The Bees are coming The Bees are coming

Two nucs to be delivered May 7th!
Yipee!!!

Postmortem

Our bees are obviously gone. 
The two hives have been weak and last week we found there were none left alive.

After checking with our local Beekeepers Association we called out the inspector.  North Carolina State University (NCSU) extension office has inspectors that cover specific areas.  We called the inspector for our county, Don.  Don came to our home to inspect the empty hives.

After looking at the dead bees, head down into cells, he speculated that they had probably starved. 

At the top of this frame the white cells contain honey.  However during the winter (and we had a particularly cold one) if the bees cannot move to where the honey is stored, they will starve.

Don then checked for American Foulbrood (AF).  He inserted a small stick into a cell, looked at what came out and sniffed it.  AF has a foul ordor.  We were relieved to learn we did not have AF.  If we had, the hives, and frames would have to be burned and buried.  This is a very contagious disease and you cannot risk spreading it.

After AF was ruled out Don looked for evidence of varroa mites and found some.  It was not possible to determine the extent of varroa mites now that the bees were gone but virtually every hive has them.  It is possible that the infestation was extensive and the colony was weakened before winter set in.  This contributed to the colony not being able to access the honey and their starvation. 

The queen had either died or was not laying eggs so we did not have new bees to replace those who had died.

We are in the process of trying to locate some nucs and will be on the lookout for swarms to replace our lost bees.

RIP

RIP bees.  We have noticed that there have been fewer and fewer bees flying from the hives.  Today confirmed.  They are all dead and/or gone.  I have sent out a request for information to our beekeepers association. 
It looks like we will have to wait to start over next spring.

But we can keep watching after our friends healthy hive.

April inspections

We did an inspection of the bee hives on April 11th.  It was a very warm day.  Aggie had been concerned that her bees were gone up until this day.  

The first 5 pictures are from our friend, Aggie's bee hive.  You can see her bees are very busy.  The hive looks to be healthy.  We added a super after this inspection so they will have room above to put the honey and room below to raise the brood. 

Now we go to our two hives.  The yellow one has been the strongest in the past.  We found a lot of dead bees from the winter.  We do not know if this is more than expected as this is our first year as beekeepers.

This is an example of the frames in the yellow hive.  Plenty of honey in the top but not much in the way of brood.  We did not see the queen but we often did not last year.  There were a number of live bees but now near as many as we saw in Aggie's hive.

These are from the green hive which has been our weaker hive.  We did see the queen a few weeks ago but it does not look like she has been very busy laying eggs.  Again, plenty of honey.  The bees all looked healthy.  There were no obvious signs of disease or infestation.  The green hive did have a spider and some webs in the bottom which may have been from was moths but not an infestation. 

 The bees you see here are dead, probably starved in the winter.  If they cannot get to the honey, they starve.

Can you see the concern on the inspectors' faces?



What now? 
We will wait another week and do another inspection.  We see bees coming and going every day that it is warm.  We can hope that the queens are still there and are getting busy.

Stay tuned.

Warm Day in February

All winter bee keepers have to just sit and wait and hope.  When the temp gets above 50 degrees you will see a few bees out for a potty break.  They will not potty in the hive.  What we thought was our strongest hive, yellow, had not had any bees out on warm days in the last month.  The green hive always had a few who would venture out. 

The last two days have been very warm and we were so excited to see bees out of both hives.  Friday it reached 78 and we decided to take a quick peek in the hives.  It is never safe to open a hive when then temp is below 60, this will chill the hive and cause the already over worked worker bees to work harder to get it warm again.

First we smoke the hive to cover up any pheromones that might tell the bees, "Intruders, attack".

We are only going to look at a frame or two.  Things we are looking for include, deformed wings, a sign of a disease.  Lots of dead bees, we know some are alive because we have seen them flying.  If all are dead, we  have a problem. And a food supply, honey stored in the top of frames.

We found a few dead bees on the frames.  That is expected because they will not all live through the winter.  Worker bees do live longer in the winter as they are not working as hard going out to forage for pollen and nectar. 

We found they still had honey stored up in the top of the frames, a few cells had brood (the queen will lay a few eggs in the winter).  Also the beekeeper in training spotted the queen on this frame. 

Overall the colony looked good and they still have honey.  All we need now is for things to start blooming and the weather to keep getting warm.  The red maple is starting to bloom and this will get the bees busy in a few days.

Winter Solstice Good News

All my beekeeper friends, and us included, worry that our bees will not make it through the winter.  We feed and feed and put in the entry reducer (to keep out mice) and worry.  One bee keeper has already reported that her bees died.  They will not die from freezing but can die from starvation if there is not enough honey stored up or if they cannot get to it.   It is not good for the bees to open the hive box when it is cold.  It has been a very cold December in NC. 

Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window today and saw activity.  The temp is 51 and that is barely warm enough for them to venture out.  Good news that we have live bees in both hives!!

Now girls get back in there before the sun sets.
Hang in there girls ... the days are getting longer!

Winter in the Bee Yard

Winter in the Bee Yard is rather boring.  The bees still fly when is it warm but not with as much energy.  This little girl came out one cool morning, checked out the temp and returned to the hive box.  The opening has been reduced by the wooden "reducer" to keep out the cold and hopefully to prevent the entry of mice in the winter.  Mice love to move into a hive box, it is warm, and there is a food source - honey.

This intruder must have thought is was safe to enter the hive.  Guess they showed him.

The bees are now all gathered into one big ball.  They will produce heat by doing something similar to shivering.  Ever so often the bees in the warm center will move to the outside.  They are polite to share the work.  Bees never freeze in the winter but they can starve to death.  It is our hope that they have enough honey stored up and will be able to access it through the winter to keep them going.

The bees have quit going to the feeder where we have provided them with sugar water for the past few weeks.  We will remove the feeders and now we can quit purchasing 25lb bags of sugar until spring.