4th of July inspection

We harvested our first honey during 4th of July weekend last year. We were not that successful this year. We lost one colony, had to requeen two others.
I could have collected one super and one top bar section from my Warre. I decided to leave all honey in. Last year I took too much and weakened the colony, not knowing that there is no nectar flow in Florida during July and August.
This year I will wait till fall and harvest after the Brazilian pepper flow. If there will be anything to harvest. For now I am happy that the bees are surviving.
The colony that got a new queen three weeks ago is still pretty weak. I added frame full of brood from my strongest hive to help them out.
I also added the last hive to the bottom of my Warre. The third hive was more than half full of comb. I will not be able to come back for a month so I want to make sure that bees have enough space to work in.
I also put together new hive body. Special one with observation window. I love watching bee activity in the Warre, so I figured why I could not do the same in regular Langsroth. Friend of mine modified a regular hive wall.



He cut a hole in the side and inserted a plexiglass window.
Now I will be able to view the progress of my hive without disturbing them. All my grandma's brood boxes had observation windows. I used to watch bees through them when I was a kid.
Can't wait to start new colony in this hive.

Lost my first hive!

Today I lost my first hive. The inspector came and checked all my hives. I have passed the inspection, but he recommended that I destroy the weak hive. It had hive beetle and waxmoth infestation. Additionally some of the brood seemed like it could have EFB. There was no point trying to save it. The bees were not able to liberate a new queen last week and the hive was so weak that it was overrun by all possible bee pests.
I dug out a hole, placed the brood box with all frames and bees in it. Doused it with gasoline and set on fire :(

Queen is dead

Well, one of the new queens did not make it. The hive was so weak that they were not able to get through the candy in the queen box. When I did my first inspection after the queen introduction the candy was chewed half way through but the queen and all bees that were with her were dead in the box.
This hive has lot of issues. Hive beetles are running everywhere, waxmoth is taking residence in the super, there is no queen and bees are not motivated to raise one.
I have an inspection scheduled in two days. I'll wait to see what the inspector says.

New royalty arrived

Today we went to pick up two new queens. we got them from Miksa apiaries. They carry excellent bloodlines.
I installed the queens in my oldest hive and the queenless split. They both were witout a queen for few weeks and did not seem interested raising a new one. No supercedures were visible in either hive

Time lapse of bee activity in my Warre

Today I set up a camera to record activity in my Warre hive. I was insterested to see how the bees manage the cells that were built on one of the windows, creating nice crossection through the cells.
I recorded over 5 hours of bee activity and compressed it into 4.5 minutes. My Warre hive has observation windows so we can see what the bees are doing during the honey flow.
Watch the top cells in the left comb. The bees will eat the honey, clean up the empty cell and start filling it with fresh honey.
Also, the left comb appears to have some sort of parasite (wax moth larvae?) operating in the middle between the left and right side cells.

We have new queen

Well, the nature takes care of itself. The control hive must have swarmed for sure. But there is a new queen there. Stick eggs are everywhere and there are at least 3 queen cells with dead larvae in them. The new queen is defending her territory

Screened bottom boards and swarm?

I have added screened bottom boards to the remaining two Lang hives. Now the only hive without the screened bottom board is the Warre. I will probably add it to the hive as well since there seems to be quite few bees at the entrance fanning like crazy. The temperature is already close to 90F during the day. The screen should help with ventilation and hopefully with the hive beetles as well.
I've added Beetle Jail to all three Langsroths to eliminate as many of these invaders as possible.

it appears that the new hive (the one that was a control to the split) lost a large number of bees. Swarm? There were at least three empty queen cells. The population seems to be halsf of what it was when I brought it in 4 weeks ago. Also there was one frame with stick eggs, but no brood anywhere.
that is what i get for leaving them alone.

Warre buildup continues, strange activity around queenless hive

The comb buildup in the Warre hive is coming nicely. The top hive is built up and activity moved to the lower hive. The bees are drawing the comb in the center 4 or 5 top bars







There was a lot of strange activity yesterday when we came to the bee yard. The bees were really active around the queenless hive. They were also quite aggressive. I thought that they were ready to swarm, which did not make sense since they had no queen 3 weeks ago.

I smoked them and opened the hive. There was no sign of a queen, no eggs, and one possible empty queen cell
The bees quieted down after my disturbance.

I was able to capture a bee burial. I did not know that bees would go to such lengths to clean the hive. The bee dragged her dead comrade at least 2 or 3 feet from the hive.

Warre buildup

The colony I transferred into the Warre hive is thriving. The top hive is completely filled with comb. It took less than two weeks.





Girls already started buildup in the lower hive as well.
They got rid of ant infestation by the morning after the storm.
The moat I built (plastic tub filled with water) probably helped too.

Attack of the Ants!

A big storm with some tornadoes swept over the area today. I decided to go check on the bees to make sure that the hives did not get blown off.
Good thing that I did! There was no wind damage but ants moved into the Warre hive. The heavy rains must have disturbed them and they decided to move to higher ground. Our hive seemed like good place. They set camp between the lid and the quilt box.





They also invaded the bottom hive.





That is one disadvantage of the Warre hive. The main Bee population lives in the top hive leaving the entrance unguarded at night.
I cleaned out the ant nest and placed entire hive into a tub filled with water to prevent further invasions.
Hopefully the bees will get rid of the rest of uninvited guests tomorrow morning when they start using the bottom hive.
The few guard bees were fighting valiant but loosing battle with the ants

Video of the fight

The Bees are busy

The bees are in full swing. All hives are humming with activity. The established hives have neverending stream of workers leaving and coming. The Warre bees are busy building the top bar comb. The have built up the comb from all top bars in the top hive in only a week! Amazing. The queenless hive seems to be diing fine as well. There is an activity at the entrance, so hopefully they have started a new queen already. The flow is strong and there seem to be plenty of pollen as well. Bees are arriving LOADED. Check out the Slo Mo video below. (Captured at 60fps and played back at 0.15 speed)

Warre hive is settled

Bees have settled in the Warre hive. They all moved to the top hive in the morning and started working on the comb strips I set up for them.
Even the hive I transferred bees from is still showing activity, although much less than other hives.
This is an experiment in the power of nature.
We have 4 hives in the yard.
The Warre, that has no comb but strong colony with a queen transferred into it. That would be like if bees settled new tree hollow in the wild.
The second hive is full of comb with brood, pollen and honey, but very few bees left. We hope that they will be able to raise new queen. This hive has least chance of survival.
Third hive is a control, new colony installed at the same time as the Warre. I just added a super to it to give them room to grow and to prevent swarming.
The fourth hive is a strong colony we started last year. They are in full swing collecting nectar flow.

Transferring bees into Warre hive

Today is the day. We will be transferring bees from a new colony we jsut purchased into our first Warre hive. The plan is simple, take bees from each frame and shake them into the Warre. Pay attention to the queen and make sure she goes into the hive. The Warre has only two boxes each with wax foundation strips attached to the top bars to help girls start building their new home. Here is how the transfer went.

Preparing the Warre hive

Today we brought our new Warre hive to the bee yard and set it up
One thing we wanted to do was to add wax foundation strips to the top bars to help bees settle in their new home.
I melted some bees wax and used it to glue strips of pure wax foundation to the Warre top bars