adding your own purchased and mated queen would speed things up and prevent so much down time. And yes, sometimes that purchased queen isn't accepted and is superseded again. Like I've heard and read from so many beekeepers out there, you just never get the bees all figured out and it's hard to predict or figure out exactly what happened or what they'll do next.

Like a pregnant mother, I've counted the days based on the bee math and the 20 day mark will be Wed, 20 Aug 2009 this week. I had hoped to take some time off Thursday afternoon to do an inspection but so far the weather forecast isn't cooperating--you guessed right, rain! So, I may have to wait until Friday or the weekend…
I dropped by last weekend, and I put my ear to both hives. No more piping and no more "ouch" oscillating sounds. Just the hum of the hive, but it was definitely not as loud as it used to be. Bees were coming and going out front and seemed to have a purpose. I even saw pollen being brought into Hive #2, it's just that their numbers were low.

I photographed a dead bee on the ground that another bee spent a lot of time hanging around, which got my attention. I collected the body along with another one that looked similar and looked them over (I put them under my microscope at home)--I think they're dead queens. Look at the brown legs (all queens have brown legs) and the body doesn't have stripes. This bee wasn't that much bigger than a worker bee. Maybe it's an emergency queen? The other dead bee looked exactly the same as this one. But the queen I saw in Hive2 was a normal sized queen. The mystery deepens. Hopefully these are evicted queens that died in battle with the better queen winning.

Maybe I could drive out there mid week...just to visit...

Oh My! Mite Counts!!!

On my last visit I checked my sticky board for mites. I saw 3 mites on one board and about 2 mites on the other.

The boards were no longer sticky and had been there for over a week so they were pretty covered in stuff. So I got out the Crisco and re-greased them with a medium thick layer to make them nice and sticky and then I slid them in under my Varroa Screen with a bottom board.

The Varroa Screens I get are from a guy in Guelph, Ontario, named Brent (http://www.beewisebeesupplies.com/ $13.00 each). I really like the design - I think it's better than the Dadant version. With the Dadant version, you have to lift the hive to get at the board, at least I think that's how it is used.

With Brent's design, the access is from the back which I much prefer. There is a gap at the back but what I've done is duct taped a flap of plastic sheeting. All I have to do is lift the flap and pull out the sticky board from the back of the hive. Then I can sit on the palette behind the hive, away from the bees, and count mites at my leisure (not that I enjoy it because I don't).

The actual sticky board is a white plastic cardboard piece that I just slide in and out on top of the bottom board. What I should do but I haven't done yet is to draw a numbered grid on the sticky board. That way when I do the counts I'll have a better track record on the drop count.

I let 3 days pass and so yesterday I went to check the sticky trap. I also wanted to put my ear on the hives to listen for piping to see if my queens were still in their battle phase.

Can you spot the 3 mites in the photo at left - click to enlarge? I've put the same photo below with the mites circled in red. Look for a shiny brown circle and you'll often see a little nib sticking out from the front - that's its mouth parts.

On first look, both hives had the same amount of activity. Hive #1 was slightly more active than Hive #2 but not by a substantial amount. The number of bees on both hives though seems less than I thought it should be. I'm suspicious that there may have been swarms from both hives with the old queens leaving... I don't know if there's some way to know other than to look inside and gauge by the number of bees inside... but being a first time beekeeper, I'm not sure how many bees I should expect to see in Aug after starting from nucs in June.

I noticed that the mite drops are all on the "busy" side of the sticky board. In other words, they're on the side of the hive where the 4 nuc frames were placed. On the other side, there's almost no mite drops.

Those frames are the newly built comb newly filled with pollen, honey and larvae after the nucs were installed. I'm curious as to why there's more droppings of pollen, wax flakes, bee parts and mites on that side of the hive. I would have thought by now that the whole deep would be busy and active at the same level.

(I notice that the lumps of pollen tend to bleed colour, making it easier to tell that they're not mites - see photo at left).

The activity looked normal to me, like busy bees coming and going purposefully. I didn't see pollen coming in so I'm presuming the bees are coming back with nectar.

(There's a couple huge fields of soya beans very close by which to the best of my knowledge haven't bloomed yet. Does anyone know if bees will forage in soya beans? I certainly hope so because that will be a huge boon for them very soon).

I pulled out the the sticky trap on Hive #2 and began the count. There was lots of debris to look through so I found I had to look over the board many times before my eyes were better able to spot the differences between flakes and bits of stuff and a real mite.

The mites are chestnut coloured and have shiny backs so if the light is shining on the board too, they're easier to spot.

I counted 12. That means 4 mites per day had dropped. It's also only an indication of the number of mites that have fallen off the bees, not the actual number that are probably above in the hive, which would be many times more. I checked Hive #1 and counted 10.

I wonder if the high mite counts and the terrible summer weather is what made both hives feel they should supersede their queens. I did hear piping in Hive #1 as well but I haven't opened that hive yet, but plan to this weekend.

(Click the photo to enlarge).

I should probably open both hives and look for drone comb to pull with my scraper to try to reduce mites. Just one female mite can take over a hive because it's only the daughters that live to hatch with the drone so their rate of expansion through a hive is extremely rapid.

I do have the lime green coloured drone bait comb foundation which I plan to use in the hives but I have expected these new nucs to build so much comb this summer that I didn't put the drone foundation in this year. Maybe I should have.

Now I will try to get through to the end of August and then treat the hives with formic acid pads.

Of course it is summer and that's the typical time when the mite counts peak. I'll have to talk to other beekeepers--that is if I can get a hold of any of them because they're so busy this time of year--to find out what their typical varroa counts are.

I also put my ear to both deeps and did not hear any more piping so I'm hoping the new queens are sorted out and that they've had a chance to get out and mate with drones.

I did hear the lower "ouch" oscillating sound though which I think might be the sound of queens in their cells... but I'm not sure on this point at all.

This weekend I'll once again recharge my sticky boards again just to make sure all the Varroa are being held on the board and not making their way back up into the hive. Mid week next week I hope to do an inspection on both hives to confirm that the new queens are laying--I'm just giving them a few more days to finish up with mating and to get back into the hive and get settled before I open things up again. I just need to confirm that there's open brood so I know I have a queen laying.

Queen Piping and Hive Sounds

Okay, so you thought I was a little crazy in my last post when I mentioned a sound I heard inside the hive.

(photo of the new hatched piping queen, presumed to be unmated, in Hive #2).

I said it sounded like the word "ouch" being said over and over really fast, faster and then slowing down, kind of like an ocillating fan.

Well, here's my proof that yes I'm a little crazy but here's the sounds of a queen piping and at the very end you can hear the ouch sound I'm going on and on about.

It's on U Tube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlI1sgczVY (God bless that man for providing proof that I'm not completely crazy).

As you listen, when you approach the 7:26 mark on the recording and again at the 9:00 you'll start to hear the "ouch" sound faintly in the background. The man who did the recording thinks it's an answering call from the capped queen.

I've looked up piping on the internet and it's believed (not proven yet but suspected) that it's a call to arms, a challenge between queens in a hive. The piping can be done by a hatched queen (mated or unmated) and also by unhatched queens that are still inside their queen cells.

And for some awesome queen photos and supersedure cell photos see this blog: http://mistressbeek.com/2009/04/18/high-drama-and-the-virgin-queen-piping/ She also heard the piping when opening one of her hives.

Wikepedia has information on piping which I've quoted here: "Piping describes a noise made by virgin and mated queen bees during certain times of the virgin queens' development. Fully developed virgin queens communicate through vibratory signals: "quacking" from virgin queens in their queen cells and "tooting" from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping. A virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards. Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive. The piping sound is variously described as a children's trumpet tooting and quacking. It is quite loud and can be clearly heard outside the hive. The piping sound is created by the flight motor without movement of the wings. The vibration energy is resonated by the thorax.

Piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive. It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight. It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support. The piping sound is a G♯ or A♮. The adult queen pipes for a two-second pulse followed by a series of quarter-second toots.[2] The queens of Africanized bees produce more vigorous and frequent bouts of piping."

What do you think of all this? I welcome your comments on your experiences with your hives.

It's all very interesting. So interesting in fact that I bought a stethoscope on e-bay for $25.00 so I can really listen. No, I'm not crazy. It's all in the name of research right?!

The Queen is Dead. Long Live the Queen!

It was such a waiting game. Waiting and waiting. Waiting for the rain to stop.

I did my quick observation check of the bee yard on Friday and hoped to return Saturday. But Mother Nature vetoed that idea. It rained all day so I was stuck at home.

(photo of new queen on the top right near the clump of bees).

Sunday dawned with overcast skies but Dad and I were game to do a hive inspection on Hive #2. I realized I needed Dad's help because a couple weeks ago when I lifted the medium sized pink brood/honey super I nearly dropped it. It must weigh around 50 lbs and my healing right arm was too weak to support it.

I got it set down safely but there were a few scary moments there when I wasn't so sure I could hold it. (I'm lifting weights for physio for the right arm and to strengthen them both but it's a s-l-o-w process).

Just before calling Dad to see about what time we'd leave I checked The Weather Network. I could see in moments that it was a red scrolling screen day on the weather channel.

The text crossing the screen were giving severe storm warnings, 100 km damaging winds and don't rule out the possibility of a tornado in my area and Oxford County where the bee yard is. Okay. Scrap the mid morning trip to the bee yard. Darn!

The last time we'd been in Hive #2 everything was doing quite well but there were queen supersedure cells. On the advice of my long time beekeeper friend Henry, we decided to let the bees do their own supersedure.

(I'm not entirely certain if that's burr comb in the photo or a supersedure cell).

Then just over a week after that I was at the bee yard and I could see hardly any bees on the front stoop of Hive #2.

The bees were very quiet. Too quiet I thought or I guess the best wording would be that they appeared to be lacking purpose.

So I really needed Mother Nature to give us a break and let us have a peek in this hive. She did come through finally by mid afternoon. The Weather Network removed the red warning script. Apparently the worst of the storm arrived farther north of us. We didn't even get rain.

Hive #2 looked much more active. It didn't have very many more bees outside, but the bees that were there looked like they had a purpose. It was encouraging.

I started up the smoker and we dug in. They hadn't built any comb yet in the top yellow super.

No surprise there. They were not yet complete in building comb in all frames on the purple super but they had been busy working on filling my honeycomb frame with wild comb.

The pink medium deep (I'm running 1 1/2 boxes for brood) was really busy. I removed the third frame which was mostly capped honey. No brood or eggs. I removed the fourth frame. It appeared to have a supersedure cell on the bottom of the frame. I angled it as best I could for photos but it was covered in bees.

Then I saw her. She was moving fast across the frame to avoid the light. A queen. The queen. An unmarked queen. That meant she was a new queen. The supersedure had happened.

I grabbed for my camera while she scooted to the other side of the frame. Then she started piping. She kept moving from one side of the frame to the other but she was easy to locate for the piping sound she was making.

I was racking my brain about the piping. I think I read that piping was what unmated queens did.... but I needed to check this information again. That would have to wait for later.

I opted at that point to end the inspection and I carefully put the last frame in next to where the queen was. I was nervous of injuring her just when the hive needed her most. After the frame was in I waited a few moments. Then I heard it again. The piping coming from inside the hive. She was still alive and well in there.

There may have been other supersedure cells. It's even possible I've read that the original queen could still be alive and it could be a two queen, mother-daughter hive. That'd be awesome.

From the outside I put my ear to both hives. I could hear a general overall hum. Then a light ticking sound, like little running feet on combs. Then I could hear a loud sound. This may sound dumb, but it sounded like the word "ouch" said over and over very fast. The sound had an oscillating effect. Next I could hear every now again the piping of the queen.

Now I want a stethoscope so I can spy on my bees from the outside.

Note this photo of Hive #1 which has many bees on the outside (it was a really hot & humid day) and Hive #2 photo above to compare the 2 hives.

What I Learned from Outside the Hive

I made a couple of discoveries yesterday. One was really fun and interesting and the other was frustrating and the last was a bit sad.

I was just back from vacation and so I planned to drop by to see my bees.

My plan was to observe from the outside, a check-in, just to see how they were faring.

The first thing I discovered was a cicada sitting on one of the platforms. It did not move very much so I was able to take quite a few photos.

I know that cicada nymphs stay underground for something like 7 years before they surface as the flying adults. I assumed that this one had probably already mated or laid its eggs because it looked like it was dying.

A week earlier I added 2 yellow medium honey supers to the hives with foundation. The bees were nearly done drawing comb in the purple supers.

Hive #2 I could see at a glance that something wasn't right--at least to what I would expect. There were very few bees on the front porch and not a lot of activity coming and going.

I stayed a while to observe and there was some pollen being brought in but comparing Hive #2 to Hive#1 there was a big difference in activity.

Hive #1 which was a bit behind Hive #2 was booming with activity. Bees were coming and going and it too had some pollen being brought in.

I found a few young bees walking on the ground exploring. I picked them up with my hive tool to observe them. It wasn't long until they discovered the honey there from my last inspection. This bit of honey proved to be a great distraction for a photo op. The bee was so busy eating up the honey that I was able to get lots of closeup photos. It was very interesting to be able to observe them up close without them feeling threatened.

After a while the bee flew off. I watched while it flew around and around some foliage as if it was looking for nectar plants. I'm assuming that this was a new and inexperienced field bee who was just learning about the great outdoors.

Then I found another bee walking around and picked her up and had the same result. She flew off too and then circled around the foliage. This reminds me of baby birds that I've seen just released from their nests. I think they're more accustomed to walking than flying and they haven't adjusted to the whole 'wing thing' yet. I've seen baby birds fall over when sitting because they opened their wings and they got in their way.

Later I took out my Varroa Mite sticky boards to look them over. I found one mite on each board, but what was more distressing was a curled up dying bee I found on the sticky board. Somehow she had found a gap at the back of the hive and had crawled in there. I could tell she was too far gone to recover, but the distressing part was seeing the two adult mites attached to her thorax, sucking the life from her.

I got out my small metal tool with the idea of prying the mites off the bee. Even if the bee was going to die I wasn't going to leave those mites there. That's when I made my nasty discovery. Those suckers can move! They actually ran away around the whole chest of the bee to a new location each time my tool got anywhere close to them. They were worse than ticks on a dog! I was shocked to see how fast they could move. They have a hard shell back too and once I caught them they were difficult to crush, but crush them I did.

Once the bee got down on the sticky board they probably found her and climbed onto her body. Obviously the mites are clever enough to move to avoid being cleansed off the bees. I can see that being a hygienic bee is a real challenge and I hope their genetics can keep up with the evil mite.

The sad part was watching the dying bee's antennae moving gently up and down. It was like she was tapping out her last message, her last body part that she could command to move before dying.

I found the small gaps at the back of the hive where a bee might crawl in and I used duct tape to fill them in so it won't happen again.

Bees in my bonnet

"You've got bees in your bonnet," my Dad would say. He'd say it to Mom a lot too. Our family often enjoys projects that we have a tendency to work on with a singleness of mind that's kind of scary. And Dad, he can get bees in his bonnet too.

This photo is of a bumble bee flying to my Oriole feeder (sugar water feeder). It's the first time I've ever seen bumble bees sip nectar from a feeder. In the past the visitors would always be ants, yellow jacket wasps, hummingbirds, finches and Orioles that drop by to sip from these feeders. The fact that bumble bees came to this source of nectar is a sign of how bad our summer has been.

There must be a dearth of nectar in my neighbourhood. That's not surprising considering how cold and rainy it has been this summer. I've read that many flowers will bloom but unless the temperature reaches a certain high, they won't put out nectar.

Last week our family vacationed in Tobermory, Ontario. It's about a 2 hour drive north of Toronto (4 hours from my home south of Toronto). We go every year because we love it so much. It's the scuba diving capital of Canada - crystal clear waters and about 30 shipwrecks to dive on as well as giant interesting geological rocks.

We also love hiking the trails of the Bruce Peninsula. Our favourite trail leads up to the top of cliffs that open out into a huge rocky grotto. These are smooth flat rocks that are great to sunbathe or picnic on.

So I had a week away from my bees. It was hard to be away from them. The last I had been in the hive was during my friend Henry's inspection and we found queen cells.

But I found I still had bees in my bonnet. I just couldn't stop thinking about them. I looked for them everywhere I went in Tobermory. I didn't have to look very hard. Milkweeds and Queen Anne's Lace were in bloom on the edges of the camp site and the bees were happily swarming all over them. I could smell the sweet intoxicating scent of the milkweed from several feet away.

Of course there were also predators on the milkweed as well, trying to take advantage of a meal that might fly within their reach. I saw a dragonfly and a crab spider, poised to snatch a meal if the opportunity presented itself.

While entering the dive shop in town I looked down at the steps and there was a worker bumble bee. I could tell right away that something wasn't right with her. People had stepped over her to enter the shop but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone stepped on her.

I picked her up by her wings and placed her on a leaf. I learned the trick of picking up honey bees by their wings from my beekeeping friend Paul. He assured me that honey bees can't twist around to sting you.

I wasn't so sure if the bumble bee could twist around to sting but I decided to risk it. As it turned out, the little creature was too preoccupied with its own issues to sting me.

I placed her on a potted purple annual flower that looked like a daisy. I hope she was okay.

We'd called home a couple times during the week and found out that the weather was fair and sunny which is a real boon from all the overcast cold days and rain.

The weather in Tobermory was fine and fair as well, just one day with rain in the morning but then it cleared and the sun came out.

And on the long ride home a week later I was still thinking about my bees and planning my next hive inspection.

There's no question, I definitely have bees, several thousand bees, buzzing around in my bonnet.