2011-11-25 travellin' bees

Up in Castlemaine on the weekend , spotted this truck parked on the side of the road early in the morning, that's 72 4-decker hives heading somewhere new, maybe they're off to some flowering yellow-box forest, maybe they are just back from a stint pollinating some almonds or something? These guys take their bees to where the action is, rather than letting them sit idle, eating all their honey. You can see a loading system of some kind, and there's a trolley and a brushcutter on top. I'm guessing they have one box of brood and room for 3 supers of honey?Is there a queen excluder?  not sure, but there's a lot of room in there for lots of honey. You can tell these guys dont muck around checking all through them every few weeeks, that would be a massive job.If they were just for pollinating, would you need 4 boxes? Can't see the entrances, they must be facing in. They must load these up at night when the bees are all tucked in bed, go for a kip on the side of the highway, then drop them off wherever they are going? More questions than answers...

2011-11-20 Katrina's Swarm

My old bee-keeping friend Nada called, a friend of hers Katrina had a swarm turn up in her compost bin, in Preston. Compost bins seem like a popular choice, and why not, they are dark, warm from the composting process, and have a few vent slots for easy access.  Here's the situation below, they are in the black bin.  I placed the empty box full of frames as close as possible to the actual swarm location...

 Opening it up, the lid was kinda heavy.....lots of comb in there....

 The lid below, complete with a giant (almost foot-long) stalactite of comb in the middle, just like some of those 'top bar' hives I've seen pictures of.

 In the bin itself, heaps of comb. Beautiful white new comb. These girls had been there for at least a month, maybe two?  I reckon at least 20 combs in there, including capped brood, pollen, nectar, grubs...not much actual honey though, they'd been concentrating on sorting out their home. There was about a full box worth of comb in there, if you added it all up. And loads of bees. This was gonna be tricky. If it was a newly landed swarm, it would be just a matter of getting the bees into a box. Luckily, the bees were very calm, considering we were totally dismembering their home and nursery.

 Some of the capped brood, below. The Queen had been busy.

 After I'd detached all the comb, shaken off the bees and got the comb into a lidded bucket, this was what was left, in the photo below. In the past i've tried to salvage some of the comb as well, by skewering it onto a frame with just wire on it, but this proved to be a colossal pain in the arse later on, when it was all mis-aligned with the other frames. So all the comb was sacrificed, in this case. Shame.

 Lid, minus stalactite...

 Comb removed, I just scooped handfulls of bees into the nearby box, as quickly as possible. The bees went from fairly benign, to fairly berserk. Hopefully one of those handfulls had the queen in it. We did not spot her, despite looking pretty carefully, but the inside of the bin was chaos, very tricky to see what was going on.

 These girls decide to congregate on my hip for some reason. I know I should be wearing white clothes, but  I don't plan on getting any white jeans just for the bees sake. These moleskins are thick enough that the bees cant sting through them, at least.

 Job done, we scooped say 80 % of the bees in there, and there seemed to be bees heading into the box at the end, hopefully this means the queen is in there, and hopefully she's OK.

 Katrina below, with her tiara of bees.  She took all the photos (except this one), and was completely unfazed by the whole thing, in the middle of a cloud of pissed off bees...

 Her glove. Heaps of stingers. None got through to her. As for me, 3 hits: pinky, elbow, and neck (ouch!), just as I was getting the suit off.

++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

STING TALLY:

Jonas : 15 (13 this season)

Adrian : 1

Edis : 1
Jazmina : 3

++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

HONEY TALLY:
2010/11: 34 litres
20011/12: 11 Litres so far.


UPDATE 27 11 2011
These bees were moved from Preston over to my place in Northcote on Thursday night (2 k's distant as the bee flies, so should be OK...), and since then they are doing great, heaps of activity. The first morning they were kinda hovering around the box, getting their bearings. If anything, I need to move them out of here, there is just a little too much bee traffic for comfort, with 4 hives now in the back yard. The plan now is to unite them with my queenless hive, and move them up to St. Hellier, near Phillip Island, to Albinas place. That leaves 2 hives at my place, about the limit, really.

2011-11-05 Queen search....

So, in the 2 weeks since i last posted:

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Adrian checked in, he's taken the two hives from his place ( the Utter hive and Kate's swarm) over to a mates place in Taggerty, where the yellow box is blossoming. Can't wait to taste that one.

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Also, I united the third swarm with the Other hive, using ;the newspaper method', where you put one hive on top of the other, with a couple of sheets of newspaper in between, By the time they chew through it, they have forgotten why they were so angry, enjoy the new pheromones, and hail the new queen. I did this at night, when they were mostly all at home.

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This Saturday I went through all the boxes at my place, just to see what was going on.
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I had a look at the frames I'd harvested, the frames were almost clean, I'd put the stickies back in for a while for the girls to clean up. Below, a patch of drone comb amongst the worker comb. I love the way their hexagonal architecture breaks into occasional randomness, here 8 rows of worker meld into 6 rows of drone. They stamp the foundation you buy into the drone comb pattern to encourage more workers...

This girl came down for a free feed, some honey still left on the frames. Bit of pollen sprinkled on her back.

A few signs of wax moth. They'll probably chew through the whole lot in this weather, not sure what to do, putting them in the freezer to kill them is the theory, but I'd have to get all the icy poles and leftovers out of there. Maybe I'll wrap them up in gladwrap or something, if i get around to it.

Jazmina helped me go through the boxes, and took most of these photos. Thanks!
Thats the queenless swarm in front, Metropolis and Other in the background, behind the chicken-proof fence.

First, a quick check in the queenless swarm, they're still kickin, even have some honey in there, but so many drones....

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Now the Other, the top box is the swarm from the tree that was united with the apparently queenless boxes below... lots of brood, on 5 of the frames in the top. Didn't see a queen, but she must be there... some grubs in there too.

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Below you can see what's left of the newspaper, there was none at all left in the box, 2 whole sheets chewed up and gone.

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A couple of supersedure cells, I don't think this is any worry at this stage, no grubs in there.

I did not see the queen, but have to assume she was in the top box, so I moved it to the bottom, queen excluder on, two honey supers on top, and next time I need to check that she is still down there. And no more accidents involving queens.

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Finally, in Metropolis, all seems well, not much more honey than last time, but lots of brood, and slowly filling up.

Close ups of some of the grubs in there. Again, didn't see the queen, but enough evidence, I reckon.

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Jazmina was stung 3 times on her leg (through her jeans), but I got away clean this time.

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++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

STING TALLY:

Jonas : 12 (10 this season)

Adrian : 1

Edis : 1
Jazmina : 3

++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

HONEY TALLY:
2010/11: 34 litres
20011/12: 11 Litres so far.