La Casa Grande Colectiva

Tag: honey

late summer hive check – mystery queen

Robbie and I opened up the hives a few weekends ago to take an inventory of the healthy hive and see how much brood the new queen has produced in the weaker hive. Sadly, we didn’t see a lot of honey in the honey supers (the shallower frames on top). We figured this was some what to be expected since our hive was just getting built up when most of the plants were producing nectar. It was a timing issue, and we were late getting our hives started.

You can see that there is some capped honey in the middle, but the bees have barely drawn out the wax comb towards the edges of the frame.

In the hive that recently had been re-queened, there was a clear sign that the new queen had been successfully introduced. You can see in the photo below that some of the cells have a dark yellow cap on them. That’s called ‘capped brood’, and in a few weeks fully developed bees will eat their way out and begin working right away.

The brighter orange cells are pollen stores.

When we first opened up the second hive we immediately noticed something strange. Right in the corner of the hive that we pried open with the hive tool, there was an unmarked queen hiding out.

There she is about as far away from the nucleus of the hive as possible.

You can see her elongated abdomen and short wings. We were hoping to find signs of the introduced queen and maybe spot her, and oddly the first bee we see after opening the hive is another queen. I suspect that before the first queen swarmed, the bees had already started feeding royal jelly to create a new queen. By the time she hatched we had stuck a new queen in, who has now taken over the colony.

If you spend a moment to think about it, a very interesting tale of courtly coups could be extracted from this. Is the native born queen entitled to the crown? Who is this imposter queen who has stolen the throne and banished the rightful heir to the far reaches of the queendom? Did we screw up the natural order of things by adding a new queen when the bees were busy rearing a new one?

We scratched our heads (through the veils), set the mystery queen aside, and continued looking for signs of the introduced queen. When we were finished and putting the frames back in we found the unmarked queen very close to where she was before.

It seems as though she still had a few workers attending to her.

September 9, 2009
hygienic bee-havior for more natural bees

Robby-Bob and I went to another bee club meeting on Sunday. It was a special event for the club. An expert was there to discuss and demonstrate ways to test bees for hygienic behavior.

The reason this is important is because beekeepers routinely use chemicals to fight off infections and pests, usually to save themselves from economic ruin. To reduce the amount of chemicals beekeepers use, an effort is underway to selectively breed bees that resist the pests. One way for bees to protect themselves is to identify and remove cells in the hive that are infected. Bees that demonstrate hygienic behavior are those that remove larvae from damaged cells. To test for this trait, they selectively freeze/kill a section of larvae with liquid nitrogen and watch to see if the dead larvae are removed by the workers.

A steel can is smushed into the comb, and liquid nitrogen is poured inside to instantly kill the larvae inside. After 24 hours, the frames are inspected.

The frame on the LEFT is from a hive that does NOT show hygienic behavior. In the frame on the RIGHT, notice how the bees removed the larvae from all the cells leaving a circle of empty comb, a sign of hygienic behavior.

Many people have heard of Colony Collapse Disorder, but bees are susceptible to a range of problems and so most beekeepers rely on some sort of chemical strategy to maintain their business. Breeding hygienic bees may ultimately lead to an industry less dependent on chemical inputs, meaning more ‘natural’, or ‘organic’ honey and wax (yay!). Of course I am oversimplifying this whole process. Hygienic behavior is actually much more complicated, especially when you approach it from the genetic side.

I was very lucky to be invited to the club meeting and demonstration, thanks Robby!

I posted more photos of the meeting to this flickr set.

Also CEIBA wrote about the event (and used my photos!) on their website.

July 28, 2009
Hives get taller

Head-beekeeper, Robby-Bob, came by yesterday and added a shallow super to both hives.

Based on the progress that was observed in the last bee post, the hives were past due for some extra expansion room. It took a little while to source the correct size frames for the shallower top boxes, and Robby installed them while I was in class. Ideally the bees will use the new frames mostly for honey that we can later harvest. Robby decided not to use a queen excluder, so there’s the potential that the queen will get up there and lay eggs. We have enough supplies for one more box on each hive depending on how well they take to the new frames.

July 22, 2009
Hive Tour 7/12/09

My good friends Kannan, and Mac helped me get a closer look inside out hives yesterday. Four weeks ago I put the second deep supers on each hive. The supers were full of bare frames, meaning the bees needed to build the comb before they could use them. Well, after checking out the hives I can say they are doing excellently. Lots of brood and some full frames of honey. There were even empty brood chambers where baby bees had already emerged. This means we probably need to add more space to allow the hive to continue to grow.

The diagram on the left is similar to our hives, (different lid and different number of frames) but it gives you an idea of how the hives are constructed. Its a fairly simple design. Wooden frames are suspended inside a box, and the boxes are stacked up. The bees then build honeycomb on both sides of each frame. I had some handy helpers, so we were able to take clean photos of each frame. I cropped all the photos in a similar way so you can flip through each cross section of the hive. As you get towards the middle you’ll notice that there is less honey and more brood. The queen lays eggs in a somewhat predictable pattern, and experienced beekeepers use that to judge the quality of the hive.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
full screen slide show of hive 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.
full screen slideshow of hive 2

July 14, 2009
Late Spring Bee Checkup

Ed, a local beekeeper, came to check out our hives for a three week checkup last weekend. Robby is out of town, so he arranged to have some members of CEIBA help keep an eye on the hives. We had gotten a late start with our bees but each queen came with 5 frames of brood and honey. In just a few weeks, the bees have really established themselves and Ed determined it was time to add the second box on the hive. This will give each hive 10 fresh frames to build comb and expand the colony size.

This frame is full of capped brood. Brood is the general name for combs that have eggs and larvae. The worker bees feed the developing larvae before sealing them in with a cap . In a few weeks these bees will hatch and the process will start over again with the queen coming around and laying eggs in each comb. In this way, the colony will double and triple in size very rapidly.

In the center of this photo, a bee is hatching from the comb. We watched as the bee ate away the cap. Like eating corn on the cob, she went back and forth chewing her way out. After she leaves, the workers will clean out the comb and get it ready for another egg.

This is what the comb looks like when the bees decide to store honey instead of brood. This looks like it was a fresh frame to begin with since you can still see in the lower left that the comb hasn’t been fully drawn out by the bees. There must be a lot of nectar flowing now because even though the comb isn’t finished, the bees are already storing and capping honey. In the upper right is capped honey. To process the honey, the bees sit over the comb and fan their wings to evaporate off the water. Once the honey is sufficiently concentrated they seal the comb off. You can tell the difference between capped honey and capped brood by the color.

I took lots of photos so we could inspect the bees in depth without keeping the hive open for too long. Click the thumbnails to go to a flickr set of the event.

June 22, 2009
Honeybees arrive

We installed two hives of honeybees today at La Casa. Fellow co-oper, Robby from across town will be using our yard (and pollen) to raise honeybees. Robby got his hive boxes from his grandfather who was a beekeeper. Robby’s been taking classes from the Central Illinois Beekeeper’s Association: CEIBA. Last night we picked up the bees from a queen breeder near Danville. They were sealed in boxes for transport in the van.

About 10,000 bees came with each queen. Five frames from a two healthy colonies, along with a two queens were put into boxes. Today we tranported the frames into the hives. Robby moved the first colony, and I moved the second. We had to wear full bee suits otherwise the bees would have stung us many times. It was quite a rush carrying the frames full of bees and being careful not to disturb them too much. We took a bunch of photos, and I’m just going to go ahead and post most of them.

Robby tried to calm the bees down with sugar water. There were hundreds flying around us as we were working.

This is what frames look like installed in the hive. There are ten frames in each section of the hive. We mixed the five frames full of honey and brood (developing bees) in with 5 clean frames.

Most of the frames are installed. Just a few more to squeeze in.

You can see the queen crawling around in this photo. There’s a little green dot on her back. Try this hi-res version if you want to see her up close. She has a longer body and smaller wings.

I suited up and moved the second set of frames while Robby took photos. This time we tried the smoker instead of sugar water. The smoke calms them down and confuses their communication.

Robby snapped this nice photo.

Calming them with more smoke. Only two frames left to move.

The other queen. Look for the green dot. Hi-res.

All put back together. Bees installed. The next move is to put more boxes with clean frames on top. The hives are designed to be modular, building up from the bottom box. Two big boxes at the base are where the queen builds up her colony. Then at some point smaller boxes are placed on top with a screen that lets only the workers past. Since only the worker can access the top boxes, no eggs are laid and they become full of honey. Since we’re starting this hive pretty late in the season, we might not get much honey this year. But its still a worthwhile project and if the hives survive the winter, we’ll have plenty of honey next year.

May 29, 2009
Bee Hives Arrive

Harvest House resident Robby Nagel brought his beehives over today. Robby inherited the hives from his grandpa who retired from beekeeping a few years ago.

Robby has been going to beekeeping classes offered by the Central Eastern Illinois Beekeepers Association and approached us a few months ago about keeping bees in our big yard. We’re not only glad to share in the honey but the bees will function as excellent pollinators to our trees and crops. In the photo above, Robby is showing me how the different pieces of equipment work.

March 24, 2009