Sugar Shake!

Yesterday, in preparation for mite season, Sarah and I performed our very first "sugar shake." A sugar shake is quite literally what it sounds like and is just one of the methods used to determine the infestation rate of harmful mites, like Varroa, in beehives. The process requires a few household items:

• A shallow bucket, long plastic container, or any other suitable bee receptacle
• A mason jar with screw-on cap (jar lid omitted)
• A screen or small wire mesh (MEESH!) (the screen will be used in place of the jar lid)
• A dinner plate or a flat viewing surface

When you have all your gear, and you're all suited up, follow these simple steps:

First, choose a densely populated frame of bees from your hive, and make sure it's QUEENLESS!

Second, with the bee receptacle placed securely on the ground, take the populous frame and hold at an angle over the bin, and with swift motion, tap the frame on the side of the container (the aim is to get as many bees in as possible).

Third, take your sugar jar a scoop as many bees from the container as possible and tighten the lid. Then gently toss the bees in the jar to ensure a good sugar coating.

Next, turn the jar over and proceed to shake the sugar out onto the dinner plate. If any mites are present they should fall out with the sugar onto the surface. For extra visibility, pour water onto the plate and the mites should float. Use the number of mites found to determine whether to treat your hives. We only found six mites out  12oz (approx 100 bees) and have decided to hold off any treatments for now.

After the shake and observation, de-lid the jar and pour the bees and sugar into the hive. The extra sugar will promote grooming habits among the other bees. Our coated bees resembled little apis mellifera spirits all fuzzy and ghostly!


Overall we found the sugar shake method quite effective, and pretty sweet too!

Bee daddy does the tending (and blogging)

Sarah is at a belt-buckle contest in Houston, TX, so it was a solo hive dive today. Temperatures were in the mid-80’s by 11am and the first drop of perspiration rolled off the tip of my nose and broke into a hundred little sweat prisms after it collided with my veil. Sarah had placed some sugar water outside of the hive earlier in the week. Only ants and a yellow jacket were partaking. I watched the entrance for a few minutes to gauge the arrivals and spotted a few full pollen baskets entering the hive. The nectar must be flowing nicely for the girls to ignore the easy food source.

The pollen basket is part of the tibia on the hind legs. Souce: Wikipedia

The small super has plenty of occupants. Sarah added it with 11 frames on July 9^th and the comb is noticeably drawn. Not too much, but a good start considering what’s been happening below. The hive body was bustling. An enormous amount of activity has taken place since my last dive particularly with the plastic foundation. Sarah’s sugar water spritz did the trick! All six plastic foundation frames had drawn comb (see one below) containing pollen, honey, eggs and brood! The population is growing as I squished more bees than normal as I was working the hive. Propolis (aka bee super glue) production is up and hive beetles are down. No queen sightings this time. Must bee at a rave!

Eggs!

I went into the hive today and saw lots of eggs and brood. The eggs are tiny white specs in the bottom of each cell. They are kind of hard to see in this photo but this entire frame was full of eggs, brood, pollen and honey. 


Wikipedia had a good description of the life cycle of the bees: The queen lays eggs singly in cells of the comb. Larvae hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped by worker bees when the larva pupates. Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger cells to develop.


Since most frames were either completely drawn out or well on their way, I added a shallow hive body for them to start building out. Each foundation got a shower of sugar water to encourage the bees to start drawing out the comb.

Birth of a honey bee and the QUEEN

Today marked the one month bee-versary of getting our hive. Our hive dive was quite productive and good thing because there was a heat wave in effect (no joke) so we had to work reasonably fast for fear of heat stroke. We saw eggs, new brood and a bee birth! Video and silly commentary provided: 

We also found the queen on one of the newly drawn out frames. Every year the queens are marked with a different color paint. This year is glowstick yellow! Check out her majesty, towards the center of the photo. Notice her elongated abdomen and smaller wings. The yellow dot on her back also helps to see her amongst the other bees.

Trappin hive beetles and feedin' bees

After only two weeks of having bees, we noticed there were a few too many hive beetles running around our hive. These pesky critters are quite common but given our hive is so new, we decided to set some beetle blaster traps in order to bring their numbers down.  Strong hives can keep these pests in check (the bees actually chase them off the comb) so until our hive can grow up to be a big hive, we'll use these traps. Click here for a little more about info on small hive beetles.

I set two traps but only one actually caught some hive beetles. I counted 41 of these critters...in just two days!  Pretty gross actually.  It is obvious we had a problem but I think these traps will help keep their numbers in check.


Why all the fuss over a little beetle?  These beetles can actually do a lot of damage. In their larval state they can zig zag through the drawn out comb, therefore destroying cells for storing honey and brood.  Here's a pretty gross photo I found online.

Caption reads: Comb slimed by hive beetle larvae. Hives infested at this level will drive out bee colonies.



So we'll keep using the traps in order to not get SLIMED! Yuck.

In other bee news, the foraging bees have finally started feeding on the simple syrup I made them. It took them about a week but they are really eating. Time to get more sugar. Here's a quick video of them feeding through their tiny proboscis. The proboscis is mainly used for sucking in liquids such as nectar, water and honey inside the hive, for exchanging food with other bees (trophallaxis), and also for removing water from nectar. Watch 'em in action...you can see the tiny proboscis in this photo I took.

First Hive Dive - with Jay Workman

After our bees had been in the backyard two weeks, we opened up the hive to see what the girls (and some boys called drones) had been up to. First we had to make a cheesy, look-at-us-in-our-bee-suits video. Even Annie (my cat) showed up to check us out.

We lit the smoker and opened 'er up to see that things were progressing quite well.  Here's footage of the first frame we pulled out. This frame had a good amount of comb drawn out and the ladies have lots of honey and brightly colored pollen stored in the cells. All of the work that goes into building and maintaining the hive and raising the colony is done by the female worker bees. When Jay and I were taking the beekeeping class last fall, the roles within the hive really fascinated me, especially considering they are all controlled by the queen. More on this later...

Ok enough videos. Here are some pictures from the same hive dive.

 Notice Jay's shoes match the veil...

 Jay reading the daily bee (also looking for the queen)

 I posted this one earlier but its still cool to see how bright the comb and pollen are on this newly drawn out frame.

 See how dark the comb is on this frame. This was one of the frames we got from David, who sold us the bees and queen for our hive. As the comb cells get used for storage (of honey, pollen and baby bees) they begin to turn darker brown. Pretty neat!

Bzzz is this thing on?

My first post should probably include a picture from the first 'hive dive' Jay and I did on Friday, June 15, 2012. We were excited by how bright the comb and pollen was. In two weeks, our bees have drawn out the comb on this frame. The photos and videos from this 'hive dive' are on Adam's computer so I'll post them later today.

Oh and Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially my awesome dad, Steve, and 'other-dad' (his phrase) Mark, who I'm quite fond of as well. Here are some photos of our merriment over the years.