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Big eyes round butt yup it's a drone. They are bigger than workers. If the brood pattern on the frames is loose and irregular, you might have laying workers. Otherwise it might just be drone hatching time.
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Jun 20, 2017 01:34
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I am loathe to check my top bars when it is in the 90s outside this week.
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Jun 20, 2017 03:15
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Dehumanize yourself and face to sweat. I just got back from a quick inspection. It's been six days since I last checked in on my rude ladies, and things are looking good with one exception. The site my hives are situated in is being overtaken by thornless blackberry bushes. This is a little inconvenient for access reasons. But even more troubling is that the branches are letting ants access the feeder in a Vivaldi cover I'm using for one hive which has proven particularly tricky to successfully feed (in that all my other feeders have resulted in that colony trying to build into them). So last week there were a few ants in a bee inaccessible section of the Vivaldi cover. This week I found ants tending a couple dozen pupae up there. Had to brush everything out. No ants in the supers though.  Gotta ask permission to do trim the bushes back and tie them or something.
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Jun 20, 2017 17:00
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Dehumanize yourself and face to sweat. My concern would be the softness of the wax and heating up the inside of the hive like that.
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Jun 20, 2017 18:58
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Fog Tripper posted:My concern would be the softness of the wax and heating up the inside of the hive like that. I haven't found that to be a problem. Being suited up in that heat, though, is really tiring.
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Jun 20, 2017 20:04
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I haven't found that to be a problem. Being suited up in that heat, though, is really tiring. Not worried about suiting up much, I have one of those super duper triple mesh jackets. When you say you haven't found it to be a problem, are you using foundations or top bars?
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Jun 20, 2017 20:08
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Fog Tripper posted:Not worried about suiting up much, I have one of those super duper triple mesh jackets. When you say you haven't found it to be a problem, are you using foundations or top bars? Langstroth with a mix of plastic foundation, wired wax foundation, and no foundation. The melting point of beeswax is around 144 F if google is to be believed.
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Jun 20, 2017 20:12
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Yeah, those are totally drones. They aren't packing (no stingers), so they're going to tend to be pretty mellow. Sometimes, they try to nag workers to feed them by sitting there and doing a little song, which is hilarious. Absolutely beautiful bees there. Fog Tripper posted:My concern would be the softness of the wax and heating up the inside of the hive like that. I try to avoid touching the wax and smushing bees or popping the caps off honey. It's not going to melt unless you're somewhere freakishly hot and you'll heatstroke out in your gear first so no real worries.
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Jun 20, 2017 22:11
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Sat and watched a bit again this eve before the thunderstorms rolled through. Saw no (living) drones. However I did see a couple corpses on the ground and also a funeral procession for one as I watched. Could not tell if it was a drone, but was neat to see the undertaker bee in action. All seems back to normal, beyond the rain going sideways now.
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Jun 21, 2017 03:28
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Look who I saw today for the first time.  And she promptly fell off into the grass and I had to find her and but her back in the hive. She was trying to fly the whole time moving here but it just wan't happening.
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Jun 25, 2017 00:14
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This is going to sound maybe cruel but why can't you clip the queen's wings to stop them swarming/leaving?
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Jun 25, 2017 09:20
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Spookydonut posted:This is going to sound maybe cruel but why can't you clip the queen's wings to stop them swarming/leaving? You can, and a few people do, but it won't really stop the hive from swarming; maybe, it will just delay it. The hive will create new virgin queens which will take most of the bees with them anyway. Some people say that clipping the queen will cause the first swarm to return when the original queen doesn't follow, which gives you a warning that more swarms are coming soon. I personally don't know if there's really much of a point to it.
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Jun 25, 2017 10:02
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So I have conundrum, when my husband and I got our bees we put the hive near our screen porch facing the backyard which makes part of their flight path go through our yard. This wouldn't be that much of a big deal except we found out after the fact that my husband is allergic. So now we need to move the hive (two deeps and one medium) to the far corner of the yard. Even with a complete suit he can't help me move them because he can't risk a sting getting through somehow. Moving them two feet a day isn't feasible either. What is my best option to be able to move them to the new location on my own?
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Jun 25, 2017 23:01
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Opera Bitch posted:
We moved a hive about a 100' last year when we took it over from a neighbor. After some research, the method that worked for us was to wait until night, when all the bees are inside, then block the entrance with some window screen taped to the hive body. We then secured the stack together with some ratchet straps and lifted it onto a hand truck and wheeled it to the new hive stand. Then, you wait three days to open up the hive; that's enough time that the bees inside will "recalibrate" their position when leaving the hive, and hopefully come back to the right spot. You can encourage this behavior by temporarily putting an obstruction, like a tree branch, over the hive entrance, until they get used to the situation. You could probably do it solo, but a full hive stack is pretty heavy. It would be best if you could find a friend to help lift the hive off and on the stands. I found grabbing the stack by the straps worked best.
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Jun 25, 2017 23:32
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I am going to have to take each box off separately and move them. I plan to put them in the back of my hatchback and drive them to where I need them to go. I just worry I won't be physically able to lift the two deeps.
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Jun 26, 2017 00:12
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Opera Bitch posted:I am going to have to take each box off separately and move them. I plan to put them in the back of my hatchback and drive them to where I need them to go. I just worry I won't be physically able to lift the two deeps. You gotta keep all the bees inside while you move it. Maybe you can slide boards between the boxes to hold them all in while you move them? Tetraptous posted:Then, you wait three days to open up the hive Unless it's too hot. And the hive needs ventilation, so don't just seal it. But if it's quite hot out, the bees need to be able to exit the hive to cool off, fan to increase airflow, etc.
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Jun 26, 2017 01:39
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Leperflesh posted:You gotta keep all the bees inside while you move it. Maybe you can slide boards between the boxes to hold them all in while you move them? Yeah I plan to pick up each box and immediately place it on a board in the car. My husband said he is just going to help me and that is going to wear the bee suit and khakis and a long sleeve shirt under it to further protect himself. We plan to move them around 8 pm when they are all inside the hive. The only issue is they crowd around the entrance at night and I worry they won't all go inside when I smoke them. It is supposed to rain the day after we plan to move them so that will make it less stressful for them to be sequestered inside for a few days because they won't want to leave in the rain.
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Jun 26, 2017 03:00
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Unless you are sitting within 10 feet of my hive, you would not know the hive was there. You are going to have bees in your yard regardless of your hive location. If all it will take is a single sting, moving the hive 100', while better, is not a total solution. Did you consider just having someone adopt your hives/bees?
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Jun 26, 2017 15:35
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Fog Tripper posted:Unless you are sitting within 10 feet of my hive, you would not know the hive was there. You are going to have bees in your yard regardless of your hive location. If all it will take is a single sting, moving the hive 100', while better, is not a total solution. Did you consider just having someone adopt your hives/bees? That was what I wanted to have do, but he wants to try this first since we have invested so much in it. Bees in the yard isn't the problem so much as their flight path to the entrance being right in a part of the yard we walk through. We should have put them in the corner of the yard to begin with but we had no idea he was allergic until a few months after we had them when he got stung a second time. If he gets stung again after this I think having someone take them will be the best solution. Him being allergic has been a big bummer.
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Jun 26, 2017 16:34
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As a precaution, I suggest you ask your doctor to prescribe an epi-pen (or off-brand if possible since they've been gouging people) and keep one at your home, just in case.
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Jun 26, 2017 17:24
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lovely days at the hive. Everything was going great- so great that it swarmed despite my efforts to discourage it. We were able to capture the swarm, but later could find no evidence of the queen having made it into the new hive. Re-integrated them into the old hive, where we also saw no new eggs after 2 weeks but assumed we were just still waiting for the virgin queen to get going. Still no eggs after 3 weeks, so I got another queen from my local breeder. I had to go out of town for the weekend, so I tasked the boyfriend with installing the queen cage. He'd been helping me at the hive, we went over the instructions a dozen times, and he said he was confident he knew what he was doing. Cut to me opening the hive today to release the queen and finding that he had put the cage between two outer frames on an upper box that was mostly filled with pollen. The queen is dead. I'm way pissed at my dumbass boyfriend who basically said "I saw a ton of bees there so I thought that was a good place" despite me having told him to put it in the center of one of the bottom two boxes. Regardless, my queen supplier thinks that it might not have mattered because the nurse bees should have found her anyway, so it's likely all the bees are too old to have tended to her. He thinks it's too late to try to put another queen in there and that the only solution is to seal the existing hive with some screen, move it a foot away, put a nuc hive in its place, and reopen the old hive after a couple of days with the hope that they just filter into the nuc hive. I certainly trust this guy as he's been keeping bees for like 30 years, but I just want to see if anybody's got differing opinions. Any thoughts? It's been just over 4 weeks now since the swarm, and I'm so loving bummed I went from one enormous hive to two hives to one dying hive. In the meantime, I'm planning on picking up the nuc on Thursday. Sigh.
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Jun 26, 2017 20:36
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Leperflesh posted:As a precaution, I suggest you ask your doctor to prescribe an epi-pen (or off-brand if possible since they've been gouging people) and keep one at your home, just in case. Yeah my husband is a nurse and picked up some medicine at work that is the same as what is in an epi pen but given a different way.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:01
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I bought an Epi-pen just to be on the safe side. It was kind of funny watching the pharmacist try to figure out what to sell it for over the counter. I guess he doesn't get a lot of requests for them off prescription. It was $110 CAD ($85 USD) for anyone curious.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:22
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Yeah I got a prescription so that the cost would be subsidized by health insurance, and also it was back in 2010. Also the high price of name-brand Epi-Pens has been a matter of some controversy.Melicious posted:lovely days at the hive. Really sorry to hear it, but I think your local guy's advice is sound. You may or may not get the queenless bees to rejoin, but either way, the nuc should go well.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:29
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Opera Bitch posted:Yeah my husband is a nurse and picked up some medicine at work that is the same as what is in an epi pen but given a different way. Suppository? e: I keed. Cats make my face melt so I commiserate with his plight.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:30
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Leperflesh posted:Really sorry to hear it, but I think your local guy's advice is sound. You may or may not get the queenless bees to rejoin, but either way, the nuc should go well. Is there a particular reason to do it this way rather than just combining the two with newspaper between?
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Jun 26, 2017 22:47
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If the "home bees" don't like the foreign bees, they need to be able to guard their door for the ensuing fight until the foreign bees gently caress off. If you just jam them all into a hive together my guess is there's some risk of total bee war with mass casualties. That said, queenless bees are looking for a new hive and just want that lovely queen smell, so my guess is also that it would probably work out. The other consideration is the amount of resources available in the nuc to deal with all those new bees, most or all of whom are too old to be making comb or taking care of the queen. If you triple the size of the hive and 100% of the newbie newbees are nectar gatherers, does that create a problem? The nuc will likely grow nicely on its own, it'll be packed with larvae and ready to hatch out eggs etc. so it'll have a good ratio of young to old bees going forward. That's why nucs can be so successful. I think the nuc will be able to absorb some bees from the old hive, but exactly how many should - in my opinion - be left to them to determine, rather than trying to force it. I honestly don't know the answer for sure, though. When in doubt, I say do what your local expert says.
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Jun 26, 2017 23:16
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Fog Tripper posted:Suppository? Hahaha no, just the medicine in liquid that he has to inject with a syringe.
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Jun 26, 2017 23:54
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Opera Bitch posted:Hahaha no, just the medicine in liquid that he has to inject with a syringe. While swelling up? Make sure he trains you on how to do it just in case. The whole point of an epipen is that an untrained person can administer it easily.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:24
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Injecting medication is surprisingly easy once you get over the fact you're stabbing someone.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:20
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Melicious posted:Is there a particular reason to do it this way rather than just combining the two with newspaper between? When you've got a queenless hive that's gone some time queenless you've got the risk of laying workers etc. Doing it this way the useful workers will take honey from the hive and beg their way into the new hive and become accepted quickly. It's a useful way to combine hives where you only really want the useful bees from it.
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Jun 27, 2017 11:27
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Aramoro posted:When you've got a queenless hive that's gone some time queenless you've got the risk of laying workers etc. Doing it this way the useful workers will take honey from the hive and beg their way into the new hive and become accepted quickly. It's a useful way to combine hives where you only really want the useful bees from it. I had no ideas bees did this. I just assumed that unrelated bees just attacked one another.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:22
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Catberry posted:I had no ideas bees did this. I just assumed that unrelated bees just attacked one another. Catberry posted:I had no ideas bees did this. I just assumed that unrelated bees just attacked one another. Nope! You can also merge a queenless hive with a queenright hive by plopping a layer of newspaper between their respective box queendoms. By the time the beediots chew through, they're accustomed to each other's scent and the queenless hive will know their new liege lady's pheromones. Bee society is pretty interesting.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:27
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Nope! You can also merge a queenless hive with a queenright hive by plopping a layer of newspaper between their respective box queendoms. By the time the beediots chew through, they're accustomed to each other's scent and the queenless hive will know their new liege lady's pheromones. Bee society is pretty interesting. Yeah apparently not having a queen is a big bummer for bees and the new queen smell sets things right 
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Jun 27, 2017 19:46
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Catberry posted:Yeah apparently not having a queen is a big bummer for bees and the new queen smell sets things right Yeah, the loss of a queen can be a colony's deathknell. If there are no larvae young enough and no nurses who can produce royal jelly, the colony is done for unless someone intervenes by introducing a fertile queen. Even still, that's no guarantee that the colony's course can be righted; if the workers are too old and too few to hold down the fort while the whole 21 day egg to adult cycle runs, the colony is still screwed. (Theoretically you can add frames of brood from another colony to tide them over, but that isn't always the best answer either.) That's why sometimes it's better to just merge colonies.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:54
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Since I have to move the bees less than 2 miles and more than three feet the suggestion I keep seeing is to sequester them for 3 days. Sadly the temperature for the three days after the move is going to be in the 80s. I have heard the advice of putting a branch in front of the entrance for them to go through, as well as putting out an extra box in the old location right before dark to protect stragglers overnight. Anything else I can do to minimize losses? I wish I'd gone with my original idea of putting the hive in the yard corner. I feel like an awful bee owner with this as well as finding out the hubby was allergic after the fact.
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Jun 28, 2017 03:40
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Nope! You can also merge a queenless hive with a queenright hive by plopping a layer of newspaper between their respective box queendoms. By the time the beediots chew through, they're accustomed to each other's scent and the queenless hive will know their new liege lady's pheromones. Bee society is pretty interesting. Yup this works also but just make sure you put the weaker colony (The queenless one) on top (Assuming you've got a bottom entrance). The only reason not to do it this way is if you hives are different sizes so you can't stack them or you've got laying workers which will fight pretty hard. Make sure you put some holes in the newspaper, not big ones but a few.
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Jun 28, 2017 09:34
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So my friend and I just moved the hive to the back corner of the yard. It is supposed to be in the 80s the next few days so closing the hive and sequestering them for 3 days isn't really possible. I put a few leafy branches right in the entrance for them to crawl through so they can reorient themselves. I hope I don't lose too many.
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Jun 29, 2017 02:18
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You will probably be OK. Lost bees are close enough to the new hive location to probably be able to smell it.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:08
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My nucs finally arrive Saturday. Thank goodness I have some built out comb to give them. Does anyone have hot tips re: new nucs? I've done my reading but I've only ever had packages until now.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:38
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