Bait Hives

    I arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for a week. I was visiting one of my daughters, who lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  The reason for the trip was to participate in a 5 day Mormon pioneer handcart trek.  The purpose of the handcart trek is to help the youth have a greater appreciation of sacrifices made by their ancestors.  Any experience that helps a teenager develop gratitude is pretty valuable in my opinion.  I had hoped to attend the Northwest District Beekeepers Association picnic when I got home, but I arrived later than I expected. Also I had visiting grand children, I discussed the matter briefly with Linda and it was readily apparent that I needed to stick around. I hope the picnic was a big success, especially the bee beard contest.

    On Saturday evening, just as my son James and his wife were preparing to leave, I noticed a big cloud of bees in the immediate vicinity of my hives. I initially thought one of my hives were swarming and I went to investigate. As it turns out, it wasn't a swarm leaving, but a swarm arriving.  As I got closer I saw that the bees were gathering on the front of a stack of deeps I had sitting on a double hive stand in my apiary. Since the bees were clustering on boxes that I knew were previously empty I realized it was an arrival, not a departure.  I thought it was kind of strange to see a swarm leaving at 7:00 p.m. as swarms usually leave the hive in the early afternoon.  I gave the bees a few days to settle in, then did a little hive exam on Monday, July 16, 2012.  The bees were occupying all of the bottom deep and filled five frames in the second deep so it was a pretty good sized swarm.  The third or top deep had no frames. I was lucky the bees hadn't decided to move right up to the top box and start building comb attached to the lid. I added a few frames to fill out the second box and got rid of the empty third deep. It was the easiest swarm I ever captured.

     Normally I would feed a newly captured swarm, but we are in the middle of the blackberry nectar flow. The bees would probably turn up their noses (actually antennas) at any sugar syrup I offered them. Instead, I will just monitor how they are doing.  If they don't manage to gather enough honey over the next six weeks to get them through the winter I will either merge them with another hive or feed them like crazy in early September.

    I think its always a good idea to have an empty bait hive or a bait box in the vicinity of the apiary. Sometimes we get lucky and a swarm just shows up.  At other times one of our hives may swarm when we aren't there to recover them. The ultimate bait hive guru is Thomas Seeley, the author of "Honeybee Democracy". He has spent his entire adult life studying swarm behavior and specifically what the bees are looking for in a new residence. Apparently, the minimum size of a cavity that the bees will accept is 16 liters.  If you don't have enough extra boxes to set up a bait hive, a swarm trap can be cheaply assembled from a couple of large peat pots, a few drywall screws, and a couple of sticks. The drywall screws are used to attach the two peat pots together, while the sticks provide a means to attach the swarm trap at an appropriate height in a tree. Ready made swarm traps can also be found in many bee supply catalogs.

    While I was checking up on the newly arrived swarm, I also checked on my other hives. Most were in pretty good shape, but a few needed another honey super.  It looks like we are finally having a good blackberry nectar flow.

   

Observation Hive Update

Our Observation Hive is Back.

   I put a new colony of bees into our observation hive today.  It was an awkward day to do it as it was a rather cool day.  I had to wait until 2:00 p.m. for the temperature to get up to just 58 degrees.  I would have preferred a warmer day but I didn't want to leave the bees confined in their hive until the following day.   I love having the bees in the shop and they are a big hit with the customers.  I just have to exercise some self discipline and limit the time I spend watching the bees..

Note the newly installed connecting comb in the center of the photo

   The colony came from one of my earlier queen banks and consisted of a little more than 5 frames of bees.  I put four frames of bees in the observation portion of the hive and the rest of the bees went into the lower portion.  The bees seemed to acclimate to their new home quickly and found both the feeder and the exit to the outdoors.  I took some photos several hours later and found the bees had already made some connecting comb to attach one of the frames to the window of the observation hive.

Note the open brood visible between the bees.

   The observation hive currently has two frames of capped brood and two frames of empty drawn comb.  Two of the frames in the lower unit are drawn, but the other eight frames are just foundation.  The weather will change dramatically starting tomorrow.  The fourth of July is expected to be in the high sixties.  After that the temperature climbs into the high seventies and low eighties.  That should cause the blackberry nectar flow to take off.  It will be interesting to watch and see how fast the population of the observation hive will grow with the emergence of the capped brood and the start of a serious honey flow. I put a jar of sugar syrup in the feeder but I don't expect to have to feed them much after that jar of syrup is gone.

    I took these photos with my iPhone. I was surprised that they turned out that well. I am going to have to figure out how to disable the flash.