A New Home for Our Swarm

June 15, 2014
Checked the hives and added 12 ounces to the feeder jar for the new hive. It sure is eating a lot, but I suppose that's good because they have a long ways to go to build up their numbers and fill two hive bodies this season. Unfortunately, the "wild" swarm was relatively small, compared to what I would have liked it to be this late into the season.

June 18, 2014
I was still feeling very under the weather from food poisoning, but my husband reminded me that I should at least check the syrup levels in each hive. I'm glad he reminded me, because I gave each hive additional syrup. The older, larger hive took about 8 ounces, and the new hive took another 12 ounces. There must not be as much to forage on (we haven't seen much, if any, rain the last couple weeks).

June 20, 2014
We received the new hive body from my Dad in the mail today. We had a lot of afternoon rain, but after it stopped and the ground dried out some, my husband and I finally got the smaller colony into their new home. We first moved our larger hive over, re-positioned some of the paver bricks (after purchasing a few more) and then put together a proper hive for the second colony. We were a bit nervous, because after smoking this hive, it got pretty loud, and as we moved it, a lot of the bees left the hive and were flying around us. But once the hive was all settled in its permanent location, they settled back down within a few minutes. Both the older hive and the newer one now rest in slightly different spots only a few inches from where they each were previously.

Here is a picture of the two hives (my camera skills with a smart phone need some improvement):

I am very proud of my husband. This particular day, working on the bees required a lot of help from him to actually move the larger hive over and re-arrange the bricks. And I'm super proud of him for stepping up and braving the bees with me to help. This was his first chance to work on the bees because he usually watches our children, and I do the work alone. But today we had some help from a good friend to watch our kids, and I legitimately needed his help.

I've never really been into taking selfies until starting this blog, but in celebration of getting the swarm into a new home with its own hive body, I convinced him we should take a selfie:

I'm still trying to decide what to name the two hives, so I'll keep you posted on that.

Swarm

The local beekeeping group I recently joined has an online message board, and last night a fellow beekeeper posted to the board that there was a swarm in someone's yard out near Hope, IN. This is only about 20 minutes from my house, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to take some equipment out there and at least take a look at it. If it was too large, or too aggressive for me to handle, I could just walk away, and provide others with more details on the swarm, so if someone else wanted to retrieve it, at least they would have a couple pictures and more information.

This is the first swarm I can recall seeing in person, and up close, so I don't have any comparison, but it was relatively small, and very close to the ground. The homeowner informed me that in the evenings, the swarm's size would increase to the point that it was touching the ground at times, so I can only assume a lot of bees were out foraging. He also explained that the swarm had been there for more than a week, so I suspect the bees were probably very hungry. The last several days the weather has been overcast and sprinkling at times, and I can only assume that's why the bees hadn't moved on to another location (usually a swarm only stays put for a day or two).

At the moment, my only extra bee boxes are supers, so I filled one with foundation frames (normally, my supers would only each have 9 frames, but this one has 10) and set it down inside a cardboard box that was slightly larger in area and more than twice as tall as the super. I made sure the bottom of the box was well sealed, and it was a heavy duty box so I was pretty confident it would hold up well. Just in case the branch was too big, I also brought along a larger rubbermaid box to drop the branch into. Before going out to the site, I imagined it would be a lot bigger. I didn't have any snippers or anything, but I also brought along a hand saw, in case I needed it.

The homeowner was very nice, and very helpful. When I got there, after putting my veil on, I lifted up the branch, slid the box under, and with his larger clippers, just clipped the end off the branch. I waited a bit to see if anymore bees would settle into the box, but after a call to my Dad, and some small talk with the homeowner about bees and their habits, I decided to seal up the box and call it good enough.

Here's a picture of the box before I taped it up:

Once home, I dismantled my old, empty package, and placed a couple smaller pieces of wood onto a piece of plywood close to where I wanted the hive to eventually rest. These small pieces of wood are acting as shims to give them an entrance at the bottom of the hive. I got a feeder jar and another empty super ready, along with my smoker, and got to it. I cut down the side of the box on two corners, with bees sneaking out on both sides, and then cut the tape open and slowly slide the super out and placed it on the temporary bottom board. I put their feeder jar on top of the frames, next to the branch, and shook the branch some to get at least some of the bees down into the box, and put the empty super down over the jar and branch. Then I put a piece of the cardboard box down on top of the hive to use as a temporary cover. Here's a picture of the "little sister hive" inside our fence:

When I was all finished, there were still a few bees left in the box, and I studied it very carefully until I was absolutely sure the queen was not among the stragglers. This was what remained when I put the cardboard cover on the yellow super:

I was very proud of myself ... and took a selfie in celebration of my small success:

When I went back and checked on the hives this evening, about 9 or 10 hours after putting the swarm in the backyard, the new bees seemed to be settling in ok (they at least hadn't all left, which is the first hurdle). There were a couple still on the branch, and one even seemed to be trying to attach wax to the pine needles, so I put a stop to that straight away. I was thrilled that they had not yet built any comb on the branch, especially given how long they had been there, and I wasn't about to let them start building on it now that they have foundation to concentrate on.

My biggest concern now is that their numbers are relatively low for how far into the season we are. They aren't even as big as a nuc (roughly 4 deep frames of bees) and only fill up about 3 super frames right now. I met someone on Monday though, who is trying to start a new hive, and they haven't received the nuc they ordered yet (wet May weather delayed the queens the supplier is raising) so maybe this small colony can still make it.

Early next week, my Dad has said he will ship me some deep boxes that aren't assembled, and frames to go into them. The plan right now, is to give the new hive a deep box as soon as possible, and hopefully they hit the ground running. Once they fill the first deep, I'll give them a second deep, and most likely move the super up to the top of the hive. If they still continue raising brood in the super through the end of the season, I'll just leave it for them through the winter.

From the very start of this whole adventure, I always had it in my head that I should have at least two hives someday, I just never dreamed it would happen so fast. Keep your fingers crossed that this swarm raised a good queen and they'll build up enough stores for the coming winter!

Now that we have two hives, in conversation, my husband and I don't yet have a good name for either of them. So we're trying to come up with names, rather than just calling them the "north hive" and the "south hive." That's way too boring. So please comment with your suggestions of what you think we should name them. And stay tuned for updates on our newest addition :)

May 10, 2014 - May 31, 2014

Edit: I have edited post to better describe a few details and add some pictures. Hope it's a bit easier to follow.

I picked up my package from Walter T Kelley in Kentucky on May 10th. It was a rainy, cloudy day and the temperatures were cooler when I got home, but it was dry enough to install the package. First, I put the queen's cage into the hive.

Here is a picture of the queen cage before I removed the cork (taking the picture was probably why I forgot about the cork, which could have been a big problem):

This is a picture of me installing the queen's cage into the hive (taken by my husband from outside the fence) and for anyone still following along at home, the cork is still in ...

Here is a picture of the queen cage after I had stuck it into the comb (yeah, the cork is still in there):

Here is a picture of the package, after I took out the queen's cage, but before I took out the feeder can:

I put on my veil, and took a selfie for posterity:

I installed the package by removing the feeder can, and then dumped as many bees as possible into the hive. By this time, my husband was too chicken to stand next to the fence (can you blame him?), and I was not about to stop what I was doing to take anymore pictures. Then I closed everything up, and called my Dad. He asked "did you remove the cork?"

I couldn't remember at that point, but was insistent that I needed to be sure the cork was out, so went back into the hive, and sure enough the cork was still there. When I put the cage back in, I tried my best to squeeze it in between the comb on the built out frames my Dad gave me, but I didn't do a good enough job, because 2 days later on May 12th, the queen cage was at the bottom of the hive, preventing the workers from eating through the candy. I put it back in place, and waited 2 more days.

On May 14th, they still had not eaten all the candy (but some progress had been made). I was forced to wait until Friday that week, because of rainy weather, so I finally removed the empty queen cage from the hive on May 16th. I closed up the hive after removing the queen cage and squeezing in the missing empty frame into the hive (noting that a lot of squeezing was needed, because of burr comb). I called my Dad again (this was probably at least the 5th or 6th phone call I placed to him that week) and he told me to absolutely go back in asap to remove all the burr comb from around the frames.

I had left a large space in the hive when I removed an empty frame from the outside and slid all the other frames over to place the queens cage between the center frames. The queen's cage had been in there for quite some time, and left them plenty of time and space to build a great deal of burr comb. My Dad explained that as long as this burr comb was in the hive, the bees would continue to work on the burr comb, instead of on the frames where I wanted them to build and fill. He also explained that I didn't know what was going on between the burr comb and the frame comb (there was a "secret" pocket in between the burr comb and the frame comb). There could have been any number of activities going on in that secret space that I needed to put a stop to. So I fired up the smoker for the second time that day, and went back in to remove all the burr comb. My Dad also explained that as long as burr comb was on the frames, I ran the risk of squishing the queen when I pushed the frames back tight together (at this point I had not confirmed that eggs were present yet).

I worried for a whole week that I had somehow squished my queen in the burr comb during my first time in the hive on May 16th. I was overjoyed to find brood of varying ages when I checked the hive again on May 24th. I was worried that the brood was not all grouped by similar ages, but another call to my Dad calmed my worries. He explained that a new queen will sometimes need some time to settle into a pattern, before she will lay in almost every cell at relatively close to the same time. So far so good.

On May 30th, I checked again, and things seemed to be going along well: lots of capped brood in a good pattern, with very few empty holes, and a good amount of activity and foraging. Throughout this time, the bees had often taken very little, if any syrup from the feeder jars, and I decided to leave them only one jar the next time I refilled. I also noted a surprising amount of honey comb that was tying the top bars together in some areas.

After a call to my Dad, and some discussion about the hive, he suggested I add the next box onto the top. About 8 of the 10 frames had some comb built and my Dad felt that if they were building that much on the top bars of the inner frames, they wanted to move up. He explained that as soon as the new brood hatched, the bees already building on the tops of the frames may start to feel like they should swarm. I expressed concern over the outer most frames not filling up, and he told me to be patient. Once the new brood hatches, they should fill up fast. The only thing he suggested is that the outer most frames may need to be flipped, so the outside face of the frame is turned inward to encourage them to fill it. He explained that, if left to their own devices, bees will usually fill a hive in a football sort of shape. So on May 31st, I added the second hive body.

Background

To give you a bit of background, I was born in Vermont, and when I was 10, we moved to South Carolina, and then soon after that Florida. While I was in college, my family moved back to Vermont. When I was a kid, I remember my Dad had bees off and on, and always talked about how his Dad (we call him Pa Pere) had bees for pollination and honey throughout his life. At one time, Pa Pere was the largest honey producer in Vermont. Over the last several years, my Dad has gotten back into beekeeping, and after a couple of years, started building a new hive design. It is square in shape, rather than the rectangular shape of a Langstroth hive. You can follow my Dad's work on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/weepingpinefarm.

Last year, in our backyard garden here in Indiana, we tried to grow pumpkins, and while I know a plant's production depends on many things, we had only one pumpkin (and my husband pollinated the plants with a q-tip when we didn't see any bees). So we decided we had to do something, or we couldn't ever expect to have a couple productive apple trees or any berry bushes in the future. We decided to start a hive in our backyard, and began making plans for it. We built a fence, to use as a wind break, and also to impact the flight pattern of the bees, so they fly higher above the ground when foraging. This way there is less of a chance that they will be in the way of our neighbors during the warmer seasons.

My Dad was very generous, and gave me all the equipment that I would need to start the hive. He would have given me a package of bees also, but the timing didn't work out, and I felt I needed to make some investment into this endeavor. We are starting our square hive with two deep hive bodies, and we have 4 supers, which should be more than enough for the first year. Here's a photo of our hive, with my parents and my children showing it off:

I'm feeding them on top of the inner cover with an empty super to protect the jar(s) of sugar syrup under the outer cover. A few weeks into this new adventure, my Dad suggested that I keep a log of how things went, so I could look back if I had questions or wanted a resource for when I might start another hive in the future.

So, this blog is my new log. I wish I had started it sooner, so I could track how much I fed, and when, in more detail, but this will do for now. From now on, when I feed, I'll record an approximate number of ounces of syrup, so that way I can start to predict, in future years, when the nectar is flowing and when they are taking syrup from the feeder jar(s). Hopefully this blog will also be a resource to other newbies that are starting out on a similar hobby in the future. As time goes on, I'll try to post pictures of my hive, but for now, it's a challenge just to get words typed up, since I also have two young children to look after.