Bees have evolved all different manners of behaviors which promote survival. One of those mechanisms is to keep the interior of the hive clean and Hygienic. We see hygiene being practiced by the overall colony and also on an individual level of the worker bee.
The colony as a whole will show clean behavior by never excreting any waste inside the hive. On nicer warm days usually in the afternoon, you will see bees coming out and performing cleansing flights. Basically, they will not go to the bathroom inside the hive. They will fly out and circle in front of the hive before they deposit their waste.
We see other cleanliness behavior in the role of the housekeeping bee. Bees move through different jobs inside the hive during their lifespan. One of those jobs is one of cleaning the inside of the hive. This involves cleaning debris and also carrying out the dead bees. Instinctively bees will fly out a distance from the hive in one last act before they die. However, if they die inside the hive, the cleaning bees will carry them out and deposit them in front of the hive.
Cleaning the hive and cleansing flights are all behavior which take energy and pose significant risk to the individual bee. But the long term survival of the colony is increased with this behavior.
Be careful, you might get pooped on. Do not worry, it is only pollen and nectar.
Worker bees take on different roles throughout their relatively short lives. One of those jobs they graduate to is the job of a guard bee. Guard bees primary role is to protect the entrance of the hive and prevent unauthorized intruders from entering the hive. Usually the biggest risk to the hive are forager bees from a different colony. The bees have a huge amount of resources to protect inside the hive. And those resources will directly affect the colonies survival. If all the honey stores are raided then a colony will soon perish.
Watch this guard bee check bees coming into the hive and chase other intruders away.
Best time of year for a beekeeper is Spring. The bees have survived the worst that Winter had to offer and are beginning to thrive. The bees are focused on foraging and building up the brood. The bees will not even notice us hanging out at the entrance and may not even notice a quick inspection.
When Spring returns, get back in those hives and do an inspection. It may have been at least a month since you last gave them a good look. Do not be afraid to get reacquainted with your bees.
Late winter into early spring can be very difficult for the bees. Specifically in the weeks of warm weather but before we get into the nectar flow, the bees will need supplemental feeding.
Our colony has made it through the harsh low temperatures. To find them starving out mere weeks before the spring nectar flow would be a tragedy. So the best thing to do is put out sugar water mixed with a bit of pollen and perhaps some health promoting additives and get them some food. Even if you do not own bees, feeding the wild population of bees is tremendously helpful.
These are not all my bees but rather probably from a nearby wild colony in the neighborhood.
In the late summer months and into fall, the availability of nectar from the surrounding environment declines. This decline triggers bees to shift away from the normal foraging behavior. All of the forager bees that were needed during the nectar flow are suddenly idle and searching for resources. Robbing is the term we use to describe when forager bees from different hives force their way into a hive and steal the honey stores. Once robbing begins it is just about impossible to stop. The only way to stop the behavior is to close up the weak hive for a period of time. Eventually the foreign forager bees will give up and go somewhere else.
Robbing usually takes place when a colony is weak and cannot defend the hive entrance. In this case, the colony had suffered enormous losses due to pesticide exposure and eventual queen failure. The robing may begin with only one bee but will soon expand to thousands if the resources are unguarded. The bees will quickly exhaust all of the honey and nectar stores until all that is left is just empty drawn comb.
Robbing can look like normal entrance activity behavior upon first glance. However, robbing is much less organized and appears to be more frantic and frenzied. You will also notice bees flying and searching on all corners of the hive looking for entrances. With this example, you can also notice wax capping strewn all over the entrance. Signs of robbing behavior inside the hive box.
When we look inside we see little to no signs of a working colony. All we see are bees focused solely on the honey stores and consuming those honey stores. We can also observe the thousands of wax cappings that are littered in the hive from honey cells that have been torn open. Also note in the video how completely uninterested these bees are with my presence. These bees are not guarding anything but rather caught in the act of stealing.
When robing begins in a weak/dead colony like this one, I also take precautions to close down the entrances of the other neighboring hives. There are thousands of foragers robbing this hive out. When I remove this hive from the location, those thousands of foragers may decide to shift the robbing behavior to a different hive nearby. We can help prevent that by reducing the entrance of all nearby hives or closing them all together until the robbing subsides.
No one likes to treat for mites. The process itself is nasty and irritating. You also get a feeling that the bees would be better off without caustic fumes flooding the hive interior. However the truth is that your colonies will most likely not survive without some sort of mite mitigation. Mites are ubiquitous. Telling yourself your bees are somehow special and do not need treatment is setting yourself and your bee colonies in your care up for disaster. Expect 60% or more losses without some mite treatment or mitigation.
Mites are nasty things which are an invasive species originating from somewhere in Asia. These things attach themselves to bees and slowly drain the bee of hemolymph. Perhaps the more devastating problem is not the leach like behavior but the viruses that the mite brings into the colony. Viruses like deformed wing virus can be a death sentence for a colony.
Mites are just one of the environmental stressors that honey bees face. Luckily we can perform a simple, quick and inexpensive treatment with Oxalic acid. I use a heated aluminum block to vaporize the Oxalic acid. The treatment takes about 10 minutes and in most cases not a single bee will perish. In some cases the bees do not even take notice of the treatment procedure. The only affect I have seen is the introduction of the hot vaporizer block causes a bit of commotion.
This mite treatment will be performed once a month starting in July and ending in October.
Catching a wild swarm of bees in your swarm catcher is a terrific feeling. All that hard work of placing and baiting your swarm catcher for week after week has finally paid off. A quick visual inspection of the swarm catcher shows dozens of bees circling the entrance. When we lower the swarm catcher down from the tree we can immediately feel the weight of the bees.
We need to get these bees into a new home as soon as possible. Make sure to transport the bees quickly and do not let them get overheated. When you shut the swarm catcher up make sure to use some sort of wire screen on the entrance so that fresh air can circulate. Lets get them into a hive;
The interior of the hive has become far more built out and organized. At least 3 frames should now bee fully drawn out with new white wax comb. Entrance activity should be a steady stream of bees coming and going throughout the warm portions of the day. The eggs which were previously seen in the drawn comb should now be open larva and capped brood.
The hive activity is now almost in full swing. The first round of brood should be hatching out in the next 12 days. We will see an explosion of bees and hive building very soon.
So you have started your new bee colony from a package. On day one, you placed your queen cage and emptied your package of bees into the hive. The hive has been closed for about a week and it is now time to perform your first inspection. At this point you should also be able to observe a steady flow of bees to and from the hive entrance. So let’s open the hive up and see what is going on inside.
A first time beekeeper will probably grab the smoker and put on the full bee suit. And if this is what you are comfortable with then there is nothing wrong with that. However, I find that depending on your bees, this may not be necessary. At this point the bees will not yet have any brood to defend and will most likely not be very defensive of the hive. The first week of a new bee package is still a transition period for the bees and the inspection usually does not need any smoke. We are still very much in the honeymoon period with the bees.
Slowly open the hive, being careful not to aggressively pop or snap the top lid off the lower brood chamber. Look at the underside of the hive lid and make sure the queen is not on the lid. Take a look at the bees. Hopefully the approximate number of bees is relatively the same as one week prior.
Take care and remove the outer most frame furthest away from the center. There should not be any bees on this frame. Do a quick check for the queen and set the frame aside. Then carefully starting at the center frame, nudge the group of frames away into the empty space you created. This should allow you to remove and inspect the queen cage that was hung in the center of the box. The queen should have been freed. If not, remove the remaining candy plug and let her loose onto the top bar of the hive. she will quickly crawl down into the hive. Do all of this over the hive just in case you drop her she would fall into the hive.
If the queen already freed herself days ago then pull the center frame up carefully and look for the queen and look for freshly laid eggs. You should probably find that about 3-4 frames have newly drawn comb with eggs.
If you can find the queen, then that is great. If not, do not worry. As long as you see eggs, then you know she is there and is hard at work. It can be difficult to find the queen at this early stage because the colony is very bunched up and not yet fully organized. I got lucky with this colony because the package I received was a bit short on bees.
Carefully put all the frames back in the hive and close everything up. Make sure to move slowly and carefully. Because the hive is still not yet fully built out all the frames with comb, there will be layers of bees in clusters. Make sure not to crush anyone and move very slowly. Finally close everything up and open up the entrance board to the larger opening. The colony will very quickly be needing the larger entrance for all the forager traffic.
The most frequent question I get this time of year, is how do you purchase bees? If you are interested in beekeeping, then you need to start all your work and preparation during the winter months. Typically this involves purchasing all of your hive equipment and also placing an order for your bee package well ahead of time. Bees are typically delivered for local pickup on a prescheduled day in April or May.
A bee package is simply a small wooden container with wire screen sides which contains a small food supply, a caged mated queen and about 3 pounds of worker bees. This package of bees probably contains about 10,000 workers bees and is enough to begin a new colony.
The package of bees is fairly durable and can survive sealed in its current state for about 48 hours. However it is extremely important that the bees are kept in a well ventilated and comfortable temperature. If I am keeping bees inside the package because of bad weather, I will keep them inside the house and twice a day lightly spray them with a sugar and water solution. Obviously the sooner you can get the package installed into the hive the better.
The day you install the package of bees should be a calm day with good warm temperatures. If you must, you can install the bees on a cold cloudy day but if the weather is better in 24 hours, I would wait. It will be better for the bees and more fun for you.
You should already have prepared the new hive for your bees to move into. Remember you cannot move the hive for the next month so make sure to have the hive in a good spot. If you are using a Langstroth hive design, we will only be working with the bottom deep brood chamber.
Prepare the hive and make sure that everything is ready to install the bees. When you finish installing the bees you want to immediately close the hive up and let the colony begin to organize. Once you dump the bees into the hive there is no going back so make sure everything is ready.
Suit up and get ready to install your bees. Begin by carefully removing the metal can of sugar water that is closing up the box of bees. Carefully and slowly lift the entire can of sugar water out of the box. Do not be concerned about the bees that fly out. Then you will carefully remove the queen cage that has a metal tab and is slotted into the wooden box. Once you have the queen cage out, place a rag or small piece of cardboard over the bee package opening to keep the bees inside the box.
Take the queen cage over to your hive body and begin to gentle nudge the bees off of the queen cage. Do not wipe the wire screen with your finger as it could damage the queen bee’s legs. Then you will gently pry the cork out of the opening in the end of the queen cage. And in one controlled movement press a marshmallow into the opening.
Then take the queen cage over to the hive body and hang the queen cage on one of the frames with the marshmallow opening facing downwards and the wire screen facing open space. The nurse bees will feed the queen through the wire screen. Unfold and use the metal tab as a hanger over the wooden frame.
Once the queen is secure then comes the fun part. Take the wooden package of bees with one hand on either side and in a sequence of controlled and swift movements, over a distance of about 2 inches firmly slam the wooden box onto the ground twice. This will make all of the bees fall into the bottom of the box. Then immediately upend the box and with a side to side rocking motion dump the bees out of the box directly on-top of the open hive body. Then repeat a couple of times. Finally you can rest the mostly empty box to the side and the bees will find their new home by themselves.
As soon as possible, I would put the hive body cover on the brood box. The bees will already be moving into the hive body between the frames. Give them a few minutes. Then gently place the cover over the hive. I like to hold the cover about 1/4 inch over it’s resting place and wiggle the cover around in a small circle. This gets the bees to clear the area and you can lower the cover all the way down without crushing too many bees.
Make sure to open the entrance wide so that the bees can fan the queen pheromone. The bees remaining outside the hive should begin to march into the entrance and start to make order of their new home. After about 20 minutes most bees should be inside the hive. Then you should close the entrance down to the smaller option on your entrance bar.
I usually stick around for awhile just to make sure the activity in front if the hive is settling down and looking normal. What you do not want to see is bees pouring out of the hive and bearding on the entrance. That would be bad.
About 1-2 days later depending on when the weather allows, I open the hive up to check on the queen. I usually do not use smoke during this first inspection. The new bee colony probably do not yet mind you opening them up and I do not want to disrupt all the important work that is underway. What you would like to do, is very carefully and slowly move the queen frame aside and inspect the queen cage. The queen should have been freed and is now somewhere in the hive. With so many disorganized bees and a disorganized hive, I do not yet attempt to find the queen. Remove the empty queen cage and put the hive back together very carefully. We do not know where the queen is so be extremely careful.
If the queen is not yet freed from the cage, go ahead and remove the candy plug and let her escape into the hive. Do this work directly over the hive so she does not fall onto the ground. Simply remove the candy plug and place the cage on the frames, she will crawl out and go down into the hive.
