The other week, I posted about some problems with my bees.  I contacted one of our NC State Bee Inspectors, Don Hopkins.  The Bee Inspectors are a great resource provided by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Apiary Program Don was a great help.  He came out on a Saturday morning and took a quick look.  It appears that, for whatever reason, the bees merely stopped feeding the larvae on one frame.  Everything else looked healthy; no signs of disease.

 

I just added a deep super without a queen excluder.  Hopefully, with two deep supers, there will be plenty of brood raised to take the hives into the winter.  I’m looking forward to potentially splitting the hives next season.

Don also turned me on to the idea of entering the mead competition at the NC State Fair.  Time to start some new batches if they’re going to be ready by then!

When I opened my hives this weekend, I noticed some unusual patterns on one of the frames.  It appears that many of the larvae are withered and dead on one frame.  I’m trying to diagnose whether this hive has some sort of disease or other problem.  If anyone can offer any guidance, please post a reply.  Before the pictures, a bit of background on this hive.  This was the first hive I installed a package in.  It was my first time ever installing a package of bees and I screwed it up.  I removed the wrong cork on the queen cage and she escaped directly into the hive.  I finished installing the package and put the hive back together, hoping that they had enough time in transit to accept the new queen.  One week later, I opened the hive and found no queen or signs of laid eggs.  At the recommendation of another beekeeper, I moved a frame from my other hive, which had plenty of laid eggs on it from their queen.  The thinking was that, if a new queen could not be found quickly, the queenless bees would work the imported frame an develop their own queen (or at least be to preoccupied to swarm).  Approximately a week later I found a supplier for a new queen and introduced her to the hive (correctly this time).  When I checked on them a week or so after that, I found that she was actively laying.

 

So, the big question is…do I have some sort of disease or problem, or is this a natural occurrence that has something to do with the frame of brood imported from the other hive?  Would the bees have rejected the brood from the other queen?  As far as I can tell it seems to be confined to this one frame.  There is one other frame in this hive that has plenty of larvae in it.  I am not certain about which frame was the imported one.  I should have marked it, but didn’t.

 

Here are the pictures:

1. Primary frame in question.  It appears it may have been thoroughly laid, but many of the larvae are gone.  The larvae that remain are in different withered states.  Some appear to have recently died, others are withered and browning.

2.  Closer look at the primary frame in question

3.  And another look

4.  Pulling one of the dead larvae out

5.  Dead Larvae

And now for some pictures from the other frame.  The queen was on this next frame and we observed her laying.

1.  2nd frame, didn’t appear (to my inexperienced eyes) to have any problems

2.  The queen has a spot of white paint

3.  These larvae seem to be in a tight pattern and healthy

 

Any advice?

I’ve always been afraid of bees.  But bees make honey and honey makes mead!  After taking up mead-making as a hobby, I quickly realized that honey is quite expensive.  Shelling out $$ to buy 3-5 lb bottles wore out my wallet pretty fast.  The last time I bought some honey, I went to a local beekeeper and bought a 5 gallon pail @ $130.  I still have 3 gallons or so left, but it’s not going to last very long.  So, free is better.  Right?

When someone told me that a good hive produces 150-200 lbs of honey a year, I decided that I needed to get over my fear of bees.  While looking for local beekeepers, I found a link to the Alamance County Beekeeper’s Association.  It just happened that they were planning on offering a beekeeping class this winter.  I signed up at the last minute.  I’m about halfway through the class right now.  One neat feature of the class is the Alamance County Farm Bureau’s Beekeeper Cost Share Program, which provides 2 free hives and bees to 15 members of the beekeeper’s class.  Much to my delight, I was selected as one of the recipients.  Sam went with me to pick up the hives at the home of one of the teachers from the beekeeping class.  Sam is just as scared of bees as I have been, but he was pretty cool when the teacher took us out to his hives to see his bees.  Sam got within a couple of feet of one of the hives and several bees landed on his head.  He froze up like a little statue when I told him not to move.  I ran my fingers through his hair and let the bees crawl off his head and onto my hand.  That was the first time I’ve let them crawl on me without flailing arms and running away.  Hopefully, we’ll get accustomed to working with them and some of the fear will subside.

Unfortunately for my wife, I began assembling the hives in the living room tonight.  The bees should be ready for pickup in early April.  Here are some of the pics of the hives going together:

The completed hive bodies.  (beside them is the functional Pirate Cannon that I built for Samuel for Christmas)

This is a feeder for the hives.  It will be filled with a sugar/water mix.  The bees access the food by entering through the opening in the middle.  There is wire cloth wrapping around inside the chamber which the bees can climb down to feed without drowning.

This is a medium super that will hold comb frames where the bees will store honey.

This is a queen excluder that will keep the queen in the brood chamber so that she will not lay eggs in the chamber for the honey.

Here’s all the parts scattered around my living room floor.  At least I put down some cardboard before breaking out the wood glue over the hardwood floor!

I still need to put the comb frames together, but that’s going to take considerably more time than the hive bodies did.  Now, I need to figure out where they are going to go.  I had hoped to put them out at my uncle’s house in the country, but his wife is deathly afraid of them.  I haven’t heard of any city ordinances that prohibit them, but not sure I want them in the backyard with so many kids around.  I have about six feet between the rear of my storage building and the fence along the property line.  I could probably put them there without having to worry about them.  I could put them behind my dad’s shop, which is still in the city, but has a small patch of woods behind it.  Any other suggestions?  I’d rather have them close so that I can keep an eye on their health.