The population of bees is exploding - so much so, they want to swarm. To prevent this, we can do the split for them. So we have gone from 2 hives to 4!
Before
After
Update 7/30
So far so good! We are seeing progress in the new hives and the other two seem to have calmed down a bit. Both queens are intact in the Asguard and Wakanda Hives. The two new hives have capped queen cells (Brooklyn and Stark Tower).
We also have visiting Monarch Butterflies! The milkweed is a great choice for honey flow (increasing the honey amount in the hive). But to add to help Monarch Butterflies is a bonus!
Hive Inspection! Time to see how they did on their treatment. It's two days early, but it was close enough.
Asgard
This was the hive we were worried about. Last inspection, we had a queen cell. Diving right in, we found her in the top body box. Hurray! We had all stages of bee life cycle (eggs, larvae and capped bees). Find the queen:
Our queen has the yellow dot.
Boy are they *hot* though! We are hoping they calm down now that we removed the mite treatment strips...
Wakanda
Everyone was happy. All stages of the bee life cycles and easily found our queen also in the top body box. Here she was:
Our queen has the yellow dot.
Grass Mowing
I thought I'd end this discussion with the topic on grass mowing. If you like clover honey ... your most common summer honey ... don't mow so often! We can sit on our back patio and watch the bees work the clover:
They say if you keep bees that you also raise varroa mite, sometimes called the varroa destroyer.
What Is It?
"Varroa mites are external parasites that attack both honey bees and brood. They suck the blood from both the adults and developing brood, especially drone brood. This weakens and shortens the bee’s life. Emerging brood may be deformed with missing legs or wings. Untreated infestations of varroa mites will increase and may kill colonies. If the colonies are not examined for mites, losses may be mistaken for winter mortality or queenlessness. " ~ Ric Bessin, University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.
Varroa Mite *photo from University of Kentucky
Aren't they ugly?! Yes, they are! And what a pest. The female mite will go into larva and lay eggs. They then feed on the poor new bee. And they multiply even before the bee enters the world!
Gross.
So what do beekeepers do? Some will keep their drone population down. You can do this by destroying drone cells.
We have chosen to use a natural method. There are some types of acid found in favorite plants of bees: formic acid. How do we use it?
In July, you apply "Mite Away" strips. By laying the strips into the hive, it will kill adult and can kill some under cappings. It is safe even during the honey flow.
So that's where we are. We applied them on July 6 and are awaiting the treatment end date. This can cause a bee loss. So we have invited the chickens into the apiary fence to "clean up" debris.
Undertaker Bees
How do we clean up the dead bees? Don't forget that there are worker bees tasked with "undertaker" duty. So they can either shove them out of the hive or fly the dead bodies away. Here's what an undertaker does:
Edit: link to Univ of Kentucky no longer works. ENTFACT-608: Varroa Mites Infesting Honey Bee Colonies by Ric Bessin, Extension Entomologist. University of Kentucky College of Agriculture
We've been so busy, I didn't realize I wasn't updating our blog! Sorry! Well, here's some news:
Join Us On An Inspection
July 6 - How Bees Know Where the Entrance Is
We took a quick peek in tonight. It's been too hot to get in there! The population has exploded more! Anyway, listen to them call others back to the hive entrance who go lost when we disrupted them!
Capped Queen Cell
Here is a capped queen cup in our Asguard hive. Our mentor suggests we leave it alone and check in two weeks that we have a laying queen. We would ordinarily do more, but we just treated for Varroa Mites. Watch for a discussion on that in a few days!
