First inpsection after the move

After putting together another hive for when when we split our current hives in a few weeks, John and family and I headed out to Katy Vincent's organic farm out in Strasburg to do an inspection. John met Katy trying to figure out sources to get better meats to eat - specifically non-hormoned, non-antibiotic, free range livestock. They bought a half pig from Katy last year and really enjoyed it. John had talked to Katy about the possibility of having some hives on her land and Katy was more than fine with the idea, especially since she was already hosting another beekeeper's hives and wanted to get more into it herself.

When we arrived, the other beekeper, another John who lives out in the Southlands area of Aurora, Katy and two other gentlemen were just wrapping up an inspection on their hives. Last year they had four hives, but two died out over the winter. Southlands John was happy that one of the remaining hives was exploding. This is his third year beekeeping and, at the moment, he has seven or so hives that are his or he is helping out with. After reading the blog by Dennis Murrell about his losses after commingling his bees with a commercial beekeeper's, I was a bit worried about our decision to move our hives to Katy's and letting them hang out with some unknown bees (ah, I can see English John reading this and making a comment about nanny-ing the bees - but he had the same concerns, too, I'll have you know). After meeting Southlands John and talking to Katy, we're all on the same page about non-natural beekeeping methods: forget about 'em!

Katy's stance reflects her farm. She won't allow any antibiotics or synthetics on the farm and that includes the bees. Add that to the isolation of Strasburg - very few people and probably less bees per acre - and I think we have a good recipe for generally healthy bees. Which leads me to the inspection. We had three big goals for the inspection. First, we wanted to see how the hives were doing in general. Second, we wanted to swap out some of the old, blackened frames that came with the bees when we bought them last year. And last, we wanted to swap out the solid bottom board on the Sicilians with a screened one (see the previous post about the different boards) I purchased at To Bee or Not To Bee, a local beekeeping supplies shop. Due to the strong afternoon winds and not wanting to unecessarily expose the brrod to them, we accomplished everything but the frame swap. Two outta three isn't bad in my book.

We started with the bottom boards. If you've read this blog, you know that our Sicilians are tempermental ladies at best. When we moved them to the farm the week before, we couldn't help but be glad that it was only 28 degrees out as they were more than a bit annoyed at the process. Luckily, the cold chilled their anger nicely! So, knowing windy conditions tend to make bees cross in general, I felt some concern for my hide in having to lift the hive up off the bottom board, exposing a large mass of the girls, to swap it out. To our pleasant surprise, they stayed Jekyll instead of going Ms. Hyde on us.

It continued to get better as we popped off the covers to inspect them: the queen is showing a good brood pattern with both new eggs and nearly-ready-to-pupate larvae and several large drones mingling with the workers. John thinks the bees are smaller this year than last; they looked like bees to me - I'm just taking his word for it. I'll profer a few possibilities for this if it's true. First, because we are not using manufactured foundation in about half of the frames, the bees are free to design their own cells instead of conforming to man-made specs (often larger than natural as to increase bee size: bigger bee, more honey - in theory). The bulk of the girls should be the size nature intends for them. However, the problem with this idea would lay (pun always intended) in whether the brood was raised mostly in our foundationless frames or in the foundationed frames they came to us in. The second possible explanation comes from overwintered bees themselves. To prolong the honey stores, the hive triggers something that causes the brood layed to be winter workers to be smaller than their spring and summer sisters. Many of these smaller bees could still be running around.

Drone, left, and worker bees

The third explanation (and keep this between you and me, okay?) is that John is off his rocker. While I'm not known for my abilities to pay attention to details, they really just do look like normal bees. The difference between the smallest cells a hive makes and the largest is about .5 millimeters. Drones come out of the largest and can easily be distinguished from the workers. Variation among the worker bee cells would be minimal comparitively. Still, it is possible that John has this one right, but you try to get a bee to stay still long enough to take measurements!



Good brood pattern - tight and mixed with
capped brood and newer larvae



The first Italians looked splendid. The queen also exhibited a good brood pattern: lots of it with all stages of development from egg to capped brood. Another thing that made us happy was the presence of fresh honey and freshly capped honey. The foraging workers are finding food and doing a good job of it!

The last thing I want to talk about is honey. Southlands John (this is going to be fun keeping track of all the Johns as Katy's husband's name is John also - oi vay!) told us that they harvested quite a bit of honey last year. It was light but tasty, garnering high praise from a very picky relative of his. The only reason I can wait for harvest season is that it harbinges the coming winter...and I've had enough of that ol' man for a while!

Posted by Bob Nelson