Whats left.

Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny day hitting the highest of 5 deg Celsius. I was excited to check the hive after such a long 2 weeks of rain and cold weather.

As of know I already know that Camille has died of starvation.

 Matilda is still doing well. She is all I got right now. I gave a pollen patty. I was considering not to give as the hive still had tons of pollen gathered from last fall in the lower chamber. But I guess, it may be too cold still to venture to the bottom chamber. Please do well Matilda! I need the weather to cooperate. I wish for more warmer and sunny weather.

Bombay is a goner too. Lost her to Nosema. I've collected some bees to send to the Ministry lab for testing. Evidence of Nosema were everywhere. I would like to know if this is Nosema Ceranae or Apis. I treated Bombay with Fumagilin and still Nosema affected it. I noticed that bees in the hive had somewhat of a similar way of dieing. Alot of the bees had the middle left leg sticking upwards. I am guessing that is how the Nosema bacteria in the guts ruptures through a nervous system that kills the bee and also causes that leg to rise. I could not get a clear picture as they were blurred from a camera that has lousy focusing. I made the picture huge so maybe you can see what I'm describing. Scroll to the right and see some of the evidence of Nosema.
When observing the frames, I can tell it was a horrible death. Bees having to hold their bladder from December to February and then getting killed by the bacteria in their own guts. The high number of bees that got affected by the Nosema, the hive could not maintain a warm cluster. The rest of the bees surviving were probably left stranded wherever they were, either in a paralyzed state coz of the cold and others who got hungry and were in a spot where the combs are empty probably did not have enough energy to walk to find food even if it was just 10cm away and then died of starvation. I saw bees with their butts sticking out of the comb probably trying to keep warm and licking every last drop in the comb at the same time. And may have even froze in the comb. Tragic!

I decided to quickly clean out the hive screen bottom boards and clear out all the dead bees before fungus grows. The boards were caked with a 2 cm deep of dead bees and mostly covered with fungus. I made sure I cleaned them out while I was upwind. Really don't want to breathe in any of that fungus spores.

Matilda you are my only hope! All the gloom and doom has to stop with great memories of summer. :)

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. 

Hive Inspection on 24th July

Did a normal hive inspection on 24th July before 2pm. Weather was sunny. I did not have much time so I laid out my task of the day so I won't forget what had to be done.

Task
Matilda

- Remove brick and move hive onto wooden pallets
-Move Queen excluder over 2nd empty super


Bombay
- Mark Queen
- Collect 100bees for varroa testing. 


Camile
- Normal Check

Inspection Notes:

Camile 
2 frames of honey/pollen
1 frame of capped brood
1/2 frame of eggs and brood in all stages
Pollen patty finished in 2 weeks. Installed patty on 10th July.
Queen spotted. Nucleus colony healthy. Spotted dozens of Varroa at bottom board.

Matilda
5 frames of honey
Queen Spotted and laying well

Bombay
No smoke used. Bees were still calm.
3 frames of comb honey and 4 frames of honey.
Marked queen. She seemed a little unconscious after being marked. I must have held her down a little too hard. Was really worried if she would do fine. After about 3 minutes, she got revived and ran around the frames. Ensured all legs were intact. Spotted lots of bees with Deformed wings.  Suspect varroa level high. Must do Varroa testing on next inspection. Brood comb that was freezed 3 weeks ago have all been removed.
Noticed 3 frames without foundation being contructed. Bees were holding on to each other like acrobats forming the semi-circle shape of the foundation they are creating.
Good pollen flow.

Success in Requeening Matilda and Bombay

I have to thank James Macdonald the owner of Armstrong Apiaries for rescueing Matilda from being shut down and that allowed me to maintain my 2 hive operation. Actually, I have 3 hives now as the former queen of Bombay rules the newly set up nucleus colony, Camille. I called James on Saturday morning 4th July and left a voice message to order queens. He called me back within an hour or two and was very assuring that he would be able to solve my queen problems and he guarantees gentle quality queens. He sent out 2 queens by priority mail on Monday afternoon and they arrived on Tuesday morning July 6th in the package below.

The brown bag with holes is where the 2 queen cages were packed in. I picked up the package from the Post Office at 9am and brought them to work. After work, I installed one of the queens into Matilda who had the drone laying queen removed 2 days before.

My new queens travelled by Canada Post comfortably for 446km from Armstong to Coquitlam. They were in transit for less than 18hrs.

In the queen cage there were 4 attendant workers and the queen. They were moving in the cage in a circular manner all day long. Super active and very different from the queens from West Coast Bee Supplies. The pheromone from the new queen was strong, that she already had a bee from Matilda who could not wait to pay her allegiance to her future queen. This bee on the cage was so mesmerized feeding the new queen that she did not even care what was going on around her.

The bees of Matilda could not wait to free their new queen and was instantly busy eating the candy barrier. Do you notice the majority of the bees  in the photo facing the cage? They were clearly excited about their new queen.

3 days later, the new queen of Matilda has been released. This photo was taken yesterday. Notice the circle of attendants around her. She definitely commands alot of respect.  From reading the frames she started laying almost the moment she came out of the cage as the oldest larvae is already about 8 days old. Look at the size of her. She is HUGE! Her laying pattern is excellent. I saw 2 frames of freshly laid eggs. What a feeling of satisfaction that the new queen has convincingly taken over the rule of Matilda. All my worries since April have been set aside and I can sleep well at night knowing that Queen Matilda II is running her hive well =).  She moves around the frames in a steady and confident pace but when I attempted to pick her up to get marked, she can really sprint. I caught her anyway, firmly and carefully on her thorax.

She is now marked. She is in my queen marking cup waiting to dry the marker point on her back. The paint I use is a non-toxic ink. I marked her green which was 09' colors as I only have 2 hives and the color does not matter. If I had many more hives, I would follow the colors of the year. I mark my queens to ensure that if the hive created another queen to supercede her, I'll know that happened.

By the way, this is my 2nd hive inspection without gloves and have not got stung. My attitude towards them have changed. I am no more afraid or nervous around them, which I think they detected it before and was aggressive then. Now I am confident of my handling of the frames and  less bees get injured on each inspection. Maybe one or 2 still. It used to be more than 10 injured bees per inspection. To safer and happier beekeeping for them.

1st Official Hive Inspection and creating a Nuc

On Sunday July 4th, Jacquie Bunse, the Bee Inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture of BC visited my hive for a hive inspection. I was delighted to have her over to be my mentor for the day and it was great to be able to ask all the questions I had about my hives. Jacquie has been a beekeeper for almost over 20years now and she was so willing to share as much knowledge she possibly could. Even after driving from Mt Currie in Pemberton to check on an apiary before coming to my apiary in Coquitlam, she seemed full of energy. She amazed me from the get go. She was not wearing gloves while going through my frames! I told her my bees can get aggressive especially that Sunday when the clouds were hanging low and it has been cool all day. I have been afraid of not wearing gloves for almost a year now. Getting stung on the fingers is really painful. The last time I got stung on my fingers was on my thumb and the next day it swelled so much that it feels like the skin around the thumb is going to explode. Since then, I have been using latex gloves that are thick enough to not allow the bee stings to penetrate the material. I was skeptical that she would not get stung and she did not. Well, she pointed out why my bees were aggressive towards me. She noticed I pulled the frames out too fast and it causes the bees on the other side of the frame not facing me to roll over and fall to the screened bottom. When they fall, they get agitated and start butting heads with me and try to sting wherever they can. So the trick was to take 1 or 2 frames out and lay it on the side of the hive to have more space while bringing out each frame and then pull out the other frames....SLOWLY! Since then, my last 2 inspections since July 4th, I have mustered the courage to not wear gloves. It was such a different experience beekeeping w/o gloves. I could feel the bees licking and crawling over my fingers,less of them got squashed and I felt more connected. I finally got to experience that my bees are really friendly and inviting as long as I had presence of mind while working with them. I owe this better experience of beekeeping to Jacquie. Thanks alot!

She thought me how to create a Nucleus hive which I used the replacement queen that Bob gave me, which by the way was a virgin queen that died in the cage when I checked again on July 6th. Probably because Bob did not add any attendant bees in the cage. I was expecting the virgin queen to die somehow as I knew not having attendants of her own, she would starve. Anyway, we created a 3 frame Nuc. We picked out a frame with honey and pollen stores on both sides, second frame with brood in all stages (some capped and some open brood)
 


and last frame with more brood and store. All the adhering bees on the frames were transferred over and we were looking out for frames that had mostly nurse bees.







Picked out another 2 more frames of nurse bees and shaked them on to the nuc box.

Thats a complete 3 frame nuc.

At the end of the hive inspection, no European Foul Brood or American Foul Brood was found. So the result is a positive :) My hives are healthy and is in good shape to receive their new queens. And I ended up with one more hive :)

Requeening Matilda Failed

The queen I bought yesterday has died. She died from suffocation on the candy. There was too much candy in the cage. She 1st got stuck half an hour after picking her up but she freed herself. The picture taken yesterday shows she was alright. At 630am, when I checked the queen cage, she was stuck. I was hoping that she would free herself again later. Every hour I checked. I had such a narrow view of her through the cage as her attendants were blocking and she never moved or struggle. When I got to the gardens, I had to investigate rather than wait 3 days till the bees eat the candy barrier to release her. I cut the cage open and found her head was covered with candy that has hardened. I tried reviving her by cleaning the candy off using Saline solution but it did not work. I'm at a lost right now. I'm too frustrated to go back to Bob and get back my $25. When I called him to tell him about the status of the queen, he blamed me for my handling. I really don't care what he says. Its as if I wanted to kill the queen. Matilda is now queenless. Will probably have to combine the hive soon and that would have to be done by Sunday. Absolutely dissapointed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My resolve is now stronger to be self sufficient in rearing my own queens next year.

The Queen has arrived

Just like the Queen of England who is in Canada now for Canada Day, my queen has arrived from West Coast Bee Supplies. What a day. I've been calling Bob about a month ago asking for queens. I think I've bugged him over the week several times checking if he was ready to sell me one. So finally on Tuesday when I called, he said he's got some. I made arrangements to reserve a queen and to pick it up today 1st July. I was excited. Finally I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with the drone laying queen problem I've had for the past 2 months. Can you imagine, Matilda has been with a drone laying queen for 2 mths and on Tuesday when I checked, they kicked her out, I hope, since I'm introducing a new queen. Well there can be more messy problems in the hive and mine aint' that bad. Nao who I met coincidentally at West Coast Bee Store was telling me she had her 2nd swarm. Thats what I call a messy problem. Glad that she managed to catch her swarm again. I'm most afraid now of a laying worker or worst several of them in Matilda.

I made all this arrangement to get to No.6 Rd in Richmond. Booked the Car Co-Op vehicle for several hrs and prepared the hive for the royal welcome. When I walked into the store, Bob was telling Nao how he found this 'dead' queen outside. When Nao left, I told Bob I was here to pick up the queen, he said he was sold out.... I lost my temper! My heart sank, time and money wasted. Frustrated, I dropped a few F bombs. He is clearly unreliable! As I was desperate for a queen. He said I could have the 'dead' one. She looked weak but mostly chilled as she was probably in the open for so long. I was put on a spot to decide and take a risk of buying a 'dead' queen. I agreed on buying her as long he guarantees that she is mated. So off he goes to collect some worker bees as her attendant. I observed he was taking foragers. He was catching bees that were at the entrance of the hive. A good beekeeping outfit selling queens will show you the mated queen laying and take nurse bees as her attendant. Nurse bees are preferred as they are young and are able to feed the queen with royal jelly and will be able to nourish the queen while she travels in the queen cage. Whereas Foragers are old bees and do not produce anymore royal jelly coz of its low in Vittelogen levels (Oliver. R, Scientific Beekeeping).

Its been about 12hrs since I picked up the new queen. Covered the queen cage with a damp paper towel and stored the cage in my jacket closet in a pocket of a jacket to keep the queen warm. She is active and all the attendants are doing well. They seemed bloated with water. But I think that should be alright. Will be installing the queen Friday evening after work.

This queen cage above is a slow-release method for introducing the queen into Matilda. It is a recommended method so that the hive can get used to the new queen's pheromone and the queen is protected from possible assassination by the  the laying worker or other workers. Jackie Bunns have recommended that I place the queen cage next to open brood which I will be transferring from Bombay. I think the pheromones from the larvae will also suppress any workers from assuming the role of laying eggs and also the queen would spread her pheromones through the nurse bees to the larvae causing the hive to accept her. One way to tell if u have laying worker is the drones that emerge are smaller in size than normal drones but will still be sexually viable. In the picture, I"m holding the tip of the cage that contains candy. The candy acts like a barrier to protect the queen and for the host bees to eat through the candy to release the queen. Approximately 6 days to release. The queen will be hungry enough by then to solicit food from the workers and spread more of her pheromone.


Vancouver clearly has a shortage of reliable bee suppliers. At this time, I would only recommend Honeyland Canada at Pitt Meadows runned by Dr Bee for my beekeeping needs.

Matilda- The Unfertilized Queen

On 6th June, I did a full inspection on Matilda and Bombay. The weather was cloudy and was threatening to rain when I started. The clouds were hanging low and from the high point at the beeyard, I could see the rain moving towards the east from Metrotown area. I guessed I had at least 45mins before it rained in my area. This is the worst type of day to check the hive. I started the fire and my fuel today was dried grass from the lawn mowings. Dried grass by far is the best fuel i've used so far. I've always used dried leaves and I never stuff my smoker full of fuel. After completing one hive, there will be no more smoke and I have to relight the smoker again for the next hive. Nowadays I don't need to relight my smoker as long I refresh the smoker with a few hard squeeze on the bellows every 10mins. Today,the foragers (high on adrenalin) are all panicky and short tempered on such a weather. It is just like confining race horses in their starting stalls for days. When a forager cannot fly because of the bad weather, its duty is to secure the hive from any sort of disturbance. So the moment I opened up the hive, the angry bees were flying into my face. I could hear the thuds on my face screen when they try to head butt into me.

Matilda- I spotted the 'useless' queen on frame 5 in the brood chamber. She is still laying drone brood. I am keeping her around till the new queen I ordered from Honeyland Canada is ready. Also her queen pheromone will keep the other ladies in line and to prevent a worker from laying. As all female bees have ovaries, a chosen worker bee will take on the role to lay unfertilized eggs. Once a worker starts laying, it is going to be really difficult to locate which is the laying worker and the new queen introduced would most likely be killed. The last resort if something like that occurs is to combine Matilda and Bombay. The honey storage were mostly in the super on frame 3-7. All the foundations are filled with wax except for frame 1&10 in the super. The green drone has only 1/4 filled with wax. I sugar dusted but did not count for mites.

Bombay- The queen was spotted on frame 4 in the brood chamber. With the Bombay queen, she allows me to sleep well at night. Again, she has not failed in showing me an excellent egg laying pattern. Even after transferring 2 frames of capped brood to Matilda about 2 weeks ago, there were 6 frames of brood today. I transferred another 2 frames of capped brood to Matilda. Hopefully this is the last transfer of capped broods. Last week on May 30th, I gave Bombay a pollen patty and it was gone on the 3rd or 4th day. The fastest I've ever seen them devour a pollen patty. Most likely coz of the high volume of brood rearing. What shocked me was there was hardly any honey left in the super. Last week, I had 8 frames of honey and 6 were already capped. But due to the long rainy period we had in Vancouver since April, the foraging time has been so short and the bees have consumed all of the honey. The rain has also caused alot of flowers to rot as they bloomed to early during the short sunny periods. The rain is also probably why Matilda's queen could not have a succesful mating flight. I will be making sugar syrup for them when I next visit. The weatherman has been so inaccurate in Vancouver. The next day's forecast can be sunny and then changed to rain forecast on the day itself and I think its one of the only jobs where you can make so many mistakes and blame nature. Lastly, before I closed up Bombay, they got sugar dusted. Did not count for mite levels as it started raining.

Flowers in Bloom around the gardens: Himalayan Blackberries, Chives, Sage, Salvia, Dandelions, Kale, Foxglove, Red Poppy, Lupin, Dogwood, Beauty Bush, Mock Orange (Philadelphus), late Rhododendrons, Sweet/Snow Peas, Spiraea, Tree Peony (Rose like), Delphinium

Problems with Matilda

I start my first post with a problem. On April 28th, I had a full inspection of Matilda after a long period of rain that started since April 22nd. I had an easy time beekeeping since I started in July 09'. Even through the winter, the bees kept really well and there was always at least 7 frames of bees throughout winter. I had a 100% survival rate from Colony Collapse Disorder. Really glad that I was not affected by CCD at all, maybe because of the natural beekeeping methods I use and also the varied plants the bees get access to in the community garden. In the photo below shows me working with Matilda in mid February on a sunny day filled out with bees.

So back to what happen on April 28th. While going through the brood chamber in Matilda, every frame I pulled up there was at least 1 queen cell capped. I found ten. 10 QUEEN CELLS! and I did not see the old queen. The 10th cell I saw, the capping has been nicely sliced open and my heart just sank. I then went through all the frames one more time looking for the new queen. I spotted her pretty quickly but I was still hoping to see the old queen. Reading the frames more intently, I did not see any new eggs laid. The youngest larvae I saw was a newly hatched one about 3 days old and there were brood in all stages. For 10 more minutes, I went through the frame but the old queen is officially lost. I am guessing she was murdered by the new queen or kicked out on April 25th 2010. My heart aches. She was a good queen, laid excellently, her ladies were good at conserving honey intake during the winter and stored lots of honey.

Its already been a month and the new queen has started laying but only laying drones. She is unfertilized and now every 2 weeks I transfer capped brood frames from Bombay. Bombay is doing really well. Glad I got 2 hives to help each other out in times like this. I've since ordered a new queen but she will only arrive in 2 weeks time. Hope Matilda survives well till then.