Minnesota Winter is Beekeeper's Ally

I believe Kirk Webster said that it would be more beneficial to see the varroa mite as a beekeeper's ally than as an enemy. The varroa mite "selects" the survivor hives for the bee breeder, allowing the most adaptable bees to survive. I am trying to see Minnesota winters in much the same fashion, as only one of my hives has survived thus far.

In some sense, my survival rate ( one out of seven) does not surprise me. The two top bar colonies went into August with little stores and no amount of feeding seemed to help. The Metpropolis hive was never very strong throughout the season. I was hoping that the two hives I developed from my own mating nucs would survive but they never quite built up either. Surviving the winter depends on building up during the summer and the constant rain during last summer kept that from happening. The surviving hive this winter was also the strongest last summer and the hive with the most surplus honey in the fall. The survival rate is somewhat predictable then.

Friday, I will call B & B Honey Farm and order two more packages. I will use my surviving hive to start one or two others. Hopefully, if this year's weather cooperates, this survivor hive can produce some real solid stock.

Video: February Thaw

February Thaw and the bees are out II
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I guess this is both good and bad news. It was over 40 degrees F in Winona today and at least one hive (Bee Glad...) showed a great deal of activity at the top entrance. In the next few days I will have to decide whether to order two more packages or will I increase solely through this hive.


February Thaw and the bees are out I
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Fence Panel Destroyed in Beelandia

One of the fence panels surrounding the parameter of Beelandia was hit by snow and ice falling off the neighbor's roof. The toppled panel did not hit any of the hives. Yet another fix-it project for the early spring!

Video: Beelandia Blizzard

Blizzard in Beelandia
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Beelandia-- 3/13 - 3/14 2010

I was busy all weekend working in Beelandia. Saturday, a cloudy, rainy day of upper 40F degree temperatures, was spent carrying out the hay bales I had placed around each hive last fall. Except for a slip on some ice, everything went well. I was also able to sow some poppy, and bird's foot trefoil seeds as well. I was a muddy, tired mess after this activity but I accomplished much.

Sunday was a beautiful day with full sun, and temperatures in the lower 60s. I took the box quilts off each hive and, on the langstroths, replaced them with feeders filled with 1:1 sugar syrup. The top bar hives still had plenty of honey and so to those I added simply a pollen paddy. As I suspected, Plan Bee... has or had mice, though it doesn't seem to have hurt that hive any.

As the above video of Bee Glad... shows, the bees were very active this afternoon. All hives were doing orientation and cleansing flights, and many workers were bringing in some off-white substance in their pollen baskets.

I think we have a winner in the Name That Nuc Contest. David Hinck, SMU student, suggested I name the hive: Worker Bees of the World Unite. Thank you David!

Checking for Food Stores

The thermometer outside Beelandia registered 41 degrees F today, just warm enough for me to take a quick peek under the quilt boxes of one or two of the hives. I checked each of the langstroths in the apiary and found that each still had a good portion of the fondant I put into each hive a month and a half ago left. I placed a small patty of fondant in each anyway and closed them up quickly. The bees all looked fine!

Videos of Saturday's Winter Flights

I got my cellphone working right and was finally to upload two short videos I filmed yesterday in Beelandia. The first shows some initial activity at the top entrance of Lib-BEE-taria,the langstroth hive inhabited by carniolan bees. The second is activity in front of Metpropolis, the top bar hive containing a colony of italian bees. The board most of the bees have landed on in this video is leaning against the hive in order to keep the entrance from receiving direct exposure to cold winds.

Please pardon the poor quality of this video as it was filmed from my phone. Next time I will out there with our proper video equipment.

Saturday Winter Flights

I went out to Beelandia this bright, sunny morning to discover all the hives are alive and in flight. The most active was Lib-BEE-taria with its carniolan inhabitants, but all hives seemed healthy.

I did take a video of Lib-BEE-taria but have not been able to upload it to youtube yet. I will try again later today.

A Visit to Beelandia -- 2/16/2010

Locally, the day was sunny, a bit windy, with temperatures in the mid-30s; a pleasant break from the cloudy, snowy and cold weather of the past week. Just the right kind of weather for peeking about the beehives in Beelandia.

As has been usual the last few weeks, I was able to observe activity at the top entrances of three hives: Lib-BEE-taria, Nuc To Be Named Later, and Bee Glad... The fact that the bees are at the top entrance does worry me a bit, as this might indicate they are running out of food. Hopefully, sometime soon, the temperature will rise above forty degrees F and I'll be able to check their food storage and feed some fondant if necessary.

Metpropolis, one of my top bar hives, concerns me as well. There is excessive diarrhea around the hive which may be a sign of a nosema problem. While I did not see any bees active near the entrance of the other top bar hive, Plan Bee..., I did notice other tell-tale signs of an active hive. However, as I mentioned before, this hive may have a "mouse problem". (No allusion to Monty Python here)

Visit to Beelandia on Super Sunday

I took a break from my grading to go out to Beelandia and check on the bees. Today's weather was primarily overcast though the sun occasionally peeked out from behind the clouds. The temperature in Winona was about 27 degrees.

There were bees leaving the top entrances of both Bee Glad... (see photo above) and Nuc to Be Named Later as the bees either went off to die or make a cleansing flight. I did not see any bees flying about Lib-BEE-taria although there were signs of recent activity at the entrance (i.e. newly removed dead bees). Metropolis, our oldest top bar also had bees flying about as well. I did not see any activities around Plan Bee from Outer Space (our newer top bar), at least not of the apis mellifera-kind. I think, however, the hive does have mice. How the bees fair this invasion will be a question for a warmer day!

Photos From Beelandia in January

I was fooling around a bit with the camera in my new phone and took some photos in Beelandia today. The temperature was in the upper 30s and the bees were active.

Bee Glad... Is Dead

Today was our warmest day in 2009 (upper 40s) so I went out to see if my suspicions were correct about at least one of the hives. I opened up Bee Glad..., separated the boxes, and, yes, BeeGlad... is dead. I didn't look all that closely or take out any frames but my initial diagnosis is starvation with plenty of honey above.

Both the top and middle boxes were heavy with honey (and possibly too much), so that the winter cluster in the bottom box had no empty cell area on which to move up to the top boxes. The dead cluster was still in the bottom box. With the freezing cold we've had, the cluster wouldn't have been able to move up much anyway. If, as beeworks.com mentions, the two top boxes had been clogged in fall, the queen might not have had enough room to lay eggs to replace the worn-out and dying summer bees. This would've left fewer bees to keep the cluster warm.

No matter which scenario, I must, in the future, pay more attention to leaving the middle frames in both top boxes relatively free or pollen and honey. When I had closed Bee Glad... in mid-October, I had left, what I thought, was a clear enough pathway up into the top boxes. However, two things happened: 1) I continued to feed the hive sugar syrup with Fumagilin-B which the hive consumed greedily, and 2) there was a stretch of warm weather at the end of the month in which the bees scavenged at the local Kwik Trip for sweets. The bees may have stored more honey right in the spaces I had left empty.

I am not very happy with myself right now.

Winter Visit to Beelandia

I went out this morning to check on my two hives. It's been a pretty typical Minnesota winter so far with snow and freezing cold. I figured I needed to check the entrances of both hives to make sure they weren't blocked.

I swept the snow away from Bee Glad...'s lower entrance and took off the metal mouse guard so that I could  brush away any dead bees blocking it's holes. Everything seemed normal here but was pleasantly surprised about the warmth I felt at this entrance. (If it had been the top entrance I wouldn't have been all that surprised.) If this is any indication of how well the bees are doing, I am very happy.

Cold Snap

Last week I spent some time out in Beelandia examining both Metpropolis and Bee Glad... . The temperature was in the 40s, so I watched as bees took cleansing flights, carried out dead bees, and a few just fell to the ground to die. The bees are still alive and looking fairly well, though the few dozen or so bees (mostly drones) around Metpropolis freaked me out a bit.

Within 24 hours, the temperature fell 40 or so degrees with a wind chill that made it feel like -40 degrees. I suspect the bees are inside clustering to keep warm.