BeeKeeping

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Comment by Strumelia on November 9, 2009 at 11:41am

Adrian, the old frames are totally beyond reusing- not worth trying to scrap and clean....I have all new frames waiting to be nailed together and new wax&wire foundation too.
When I do the split i will be putting one old deep on each stand- with brood, workers, and food (the queen in one and queen/swarm cells in the other) and will then place a brand new deep with new frames on top of each hive's old box in the Spring- so yes that will encourage the bees of both hives to start working upward into the new 2nd brood boxes.
As they progress and start raising brood in the new top deep and filling it up with honey and pollen, I will add yet another new deep on top of each hive and when they start using that 2nd new deep I will look for the right time to entirely phase out the bottom old funky deeps with their old frames. I may be able to scrape and reuse those old deep boxes, but the frames are pretty awful and not worth the work to try to save.

I don't really plan on harvesting honey this coming year, but rather my efforts will be aimed towards splitting this hive into two and building them up into two strong colonies, and shifting everyone slowly into all new hive components.

Thanks for your input and helpful info!

Comment by Adrian Fox on November 9, 2009 at 2:59am

Definitely aim to progressively replace those black frames with new foundation as soon as there is a reasonably strong honey flow next spring. Don't force the pace, let the bees work at their own rate, and don't split the brood nest by plonking foundation in the middle. New comb is always better and less disease prone, and even hatches larger bees which are healthier. Here in France, some of the professionals aim to replace all the brood nest comb every year if they can.
The other tip is that foundation is drawn out far better in a box abovethe brood nest.
Build a simple solar wax extractor if you can (sheet of glass over a wooden box painted black inside, with a sheet of tin for the wax to drip down into a container) and you can use the wax from the old combs to make candles or beeswax polish. Then you can fix new foundation in the old combs easily.

Comment by Strumelia on November 8, 2009 at 8:34pm

Well I did wind up getting that gift hive a couple of weeks ago.
A beekeeper helped me go through it beforehand and consolidate it down to two deeps. We found the queen and the bees looked healthy. The deeps and the frames are quite old and blackish, but I will start changing them out in the Spring- best to leave them in their familiar home for now. We did put new top lids and bottom board combo on it though, from my new hive components I had at the ready.
The bees seem quite happy for now, as you can see:

Hopefully they will make it through the winter ok. Next year I won't be worrying about harvesting any honey, but instead will be concentrating on creating a second strong hive from this one and getting everyone moved gradually into new hive components. Those old frames are pretty hopeless at this point...the bk and I already discarded 9 of them from the third deep (that we eliminated) before moving the hive to my house.
I'm very thrilled with my bees, and have gone into the hive a couple times already on my own. :D
Soon it will be too cold to open the hive at all anymore until Spring...but today was almost 60F! Weird, considering it was 28F last night. =8-o

Comment by Srijan on September 30, 2009 at 6:56pm

I did this in May 08. It worked great. You want to take brood frames that have open cells with visible eggs. The workers can develop a queen from an unhatched egg. Like Adrian said, it is probably better if the frame has a swarm cell on it. Bees in swarm mode are able to build out comb much faster because they all revive the ability to make wax. The important part is to do this early in the season so the colony can get strong enough to survive the winter esp in northern NY. Marla Spivak from the University of Minnesota wrote a great little book called Beekeeping in Northern Climates. It is a bit dated since it was written before IPM techniques were very popular.

Comment by Adrian Fox on September 30, 2009 at 4:05pm

Srijan is right that his method is the simplest... colony division. But I'd be a little worried that raising an emergency queen with relatively few bees might result in a very poor queen. At least by either buying in a queen or using swarm cells, when the bees themselves raise good queens at the best possible time, you are more likely to get good results.
In the end though, I agree that you have to choose a method which will work for you, and introducing queens and carrying out swarm control etc is not easy for a beginner.

Comment by Strumelia on September 30, 2009 at 4:03pm

Srijan, that sounds quite logical. Have you actually done this?

But how will I know at what stage to take the brood frames? What if the brood in those frames is already developing into workers or drones? Or should the cells be open with tiny new visible eggs?.....Or should I instead take a frame with brood and at least one 'peanut' queen cell visible on it already?

I do like the idea of the new queen mating with locally acclimated bees, especially since we live in a northern area in New York state which has long cold winters.

thanks to all for the advice! I've been doing a lot of learning and asking among beekeepers.

Comment by Srijan on September 30, 2009 at 10:25am

Strumelia, Adrian's advice is good. However the simplest way to make two hives out of one (assuming the existing hive is strong) is to take a frame or two of brood with bees and eggs as well as a frame or two of honey and put those in the new box. Fill out the rest of both boxes with empty frames. One hive will have a queen and one won't. As long as there are eggs in both hives, the hive without a queen will rear a new one. This hive will be slower to get up to speed since they have to rear a new queen (16d) and she has to mate (a few days) and then lay eggs which become new workers (21d). This is about a 40 day delay. If you do this, do it early in the season. It is also helpful to feed the new hive since they are a small population for gathering nectar. This way you don't have to find the queen when you making the split. I've done this and it works. You also get a wild inseminated queen in the split which tends to be stronger and better at laying eggs. She also makes workers better adapted to your area since the drones she mated with are local.

Comment by Adrian Fox on September 30, 2009 at 6:19am

The hay fever theory is very interesting as it does appear to work. I used to suffer terribly until we started keeping bees. However, most allergies are to grass pollens which bees don't collect. My theory is that it is either bee stings (which cause many reactions in the immune system) or the multiplicity of pollens in honey and honey comb which make the immune system less sensitive.
I'm sure bee researchers must have done some work on this, and found out whether eating pollen patties collected by bees works equally well.

Comment by Maggie on September 30, 2009 at 5:09am

We plant lots of bee attracting plants in our garden.
We have bee hives across the road from where we live.
I buy their honey, I guess the bees that visit our garden come from the neighbor bees.
I read that if you eat local honey you do not get hay fever, this theory,
magic has worked for me!.
I also eat nasturtium flowers each day, another way to avoid hay fever!

Comment by Adrian Fox on September 30, 2009 at 1:52am

Strumelia, just wondered why you are thinking of buying more bees if you are getting one free stock? My recommendation would be to get a new hive as you plan to do, but you will almost certainly find that the bees you are being given will make swarming preparations in spring/early summer. Once you notice queen cells are being built, find the queen and put her with a frame of honey and pollen, a frame of sealed brood, and a frame with lots of bees into the new hive. You can fill up the empty space on either side with frames of foundation.
The bees in the 'old' hive will complete the queen cells and a new queen will fly out and get mated within a couple of weeks. They are most likely going to lose their swarming impulse. The old queen will head your new stock but there won't be enough bees in that for swarming that season. The bees might replace her with a supersedure queen during the summer if you are lucky.
Another good way to build up a new good stock is to just buy in a good queen.
Make (can be a very simple construction) or buy, a nucleus box for three or four deep frames and remove the floor. Place this over a shallow wooden box in which you put a 40 watt light bulb, covered with a sheet of tin. Put this in your shed or garage (or kitchen if you don't mind.) This makes a simple and effective incubator.
A day or two before the queen is due to arrive in the post, put a deep frame of emerging bees (sealed brood but with bees just coming out of the comb; they look grey and fluffy and you can see where they are chewing their way out) into the box with a frame of honey and pollen. Make sure any older bees have the chance to return to the main hive.
The heat from the bulb keeps the emerging brood warm, the young bees are the most docile bees you will ever encounter, and they won't start flying outside the box for at least a week or ten days.
Now the best part. When the queen arrives, you just run her straight into your little box. No need to use the cage or worry about her being killed by the bees. She will be accepted by the young bees with no problem.
After most of the brood has emerged and the queen has started laying, put the box outside and very soon you can transfer the stock to a full hive using division boards to keep the brood nest small to start with. But being a new good queen and with only young bees, the stock will build up very quickly. Don't forget you will need to feed them until they build up though.

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