A New Queen?

April 7th, 2009

A few days ago I installed a new frame into the viewing area of the observation hive along with five additional frames of young bees down below. The colony was without a queen. The camera was focused on a natural queen cell that was capped off.

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We watched for several days hoping to see her emerge. Today, April 7th, she has apparently emerged as the workers are tearing the cell down. You can watch their progress on the webcam.

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I have not been able to find her on the frame in the viewing area, but she may be small enough to fit through the queen excluder and be with the bees down below. The other possibility is that the queen died in her cell, and the workers sensed that, and are now tearing down the cell after removing her remains. It’s too cold today to open up the hive to see if I can find her - plus it would probably be a good idea to let her settle down anyway after just emerging from her cell.  If she is trapped up above the queen excluder, I will need to move her down below it so she can take her mating flight and hopefully return to the colony to begin her reign.

A young virgin queen is usually very difficult to find as they are not much bigger than the typical worker bee and they are usually very “runny” - meaning that they move very fast, and often can be found on the side walls of the hive - unlike a laying queen. It is only after their mating flight has occurred and the queen begins to lay eggs, that her abdomen swells up and she becomes slower moving spending most of her time on the comb laying eggs.

Stay tuned as I will report on my progress in looking for the new queen.

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Splits and Installation of Queen Cells

April 1st, 2009

On March 23rd I grafted larvae into artificial queen cups and installed them into a starter-finisher colony to transform these larvae that were destined to be workers into queens. Normally the queen cells are harvested 10 days after making the grafts and then transferred into nucleus colonies where the queens emerge from their cells, take their mating flight and then begin to lay. Due to forecasted rain I had to advance that schedule a couple of days, so on March 30th Tom, a fellow beekeeper that lives nearby, and I made up several splits in preparation for installing the queen cells.  We installed five frames of honey, pollen and capped brood into the five frame nucs and”queen castles”. The queen castle is a 10 frame hive body with partitions that slide in and out enabling you to have either 4-two frame nucs or 2-five frame nucs. With entrances on opposite sides, it minimizes the drifting of one colony to another. Below is Tom installing frames into a queen castle.

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We also had a couple of naturally occurring queen cells that we utilized. They were from some of my more productive, populous colonies, so I had no reservations about using them.

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I used five frames of honey, pollen, brood and bees because I had several strong hives to work with. Normally when making up five frame nucs I would use only three frames with all the above and two empty drawn frames. I have successfully made up the nucs with just two frames, but more is usually better. The frames with the honey are placed on the outside edges of the nuc. Frames of pollen, honey and older brood are placed in the middle. Ideally, you would not have any young larva that could become queen candidates as the colony may decide that they would prefer to raise a queen of their own rather than the one you have given them.

The next day I returned to install the queen cells into the nucs. Each cell is removed from the grafting bar and inserted into a plastic cell protector that has “ears” on it to enable it to be pushed into the wax foundation of the frame. imgp0138

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So now I have 13 nucs that hopefully will be successful and join my other hives to be productive this year.

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Making New Colonies & Queens - Part 3

March 25th, 2009

In this posting I am going to briefly cover the technique called grafting to create new queens. There are complete books covering this in detail if the reader is interested in learning more. This method is more involved than simply making a split and letting the queenless bees raise a new queen. This method lends itself  to raising more queens at one time from the selected queen compared to giving a queenless colony a frame containing very young larvae. When choosing the queen from which to raise new queens such factors such as mite and disease resistance, productivity of honey and brood, longivity and gentleness should be the criteria used to evaluate the candidate.

The tools are simple and inexpensive; however, the technique definitely takes skill. This method is known as the “Doolittle” method - named for the person who first developed it. The process involves taking very young larvae from the selected queen and transfering them into an artificial queen cup that is held in a special frame that is then inserted into a “cell starter” colony, which is a colony that either thinks it is queenless - or actually is.  The frame of grafted larvae are then transferred into a ”queenright” or cell finisher colony, which is a colony that has a queen as it has been found that they actually do a better job of raising a queen larva than a queenless colony.

below is a chinese grafting tool that I use. The tip is a flexible horn material that is slid under the larva and royal jelly that it is floating in. imgp00801

Here is the artificial queen cell cup and the frame holderimgp0081imgp0082

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Unfortunately the camera was a little out of focus, but I think you can make out the “C” shaped larva and royal jelly on the tip of the grafting tool. The button on the opposite end from the tip is depressed, like a ballpoint pen, to gently insert the larva and royal jelly into the queen cup.

When the grafting is completed, the frame is inserted into the cell starter colonyimgp0109

Rather than taking out the frame after it has been “started” in one colony and transferring it to a “finisher” colony, I use the “Cloake” board method which allows one to use a single colony for both purposes. The Cloake board has a metal tray that slides into place, effectively blocking the queen pheromones from entering the upper chamber. It also has a queen exclude that prevents the queen from being able to access the upper chamber.imgp0089

After 24 hours have passed since inserting the grafts into the colony the metal tray is removed creating a queenright colony to finish off the cells. Below is what the cells look like 24 hours after grafting. A more experienced person would have close to 100% acceptance of the grafts. My success rate is much lower as you can see.

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When the cells are mature and before the queens start to emerge,  which is 10 days after the grafting, the cells are removed and inserted into a queenless colony or split where the queen emerges from her cell and then in a few days takes her mating flights. She hopefully will be sucessful and safely return without becoming a meal for a bird or dragon fly and begin to lay eggs in about a week.

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Making New Colonies & Queens - Part 2

March 25th, 2009

I discussed some of the natural reproductive instincts of the honey bees and the environmental conditions that lead to natural replacement of a queen and colony expansion in part 1 of this series. In this article I will discuss the simplest method that a beekeeper can use to create a few queens or colonies. This method is called making a split.

I am not going to get into a lot of detail here but just cover the basics. If a colony becomes queenless for whatever reason, they sense the loss of her presence due to the lack of a pheromone that she produces and they will attempt to raise a replacement. They usually select several larvae that are less than 24 hours old  and feed them a diet of royal jelly during their six day larval period. A worker bee is fed royal jelly, a substance secreted from the young workers, for only the first day and then pollen and honey after that.

A beekeeper can create a queenless colony by combining frames of honey, pollen, capped older brood and very young brood into a five frame nuc (nucleus colony) or standard hive body.  The bees will sense their queenless condition in a matter of hours and begin their task of making a replacement queen.

Below you will see queen cells about to be capped off.

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Looking at the queen larva inside the cell

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imgp0122In about 16 days from the time the egg is laid the new queen  will emerge from her special queen cell that looks very much like a peanut in its shell. If there are several queen cells present, the first queen to emerge will kill her rivals by stinging them before they emerge. If two queens emerge at the same time they will fight to the death until one is left to take over the colony.

The virgin queen will then have to take her mating flight where she will mate with up to 20 drones and then return to her colony. She will store the drone’s sperm for her entire life which can last for up to five years.

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Making New Colonies & Queens - Part 1

March 24th, 2009

Spring is here in the Atlanta area and the honey bee colonies are expanding exponentially with the workers bringing in pollen and nectar from the blooming trees and flowers and the queens laying eggs to make new bees 24/7. 

The colonies overwintered in small tight clusters the size of a football - and some as small as a grapefruit. Now with the abundance of food, most all of my colonies here in the Alpharetta area are filling the better part of two hive bodies with adult bees, nectar, pollen and brood. Left on their own, the bees would soon start to think about swarming as the hive becomes too congested. When the instinct tells them that the hive is getting too full they will create a new queen and the existing queen will fly off with about 60% of the workers - leaving the new queen to take over the colony with the remaining workers.

Worker bees also can sense when a queen has either died or is failing to be productive by an absense of her normal pheromones. When that happens, the workers will take a larva that is 24 hours old or less and feed it royal jelly during its entire larval period transforming it morphologically into a queen.  

These instincts, an abundance of food and a growing population of bees afford the beekeeper an opportunity to create new colonies by mimicking what the bees do in these conditions. I’ll cover a couple of methods that I am using to expand my colonies in the next installments.

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Swarming - Not Now

March 19th, 2009

queencell2It’s been nine days now since I reinstalled the frame with the three Queen cells into the observation hive and re-united it with the Queen.  The colony has obviously called off their plans to swarm as the cells have not been drawn out or expanded as can be seen in the photo above, taken today, and compared with the photo below taken on March 10th. The workers have a strong interest in the Queen cells as they are constantly working them, chewing and polishing the wax both inside and outside the Queen cell. You can see them doing this live on the beehive webcam.

Since I reinstalled the frame into the viewing area the Queen has  filled it completely with eggs and larvae - in fact it’s been full for several days. Each frame contains approximately 7,000 cells, which means she is laying almost 1,000 eggs per day. Rather than change this frame out, I have relocated the Queen to the lower portion of the observation hive where she will have access to some empty cells in frames down  below in which to lay eggs. These frames were previously located up above in the viewing area and had been filled with eggs but now are empty as the adult bees have emerged from the cells. With spring now definitely here, the population of the hive is exploding and it will be a challenge to keep up with the growth, constantly changing out empty frames with filled ones to try to keep the swarming instinct under control. The frames that the Queen fills with eggs are either rotated within the observation hive or given to one of my other colonies that need a population boost.  

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Swarm Preparations?

March 10th, 2009

queencell1Well, new developments in the observation hive! On saturday, March 7th, I had given the queen a new, empty frame of drawn comb on which to lay eggs as she had filled the previous frame. I noticed that she just did not seem to like this new frame as she refused to lay eggs and just stood around on the top bar of the frame. So today, the 10th, I decided to swap out the frame with the original frame since many of the capped cells (pupa) had hatched out. When installing the frame and the queen, I notice three queen cells are starting to be drawn out. This means that the colony is making preparations to swarm, which is the honeybee colony’s means of reproduction.

The queen may have stopped laying in order to slim down to be able to fly off  with the swarm. Normally a laying queen is too heavy to fly - at least not very far. When a colony decides to swarm, they raise a new queen and the reigning queen flys off to a new location, taking about 60% of the workers with her to establish a new colony.  The first new queen to emerge from her cell will kill her potential rival queens, by stinging them before they emerge from their cells. If two queens emerge at the same time they will fight to the death leaving the victor to take over the hive. I will monitor the growth of these queen cells and harvest them before the queens emerge and will place the cells in a queenless colonies that I will create from some of my existing hives.

Watch the development of the queen cells on the webcam.

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Spring has Sprung

March 7th, 2009

queenbeinggroomed2Today is March 7, 2009. The hives here in Alpharetta  are  bursting with pollen, nectar and bees. The Queens have been busily laying eggs for some time now, and the Workers are bringing in baskets full of pollen from the maple trees and nectar as well. In the observation hive they  have completely filled the six brood frames, so I have had to rotate in some empty frames into the observation hive from another hive in the beeyard in order to give the Queen room to continue to lay eggs. The beehive webcam is now focused on an empty frame of drawn foundation. That means that the bees had previously secreted the beeswax and formed it into the hexagional shaped cells that is both the nursery and pantry shelves for the colony.

Amazingly, in a matter of just a couple of hours they moved nectar up into the empty frame in the top that we are viewing live on the webcam from the frames below in order to provide food close by for the Queen and the brood. This is the shiny substance visible in some of the cells.

In the attached picture the Queen is being attended to by some workers. I had to physically pick her up and move her to this new frame and the whole process was obviously a little upsetting to her and it is taking her a little while to settle down and resume her normal activities. We will continue to watch the Queen as she  lays  eggs and the Workers move nectar and pollen into the cells. I suspect that it will not take long for them to fill this frame up as well.

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The Bees Become TV Stars

February 20th, 2009

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the bees are stars

KHQ-TV in Spokane, Washington has what they refer to as a “pretty off the wall morning show” featuring live streaming video from all over the world. On Friday February 20th they featured our webcam on their live KHQ-TV Today Show and a phone interview with me. The bees were building comb on the side of the glass and could be seen working the wax and expanding the cells.

So now the ladies are stars. Next they will want red carpet on the landing board and their own private dressing rooms.

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How Safe Is Any of Our Food?

February 6th, 2009

With all the recent press concerning the Salmonella outbreak that has been linked to peanut butter from a Georgia plant, it is understandable that the stories concerning the “Honey Laundering” scam hasn’t garnered national attention. At least no one has died from eating the tainted honey – yet. As I mentioned in my earlier articles, honey from China that has been found to contain everything from high fructose corn syrup, pesticides and antibiotics, is being transshipped from China to a third country and then smuggled into the US. The honey is then re-labeled as a product of that third country rather than a product of China to avoid the tariffs and the closer scrutiny it would be subject to as a product of China.

As reported in the recent Seattle PI series of newspaper articles, the US honey packers are currently using imported honey for more than one-half the honey consumed in the country and much of it is coming from countries that raise few bees and have no record of producing honey for export. One of the largest packers in the country is Silverbow whose customers include Costco, Walmart and Safeway. Gary Grigg, its owner, is quoted in one of the articles as saying “The FDA is on top of it and they pull samples and check containers before they release them to us to buy – They’re the watchdogs.” I don’t think so. The FDA even states that the agency only tests about a hundred honey samples a year and relies heavily on tips from industry whistle-blowers. It sounds to me like the fox is in charge of watching the hen house.

Another problem is the fact that there is no legal definition of what honey is in the US. There is nothing that says high fructose corn syrup or sugar water added to honey cannot be called honey. The USDA has stated that they don’t have the resources to enforce a standard if one existed – so why try. And for the organic consumers, the USDA has said “you can certify any product as organic as long as you comply with the existing regulation, but there are no regulations for honey”. That means that the green USDA organic sticker on honey is meaningless”. In fact, the USDA has never levied a fine for violation of organic rules for honey or any other product. In this vacuum the State of Florida has recently passed a standard definition for honey with teeth that allow for civil penalties against abusers of the statute. Hopefully other states will follow in adopting similar laws. So how many of you serve your children honey nut cheerios for breakfast, or honey graham crackers for an afternoon snack or your honey wheat berry bread for lunch? Read the ingredients and you will see honey listed, but what is the percent of it compared to the high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners that are listed along with it, and what assurance do you even have that the honey listed is really honey?

So the bottom line for now is for the buyer to beware. Ask questions and don’t assume. And if you are buying honey – buy it from someone you know and even then ask questions.

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