The weather had rained 4-1/2" early this month. We then had the next week in the low 90's. Quite the swing in temperature you know. I live in Texas, so it's pretty much normal to have spikes of extreme weather for short periods of time.
Bees are doing very well. Wintered nicely in the warmer then usual temperatures. The bees were out about 100 to 200 yds flying around. I don't think many actually left further then that as we had bees all over the property. Not bothersome, but just hanging around. Sometime during the week I would feed a bottle of sugar water. Just did it for my entertainment I suppose. Massive amount of bees you could imagine.
January I was able to purchase my 2 VHS queens from California. Arrival on the 13th of April. 23 days to go. I am counting the days because I have rather aggressive bees. 1 hive is Africanized hybrids unfortunately. That's from the cut out I did. I purchased 3 frames of drone for queen breeding. Hoping to raise queens and sell them, so flooding the area with the VHS drones I would really like that. Calm the bees down in the area.
Early Feb I made a Nuc box that is queenless. I am making comb basically with them is all my goal is. I keep dumping some nurse bees in and a frame of brood when I can. The bees decided to fill the gap where I pulled a frame for the Nuc Box and didn't replace that frame. Now if I could only get the bees to do that in the brood box. For whatever reason the queen only has 5 frames drawn out in the brood chamber.
I made about 50 frames and a few more that were mediums. Made a few bee boxes too. I opted to take the honey box off the bee hive 2 (Africanized Hybrids), but they eventually just robbed it, so I put it back on. I just started a new bee hive with the honey box, but that was a fail. It was next to the bee hive is why. Oh well. I just left a new box with frames on if the bees wanted to make a new bee hive.
The bees are bringing in lots of pollen and nectar currently with all the wildflowers in bloom. We have a normal spring it appears. Bit dryer then usual and not raining inbetween dry spells frequently enough. Were having high winds as usual in spring time with 15 to 25MPH winds. I open and reduce the entrances when needed. We had a few nights of freezing weather over the weekend. Amazing the Texas weather we get. Just when you think Winter is over we get a cold front.
Here is a comical moment. Again I have mean bees, I wasn't suited up this AM.
Bee management is something we all try to do and stay on top of. We can only manipulate and guide the bee colonies. The bees know more then we do and more they know what's up. I'm nearly coming out of my first winter. It was a very mild winter with only a few nights that crept as low as 27 degrees that I can remember. I can't really recall an arctic air mass moving down and it getting super cold or staying prolonged cold.
I expected to go into Spring with the bee hives having only gone through half the honey in the 2 boxes I had for them. It's about 1/3rd and I speculate that as I didn't weigh the boxes, but do know that the bees had very heavy honey boxes going into winter. I did a tremendous amount of feeding trying to get the bees built up with comb and the numbers healthy in 2015. We had a drought and it was so severe that we didn't even have a nector flow meaning very little flowers bloomed in the fall. I remember going in to parts of the end of summer and feeding and I didn't feel as though I had to. I am glad that I did because I didn't even know what to have for winter time.
Since mid January I have fed a bottle of 1:1 sugar water a week. Sometimes it was 2. I opened the bee hives in Mid January and did see capped brood. Spotty brood pattern, but none the less it was the opportunity for the colony to generate some bees for the spring time. Upon closing up the bee hive I noted that a lot of bees were dead on the ground over the next 2 days. No panic, it's just the stress of going into the bee hive. Warmer days above 50 the bees could be seen flying about. I knew what was going on. Old bees I stressed them and they died.
Mid January I ordered my 2 VHS queens from California. This is in light of having to do this because I have too aggressive of bees for temperament. I call 1 hive suspected Africanized bees. Call them hybrids if it makes you feel better it doesn't change the bees temperament. I had a guy comment on that to me and just left it at "Thank You". I know what I am dealing with and have the responsibility of managment of both bee hives. Queen arrival is April 13th mid week. Hope I can find both queens in the bee hives.
That last question is something to address. If I can not find the queens then what? I get to have 2 Nuc boxes with new queens and in a later date I will search until I can find the queen. Bee hive 1 qn goes into a Nuc Box and Queen in bee hive 2 goes into a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Of coarse I am going to remain confident that I can infact find the queens. I will pull the queens on Sunday with help. Here is to good weather that week.
We do have a few trees/plants and shrubs flowering, so the bees are bringing in pollen. What is pollen for bees? They put pollen in the baskets on the legs. 2 pouches. I don't know how they do it, I suppose rubbing the legs 1 on the other as they walk on the flowers. Bees use the pollen to feed to the larvae as protein. No pollen no brood can grow from what I have researched. So, bees that are brining in pollen means the queen is probably laying gang busters.
Mid Feb I did a split into a Nuc Box. I did this to have them draw out comb on drone frames that I purchased. They did not draw out drone comb though. I need drawn out drone comb for when my queens arrive I plan to graft queen cells.
Today I wanted to see how the Nuc Box was doing. I wanted to put a frame of brood inside it too from beehive 1. So I removed the honey box and pulled a few frames and found 1 frame. I put it in the Nuc Box and looked at the frames inside to see if the Nuc frames were being drawn out. No they were not. Just before I closed everything up I wanted to look at the honey stores in the 1st bee hive. I opened the inner cover and it had a full drawn comb where I had removed a frame previously for the Nuc Box and did not replace that space with an empty frame. This meant that I had to get a frame and attach it to a frame and put it back. The comb wouldn't fit in a medium frame, so I had to then get a Super frame. I have medium frames for honey though, so this meant that I would have to take the honey box off to place it in the deep brood box. Replace the honey box and then add another box for honey since they're drawing wax comb. Now, thinking back I should have just placed the deep frame into the Nuc Box cause it's a deep. I will open up the brood box next week and see how they attached the comb to the frame and straighten it out. Probably will just put it in the Nuc Box.
The bees have been active today. Both hives have been out flying around. We've had temps above mid 60's today. It was breezy today about 15 MPH at times. The bees are not going to be bringing anything in. The hidden water fountain is very active with the bees drinking water.
I have had 4 packets of flower seeds since last spring, but it was too late to plant them when I purchased them. It was at the dollar store I think. I planted Poppies, African Daisies, and a melody mixture. The poppies I know will do well. The African Daisies should do well too. I have no idea if the melody will do anything. I also have Delphiniums. They're rather large flowers that I think the bees will like. I will plant them in January and keep them indoor until the end of February. I also planted a almond verbanium This is a flowering small tree that is very fragrant. It will definitely attract bees. Smells really sweet and fragrant. I planted this off the porch about 8feet, so I could enjoy the smell and not have the bees too close. 4ft cube is about what this says it will grow. I have poor soil conditions, so who knows how it will do. I did put a lot of potting soil in the ground.
Lots planted this year. 3 peach trees, 4 roses I think it was 4, 6 grape vines, Some shrubs and some kinda plant that is suppose to bloom in the spring time. It didn't grow much until this fall. Hard to have anything grow in such conditions . Quite a lot of stuff was planted for the bees, but it's not going to impact them as they forage about 8000 acres.
I attempted to contact Hawaii for a queen, but they didn't have any they'd sell me. Damn it. Contacted some in Florida just on the off chance. NOPE. No luck. Oh well.
I did start making Nuc Boxes. Made 1. Cut material for 2, but miscut one board, so I have to do it at a later time. I only had enough for 2 boxes. These are not whole Nuc boxes. These are for the existing Nuc Boxes I have. Since I have to split that African Mean as hell bee hive, I need to build this winter.
Anyhow that's about it. Everything is browning again. Just too cold and the daylight isn't available, so the plants and grass are going dormant.
It's been 23 days I believe since I reduced the Africanized bee hive down by 50%. This was killing 50% of the hive and the queen by shaking the bee frames off the frames and into soapy water. This was done to reduce the behavior of aggression problems I was encountering. It's not fun when your being attacked by bees.
I did write of my attack last week that happened in less then 2 minutes. Lesson learned that any thing I do, I must dress in layers, and be fully protected as the bee hive does respond very quickly. What is going on? I would love to pop the top of the Africanized bee hive to pull a test frame I put in 8 weeks ago. I just want to see if they have drawn comb on it. If they do draw comb then great an inexpensive material for foundations. Since I don't have nurse bees I speculate that the comb is not drawn out, so no need to go rifling through an overly sensitive defensive bee temperament. I can wait for Spring time.
I speculate that a new queen is in the bee hive because it's 5 days past the 16 day emergence of a queen. Hopefully the bee hive did requeen. Since the population was full strength numbers and I culled out 50%, plenty of nurse bees to requeen and even if not the nurse bees enough bees were out of the bee hive when I did the shake some how hopefully who ever makes the queen cell with the pheromones was able to do it.
The queen is going to be a virgin as no male drones exist because they were kicked out of the hive when Fall started. I have seen drones in the other hive awhile back. Interesting thing is I had never seen a drone during inspections. It would be interesting to know if she lays drones specifically to mate and then winter. Since were in Texas I wouldn't bet against that happening. Were still having upper 70's and a few 80's. Nights are in the low to mid 60's. Not ideal to lay, but with the events that took place I speculate she's gotta mate.
Prediction Spring will come in 2016 and in January on some warmer days that we have the queen will start to lay. This will start the bee hive population. February will come and it's coldest during this month. March will come and flights will take place even though nothing is available until April when Spring Flowers emerge. We have an emergence of wildflower bloom that is spectacular. We've had fall rain that germinates the Spring flowers. Sadly we didn't have any rainfall or early fall rain, so not too much was available for the bees. I did a lot of feeding of the bees this summer due to the drought. I thought some flowers would be coming up with the rainfall, but that isn't the case. Not even the native bufflo grass is putting up seed stocks that we typically have. Great thing is that I don't have to mow. Anyone want to come mow where the bee yard is? Yes, I do suit up as I have gotten attacked on the mower when I last mowed about 2 months previously.
I will build my bee wooden ware. I will be putting on 3 honey boxes on bee hive 1. I hope to have 3 nucs ready to go for a split in the Spring time when I receive my queens from Louisiana or California. I am getting a Varoa Mite Resistant strain of queens that are suppose to be good population growth and honey producers. Varoa Mite is 1 of the many factors of bee decline. Basically it's a flea on a bee is the easiest way to say what it is. It weakens a bee hive. This strain of bees will cart larvae out of the cells and drop them off outside when the mites are present. This reduces the numbers of the bees, but keeps the population of Varoa Mites in check.
Plan is to split the Africanized Bees to 3 Nuc Boxes, leaving the existing bee hive to repopulate. Sell the Nuc boxes after 45 days and recover some of my initial investment. A little bit learned is I should have added another box to the bee hive sooner and that probably would have curbed some of the problems I had with the bee hive. Maybe they were too populated. Just didn't have the resources to build comb though as not much pollen. Very hard to build a hive up when mother nature throws nearly 4 months of no rainfall. I will have my 2 bee hives. Just am not in the place I thought I would be in. I wanted 2 productive bee hives producing honey. I rather have the money though selling Nucs then the honey production. I might change that though come spring time and just requeen the bee hive to have 2 bee hives producing the amount of honey I really want. At sometime I will need to split bee hive 1 though is my thought. So who knows. Nothing is certain as anything can happen when you have bees.
I wanted to return 2 frames I harvested honey from about 3 weeks ago. I also wanted to know a few things too. I wanted to know if the bees were going to be better with out smoking them or if it was not going to be possible.
I got the frames I wanted to return out of the refrigerator. Took the plastic off it. Suited up. Thought since it was quick that I was going to just pop the top and it was going to be easy to pull a frame and exchange it.
I get to unstrapping the bee hives. Bees just poured out of the bee hive 2 that is the Africanized. Okay in under a minute I got stung about 20 times. Of all the damn places it was my socks. I must have killed a bee with my glove and it fell off onto the ground. I wear black socks unfortunately.
So I hobbled off about 10 feet with my hands swatting the bees killing them that are on my socks. Not good. I run off to my shop and go inside where I don't have visual with the bees and the bees don't either.
The typical protocol is suit up with gloves. Socks are fine with shoes. They've stung my socks, but it's only been twice that has happened. If I am going into the hives messing with them I am fine typically and never been as torn up as I was. I go in with my winter boots and ankles duct taped normally if I know the bees are going to go nuts or if I am doing a prolonged contact with them.
I got most of the bees off my ankles. looked at the screen on the door and not many were massed on the entrance. I take off to under the oak trees. Do some weaving and all the bees were gone. No buzzing. Into the house I go. Ankles and hands on fire. I was wearing gloves too and that's a first.
I get the bath tub going with cold water. Go to the kitchen and pop 2 benadryl. The sad part is that I am going to have to go out tommorow and strap the bee hives back down.
So here I sit. I should have smoked them. I should not have done anything to bee hive 2. Bee hive 2 has been behaving and well. I was only going to look in to see if they had queen cells and straighten up the bee hive box cause it's not sitting level on the bottom board. This of coarse was at night when I got to killing 50% of the bee hive. My guess is they have the bee hive requeened or 1 is about to emerge, but I won't know because they won't let me look inside. No need to force myself upon them.
I'm going to have to have a few bee keepers in the spring time come help me when I requeen the bee hive in springtime. Not looking forward to this at all. I am going to split this bee hive into 4. I will have a total of 5 bee hives. Bee hive 1 I will continue to add boxes to. No need to do anything other then re-queen it with a gentle queen with varroa reistance from California. They will be taking orders for queens in mid January for April - August is what I received from them in an email.
I am going to prepare this winter building bee hives. Should be fun building. I also am going to build bee hives to sell because I believe I can sell them locally to a hardware store and possible tractor supply that is local. Tractor Supply store just opened in my town.
Although the bees seemed to be calm now, last week was not any fun. The bees were aggressive to the point I wanted to get rid of the bees. Talk was with "E" was she was wanting to burn the bee hive. I attempted to re-locate them to the country on a ranch with another bee keeper contact, but that was clearly not going to happen after the follow up phone call never happened. Did not even receive a "NO" by phone call, so that's a big fat "HELL NO!"
I just do not enjoy mean bees. Combination of installation of a beetle trap, removing a sun shade and an inspection of 1 frame made the bees super aggressive. The bees would be gone if they didn't calm down this week, so thankfully they did.
Here is the bees bringing in Pollen. You can see they dynamics of the bees interaction with each other if you pay close attention to what the bees do by following the ones that are walking around. Guard bees, Fanning Duty and nectar transfer is what I think can be spotted.
It's bee raining here off and on for the past couple days. In the AM you can see the dead bees that die daily and are carted out of the bee hive. Since more time is spent inside it's more common is my theory to see dead bees.
If you took 20,000 bees and you know that bees die in approx 35 to 42 days, then you see that 476 571 bee deaths happen naturally. This of coarse isn't the ones that don't make it back due to being injured, killed, stinger death and other natural ways they die when away from the bee hive.
This doesn't alarm me as the social structure in bee hive 2 (suspected Africanized) is not in order due to the loss of the queen. I had to kill 50% of the bee hive this being the brood chamber. When safety is at the most concern the social structure isn't a concern to me and shouldn't be to anyone else. I shook the brood chamber frames into soapy water a little over a week ago. This was done thinking it would calm the bees down as they don't as many bees nor the pheromone of the queen that dictates the aggression level of the bee hive. Clearly the sensativity the queen had was over what I will tolerate.
I will not open this bee hive up and see what is going on. No need to as I predict a virgin queen will emerge the 30th or the 31st. Most certain that they will be okay as mother nature has a balance. If no queen exists, then the hive is doom to die out. All seems calm and normal now, so I am not worried. I went in to this with the mindset when I culled 50% of the bee hive that either they calm down or don't. If they don't the bee hive is no longer and I will take the rest the death. Either the bees survive or they do not.
