Adventures in Beekeeping - Installment #2

Greetings Internet!

So... I have some fun updates on the bees and have been waiting to share with all of you.

First, my bees have successfully made a new queen.  I was able to spot her in the hive a few weeks ago... but due to some pretty crappy weather, I was also very afraid that she did not get a chance to leave the hive and mate...  But upon seeing new larvae in some of the comb, I added another "super" to the hive so it looked like this:

The new super is the unweathered box in the middle...
Note that this moved the hive entrance up by about 14 inches and the bees were a little confused.
That's why they are crawling all over the box, looking for the entrance

I had hoped that adding another super would encourage the bees to draw out more comb for the queen to lay in, but as it turns out, bees are best at wax making when they are young and by now, most of my bees are pretty old.  So the new frames will be waiting for when the new bees hatch out.  They can get straight to work!

Speaking of which, I found this when I opened the hive last week:

Photo courtesy of my brother, b, who is visiting right now

What you can see there in light yellow are what is called "capped young"... This means the little white larvae I saw in there before are now old enough to pupate and become real adult bees.  What's also good is that the queen laid all those eggs in a pretty consistent pattern across all the comb and didn't skip too many cells... that hopefully says she's a nice efficient queen who will be able to grow the hive rapidly.  There is also a little bit of white on the frame in the upper right corner near my right hand... that is actually capped honey.  Eventually, the bees will store honey and raise young in separate areas... but for now, since they didn't have a queen and also didn't have anything better to do while they were waiting for a new one... they stored a little honey here.  That's ok and it will get sorted eventually.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day for bee activity and they were super busy!   I suspected that some of the new queen's young have hatched out because I saw a little bee dance at the front of the hive today.  I tried to take a video but the iPhone wouldn't let me zoom in so it's all grainy and you can't really see it. But you can see a better one here (that is not my hive).

I, too, think that this little bee was acting as the beaconing device for all her little sisters who had flown out of the hive for the first time today. This bee was shouting "OVER HERE!  This is where you left from!"  At least, I hope that's what they were doing :)

Now that I can kind of relax and stop worrying about the queen for a little while... I've turned my attention to pest control!

Bees have about a MILLION pests and parasites just waiting to take advantage of them, their honey stores and their nice, clean, well-maintained home. My new problem is this guy:

Small Hive Beetle (left) and unidentified wormy thing that is not a beetle larvae (right)
and general pollen and wax debris from the bottom of the hive (everywhere)

Small hive beetles are probably the least worrisome pest to have, so I'm kind of glad that this is the first one I get to deal with... all the others sound pretty scary to deal with and I'd rather ease into it!  Basically, these little guys are taking advantage of the warm, clean house that the bees provide.  Their larvae also like to eat the pollen and other debris that fall to the bottom of the hive and will eventually move on to eating stored food in the honeycomb if left unchecked.  Since they are relatively big, I can see them scurrying around my hive when I open it up.  They like the crevices between the frames and the wall of the hive. 

Since I have no interest in introducing any chemicals into my hive (or the HONEY!), the solution to hive beetle is pretty simple: kill the ones you find!

After I confirmed the presence of hive beetles in the hive by pulling out the bottom board (pictured above), I went ahead and knocked everything into a bucket of soapy water.  Then I sprayed off everything else with a hose and cleaned the board with ethanol, both because it would sanitize the mess and because it would aid in the water evaporation:

Clean white corrugated plastic hive bottom

I then spread the Aquaphor all over it (in the mistaken belief that this would make bugs sticky and less likely to be able to crawl around... I don't think it does.  Oops!).  And then I put it back in (look at that pic of the hive and you can see the white sheet near the bottom of the hive...). 

Today after I checked the hive (and SAW THE QUEEN!  HOORAY!  She's STILL there!!), I pulled the sheet out again and about 10 of the little buggers had fallen onto the sheet while trying to escape the light/run from the bees being more active and... dumped them right into a bucket of soapy water!  I also discovered some larvae in a pollen patty I was feeding the bees so I took that out and threw it in the freezer (and got stung by a dead bee that was stuck to it!  ouch!).

So there it is.  Phase one of Integrative Pest Management (IPM).  I just ordered a bunch of new beekeeping supplies so I can talk more about IPM in a future post.

As a fun side note:  What's a little entertaining is that these beetles are big enough for the bees to see but too small for the bees to get a hold of and sting to death (what they would normally do to hive invaders).  My beekeeping teacher likens it to holding a soccer ball between your elbows and then trying to kick it...  But man, the bees are not pleased to have these guys in their home... you can actually watch the bees chase the beetles around until they can hide in a crevice and the bee will still stand sentry, trying to get at the beetle.

Here's a video of one... it only happens once between 0:04 and 0:06... no need to watch the whole video because it doesn't happen again.  Poor bees... they're so mad at these "house guests"...