Gloriana's Gold is Thriving

This morning I went out to cut away some shrub and weed overgrowth around the hives and did a quick inspection of Gloriana's Gold (GG). This hive is composed of one deep with two medium supers on top of it. I was excited to lift the back of the hive and feel its weight — it is chock full of bees!

The top super has honey in the outer frames and baby bees being laid in the middle. The laying pattern is a little spotty. I think that may be because the queen is laying more in the middle super, which is definitely heavier with brood.


Last, I pulled out the IPM sheet for a check. The IPM (Integrated Pest Management) sheet fits below the screened bottom board and helps a beekeeper see and monitor a mite infestation. As far as I can see, there wasn't a mite problem, just heavily coated with pollen. Oh, and also a wax moth or two that the girls killed and mummified.

I'm excited about traveling to Temple, Ga. this weekend to pick up a nuc from Georgia Honey Bee Company. I've got an empty hive and it needs fillin'! Photos to come.

Fond of Fondant

It's a beautiful and mild (60 degrees) winter day in Roswell...and with colder temperatures and a "possible weather event" coming later this week, I thought it would be a good time to give my bees a little winter boost in the form of fondant.

Fondant is a simple sugar candy. Here is my recipe:

2 cups white sugar
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1-1/2 cups boiling water

Combine and heat ingredients, stirring until sugar dissolves. Then, heat — without stirring — until the mixture reaches 238 degrees on a candy thermometer (or until medium ball stage).

Pour into a bowl and let cool to touch. Beat the mixture until it's light and pour into a wax paper-lined mold.

As you can see here, I let the fondant cool a bit in a wax paper-lined loaf pan.

Later I removed it from the pan, lifting it by the wax paper. I put another sheet of wax paper on top and rolled the fondant out into a thin sheet, which I then cut in half. The bees will get half the fondant today and, whenever they finish it off, I'll give them the other half.

As soon as I placed the sheet of fondant on top of the frames, the bees were on it. (The darker substance on the left is a pollen patty that I placed in the hive a few weeks ago for a protein source.)

When I replaced the inner cover, a few of the girls peeked out at me and the sunshine. And then it was time to replace the outer cover and seal up the hive so the bees can eat and get back to their important work.

Starving!

I was so thankful to receive dire warnings via Facebook and email from Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association, as well as Brushy Mountain Beekeeping and Pigeon Mountain Trading Co. about the immediate need to feed the bees! Even though the season is deceptively warm and we're lured into thinking the bees have plenty of food, an actual lack of nectar flow has put Southern bees into starvation mode.

Yesterday I made a big batch of sugar syrup and went out to inspect Apollo, my only remaining hive. Sure enough, when I pulled off the inner cover, there was a cluster of about 100 dead bees on the top super. Sad, sad, sad. This super, which was full of honey a couple of months ago, was now almost devoid of honey. The bees were STARVING and had been feeding off their stores.

On the positive side, the queen had apparently made it up into this super and been hard at work laying eggs. Six of the frames were full of beautifully capped brood, eggs and larvae, and the laying pattern looked just as it should. My sweet little honeybees need a food source so that they can, in turn, nourish these baby bees and make a strong colony.

The girls went through a large plastic feeder of syrup yesterday and they are now working on a small feeder this morning. Probably time to think about ordering a feeder that can supply them for at least a few days at a time.

Hope I've dodged a bullet and kept Apollo going — I'd hate to lose yet another hive.

A Tale of Two Hives

This has been a challenging winter for both hives. I've learned more about the pests that plague honeybees and about the value of regular hive inspections, winter feeding and "re-queening." Let's just say I've learned these lessons the hard way.

Apollo

Apollo is my original hive, which I started with a package back in May 2010. This hive has overcome numerous problems including multiple swarms, one particularly brutal and prolonged cold snap and several different pests.

A couple of months ago, I pulled off the cover and noticed that there was a white substance underneath the inner cover. It looked like expandable foam sealant, actually. I had a very hard time prying the inner cover off the top super, and when I finally did, was horrified to see a thick layer of white cocoons. Apollo had a wax moth infestation. (Click on the photo below if you'd like to see an enlarged image.)



Wax moths are extremely destructive insects, spinning webs throughout the hive and their larvae destroying not only the brood comb but also the hive equipment. Here is a picture of the damage done to the super and frames by larvae burrowing into the wood.



I removed the top super — which could not be salvaged — and cleaned out as much webbing and other wax moth debris as I could, put in some fondant for the bees to feed on, closed the cover and hoped for the best. Although I've been told that honeybees are likely to abscond from a wax moth-infested hive, the Apollo bees chose to stay and, miraculously, appear to be thriving right now.

Recently I attended a lecture given by honeybee expert Dr. Keith Delaplane about colony collapse disorder and what the disappearance of honeybees and other pollinators means to the environment and to our way of life. (Check out this informative editorial, "On Einstein, Bees, and Survival of the Human Race.")

Afterward, I was able to ask Dr. D. about my wax moth issue and he just smiled and said, "Wax moths are generally only a symptom of a bigger problem. If the hive is healthy and the bees are robust, they can fend off wax moths pretty easily." So, we talked about the probability of Varroa mites (at least the small hive beetles are under control, I'm glad to say), or... an unhealthy or dead queen. He suggested I "re-queen" the hive, which involves killing the old queen and introducing a new, healthy queen. I shuddered visibly, I guess, because Dr. D. simply smiled again and wished me luck.

For now, I'm watching and waiting to see if Apollo has the strength to keep on keepin' on. There are hundreds of girls out and about lately, flying around in the sunshine on these warm afternoons, so I'm thinking they're gonna make it.

Rocky

Sadly, today I discovered that the Rocky hive is dead. I'd suspected as much because there have been so few bees visibly out and about, nowhere near as many as Apollo. I'm sad and feeling like a "bad mom" because if I'd paid more attention sooner, I might have been able to salvage the situation. I could've re-queened this hive and fed the bees with not only fondant, but also pollen patties.

Bees need a food source during the winter, even in Atlanta where there is some pollen available for foraging pretty much year-round. This year, I didn't give them pollen patties and I feel like this was part of the reason for hive failure.

So, I fell down on the job and it's a hard lesson learned again after losing the Sweet Beezus hive last winter.

Plan B

I've got a package of bees on order to repopulate Sweet B, and those bees will arrive in May. In the meantime, I've signed up to attend a hive inspection tour offered by the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association in a few weeks. The inspection of multiple hives will be conducted by a master beekeeper and we'll be able to observe and learn what to look for in determining whether the hive is healthy or has problems.

Also, I found out that, as a MABA member, I can put my name on the "swarm list" and possibly be the recipient of a swarm of bees that MABA beekeepers are routinely called on to collect from people's yards, businesses, school playgrounds, etc. As often as my own Apollo bees have swarmed in the past, I might be lucky enough to collect my own swarm again this spring and repopulate the Rocky hive. And that's an interesting idea in itself, because Rocky was started from an Apollo swarm the first year I began beekeeping.

Newbies...make that new bees!

Tomorrow's "shipping" day. The new bees I ordered from Rossman Apiaries will be shipped out to me via Priority Mail. (Hopefully, there is no significance to Friday the 13th in this case.) The new girls should arrive here Monday or Tuesday.

In preparation for their arrival, I watched the Brushy Mountain DVD for beginners again, paying special attention to the segment on how to install packaged bees. The hive is painted and ready in its place out in the back yard. All that's left to do is make a batch of sugar syrup on Monday for spraying the bees down and then feeding them.

Pictures to come after installation next week.