Helping a Friend is Fun

Hive Report 3/10/13

Our web page creator is a beekeeper.  He is a naturalist and very smart.  He also civil war re-enactment actor.  He gives himself to God, his family, his church, his work and the York bee club. So last year MamaBeehive bartered with him for some web design service for beehive service.  So I gladly stepped up to help him.  He needed help with splitting a hive.

March 9....We are mentoring another new beekeeper so she was asked to attend.  So it is planned for split to begin.  Welp, I decided to film and take pics, so i did not wear gloves.  Got about 4 or 5 stings.  That is ok, i just wanted to stay free so i could capture the action.

It ended up we made a split in to a 5 frame nuc.  we moved on to a hive that was queenless that turned out the queen was still in there.  We caged her made another split and put her in the hive.  The bees should be letting her out right about now(sunday).  It took longer than expected but it was a lot of fun.  I kept those two running with a lot of directions.  They learned what to do to make a split. yeah!

So then we were off to Lake Wylie Apiary.  I was glad to see capped brood and lots of evidence of queens in all the hives.  Mindy spotted the queens too.  We gave them sugar syrup with honeybee healthy.

March 10....I checked the hives at the tree farm, it was dead.  I think that possibly the queen died when it could not get thru the queen excluder.  I had not checked this hive since October.  Forgot that the excluder was there.  But there was some dead bees on the bottom that had not been dead long.  no honey in the box. Talked to Tom and he said he may take the class and get more bees from Jesse the bee man.

I check the hive at Uncle Ron's.  it probably has 2# of bees (maybe less).  some honey.  added sugar syrup with honeybeehealthy.

I checked Tim's hive.  The first hive was low on bees.  Saw eggs, no queen visible.  The other hive was busy and full.

tim's

I checked Biggers.  Lost two hives...sorry.  Samples collected and will be sent immediately.  Talked to landowner about the other property up the road.  Scoped out another site for bees.

Biggers

alternate bee yard with biggers

alternate site at biggers

alternate bee yard

I checked Blacks.  Lost one hive...sorry.  It was very light a few weeks ago and was working with it to help build up.  Something suspect going on.  Thousands of bees on the bottom board  Talked to Arthur and said there was nothing sprayed.  He is going to move the hive stand over to new apiary site (behind his house).  We had a very good long talk.

blacks

dead out at blacks thousands of bees

dead bees on ground around the hive

dead out at blacks on bottom board

I counted the colonies that we have to date....At the end of fall 2012 we had 40 hives (you are not going to like it) we have 14.  we have re-distributed 5 to Jay and lost 21 hives.

 
Overall we would do not have any that i would split at this time.  The winter build up is going but just good enough with remaining hives.  I am a bit overwhelmed not sure what to think and trying not to think about it to be honest.