Thrilled

An exciting verification today in the top bar beehive.  Last weekend, we found capped brood when we had begun to assume we had lost our queen - again. At the time, we were unable to verify the presence of brood at any other stage.  Had the queen laid successfully, then died?

Today, with some trepidation, I did a very quick hive inspection to see if there was any more progress, and found more brood, several stages of larvae, and the queen herself!  I put the three frames I had disturbed quickly back into position (it is overcast and a bit cool), put the cover back on, and let out a deep sigh of relief. Okay, there may have been a fist pump too.

I'll leave things alone for another week, then do a more thorough inspection with Adrian to figure out where things are going as we head into fall.  We will need to assess the honey situation, and decide if we will need to move some frames around, and if we will be needing to 'help' the hive with some sugar syrup to survive the winter; they have had so many upsets during the time when they should be setting in their stores.

I couldn't be happier to *not* be harvesting honey this year!

Bees and Bunnies

We went into the hive during a sunny break on Sunday, and were surprised when we found capped brood, but no other sign of a queen bee.  The hive has a reprieve until next weekend at least, when we will check again to see if there is any sign that the hive is queen-right and things are progressing well - we have our fingers and toes all crossed. This is proving quite the complicated beekeeping experience.

Work continued on the rabbitry, and we managed to get frames installed and covered, that will eventually each house two large hanging cages for our rabbits to have more space and fresh air. 

Sakura and Chun Li are both due to deliver today, and have built nests but have not yet begun to pull fur.  I'll be checking on them all day, but they'll likely wait until tonight to have their kits.

The Birds And The Bees

Well, the bee hive continues to be a big question mark for now.  I confirmed that the queen had emerged from her cell, removed the langstroth frame, and added a couple of bars (for new building) with minimal manipulation on Monday.  On Saturday, we did a more thorough inspection of the hive, hoping we might observe the queen or evidence of new brood.

Nothing.

We didn't see any sign of Queen number 9, but we also observed normal, calm hive behaviour with a bustle of activity and no aggression.  I'll take that as a good sign, and leave things be for another week.  There aren't a lot more options now, as we are reluctant to buy another queen after losing our import to begin with, and it's getting rather late in the season for nectar flow and re-building the colony numbers.

Celine is still sitting on her eggs, and we *could* see chicks by the weekend.  We've set up a temporary shelter to move her (or likely the 2 older girls) into if she manages to hatch out any little ones.  We did attempt to candle the eggs to identify if we have any potential chicks on the way, but with very little experience and a normal flashlight, I couldn't say for sure what I was looking at.  Two of the eggs appear to match online diagrams showing a late death at 10-16 days, but I'm unwilling to risk viable eggs due to my own uncertainty. I won't be jostling the eggs again until I am sure they are no longer viable.

Another sunny, dry day in the garden... I broke down and got out the sprinkler on Sunday to supplement the drip irrigation lines.

Just Bees

I'm sensing a theme to my postings recently.....but it looks like things might have finally settled down on the bee front (fingers crossed).  The heat has been high over the past week, making manipulating top bars a bit risky (and *that* is how we've accidentally managed our first, small, honey harvest).

Yesterday's inspection was full of import, as it would tell us if we still had 'someone' laying, and what was going on with the 2 queen cells.  The bees have returned to a state of calm since the initial robbery and hive move, and I've been closely approaching the hive and watching them work (and deal with a very reduced entrance) over the past several days with no issues.

The emergency queen cell is still intact, and was covered with worker bees (their numbers enhanced by all of the brood from the Langstroth frame, which has hatched out completely). Careful examination, using a flashlight, showed that there were no eggs or larvae added to the comb this week. Our observations on Monday verified minimal larva that was three days old and more, with no evidence of eggs. Our thorough examination on Wednesday resulted in no visual of a queen, and we saw no evidence of a queen again.  It seems that we made a good call to leave the emergency cell where it was.  The potential swarm queen cell has been abandoned, and I saw no evidence of the larva that had initially caused me concern.

Given the information available, this queen should emerge today or tomorrow, perform her orientation flights, and mate within a week to ten days. She should begin laying within three days after mating.  We could have eggs laid in the brood chamber as early as next week, or as late as 17+ days from now. That 'late' calculation was why we waited so long to see results from our last queen, and then install a purchased queen - and that didn't work out either.

I'm hesitant to risk opening the hive again for the next while, to reduce the risk of killing the queen, or startling her into flight. The bees from our original colony will be nearing the end of their life-span now, and Jen's Langstroth workers are going to be hard-pressed to span the gap between now and the emergence of the new queen's worker brood ten days after being laid (2 1/2 weeks from now at least). A worker bee in summer can live to about a maximum of about 6 weeks. Here's to all the hard work going on inside that wooden hive body! And here's a view of their nearby pollen and nectar sources this morning:

Just in the backyard, there's borage still blooming in the garden, along with honeysuckle, roses, lavender, bergamot, vetch, trefoil (finally found that this annoying weed can feed rabbits *and* bees!), squash, cucumber, coriander, thyme, oregano and lemon balm (which I need to stop harvesting for the rabbits and allow to bloom).  Put a beehive in your yard - it's a good reason not to worry about the dandelions you have growing there.

The Bee Saga Continues

So, we went into the hive today to look for eggs and larva, and to excise the emergency queen cell I had found.  We looked at every frame multiple times, inside the hive body's nooks and crannies every time we moved a frame, and tried to find a queen corpse with a red dot.....or even one without.

 

There were a few bodies, but they were small, and some of the housekeeping bees took advantage of our opening the hive to dispose of the waste. 

 

It didn't look like there were any new eggs, but the workers are tending *another* queen cell, that has a larva hatched and floating in jelly - they're building the cell up around her on the bottom of a frame (swarm queen location).  None of the vacated cells from the previous swarm cell building have larvae or discernible eggs, though workers may have been prepping them for eggs (several workers had their heads inside two of them).

 

I looked everywhere for newly laid eggs, but most of the comb is filled with nectar and capped honey, with some pollen and some larvae that looked to be day three or four and older - there are capped drone cells. The bees are not touching the newer comb we had hoped they would use for brood. I moved that comb immediately beside the Langstroth brood frame, to make it more accessible to the bees tending the brood - there has been no addition of new comb (aside from adhering the existing frames to the sides of the hives).

 

I brought out the knife to cut the emergency cell off the brood comb, and found I could only score it down to the plastic base - there's no way I can 'scoop' this comb off without fatally pinching, ripping or otherwise  damaging the queen inside - and she still  might actually be needed. I made the call to leave the cell in for now.  I will check daily to see if there is any sign of new brood being laid.

To Bee Or Not To Bee

This whole beekeeping experience is making me appreciate bees, beekeepers, and honey much more than before!

Last weekend, we introduced a new queen to our pieced-together hive, having been unable to find any sign of a queen, eggs, or larva anywhere in the hive for more than 17 days.  Then, we had robbing, entrance closings, verifying that the queen had been released from her cage,  more robbing, moving the whole hive, monitoring the state of the hive and worrying about the wellbeing of the queen while the bees seemed much more agitated and wary...

Seven days after we originally 'mixed things up,' I went in to quickly assess the state of the hive, and opened the hive body at the end farthest from the 'loaner' Langstroth brood frame - where the original top bar stores of nectar and honey were being managed.

And found a queen.

But - it was a queen without the red dot of the caged queen we had introduced, and she seemed much larger - with worker bees doing a very picture-perfect job of attending her, fanned out around her. Ironically, it was also the first time I had visually verified the presence of a queen in the hive.

But - she was on the follower board at the front of the hive, and nowhere near cells that she should be laying in.

Unsure of what to do, and with a mass of now very agitated and noisy bees filling the air around me, I carefully placed the board back into the hive body, put the top back on the hive, and walked away to think.

Now, this could be one of the original queens, out of the five cells we identified after our swarming incident - heck, it could even be the queen that came with the package originally, if she had not been ousted from the hive.  Or, it could be the Vancouver Island queen, with the dot having been removed somehow from her back.  The two of us went into the hive the next day, in hopes of identifying one or both of the queens in the frames, so we could decide what was going on.  We found this:

 

 

A capped queen cell

 



Now - follow me here - I did not observe this cell when I went in by myself, so we cannot be certain how long it has been capped. We know for sure that there was no sign of a queen cup on the day we put this frame into the hive.  Research shows that it takes '9 days' for a laid egg to become a capped queen cell, and 16 days total to emerged queen.  If this brood frame went into the hive body ten days ago, it's possible that this cell contained an egg from Jen's queen in her hive, that was less than 3 days old, and that our colony recognized as having the potential to become a queen - so they built up the cell around her. 

Our assumed lost queen may have finally laid an egg in this comb, and then the colony decided to replace her, noting that she was not being very productive (reference the days with no activity in the brood chamber).

Using these same figures, it should not be possible that the Vancouver, caged queen, laid an egg that was developed into a queen cell - simply because there was not enough time between her release and the discovery of an already capped cell.

So, I consulted with Jen, telling her that we had not been able to observe a live queen despite going through the entire hive - they can run from the light and move quite quickly, or hide within the hive body.  My next move (tomorrow when Adrian will be an extra set of steady hands) is to physically remove this queen cell from the comb, and place it in a ventilated container for the next few days. I will have to inspect the hive every day to try and determine if there are any new eggs or larvae visible in the cells - to identify that there is 'someone' still laying.

If there is a drone layer (an infertile worker bee), I should be able to determine that no current larvae are capped as worker cells, and should see only infertile drone capping.  Brood placement, and the presence of more than one egg in a cell is another tell-tale. This is a problem of its own, as it means that there will be no new workers, *and* the drone queen could kill any other queen introduced into the hive.

Strawberries, Blueberries and Huckleberries

Technically, the month for strawberries has passed in the garden - though there are a few lagging behind to ripen as the season continues.  If we're lucky, and the heat-wave subsides, these 'everbearing' plants will flower again (maybe two more times), and we will enjoy more fruit in the future.  For the time being, our attentions have turned to the blueberries which have been ripening since the beginning of July.  We try to pick the ripe berries at least once a day from our established bushes, to discourage predation by all of the birds looking for a tasty treat.  I just scared off several Stellar Jays having brunch... By the end of the season, we will be so tired of these daily pickings that the time will come to just let the birds have a little feast.  We still treat Nugget to a few of her favourite tidbits - our chicken loves her blueberries, and will jump to carefully nip them from between our fingers.

Yesterday morning, I went out to one of my favourite picking spots to hunt for wild huckleberries.  They're much harder to pick, averaging roughly 1/2 hour of picking for each 1/2 pint of jam that I make, but it's become a bit of a tradition for me.

 

Several times throughout the day, I checked on the hive to make sure that there was no sign of the robber bees - we physically moved the hive after the robbers returned the second day after they found the hive. The distance of a mere 10 feet and some tall plantings seems to have caused enough confusion to discourage predation. Two of the three entrance holes are blocked, and will stay that way in the near future.  I've observed guard bees pacing in and out of the remaining entrance, wary of intruders. We will do a hive inspection on Sunday to verify if our new queen is laying, and if the brood from Jen's hive has begun to emerge.  

 

In the garden, the barley, shallots and garlic are nearly ready for harvest. We had the last of our first -sown lettuce greens with dinner last night, and had blueberries with a bit of ice cream to top off our meal.  The tomatoes are in bloom, but I have yet to see any fruit development (very late this year). Cucumbers and zucchini are beginning to form, as well as the fruits on our winter squash vines.  The pole and bush beans have peaked in their growth, and are starting to set flowers for pollination. More pole beans are just breaking the ground to replace the pea plants I pulled on the weekend. Cilantro plants are busy flowering, so it looks like we will have a good crop of coriander seed - and I have successive plantings of the herb, so we are still enjoying fresh salsa, even if the tomatoes are from the store. The heat caused the oriental greens to bolt, and I've decided to let the planting essentially re-seed itself in place for the cooler months.  The first planting of basil is hitting a foot in height, and I should be harvesting this weekend to make basil/almond pesto (it keeps wonderfully in the freezer). Also on the to-do list is using up some of the parsley for home-made tabouli. 

 

While I was giving some of our plants a bit of extra water, this dragonfly fearlessly landed a foot away from me, and stayed to let me take pictures.

 

Robbery in Progress

I went outside today to check on the chickens and rabbits in the hot afternoon, and went to investigate when I heard buzzing from the direction of the hive (you don't normally hear them, unless you've got the top open).  At first glance, it looked like there was a massive backup at the entrance holes, but knowing that our colony is currently fairly small, and knowing that there have been fewer numbers heading out to forage over the past few days, I took a closer look.  What I saw was a few larger bees wrestling at the entrance holes with some of our girls. The foreigners were trying to get in, while their compatriots hovered nearby, waiting for their chance to zip past the bees guarding the entrance.  In large part, our foraging Carnolians seemed to be ignoring the interlopers, trying to get around them and continue about their business. I'm not sure how many 'guard' bees are at work in the hive these days with their limited numbers.

I plugged the holes with twigs as my first reaction - trying to limit the amount of movement in and out of the hive.  The robbers stayed close by, and I ran to get my veil and gloves, while dialing my beekeeping friend.  You can see the robbers below - the much larger bees with long, dark abdomens were considerably bigger that our fuzzy little girls.

Veil and gloves on, I tried to secure the entrances to allow for passage of our smaller bees, while limiting how many of the robbers could get in - all of the bees ignored me.  I was hoping that blocking the passages would make it easier for the colony to fight back and prevent ingress.  The sheer numbers of robbers was disconcerting, and I had no idea what was happening inside the hive (robbers will kill workers and even the queen of a hive they are stealing from).  I couldn't open the hive to observe, since that would only allow more robbers a chance to get in, but could see that the queen cage was resting on the floor of the hive, possibly knocked off during the struggle inside. The cage was dutifully being attended from outside by 10 or more worker bees, doing their job regardless of the situation.  Twice while I watched and considered my options, the sheer volume of robbers trying to force their way in dislodged the smaller sticks I was using to reduce the space. 

I decided this wasn't going to be pretty, headed back to the workshop, grabbed the staple gun, and cut myself a piece of screening material.  I quickly removed the sticks, and secured the screen over all three holes, stapling it down to prevent any movement at all. Robbers were trapped inside, and our foragers were unable to return home.

I checked back on the hive at intervals, and found that the robbers had lost interest about 45 minutes after I placed the screen - now there were about 30 of our bees desperately trying to get out of the hive, bunched up under the fabric.  I pulled half of the screening off, freeing one entryway completely, while making it difficult to access the second entrance.  Several of our girls took up position at the edge of the open hole, fanning pheromones, I assume, to tell their foraging sisters that they could now access the hive.

Relieved and worried, I opened the hive to access the queen's cage - and found her unharmed and alive, covered in a protective coating of bees.  The candy plug is almost gone, and I feel fairly confident that the hive has accepted her and was protecting her during the invasion.

I'll keep a close eye on the hive tomorrow - and probably for several days!

Of Bees and Bunnies

Yesterday, we processed our two recent litters of rabbits, while taking some time to show friends how to put down a rabbit as quickly and humanely as possible, and what comes after.  My farming/beekeeping/font of knowledge friend Jen dropped by, having run to the post office to pick up a queen bee that had been mailed overnight from Vancouver Island, and shared some personal tips and tricks about rabbit butchering.  All of us chatted and had a few positive hours of preparing home-grown meat for the table. I think everyone learned a thing or two!

I took a moment to discuss with Jen how we had determined that we no longer had a queen in our hive, and that our colony was likely doomed - knowing that the current bees would die off with no replacements being reared.

A few minutes after cleaning up after ourselves that evening, I received a call letting me know that the replacement queen from the Island was available, since the 'queenless' hive she had been meant for in Jen's bee yard had managed to produce their own queen after all, and things were ticking along.

Adrian and I quickly decided to ask for the queen - and a little bit of help as well. 

So, this morning, Jen came over with the queen in a little cage the size of a tic tac container (shipped via Canada Post Expresspost), and a frame of capped brood from one of her Langstroth hives.....

We shifted all of the top bars over, to make as much room as we could at one end of the hive, and placed the wood pieces which previously held the sugar syrup feeder, so we had a bit of a platform.

 

 

Jen had brushed as many bees off of a brood frame as she could, and brought the frame over in a pillow case for transport. Unfortunately for the bees that hitched a ride, our colony identified and killed them as intruders. It was a bit gruesome to watch.

 

Removing two of the built up top bars gave us just enough room to squeak the Langstroth frame in on an angle, and allow it to remain upright. 

The removed top bars, started with new, unused comb, went on either side of the foreign brood, in an attempt to insulate the brood, and to give a bit more security - and possibly to lend a reassuring, familiar scent to the remainder of our colony.



The queen was duct-taped to one side of the brood from Jen's hive, and the second top bar placed in front of her to provide warmth and security, while the bees from our top bar learn to recognize her scent and release her from her cage by eating the candy cap at one end.

We covered this decidedly unconventional compromise with a burlap sack, before putting the lid back on the hive, and this evening I will go in to (hopefully) verify that 1. Our bees have not killed the new queen, and 2. That they are congregating around her protectively and feeding her while they accept her leadership.

 

Thank you Jen, and here's hoping that our emergency measures help our hive to regain its lost numbers.

Hive Inspection

Yesterday's swarm flew off before someone could come and capture it, apparently taking a swing about the neighbour's yard and 'heading East.'

Today we went into the hive to do a full inspection, and get an idea of how the colony was responding to losing part of its population.  We went through all of the bars in a thorough examination, and found five empty queen cells in total, meaning (we hope) that the battle is over, things should be settling down, and the new queen will take control of the colony. After having her mating flight, she should get down to the work of re-populating the hive.  The girls (and boys) were calm and busy in all parts of the hive, and laying in some nectar in the brood nest.

There is capped honey and pollen present, though not in large amounts.  We'll do an inspection in a week and, with good luck, we should start to see eggs being laid. It could take two weeks before we see much happening to indicate the presence of a laying queen, so we may need to be patient.