Learning Beekeeping

The first graft set failed as there was a accidental queen in the queen breeder box. This time, I double checked it. Found only 1 queen cell, removed it, and put in the grafts. Grafting was much easier and faster with 3.5x readers, but my cheap grafting tool broke. Need to buy anther. 29 grafts added, 1 cell fell out of bars and was lost in transit. Crap. need to check them this saturday..

So I drove to Houston 3 days ago, the Firewheel bloom is happening in a big way. Huge crop this year. I expect alot of honey will be made in the region. This bloom is likely 7-10 days old and may last 3 more weeks given the forecast.

At the outyard and home yard, the 6 nucs I made are doing ok. 1 is queenless, likely a casualty of mating flights. So 5 nucs left. I’ll keep 2, sell 3.

One hive at the outyard seems hot. I will requeen that on the next batch of queens I make. The other hive is pushing into 2 deeps. With queens, i’ll split them into 3-4 nucs after this honeyflow. I’m removing alot of foundationless frames, as nuc buyers may not want those frames. The outyard target in 2 years should get to about 20-30 hives.

Home yard is doing well. They get more regular feed and ramped up quick. I want to graft queens this year, and I’m a little late, but I’ll do it all the same.

This week I split the home hives because I found a hive that had sealed queen cells. Split that hive into 4. 2 frames brood 1 food. That brings the home apiary to 7 hives. And Saturday I helped Nick with his hive that swarmed. I had lots of cells, I kept 3 and they hatched overnight. I was able to introduce the virgin queens into 3 new nucs at the outyard, so the count out there is now 5.

I’m still dragging with a cough as I get over this crud. I’m good for about 45 minutes then I’m done.

At the outyard, I still need to clean off the flood damaged equipment, and put in foundations. There are no foundation frames at that yard now.

Of the new nucs, I need to check for eggs about 15 APR.

First firewheel seen on 27MAR.

We have warm weather (80F) for the next week or so. I’ve put bucket feeders on all the home apiary hives. Hopefully, it will inspire them to begin to brood up. And early ramp up would be useful. While I can’t raise queens in Jan/Feb, I can more easily equalize for all hives to be ready for spring splits.

Back from Kyoto last week, did a quick inspection of home hives. All look good. The nuc looks weak. Don’t know if it will make it at 3.5 FB. The far right hive has a good deal more honey than I expected.

Of the home hives I split a month ago, 1 has a laying queen, the other doesn’t. I gave 2 frames of eggs and larvae to the hive that failed. I’ll check in a week if they make queen cells.

Last week, I checked the 2 hives at the outyard. They look great, coming along well.

All hives were given plenty of feed.

Now that I set up the new outyard on higher ground Monday, it is time to split the home hives.

I’m at 2 home hives now that the 2 nucs are at the outyard. The home hives are getting big and can afford a split. They now have feed and should be good to go for making queens while i’m gone. I noticed they are almost done fixing the flood comb I gave them. So I gave them more after I pulled 5 frames each. These are summer splits and need to be bigger. 3-4 frames brood 1 resources so 5 frames not 3. I’ll check on them on Saturday if they are building cells. Queen check on 17AUG (25days).

In sad news, when I visited the flooded yard, the hive I thought survived, was dead. It was just robbers.

After the July 4 flood, I was able to recover 20 frames of drawn comb. Some with honey and bee bread in them. The goal is to save them from the inevitable toll of hive moth and small hive beetle damage. I’ve frozen 10 frames and installed 10 frames in 4 hives.

Today I saw the results. All the combs I saw had been recovered and reused. The queen had more space to lay and more cells to store honey in. So a success. However, on plastic foundation where only a part had been drawn out before the flood, mud had stuck to to the frame and they had not cleaned that off yet. That may be an issue with other flood damaged frames. I see 2 solutions: 1. soak and scrub the plastic then recoat or 2. say screw it and just paint wax over the dirt. I think option 2 is more practical.

The two nucs are now ready to transport to the outyard. They will need 10 frame bodies. The other 2 hives are at a size that I think I can split them this week. So I will take the nucs to the outyard, transfer them, then bring back the nuc bodies and split the remaining hives. That puts me at 4 hives, 2 nucs. They should recover by September to split again.

In other news, I saw a hive in the outyard with signs of life. Did the queen survive? Or is it all survivor foragers? Or a swarm move in? Could not inspect it.

San Gabriel River rose something like 37′ . My outyard, which I moved up in elevation since the last flood 15 years ago, was flooded by 6′. I lost all 6 hives, maybe 1/4 of my stored equipment, but I recovered 14 deep and medium bodies and frames. Neighbor says he has more of my boxes, so I hope not to lose much.

Here is the damage report I posted on Youtube

Visited the out yard – it finally has some flow. But small. Indian Blanket finally showed up in the field. Late, and little, but some. Also saw the beginning of horsemint. The hives were so hungry earlier this month they are slow to recover likely from cannibalizing eggs. Some only grew 1 frame of brood.
One hive had still not taken their syrup. Strange. I”m not wondering if the holes were more plugged up than usual. But my main theory is the bees failed to find it, because the super above the nest was empty.

Of the two hives I dropped a Corey Stevens queen cell in, only 1 took. The other was queenless. I gave them a frame of mixed brood and honey. All hives got feed but the one strong hive with stores.

I’m thinking there may be a pollen shortage that retards brood up.