Last weekend I tried equipping myself with a camera strapped over my veil during a hive inspection. It wasn't perfect, but more modified attempts to come. After seeing the telescoping cover (the very top cover) dripping wet, I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure your hive is well ventilated. I replaced the inner cover with one that has a notch in it (that formerly served as an entrance) and will continue to place bottlecaps underneath the telescoping cover to maintain ventilation there. I also have been leaving my bottom tray half off the screened bottom board. The moisture quilt really is working wonders at keeping the moisture off of the bees. Even though there's not really any rain in the forecast for the next month, I'm still going to keep it on until the winter has passed.
It takes every bit of self control for me not to open up the hive each weekend. I just want to see how everyone is doing in there & make sure that nothing looks funky! Day time temps in North Bay have been in the 50s, which is not comfortable enough for my girls (they're spoiled). Depending on your location though, winter day time temps in the 50s might prompt a hive inspection. Since winters in California have mid-60, sunny days, I try to hold out for these. On a recent prime weathered weekday, I briefly inspected the bees during my lunch break with the following objectives:
This is what I found... The hive was very active when I arrived and the amount on bees told me that the colony size is stable. I only took out two frames during this inspection to minimize disturbance. There's still plenty of room in the top box for the bees to store whatever their little beehearts desire. Given that we have finally been getting the much needed rain, the mold up top wasn't a surprise. I went to a beekeeping meeting this week & learned that mold is virtually inevitable in wet winters. Beekeepers even get moldy frames. I've read and heard mixed reviews about whether or not to let the bees clean off moldy frames, but supposedly they'll do it if you let them. Luckily, when I removed the moisture quilt, there was no mold whatsoever below it, meaning that the moisture quilt has been doing its job at keeping the moisture away from the bees! MORE ON MOISTURE QUILTS: My moisture quilt comprises the top-most box of my hive & holds a small amount of wood chips/ shavings, suspended above the colony on a screen that rests on a queen excluder. A major contributor to hives not overwintering is moisture. When bees respire & cluster around the brood nest, they're giving off damp, warm air. Similar to a window in the wintertime, when moist, warm air makes contact with a cold surface (in the hive, the upper cover), it condensates. If I hadn't installed the moisture quilt, the condensation would collect and drip back onto the bees, causing them to die from being wet, cold, &/or possibly giving them a common bee cold such as nosema. The capped comb I saw was concerning to newbee me, since it's a dark color & it's sunken! [[I've come to associate sunken comb = foulbrood. If I had a toothpick on me during this inspection, I could have opened up a cell to see if it had stringy contents, but my bee supply bucket was ill-equipped. It didn't look like brood comb though]] After a little inspection, I noticed that said frame contained strictly pollen & honey. Turns out this is just a tiny batch of capped honey that looks different due to the winter conditions.
FREED BEES live on!! Blogs have been an extremely useful resource for me when I started becoming interested in pursuing beekeeping. I've finally decided to muster up a little drive and start blogging about my own trials and tribulations, which hopefully might be at least slightly helpful to local beginning apiarists. Given that tis not the season open up the hive often, for starters, I'll just share a video of the girls flying in slow-motion (best viewed in HD). Side note about “my girls”... For those wondering "why do beekeepers always refer to the bees collectively as girls?"... Well, the reason is because all worker bees are female. While male bees exist in the hive, they do not contribute at all to the workforce and exist strictly for reproductive purposes. Male bees, called "drones," do not have stingers, do not forage for nectar or pollen, and only leave the hive in search of finding and mating with a virgin queen bee in the sky. Romantic, no? In the hive, the only thing male bees can be found doing is consuming resources collected by the females.
Generally, a large presence of male bees within a hive is undesirable, as the comb that drones pupate in is a prime spot for varroa mites to reproduce in, due to similar gestation periods. Varroa mites are a large contributor to colony collapse disorder, but more to come on that later. During inclement weather or in times of blooming dearth, the worker bees will kick the drones out of the hive to conserve their resources for raising brood (baby bees). |
AuthorPennyslvania-native California apiarist, biologist, & DIYer. Archives
January 2016
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