It's Been Way Too Long Since the Last Post!

...And much has happened since then.  My son, of whom I am very proud, is now making final plans for his upcoming college education - he starts in August.  It has been fun to see him mature into the man he is now and I look forward to seeing God continue His good work in him.

Ok.  Here is the long and short of the last five (or so) weeks for Airy Ripe Rakes.

I went into winter with four hives and emerged on the back side with only two (the hive loss stories are in previous posts).  These colonies were my original hive that I started beekeeping with in 2011 and the McFadden colony I purchased late last year.

So, late in the spring I split the McFadden hive by creating a nucleus hive but misread the signs of imminent swarming.  I expected and wanted natural queen creation from swarm cells.  Apparently the swarm cells were from past use - I now know how to detect this - and I ended up with a nuc and no queen.

The "Tom" hive - which was my very first colony - had an aging queen who wasn't laying very well at all.  So I removed her expecting the colony would naturally create a new queen from recently laid eggs.  This did not happen.

And somehow - for reasons unknown to me - after the split and after removing the queen from Tom, the McFadden hive lost their queen.  So, during my hive inspections three weeks ago, I didn't find any eggs or larvae in any of the three hives (McFadden, Tom, and the nuc).  By the way "nuc" is short for nucleus and is pronounced "nuke".  So I had to scramble and ordered three queens.  On Friday the 31st of May, my brother-in-law and I installed new queen boxes into the three hives.  These are tiny little boxes that house the queen and a few attendant worker bees.  They can be easily slipped in between two frames to allow the existing colony to get used to the new queen scent.  The following day, the 1st of June, my lovely assistant and I released the queens using the hand release method.  My assumption was that the hives had been queenless for up to two weeks and there wasn't any lingering old queen scent to cause the workers to rebel against the new queens.  The overnight stay in their queen boxes allowed their scent to permeate the colony and allow the workers time to get used to the new queen scent.

Everything was a success!  As of Saturday the 14th we have 14 day old brood, which will begin hatching on the 21st.  I actually checked to see if the queens were laying 3-4 days after their introduction to make sure everything was OK.  But seeing all of the new capped brood cells on several frames in each hive yesterday made my heart sing!

The "Tom" and "McFadden" colonies in late April 2013

I was happy to find that the queen in the "Tom" colony was still laying. But I think I need to do something a little more aggressive to rebuild this colony.  This video is very short.  I just wanted a quick peek to see what was going on.

http://youtu.be/CTM6xC8BAvg


I'm sorry to say that this next video is a long one by my standards.  I don't like long videos because it is easy to lose interest.  I usually edit a lot out of the raw video and try to keep things interesting, but there is so much interest within the video that it remained fairly long.  Thanks to my lovely assistant (and wife), Ramona, for her help with the camera and the extra hands.

The purpose of the video is to show how I put wild comb in the bottom box of the McFadden hive into frames.  I am very glad I checked it out today because I found 2 swarm cells (cells in which the nurse bees are creating new queens).  I want the bees to clean up the mess I made of their comb before I stress them out again with swarm preparations, so I eliminated the swarm cells.  You will also note that their is a large amount of drone brood, this is also a sign of an imminent swarm.  You have to have a lot of drones to mate with a new queen.

This is such a strong colony that I want to split it and make two out of the one.  For this, I will need a swarm cell (queen cell) and lots of brood.  From the looks of things, that will be the easy.  I will have to pay very careful attention to this colony for the next few weeks, at least until I split the colony.  If they create more than one swarm cell I will use an extra one to re-queen "Tom".

By the way, this is the McFadden colony.  It is a feral colony that built its nest in a vacant hive on my friend Pat McFadden's farm.  Unfortunately, Pat was too ill to take care of the colony and they built 4 frames worth of wild comb to fill in the middle section of the box (there are 3 frames on each side).  If you need to monitor the colony for disease, swarming, or various other reasons, it is very convenient, if not necessary, to work with frames.  That is why I abandoned top bar hives during my first year of bee keeping.

The McFadden colony appears to be so strong and the queen lays such a great pattern that I want to purposefully make it a breeder colony to replenish my own apiary and help others too.

http://youtu.be/QuMeJz7Frvs

The pond is full! And the bees are cold!

I think it's great that the pond is full.  But I am tired of the cold April weather.   April in Kansas is the time for bees to be foraging and gaining numerical strength for the upcoming honey flow.  The cold weather could be retarding sources of early nectar and pollen, which are important for the spring build up.

My neighbor to the south of the farm said we received 2 1/4 inches of rain last night.  I knew it would take just one gully washer to fill it.  By the way, I finished painting the boxes.

Wow! The bees are having a hard time of it!

I ordered two packages of bees for this spring and expected them to arrive Saturday morning the 20th. This isn't going to happen now. My shipment, along with hundreds of other colonies, died en route due to a snow storm in Wyoming this week. This is terrible! Our local suppliers still have my deposit and they are trying desperately to fulfill the orders. I really don't know how many colonies were affected but it could number in the thousands. Our local distributor picks up about 150 or so for local beekeepers in South Central Kansas. And he is just one of many distributors that pick up bees in Nebraska after the trek from California.

In the meantime I found two sources for direct delivery through UPS but I am not sure I want to pay the premium. But time is running out and I will need to make a decision soon. This just reinforces my need to have a completely sustainable apiary and produce my own colony increases. I just need to bite the bullet, study up, and learn how.