This morning's earlier encounter with the sickly bee made me change plans to inspect today instead of tomorrow. The experience was a newbie one, and filled with "should haves". Should have put in a SHB trap. Should have taken care of cross-combing when queen was laying lightly during dearth. Should have filled in or removed eco floor. Should have kept a bleeping notebook. We're heading into autumn, which local beeks tell me is a time of flow, so while I have no problem adding an SBH trap of some kind and doing something about the eco-floor, I am loathe to cut into the brood comb -- cross-combed, but not horribly so. I can still take out two clumps of 3-bars-each, and the bars on either side are straight. In fact, all in all, of the 20 bars they've now built, all but 6 are in fine fettle.
Okay -- so out to the beehive to check for mites and general health. First, I mist with a bit of minted water. They buzz some. I try some smoke, and I swear, it just changes them from peacefully ignoring me to a buzzing swarm of death. So, I sit for 5 minutes waiting for them to calm down, then remove gabled roof. Immediately, I see a couple of cockroaches scurrying, and there is feces on top of the back few bars and along the trough edge where the roof sits on its frame. (Note to self: re-think this whole gabled roof business. while it is pretty, it creates grooves for critters to hang out in.) I loosen the back follower board (all the way to the back, not actually contributing to managing hive space) and move the back bars so I can begin taking bars out. Everything -- even those back bars with no comb -- has propolis on it. 10 bars in, I pull the first comb -- it's half way built, has a few dozen bees on it, and 5 beetles. I crush 4 of them, and smash the 5th into the wax. The next 3 bars are 3/4 built and covered with bees. I don't see much in the way of capped honey, but there's a bunch of nectar and pollen.
Each bar gets pulled and placed on the inspection stand -- I get close, but do not see mites anywhere. The bees are really fairly calm despite the smoking incident. When they get interested, I mist a bit, and step back. This usually results in bees lapping up the minty water. Maybe this creates a little accidental IPM?
When I hit the brood nest -- which is about 10 bars wide, contained between 3 bars of nectar-filled comb (closest to the entrance) and 7 bars stretching to the back of the hive (which now has its own entrances) -- I also hit cross-combing. The first couple bars are fine -- nice, straight. One has a somewhat weird brood pattern -- top to bottom but on one side of the comb and not the other!
I am hoping this means the other side hatched, because the next bar I pull is quite pretty.
Then come the cross-combed bars. These are the original crappy ones I made. I should have corrected this during the dearth. I can still pull them out in clumps of three, and they are just filled with bees and brood. The picture below is the "first" brood bar from the entrance -- it has more open space, some capped brood, and the other side of the clump is packed nicely.
I still didn't see the queen, but my guess is she's in that clump somewhere. By the time I made my way through the brood nest, the bees were getting fairly riled, and getting them off the bars/edges so I could close up was an interesting challenge. First, they propolize the daylights out of everything, so it is incredibly sticky. Second, the hive tool is Satan Incarnate, so nudging them with that does move them, though not usually down into the hive. I tried blowing on them and indeed, they moved, but also got super-pissed-off. I simply walked away from the hive but the sweet-and-stupid pitbull got stung. I then decided to try smoking them and for some reason, this time it worked! Honestly, I can't think of what I did differently. I smoked over the top of the bars, and within a minute or so, half were back inside. Another smoking and another half followed them. This was enough to begin really pushing bars together, and a few minutes later, the deed was done, cover was back on. Oh! And two giant stick bugs ran out of the hive, along with a couple of roaches. Sigh.
I realize this is a long message. If any of you have eco-floors, I'm curious how they are working for you. At first blush, the eco-floor seems like a great idea for both temperature stability and natural apicentric beekeeping. In the wild, most tree cavities have a bottom, that bottom has stuff in it, and that stuff includes some bugs. But I find cockroaches nasty. I only saw those few SHBs on the furthest comb, but stick bugs? Where did they come from? I'm thinking that the semi-tropics may not be the right environment for an eco-floor. On the other hand, overall, the bees seem fine! I'm going to ask a local beek from one of the clubs to do an inspection with me. Someone who doesn't hate TBHs (or at least doesn't care).
I feel like I owe the bees an apology. That I promise I'll do better from here on out. I'll keep notes and draw pictures. I'll use beetle traps and fix cross-combing. Promise.
Okay -- so out to the beehive to check for mites and general health. First, I mist with a bit of minted water. They buzz some. I try some smoke, and I swear, it just changes them from peacefully ignoring me to a buzzing swarm of death. So, I sit for 5 minutes waiting for them to calm down, then remove gabled roof. Immediately, I see a couple of cockroaches scurrying, and there is feces on top of the back few bars and along the trough edge where the roof sits on its frame. (Note to self: re-think this whole gabled roof business. while it is pretty, it creates grooves for critters to hang out in.) I loosen the back follower board (all the way to the back, not actually contributing to managing hive space) and move the back bars so I can begin taking bars out. Everything -- even those back bars with no comb -- has propolis on it. 10 bars in, I pull the first comb -- it's half way built, has a few dozen bees on it, and 5 beetles. I crush 4 of them, and smash the 5th into the wax. The next 3 bars are 3/4 built and covered with bees. I don't see much in the way of capped honey, but there's a bunch of nectar and pollen.
Each bar gets pulled and placed on the inspection stand -- I get close, but do not see mites anywhere. The bees are really fairly calm despite the smoking incident. When they get interested, I mist a bit, and step back. This usually results in bees lapping up the minty water. Maybe this creates a little accidental IPM?
When I hit the brood nest -- which is about 10 bars wide, contained between 3 bars of nectar-filled comb (closest to the entrance) and 7 bars stretching to the back of the hive (which now has its own entrances) -- I also hit cross-combing. The first couple bars are fine -- nice, straight. One has a somewhat weird brood pattern -- top to bottom but on one side of the comb and not the other!
I am hoping this means the other side hatched, because the next bar I pull is quite pretty.
Then come the cross-combed bars. These are the original crappy ones I made. I should have corrected this during the dearth. I can still pull them out in clumps of three, and they are just filled with bees and brood. The picture below is the "first" brood bar from the entrance -- it has more open space, some capped brood, and the other side of the clump is packed nicely.
I still didn't see the queen, but my guess is she's in that clump somewhere. By the time I made my way through the brood nest, the bees were getting fairly riled, and getting them off the bars/edges so I could close up was an interesting challenge. First, they propolize the daylights out of everything, so it is incredibly sticky. Second, the hive tool is Satan Incarnate, so nudging them with that does move them, though not usually down into the hive. I tried blowing on them and indeed, they moved, but also got super-pissed-off. I simply walked away from the hive but the sweet-and-stupid pitbull got stung. I then decided to try smoking them and for some reason, this time it worked! Honestly, I can't think of what I did differently. I smoked over the top of the bars, and within a minute or so, half were back inside. Another smoking and another half followed them. This was enough to begin really pushing bars together, and a few minutes later, the deed was done, cover was back on. Oh! And two giant stick bugs ran out of the hive, along with a couple of roaches. Sigh.
I realize this is a long message. If any of you have eco-floors, I'm curious how they are working for you. At first blush, the eco-floor seems like a great idea for both temperature stability and natural apicentric beekeeping. In the wild, most tree cavities have a bottom, that bottom has stuff in it, and that stuff includes some bugs. But I find cockroaches nasty. I only saw those few SHBs on the furthest comb, but stick bugs? Where did they come from? I'm thinking that the semi-tropics may not be the right environment for an eco-floor. On the other hand, overall, the bees seem fine! I'm going to ask a local beek from one of the clubs to do an inspection with me. Someone who doesn't hate TBHs (or at least doesn't care).
I feel like I owe the bees an apology. That I promise I'll do better from here on out. I'll keep notes and draw pictures. I'll use beetle traps and fix cross-combing. Promise.