Category: Bee Keeping Journal

First noticeable signs of nectar stores have been identified. Also, the bees are much easier to work as they now have a job.

The two known campus locations which contain wild hives are very active and ready to thrive in the up coming Spring months.

First drones of the season were seen in the hives at Niagara. Specifically the wooden NUC.

A hive was installed at the Barrett location. This will be the fourth year we have been keeping bees at this location.

This 2stack NULC overwintered with a small number of bees. 6 days ago, I placed a frame of brood from the plastic hive into this NUC to help boost numbers. I was previously unable to find the queen, but today she was found and looks large and healthy. I also noted that the bees were tending the new frame of brood which was placed into the hive.

The in-hive feeder was removed and a drawn frame was put into its place. This hive needed minimal smoke and no veil. This hive will go to Barrett’s house.

The plastic hive overwintered with a large number of bees into the spring. There are brood frames present in both top and bottom boxes. Several frames of eggs present in both boxes. This hive is prime for a split. The number of bees was very high. Four frames of resources and brood were moved to the top of the 2stack NUC box. The queen was found and moved with the split. This leaves the plastic hive queenless but with a full frame of eggs and 2 full frames of brood along with several frames of resources.

The split hive from last week was inspected and no signs of a queen cell were found. The time without a queen has been 5 days. I would expect to have seen a queen cell. We may need to add a fresh frame of eggs. Otherwise the colony look very strong.

No other colonies were split as they really did not have enough to fill out the one deep box. The two remaining unsplit hives now both have a second deep brood box to grow into. The first picture below shows a good healthy colony but not really ready to split. The second deep box will help make splits a bit later in the spring.

The colony which had eggs in the super was finally fixed. All of the brood had hatched out and no new eggs were present due to the queen excluder which I placed on the hive a few weeks back. All bees in the upper super were shaken into the lower deep. The empty second deep was added.

A 2stack Nuc was taken to the campus. This has fully drawn frames and some resources. This will be for swarm catches or new splits.

Only 2 out of the 6 hies at Corona St. survived. All of the commercially purchased hives perished at various points throughout the late winter. All hives had good resources and did not show signs of starvation or any deadouts at the bottom of the hive. A small number of dead bees were present but not enough for a full hive and most likely were due to the extensive robing.

We split the two remaining wild colonies. Both colonies had extensive bees filling out both the top and bottom boxes. There were eggs and brood present in both top and bottom boxes. The white yellow was split and the queen went with the split. The yellow read was split and the queen went with the split (we think). Both boxes had eggs, pollen and resources to start again.

For some reason, wax moths hit the two unused Warre hives during the 2021 summer. I had these two hives sealed up with the intention of preventing any wax moth intrusion. My efforts to seal the hives was not successful. My guess is that the moths entered into cracks in the hive body interface. 8 Warre hive boxes were destroyed. All wax and moths were removed from the contaminated boxes. The boxes and frames were then blasted with flame to eliminate any remaining wax moth contamination.

There was one Warre hive which went into fall with a very strong colony. The hive was treated several times with Oxalic acid vapor. No honey was harvested on this colony. For some reason the hive was abandoned. No dead bees were seen in the hive and only a handful of bees were seen in the bottom of the hive. These dead bees would most likely be a result of the extensive robbing of the extensive unused honey stores and not the original colony.

A perfect looking hive but simply no bees. Perhaps the bees abandoned the hive.