Apiary Journal 2012
by Caroline Abbott
Location: 1327 108th Ave. Otsego, MI 49078
October 20, 2012
Activities: Due to rainy weather we met in the shelter of Caroline Abbott’s garage. We discussed overwintering techniques and built two wood chip boxes to place on the club hives on a nicer day. Club members stapled window screening on the bottom of the boxes and filled them with wood chips. We decided the screen was stretching from the weight of the chips, so we took the pieces from cutting down deeps in to mediums, and plan to use those as spacers to keep space between the bottom of the wood chip box and the top bars of the honey super. We discussed ventilation and that it would be a good idea to put an upper entrance hole in the spacer. We also decided to keep the ventilators in between the inner cover and top cover.
Notes on future hive needs: The wood chip boxes – the purpose of which is to provide moisture absorption and insulation – will be placed on the club hives. Also when the weather gets colder, ½” hardware cloth entrance screens will be stapled on the hive entrances to keep mice out. The swarm trap needs to be taken down and put away for the winter.
September 15, 2012
Hive # 1 & 2 :
Condition of hive: Both hives looked great and had a whole full super of honey in the top box. Both boxes has some capped worker brood left in the hive, but the empty brood combs were being filled up with honey. There were still drones in the hives, but that is normal for this time of year. Activities done to the hive: We checked the first two boxes of hive #1 and checked all the way down on hive #2. Since all looked good, we left them as they were. We took down all the other equipment from the failed splits and put them away in the pile. The one has a mouse nest in it already, which was cleaned out and the mice sent scurrying.
Notes on future hive needs: In October, we will place mouse guards on the entrances. We do not need to check for honey stores because there is already enough. We will do a cursory check to make sure all is still well before bedding them down for the winter.
August 4, 2012
Hive #1,2,3,4:
Condition of hive: First we checked hive #4 which was the failed Buckfast queen hive. We determined it was queenless and had about three frames of poor little bees who hadn’t figured that out yet, so essentially dead. Next, we checked hive #3, which was in about the same condition, maybe even less bees. After this, we checked hive #1, the overwintered hive, it was looking great and was full of honey. Hive #2, the Carniolian package was also doing well and had lots of honey. Activities done to the hive: We left the two queenless hives up for now, waiting until the poor bees die out, we don’t need the equipment yet. Hive #1 we collected 18 frames of honey off of. We re-filled the supers with empty comb. Hive #2 we collected 9 frames of honey – these were fat frames in a nine frame holder. These were also replaced with empty comb. We extracted nine frames of honey and left the rest for another day or field day.
July 7, 2012 Hive # 1, 2, 3, 4: Condition of hive: We lost the Buckfast queen. It is very sad. There was no evidence of her. The hive attempted to make a supercedure cell, but they apparently failed. There are not enough bees in the hive to survive. The other split is in a similar situation. Apparently they did not make a queen with the first split and by the time we notched the frame, the hive was too small to be able to successfully make a queen. Both Hive #1 and hive #2 are doing well. Activities done to the hive: It was extremely hot – over 100 degrees, so we did a very quick hive inspection and returned to Caroline’s garage to answer questions in the shade with lemonade and ice water. Notes on future hive needs: Hives 3 & 4 will need to be taken down. We will check for any honey next month on the other two. June 9, 2012 Condition of hive: The Buckfast queen was not present upon inspection of the hive. We found a supercedure cell, so decided to wait to see if they successfully re-queen or not. We are not hopeful. The other split did not successfully make a queen from the queen cups in the split. We realized the queen was left in the original hive, not in the split, so it was very weak. Hive #1 looks good. Hive #2 , the package is looking good, too. Activities done to the hive: We used Mel Disselkoen’s “on-the-spot” queen rearing method, taking a frame of brood from hive #1 that had eggs and young larva in it. We notched three cells with eggs in them and placed it in the split. We are concerned that the hive is very weak and may not have enough bees left to successfully make a queen. Notes on future hive needs: We will assess whether the Buckfast hive or the split successfully make queens, or whether both are too small to be able to do so. The other two hives look good. May 3, 2012 Condition of hive: Hive #1 was very active, but calmed down since we had given it more room, it had not swarmed. Hive #2 – the new package was acting good, looked like all was well. Activities done to the hive: We placed a new pallet on the ground by hive #1 and split the hive. There were queen cups with eggs in them in at least two boxes. Because of the strength of the hive, we made sure there were frames with queen cups in both halves of the split and gave equal parts to each side. We labeled the split hive #3. We left the swarm trap in place in case they swarm anyway. Notes on future hive needs: Since the queen cups only had eggs in them, we figure they won’t attempt to swarm for about two weeks. Therefore, we will check them around 5-17 or 18th to see how they are doing and check the swarm trap. We will schedule a field day in early June to do a routine hive inspection and see how our new package queen is laying. May 1, 2012 Hive # 1 & 2: Condition of hive: We received one package of Carniolian bees from AWS bees. We installed it in hive #2. All went well, we released the queen immediately because she wasn’t in an introduction cage. Hive #1 was so strong it was ready to split. We had put another box on top to give them some extra room the day before, and with club members’ help we put another box with only foundation under that to keep them occupied until we could split them. For extra insurance, we place a swarm trap in a small tree near the hives in case they decided to swarm before we had a chance to split the hive. Notes on future hive needs: As soon as possible, we plan to split hive #1.
Hive # 1 , 2 & 3: