Hive Status Jan 30th

Today is the 1st sunny day after a long week of rain. I have been aching to visit the hive  All the short sunny spots that occurred this week were on weekdays and I was at work. Receiving emails from fellow beekeepers noting that their hives were bringing in pollen made me envious to check on how mine were doing.

I opened Bombay first. There was a small cluster in the upper brood chamber and lots of honey left. At least 6-7 frames of honey. I was hoping to find the cluster extending down to the lower brood chamber as it seems too few bees are left. I lifted the upper brood chamber to take a peep and there was nothing below. I had a bad feeling if they would survive or not. I rotated one frame where the cluster was closest, to get access to more honey and shifted the remaining pollen patty left behind in November over the cluster. Hopefully, if the queen is laying they can slowly replenish their numbers. I lifted the entrance reducer to clear some dead bees and there was so many dead bees. The screened bottom board was just chalked up with dead frozen bees. I closed up the bottom to maintain their heating system just in case the dead bees were somewhat of a wind/cold breaker.

I opened Matilda next. The hive looks better. At least 2 frames of bees remaining and tightly clustered. Honey storage levels seems the same. At least 6-7 frames left. Did not need to shift any frames as the cluster was on a frame full of honey. After opening, they started to fly out to gather pollen from catkins hanging from the hazelnut tree.

Lastly, I opened Camille. Clear dead out. It was as expected but I was hopeful that it wouldn't come to a tragic end. From the previous post, the hive only took in 3 gallons or less of 2:1 sugar syrup. Below is what is Camille. The bees were not frozen. The bees at the top were dry and it seemed that they died together just 1-3days ago.

Hive Covered in December

Only Matilda and Bombay are covered with Bee Cozy. Camille is not as an experiment to see if it is necessary to cover in our Vancouver winters. They don't look well wrapped as the Bee Cozy was bought on my 1st winter with the bees and I was wintering them in a single chamber. All the hives are on screen bottom board fully opened year round to promote maximum ventilation. Between the outer cover and the inner cover there is a styrofoam board to prevent a cold front on the inner cover that will cause condensation from the bees heat generation and the cold air outside. 

On Dec 4th, Matilda and Bombay were treated for mites with 100ml of oxalic acid. I made sure the treated sugar syrup was nice and warm. I made 150 gm of 1:1 sugar syrup with 4 gm of oxalic acid. Camille was not treated as an experiment as well. 

Matilda and Bombay were clustered in exactly the same manner except the bees in Matilda was on the right and Bombay was on the left of the hive. They filled 6 frames in the upper and lower chambers = 12 frames of bees.

Preparing the Hive for a Vancouver winter

After harvesting honey from the Matilda and Bombay, its time to give back to ensure they had enough storage to last through the winter that starts in Vancouver from November till end of February. Winter really starts for the bees when the last Sunflower and Aster flowers withers away. That is when there is nothing left to forage eventhough there may be nice sunny days that are ideal for the bees to fly out.

So to prepare for this I started to do price comparisons of Rogers 10kg sugar bags. The good thing about preparing the hive for winter is that there are no big holidays around the corner where everyone likes to bake for the family which is the best time for beekeepers to stock up on sugar. A 10kg bag of sugar during mid-August cost $8.88 - 9.99 at Superstore and when comes Thanksgiving or Christmas is near a bag will cost $$12.99-$13.99.

 I bought 8 bags of sugar. I've never bought so much sugar in my life before at a time. When I looked at the amount of sugar I bought, it felt I was running a bakery shop. Friends with cars are my best friends when I need to cart around heavy stuff. Ted was the driver of the day. Of course, Ted got a gorgeous jar of honey for helping.

I took a day off from work to mix the sugar into a 2:1 sugar syrup. Borrowed a propane burner and a witch concoction pot to deep fry turkey from a friend.

All the white pails behind the pot is to store the sugar syrup over the 10 weeks of feeding. My first winter with the bees, I used to make sugar syrup every week at home and pour them into one gallon containers. Then lug at least 2 one gallon container on the skytrain and then on a bus to get to the hive. It was too much of a hassle and that had to change. Making the sugar syrup at the gardens is the best method so far to save time and way more manageable. With the Witch Pot I could make 15 litres = 3.96 gallons at a time. That is about 10kg of sugar with 5 litres of water. But somehow I don't get why when I mix sugar with water in that proportion I don't quite get the 3.96 gallons I expect. I always get about 3.5 gallons or little less. The density of water must be quite expandable that it absorbs the sugar and does not add to the volume. If anyone has  got the science of this, I would like to try out your formula. Anyway, boiling 5 litres of water with the propane burner takes about 10mins or less which is really fast.

At the end of all the pouring, stirring and mixing of 80 kg of sugar with 40 litres of water, I yielded 30 gallons of 2:1 sugar syrup which was perfect for 3 hives to have 10 gallons (40kg) each to store for the winter. They stored perfectly well from September till it was all gone which was 1st week of November. I also added juice of 1 lime/lemon to 1 gallon of syrup every 2 weeks to boost Vitamin C intake.Hopefully, there will be some benefits to doing that.  Fumagilin was added as well for the 1st and 3rd week of feeding.  

After the 10 weeks of feeding 2:1 sugar syrup, Matilda and Bombay was back breaking heavy in the top brood chamber. The bottom brood chamber were mostly filled with pollen. I thought that was interesting, that the bees organized it in that way. Since I placed the frame feeder at the top chamber, it would be just easier and closer to just store the sugar syrup at the top and foragers can dump pollen at the bottom chamber to shorten the time to unload and do the next trip. The only problem was Camille was not taking in the syrup like the other 2 hive. In total it took just about 3 gallons. I cross my fingers that Camille will make it through the winter. 

Lastly for mite treatment, the hives were only sugar dusted. 2 cups of blended sugar per hive for 10 weeks. 1 cup per brood chamber. They were dusted on the same day each week for 10 weeks. I did not stay to count the mite fall after each dusting. Partly because I did not want to get disheartened by the number of mites I'll find. I did the sugar shake mite count every 3 weeks and my infestation rate is high! It was sitting at an average of 15-20%. The application was not consistent as well as sometimes I'll get 100 nurse bees and the week after I'll get 300 nurse bees as I was reading different articles that recommended differently. After doing some reading on this method, I'll only collect 1 cup of bees which is an approximate of 100 bees. I really like the sugar shake method as none of the bees in the test dies. They come out of the jar groggy but after 2 minutes, they are back in the hive. I also figured that if I am taking nurse bees who are mostly carriers of the mites, they are too important to lose. The caring for the thousands of larvae (big demanding job), feeding the queen, building comb and etc. Plus nurse bees have the highest levels of vitellogenin and it is vital to the health of entire colony. I am very conscious of the efficiency levels in the hive and I strive to not affect that efficiency by reducing the amount of bees I injure or kill in anything I do in the hive.