Bee installation day!

I have mentioned before that beekeeping is not for the faint of heart, and that is so true. A lot of wonderful science shrouded in a constant stream of mysteries. It’s almost impossible to feel you are doing everything/anything right/wrong.

Today was an important day for our little apiary - we had one new package of bees to install into our Hive 3. We also had to check Hives 1 and 2 for brood (eggs/larvae), which are evidence of a laying queen. The queen takes the winter off, and all of the bees live extended indoor lives for 6 months. (As a comparison, summer honey bees only live 3 weeks.) So assuming the colonies make it through the winter (both of ours did), you now have to check to see if there is brood being laid. If not, when all of the winter bees die off (very soon), there will be no new bees to support the hive going forward.

Here is Montana holding a “package” of about 5,000 new bees. Inside the package is a little screened-in box that holds the precious queen. You dump the bees into the empty hive en masse, and then you strap in the little queen box and replace the little cork in the end with a marshmallow. It takes the other bees a few days to eat through the entire marshmallow, at which time everyone is used to her pheremones and the queen is then free. Before she can lay any eggs she has to leave the hive and take one mating flight (this happens in a “drone congregation area” about 20+ feet up in the air.) Drone (male) bees from OTHER hives make a run to mate with her (and when they are successful they die, because the mating act causes their abdomens to explode, I know.) This one flight is the only time the queen leaves the hive, and she has everything she needs to lay literally thousands and thousands of eggs every few minutes for the rest of her life. It’s nuts!

Our installation went without a hitch, so we will keep a close eye on Hive 3 to make sure they are drinking the syrup we feed them this time of year and starting to build out comb (the little wax honeycomb formations on the frames) and that they fill them with honey from the syrup. Once the nectar from flowering plants and trees starts flowing outside the hive, we pull the syrup, and then THIS is where honey we can eat comes from.

We make up 5 gallons of 1:1 sugar:water syrup to feed the hives in the early spring. These jars are inverted inside the hives so that outside predators like yellow jackets can get at the good stuff.

The is one international color that queens all over the world are marked each year. For years ending in “4” it’s green. This allows beekeepers to be able to identify if the queens they installed are still active or have been replaced by the colony. The colors also help remind you how old the queens are.

An example of a pretty nice frame that has a little of everything to see. The light yellow along the top edge and left bottom corner is capped honey. This isn’t honey we would harvest - this is honey they will eat as needed.

Inside of the capped honey are colorful honeycombs with varying shades of yellow, gold, browish that are pollen that has been brought in by workers. Different plants make different color pollen. It’s a great source of protein, needed for the babies. In the middle iare darkish-colored slightly raised filled honeycombs. This is the precious brood, the eggs. All of these eggs are females, who do all of the actual work in the hives. You actually can see a few drone (male) eggs along the very right-hand side. You can tell they are drone eggs because they are a larger raised bump. Some drones are a sign of a healthy hive, even though drones do absolutely nothing in their hive (and they are unceremoniously tossed out when fall arrives.) But they do have a job of mating with OTHER queens at some point in their short, otherwise useless, lives.

This is an example of a problematic frame from Hive 1 with ALL drone brood. This is definitely too much drone brood. We are not entirely sure WHY the queen decided to do this (lay a whole frame of drone), but drones attract mites, so this is too much. You can see in the picture below how gross it was when we scraped this whole section out, yuck.

I know, so gross. It’s a shame they have to lose the underlying honeycomb, because they worked hard to create that (you can see what the bare frame foundation looks like, the light yellow with just a slightly raised honeycomb shape.) They will have to recreate all of the built-up honeycomb on this section that we had to remove.

Here is an example of a beautiful frame from Hive 2 that has a special twist. You can see the colorful pollen, and while the honey isn’t quite capped, you can see the nectar inside is a little glossy, so it’s getting there. You calso see some nice patches of brood. But you can also see a part in the middle where I have brushed off the bees is a little raised kind of cylinder - it’s a little hard to see from this picture. But it is a “queen cup”, which is the colony’s method of replacing a non-laying/ineffective queen (which we know this hive has, because there is zero brood.) So we are hopeful this hive will re-queen itself; if we don’t see evidence of this by next weekend, we may have to buy a queen and add her ourselves.

This was by far the best apiary inspection day Montana and I have ever had. Each of the three hives is completely different. Hive 3 is brand new and off to a worry-free start. Hive 2 is a real survivor - there is no brood inside, but there are those “queen cups” that are evidence that the colony is working on creating a new queen that will lay eggs. Hive 1 is thriving will many thousands of bees, tons of brood, bringing in pollen - al of the things. On top of that it was the perfect day, because those bee suits can become claustrophobic if it is too hot, and the bees can become ornery if it is too windy, cold, or rainy. But today we were calm and in control - even when Montana had bees fly up her jacket, there was no panic. Impressive and super fun and rewarding day in the bee yard!