Hive Inspections Pt.3: Trailer-Home Cut-Out & Winterfell Is Stacked

   This cut-out was actually done the day before the hive checks, and I wanted to cover it before going into the bee yard bees. Mainly because it involves hive beetles, a pest that's very relevant to my bee yard bees.

   Mike contacted me in the morning to see if I could help him out with a cut out involving a trailer home. He had a job to do in the morning, and would be starting the trailer home around the time that Algebra was finishing up. It was also right down the street from my house, so it was a perfect opportunity for more experience. My face was still swollen pretty hardcore, but everything I've read says that heat is a great treatment. So if anything, sweating it out in a bee jacket under the Florida sun would be healthy. 

   Upon arriving at the trailer, Mike joked about how I'd gotten lucky, and that it was only a small hive. Brendhan (owner of Bee Barf Apiaries, the primary removal contracting company) had mentioned to Mike that it'd probly be a good "learning experience" due to just how massive trailer home jobs usually are. Apparently the last one they'd done had been half the length of the ENTIRE TRAILER HOME. What a jokester haha. 

   The bees were quite nice, even with how rough I had to be in order to cut away the insulation they were behind. Now, normally removal is done with a full suit. That way there's a minimum of seams for the bees to crawl into. I don't have a full suit, just a jacket with attached veil, and when things are in turmoil bees naturally want to crawl into small, dark spaces. That includes jean legs. 

   As a matter of fact, one got up my jean legs and climbed as if she was going up Everest. There was no backwards motion at all, even when I blocked her off by closing off her vertical progress by gripping my leg. She was on a treasure hunt for some valuable jewels and there was no way to get her out without the jean material pressing down on her, which would make her sting me anyways. So, unfortunately, I ended up having to slap her, hoping that she'd only get a light sting in. Nope, that stinger got buried to the hilt in my knee. Granted, my face was already swollen up from the previous days sting, but this one ended up not being too bad. I also got stung through one of the seams in my glove's finger joints. However, Neither of them swelled at all, and, again, the stung hand was very free of stiffness. It was nice!

   Here you can see the length of the stinger, it's the red line pointing downwards. Those little swords are retty impressive huh? It must run lengthwise inside for about half the length of their abdomen. I'll have to look up the layout of their internal abdomen anatomy. Stingers are actually two separate serrated-edged "blades" that are positioned side by side with a channel between them. The venom is pumped down that channel and into the wound. Contrary to old wisdom, recent research has shown that it's prudent to just pull out the stinger immediately. Use your fingers or nail to scrape/pinch it out, it makes no difference whether the poison sac gets compressed. It's going to keep pumping, like a little heart, the entire time you scramble around for a credit card to scrape with. The amount is so minuscule that it's going to empty out in the time spent searching.

   Anyhow, back to the cut-out. Overall they were healthy! The laying pattern was nice, and there was a minimum of hive beetles. However, take a look at that picture. I didn't notice it at first, but do you see all those larvae with dark heads? Those are Small Hive Beetle larvae, disgusting little bastards. Due to the insulation being just inches from the hive, and being a nice loosely packed, moisture-holding medium it was perfect for the beetles. These little buggers would pupate into a ton of hive beetles, and those might be enough to start sliming up honeycomb with more larvae. Once the comb is slimed, the bees want nothing to do with it. They'd eventually either move to a larger compartment underneath the trailer, or evacuate completely. So it was a good thing for these bees that we got called in!

   This is another reason to make sure there are oil-filled trays under each hives screened bottom board. That way the bees can toss the beetles to their oily death, and the beetles can't lay their larvae in the ground directly underneath the hive. Beetles can fit through the grating, so without an oil tray it's just one massive entrance.

   The cutting out of the comb only took about 30mins, after that it was a matter of finding the queen. In such a tight space it was pretty impossible to move around enough to check all the bees. Mike made the call to vacuum them up. His vacuum has been modified so that the inside of the vacuum tube is smooth, minimizing injuries from bumping around, and the vacuum itself has a suction control. That way he can set it to the minimum level of suction needed to suck up the bees, also minimizing the friction. Instead of an open chamber and filter, they're suctioned into the above box. We knew we had the queen when the remaining bees started to cluster around the screening. That meant they smelled the queen's pheromones and were trying to stay with her. 

   After that we packed up and Mike took the bees of to their new home in his bee yard. Couldn't have gone any smoother without having secured the queen in a clip!

Winterfell

   Now we move forward again to Thursday, which has been the most exciting "bee day" yet. Winterfell is finally ready for a second hive body! 

   I arrived at the bee yard, cleared out more brush on the way to the hives, and this is the first image I saw. At first it was a bit concerning, since it was actually the day after they were meant to receive their new hive body. They'd been looking a bit crowded the week prior, but I just hadn't been able to take a long enough break from school and work to properly paint a new Deep box with multiple layers of primer.

   Thankfully though, upon giving them a look, it was just normal bearding. As you can see, they have an entrance reducer (wood bar with different opening sizes cut into it) and they simply didn't have enough entrance real estate to spread out along the entire thing. This is just typical "bearding" behavior, where a portion of the bees hang out on the exterior of the box in order to cool off and help maintain internal hive temperature.

   

   I should have taken a picture prior to putting the queen excluder mat on (gridded grey square) the top of the hive. The whole top surface of the bars was covered in bees! It was awesome! These girls are busy, and definitely need this new hive body! Now, they'll start storing honey above, and gradually transitioning out the honey frames below. This way way the queen will fill out more and more of the bottom box's frames with brood, while the bees move their honey storage to the above box. The excluder will keep, or exclude, the queen from the top box. That way she'll fill out the bottom box and I can pull a couple frames of honey from the top box once it's finished. I can't wait to taste it!

   I didn't check the hive over in depth. I saw a few eggs and lots of healthy comb from just pulling the frames up by only a few inches. The queen is still doing her thing and the colony is very happy. No stress buzzing from these bees. They were also so busy that only two guard bees came by to inspect me.

   All in all, I couldn't be happier with these Italian-Carniolans and would definitely recommend any beginner to purchase their nucs from Steve over at Bee Healthy Honey Farms. He's a great guy, cares about his bees, and these girls are definitely proof of his hard work!

The Wildlings

   There really isn't anything to cover about the Wildlings this week. I'm leaving them alone until Thursday. They had queen cells last week and they should have hatched out by now. I don't want to risk accidental damage to the new queen, and I don't want her to get spooked. Everyone I've spoken to has recommended leaving the hive untouched for at least two weeks as well.

   There was some crazy vine growth leading up to their entrance, so I cleared that and took their empty feeder jar to refill at home. Sugar syrup is being chugged like mad, so they're definitely keeping busy! I'm not all that concerned about them to be honest. They're a good starting size and, if need be, I can pull a frame from Winterfell for them to build new queen cells. 

   Most would just say "Hey Charles, why don't you just buy replacement queens?". That would be the easy thing to do, but my main goal is to breed hardy, hygienic bees. Feral bees are healthy, proven bees that are able to thrive so well that they reproduce. Remember that honey bees reproduce on a hive level. Any wild swarm is, usually, led by a successful queen that has survived varroa mites and other pests without any "help" from humans. Those are the bees we want as beekeepers. On a large commercial scale, honey is a secondary product of successful bees, while pollination is the primary "product". If the Wildlings and Dothraki can be guided to full health that will be two more hives that can each be split twice in the next twelve months, creating a total of eight hives from just those two!

   That sums it up for this week's hive inspections. Pretty busy, huh? All of this with full time summer classes and working part time, as well as making sure my Kai Ken puppy (Ren) gets all of the attention she deserves. It's a lot of work, but very rewarding. Especially beekeeping, it's part therapy, part physical workout, and part meditation. It's very mind-cleansing to work in agriculture. It gets you back in touch with a part of life that a lot of people are missing out on, and that's the connection with our roots as Earth dwelling mammals. The woods and nature are part of us, and many studies are showing that without we get very stressed out. 

   If anyone reading this thinks that they might like beekeeping, then you should definitely give it a try. It's as involved as you want it to be. Set up a self-made "top bar hive", get some bees, and let them do their thing. Check on them every two or three weeks to make sure there aren't pest problems, and let the bees do their bee thing. They'll make you happy, make your garden a lot more productive, and you'll be doing a good thing for wild bees as well.

   See you next post!

Hive Inspections Pt.2: Re-Re-Queening & My Face Is Over 9000

   The last week and a half has been pretty good for all of the bees, except for the Dothraki. They've been having some issues. Well, either that or they're being very secretive about how well they're doing.

   Upon last hive check, I discovered that their queen cells had hatched out. Also spotted was a potential virgin queen. This week though, there was no queen anywhere, and not just that. There were also a set of NEW queen cells, all of which had been sealed. Curiouser and curiouser.

   One thing that did come to mind was how last inspection's virgin queen was just so scrawny. It didn't even click that it was a virgin queen until a few days later. She was so tiny that, at the time, I had thought she was just a weird looking bee who had developed improperly. Just to be safe, I made sure to skip a full inspection on them to not spook her.

This Week: Dothraki

   As usual, Thursday morning I had gone outside with my coffee to watch them start their day. This time though, there was a small commotion at the entrance. Two bees were dragging another bee out. One bee turned back at the lip of the bottom board, and then the remaining bee flew her captive down to the bricks. The captive bee didn't seem to be struggling at all, and the worker proceeded to hop another six feet with her "cargo". That was a bit strange and caught my interest. Normally they'll dump their dead a max of two feet away. This must have been a special prisoner.

   It was a virgin queen. The first thing that highlighted her as a queen was the honey colored abdomen with a dark tip and no black bars. 

   The next indicator was the classic queen thorax. If you look at the picture above, on the left side is the virgin queen, and the right side is a worker bee. Notice how the thorax on the queen is much more pronounced, has a very light covering of hair (most of which can only really be seen from an angle), and has a defined circular shape in the front half. 

   Also take note of how different her primary (outermost) wings are compared to the worker's. The worker's wings are noticeably smaller in width for the last third of the main wing, while the queen's wings are more wasp-like and much more broad at the tips. I'll have to do some research on the wing details, but I would assume the queen's are for fast, agile aerobatics to avoid predators while on maiden flights and swarm migrations.

   As for the health of this virgin queen, I'm thinking she was in poor health and the workers killed her by stinging her. She wasn't convulsing, it was more of a twitching. The tiny joints in her legs were twitching and vibrating as if she couldn't control them, which says "venom" all over it.

  Honey bee venom is called "apitoxin" and is primarily an anticoagulant. According to Wikipedia's entry on apitoxin, two components of it are apamin and phospholipase. Apamin is a mild neurotoxin, and phospholipase is an enzyme that breaks down phospholipids (cell membranes). Both of these would certainly cause degradation of motor functions as characterized by this virgin queen's symptoms.

   I felt bad for her, but the bees know best. From my perspective I have no idea if there is something wrong with this queen, but from a bee's perspective there could be some glaring problem with this queen. She is a very pretty queen though, the picture doesn't do justice. I'm going to start a pin board for queens, and to create a sort of catalog of different queen colorations. Inevitably, there will be queens that produce very irritable bees. These will have to be killed so that the workers can raise a new, nicer queen. So instead of just pinching (squishing) them, it'd be neat to just collect them.

   Anyways, after taking some pictures I went back and inspected the hive. There were seven new queen cells, and a good number of capped brood had hatched out. The hive was very busy with workers packing away pollen for the new larvae and bigger population. Again, I didn't see a queen, and the current queen cells were all sealed up with no holes. So I really don't think that virgin queen had been stung to death by a resident queen from the previous hatching. Otherwise, the resident queen would have chewed through the new queen cells to kill the occupants.

  Just to be safe, I removed an unused frame of empty foundation from the Dothraki hive and traded a frame of brood from the new feral hive. After giving them the new frame they were closed up. I kept it all as brief as possible due to them already being stressed without a queen. I'm crossing my fingers for this next wave of queens, mostly so that I don't have to keep pulling brood from the new feral hive. 

Notes: All comb related indicators are considered false due to constant trading of frames, Brood: First set of queen cells hatched (observed ejection of dying virgin queen with failure of fine motor control), Second set of queen cells intact (x7)

New Ferals

   These girls are doing awesome! It's incredible just how quickly these bees haven taken to their new home. Not only are they exploding with activity at the first indication of the sun rise, but they're chugging syrup like mad!

   One way to tell how much construction going on inside a hive is by how how much dust they're tossing out. Like any busy construction site, there's wax scraps and debris to get rid of. Just look at he picture above. There's definitely some heavy lifting going on inside this hive!

   Prior to taking a frame of brood, these girls were at 7 frames of bees + comb. I was going to stack a second Deep box on top to make a two story hive body, but after the frame removal I think they're going to need a bit more time. This definitely calls for a trip to South Florida Bee Supplies for more frames and boxes though. They'll be moved to the bee yard this coming Friday.

   Oh! Almost forgot. The bottom board that's currently on them is a pretty old board that I bought on the cheap. It doesn't have proper spacing for an entrance feeder or for an entrance reducer. So I had to improvise a bit to come up with a good feeding solution.

   What I ended up doing was just taking two pieces of wood and forming a brace for the jar. Do not use this method with anything breakable unless the hive is very heavily sheltered. This area of the patio is sheltered on two sides by the house, so I felt comfortable using a mason jar for this. 

   This left a nice little sheltered area that channels the bees toward the jar. I also put a drop of honey right in front of it so that the bees could hone in on the smell. From everything I read, sugar syrup is odorless. That would explain why ants aren't sneaking in to steal syrup. Therefore the honey is pretty necessary, at least in a small bee yard. In a large bee yard there are just so many bees that it's almost guaranteed that someone will find the feeder by chance, and then call for backup. 

   Sure enough, they found it within 2 hours. Ever since then they've been chugging syrup like mad, emptying jars within 48 hours. It's pretty impressive! They also have drone cells which means they are in ace shape. A hive won't create drone cells unless they are very "happy" and unstressed.

Notes: 

Pests: Two hive beetles (both dead, assumed to have hitchhiked with cut-out comb), Brood: 5 frames (Eggs/Larvae/CappedBrood/Drone, one frame given to Dothraki) with solid laying pattern, Honey: 2 frames (Honey only), Syrup: 2 mason jars in one week

My Face

   This sting is really bringing out my Mandarin genes. When I asked friends to rate my Asian level on a scale of 1-9000; it was a conclusive 

   So again, wear your veils please! 

   This updated ended up being a lot longer than I expected. Mostly due to just interesting bees are, and how much change has been going on with these bees. Then again it's Spring, the best time to bee a bee! See what I did there? Tomorrow's post will be about the Winterfell hive mostly, as well as relocating my bees to a different part of the bee yard property and a cut-out from a trailer home. Stay tuned!

Edit: This post has now made some asian dating sites pop up in the Google ads hahaha. Silly Google.

Hive Inspections P.1: Bee Punched

  Things have been so busy with three summer classes + managing four hives. I've been preoccupied getting the "needs" taken care of, and haven't been updating as much as I like. Mostly that was from having to write my first essay of the semester (who knew that a comma before "and" isn't necessary anymore) and studying for a four chapter Intermediate Algebra test in the same week. Going back to school after several years away is challenging! As a result, this and the next post will cover about a week and a half (instead of the standard week).

   It's also been quite a challenging week with the honeybees. The biggest hurdle this week didn't even have anything to do with them directly!

WeatherTF

   Florida is known for it's mercurial weather, and this week really lived up to that reputation. Storming one day, crystal clear the next; torrential rainstorms for 2 hours and then perfectly clear only fifteen minutes after the rain stops. It was like that from Sunday through Wednesday. The bees couldn't get much foraging done, so they were supplied with as much sugar syrup as they could drink. And boy were they thirsty! The new feral hive chugged a full mason jar (about 3 cups of 2-1 sugar syrup) in only a day and a half, while the Dothraki nano-hive killed a jar in 3 days. Pretty impressive for the Dothraki only having four Super frames of incomplete cut-out comb.

  The Dothraki had hatched out all of their queen cells last week, so I didn't want to bother them at all. They did their thing and I didn't inspect until this past Thursday night. I'm not completely convinced of having seen the virgin queen last week, and if I did she may have been unhealthy. The one thing I noticed about her, if I did indeed see her, was the classic queen thorax. However, her abdomen seemed abnormally small, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of the strange looking bee. In the end, the hive was closed back up and undisturbed, outside of changing the syrup.

   The new feral hive, which has yet to be named, are just absolute badasses. They are SO busy it's crazy, and there are just so many bees! At night the entire entrance is covered in bees. The queen is also the most primal, fierce looking queen I've yet to see. She's got the largest abdomen of all of my queens, almost completely jet black with gold crescents/stripes on her abdomen, and gold fur that points away from her body as if she had a gold aura. Awesome. I'm going to have to get a picture of her some time.

   Both of the above hives are temporarily housed on my patio, and, honestly, I'm not too worried about them. There are only a very few hive beetles that hitch hiked in with the comb from the cut-out, and the bees are doing a very good job of keeping them close to the top of the hive. Mainly, I was concerned about the Wildling and Winterfell hives. The weather had been very rough and I can't walk outside to the check on them every morning in the same way that I can with the new ferals and Dothraki.

The Bee Yard

  It had been a good week and a half since checking on the bee yard hives and... it was completely overgrown. The yard is on the outskirt of a farm, on the other side of a berm, and untouched by farm workers. So the only people who have any reason to visit this area are beekeepers and Department of Agriculture inspectors. Upon pulling in and parking, it was very clear that I'm still the only keeper that visits their bees.

   WEEDS, EVERYWHERE. You may be thinking to yourself, "What's the big deal? I have weeds in my yard, just walk over them.". But you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong. "Why would that be?", you ask.

   Oh no, these are not fields of dandelions. These aren't fields of clover. This is a giant field of shoulder height, overgrown, dense weeds. The stalks are the a solid inch thick on each plant, and each plant branches out into dozens of shoots.

   The torrential downpours of the last week were like Red Bull for these plants. They shot up from waist level to head and shoulder level, and they didn't just grow upwards. They grew to the sides.

   This picture was from three and a half'ish weeks ago, from an earlier blog post. Notice how the ground is mostly sandy dirt? Only a few vines/runners are scattered across the ground. There was a nice sandy path from the parking clearing out to the bees.

   This photo and the title photo are what the lightly winding 125-150ft path has become. I ended up having to go home and retrieve my machete. Then it took another half an hour to clear away enough brush to make it over to the hives. All of which was done under the burning, midday Florida sun. Not only did I have blisters across my hands from not wearing gloves with an old, dull machete, but it dehydrated quite harshly. Two massive fire ant nests sprang up in the path too. Thankfully I saw them in time. 

   In the picture above, the "table" with the aluminum topped hive is mine. Not pictured is the Wildling hive. The rest of the hives are association member hives. Right after taking this picture I got targeted by one of the non-Z bees who followed me 100ft back to my car, continued to buzz angrily after I'd "frozen", and then tried to kill the back of my hat.

   I was using my phone to try to locate it, since all I could hear was furious buzzing coming from right side of my head. Unfortunately, I was too worried about just locating it for the image to register. To recognize that the bee was actively attempting to sting my hat. With breath held (to avoid the bee homing in on my carbon dioxide) I wished it away. But unfortunately, that bee was pissed and suddenly swung around to punch straight into my face. Directly above my right eye.

   That red dot over my eye in the left side of the photo is after pulling the stinger out. New research shows that so little poison is actually dispensed, that it's better to just immediately pull out the stinger. It comes down to scraping/pulling it out immediately with fingers and squeezing the venom sac vs taking the time to locate an appropriate scraping utensil and carefully scraping the stinger out. It's pumping venom in while all of this is happening. So I actually just pulled it out with my fingers. There wasn't really much pain involved. The sequence of a bee sting is pretty much "OW you little douchebee!" and initial shock that something stung you, followed by 10-15 seconds of residual "Man, that stung", then about two minutes of mild burning while the venom takes effect. After those two minutes there really isn't any pain, just a mild throbbing at the sting site. 

   After ten minutes of rehydrating and gearing up, I then headed back over to the bees to get some work done. And honestly, it was my fault for not wearing a veil while machete'ing anywhere near unfamiliar bees. 

   As far as I can tell, the only visit from anyone else was to remove a dead-out that I reported. The other dead-out is still there, three weeks later, on the first pallet. Needless to say, those bees are stressed out. I took a peek into them to make sure there wasn't beetles pouring out, but they've all pulled back to the bottom boxes. I'm not going to touch other people's gear, but with how aggressive those bees are I'd say they're pretty stressed out.

   Now, with my bees I can do just about anything and they won't get riled up. Not once have they attempted to sting my jacket. But, upon getting behind my bee "table", yet another few bees came over from the other hives and were angrily buzzing around my veil. They even landed on my veil and were sticking the tips of their abdomens through the netting, trying to sting me! I can't help but feel bad for those bees. They're putting up a fight for survival, and I wouldn't mind helping them out. But unfortunately, I have no idea if there are any sickness and it could spread to my hives if I did manage both the association hives + my own. 

   I did what I could and cut down the tall grass that had completely grown over several hive entrances, but that's all that could safely be done for them. Just one of the down sides to an association bee yard. At least it gives ones self the "opportunity" to really think about if they really want to do this. It was a crappy experience, but I'm more dedicated to my bees after it. As the saying goes, "A calm sea does not a good sailor make".

  Anyhow

   No one wants to read an entire book in one sitting, so that's why this post is being split into two parts. The first part being punched in the face by a bee, and the second part will be the actual inspection of the bee yard hives + the really interesting going ons with the Dothraki nuc. It involves virgin queens, re-re-queening, and an even more swollen picture of my face from the day after. Stay tuned... and wear your veil!

(The right side is my normal face... thanks for asking if the right side was the messed up side Danielle)

P.S. Thoughts on starting a new health craze? Beetox, an organic alternative to Botox?

First Solo Cut-Out: Third Feral Hive Recovered... And It's A BIG One!

This has been one intense week. Monday was my first day of summer classes, spanning from 10am to 9pm. Three classes, each several hours long, with one break of 1 1/2 hours, and then a break of 2 1/2 hours. Rough. I need to start packing a fruit salad and yogurt as an energy snack. As if that wasn't enough, I got an email in the morning about a cut-out that was needed that afternoon. Any reasonable person would have been tired, and would have asked to see if it could be done the next day. But I was too excited to be reasonable. This would be my first cut-out to be done by myself!

I headed straight from Biology lab to the property by Palm Beach Gardens. Upon ringing the doorbell I was introduced to a really nice woman who, as it turns out, used to keep bees while living in France. She was very happy to have the bees rehomed to a "backyard" situation, where they would be looked after, instead of the large tree pot that was their current home.

As we walked out to the backyard, she described how the bees had originally arrived. They had shown up approximately 4 to 6 weeks before, and then decided that the pot would make a great home. It was large and roomy, had a nice dark interior, and small drainage holes around the top for small, easily guarded, entrances. "No big deal," I thought, "I'll just pick it up and move it into the open. Then cut out the few panels of comb to place into a nuc box, then be on my way...".

NOOOOOPE. I would most definitely NOT be right along on my way. These panels of comb were MASSIVE. I don't mean "Huh, that's some big comb.", I mean "WOAH... this is going to take a few hours...". An important lesson was learned this day: Don't ever underestimate the honeybees. I should have brought a complete set of ten empty frames. Unfortunately I only had five, and the location was a full hour away, in zero traffic, from my house. I also had work the next day, and then another full day of class. So there was no way to come back the following day, or even the day after that. I was going to have to make do with what I had.

The top of the tree pot was a good 3ft wide and just as deep. There were nine panels of comb, with the largest ones spanning from the top of the pot to the bottom. It wasn't just comb that had to be dealt with either, there were a serious number of bees in this hive!

Now, I haven't seen a huge amount of hives up close. But this comb was by far the most beautiful, perfectly filled comb I have ever seen. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see the left side panel quite clearly. There is a half circle of capped brood, at the center, that is in the process of hatching. After this there is a very clean arc of eggs (looks like empty cells), followed by another perfectly laid arc of young capped brood, and then after that is shiny fresh wax filled with eggs (which you can see more clearly on the edge of the right panel of comb). This comb was stunning. I wanted to save as much of is as I could. If only they made curved frames!

After wondering just how the heck I was going to do this for a good five minutes, I got started. The comb was so long and new that they all drifted to the sides after flipping the pot over. However, at least none of them detached or broke off. Mike taught me that the proper way to go about this is to figure out which way the comb is facing, then flip the container over with the combs running away from you. So when flipping, you should be able to look straight down the spaces between combs. This follows the structural strength of the comb to avoid breakage. If you flipped a container with the comb running lengthwise, with the end of each panel at one of your hands, then there's a good chance of panels completely falling off and onto the ground.

It was extremely messy work and I wish I had taken more pictures, but, since I was doing it all solo, there was no way without being significantly slowed. Thankfully the bees had replaced hatched brood with honey and pollen along the tops of the panels. That way I wouldn't have to be so concerned about salvaging under-developed comb that only housed minor amounts of honey or brood.

That being said, I still had to cut into that perfect comb. It was mentally hard to do, putting hive tool to immaculate brood comb. Each panel got cut up into two smaller panels that would each be rubber banded into an empty wooden frame. Seeing the developing, bee-shaped pupae falling out and being crushed was really tough... but there was no way around it. Not just that but I had to be extremely careful with the whole thing. Careful to damage the brood comb as little as possible, careful to not crunch any adult bees on accident, careful not to be too rough and damage the queen without realizing. It was a lot of self-reassurance without having Mike there to ask questions to.

Eventually, I got all of the comb either transferred into frames, and what couldn't be framed got bagged up for wax reclamation. As I was pulling out the last three panels, I got a glimpse of the queen. She was quick though and disappeared into the mass of bees before the queen clip was ready. I was ready to start sweating about finding one queen bee among 10,000 bees. All of which were randomly walking around the pot and supporting wheelbarrow. However, just as I got the last panel out and returned with the queen clip... there she was! She had somehow made her way up from the bottom of the pot to the inner lip, and flashed over top of the other bees for just a second. That second was all I needed and I was able to clip her on the first attempt. Not to pat myself on the back, but picking out the queen is starting to become an unconscious reflex. All of this cut-out experience and hive checking is building some great experience!

Once she was clipped it was just a matter of placing her in the nuc box, setting the nuc box about 10 feet from the wheelbarrow and pot, and waiting. I dumped what bees I could from the pot onto the top of the nuc box, then put it back on the wheelbarrow. Then it was time for a dinner break.

I hit a great local Cuban restaurant, and then returned about two hours later after dark. All of the bees were off the wheelbarrow and in the nuc box with the queen. Perfect! There was still a giant beard on the front of the box though, due to the sheer size of the hive. I ended up just scooping them off the sides with my hands and putting them on top of the box. It was dark so they just stayed clustered up there, then it was off to the car for these bees.

After arriving at home, I went to the trunk to get the bees out and... crap, there were bees bearding from the entrance of the nuc and onto the walls of the trunk! I tried to get as many as I could out, but knew they'd have to be handled tomorrow. At night they seem to just go into stasis and ignore most of what's happening. The trunk would smell too much like the queen and they wouldn't follow her immediately to the backyard. So the nuc was taken to the back yard, set up into a full sized Deep hive body, and I went to bed.

And this is what I woke up to! I tried to manually get the bees out for about fifteen minutes, but there were just too many inside the trunk and inside the cab of the car. What ended up working was bringing the empty nuc back and placing it next to the car. It smelled like the hive and queen, so they quickly moved over into the box. The ones inside got heavily smoked and almost all flew outside on their own. They caught the scent of the nuc and went in, leaving only a few stragglers inside who got shooed out by hand. Success, hive #4 has been successfully relocated to the backyard for rehab!

I didn't have a spare telescoping cover (forgot to pick an extra up in Miami), so I cut a piece of pine board into a nice size for the hive. The triangle of wood is just heavy cedar to weigh down the cover. Right after they were checked on, I had to go to work. So I did that and then came home to see how the girls were doing. They were gentle the whole time and will let me sit next to them without issue. The first day was all orientation flights and sending out forager scouts. It was a constant cloud of 25-30 bees in the airspace around the hive, many of them departing and arriving from the surrounding area. The area around my home must be great, considering many of them were already returning with very full pollen baskets.

I also noticed that the Dothraki hive had extra guards at the entrance, and that there was a lot of traffic coming and going from their entrance. There's no way to visually be sure which hive the bees belonged to, so rather than risk the Dothraki getting robbed, I reduced their entrance to an opening of about an inch and a half. Afterwards they seemed to feel more secure and posted less guards. One interesting thing to note, however, is that at night they pack the entrance with "sleeping" guards so anyone entering would have to touch them. The new hive also has bees at their entrance at night. Both of these are new behaviors that I haven't seen before, so my hypothesis is that they post extra guards at the entrance when there is another nearby hive (possible competition).

I was also able to record some high definition video of the new hive's activity of their first full day. There's a lot of traffic coming and going for orientation and harvesting. There is also some fanning going on, although I'm not 100% positive whether it's ventilation fanning or pheromone fanning. It'd be great if someone could confirm which it is. I want to say it's pheromone fanning since there were only three bees total who were engaged in fanning. However, none of them had their abdomens pointed upwards to expose their pheromone glands. Three bees just doesn't seem like it's going to accomplish much in terms of air conditioning, so I'm a bit stumped on which it could be.

I highly recommend watching in 720p/1080p in full screen!

All in all the bees seem very happy. I released the queen at around 11pm on the day following the cut-out. After class yesterday, I checked back and the bees are still there. So they're happy, the queens happy, and they all approve of the new home. I'm thinking of moving them to the bee yard later today or tomorrow.

The only thing that worries me is not having a proper cover for them. I'm not worried about beetles that much. They were living directly over the dirt and had only two beetles that I could find, both of which are now dead. These are awesome bees, super busy, very friendly and patient, and I'm completely confident that they will be my strongest hive. If this queen keeps her immaculate laying pattern then this hive is going to be booming over the next month. They'll definitely need a second Deep box in two weeks, then another month or two to fill that up. Once that's done, it'll be time to add a honey super for my first ever frames of honey! After pulling a bit of honey, I will definitely be splitting this hive to start a new colony. Exciting stuff!

P.S. Regular readers may have noticed that some ad banners have popped up on the sides. I'm not a fan of ads, but the Google AdSense ads actually promote reputable beekeeping suppliers (ex. Mann Lake, Dadant) as well as some companies selling package bees. There is an ad that pops up every now and then for RoundUp (Monsanto), and I am working out how to specifically block that ad. AdSense allows blocking specific advertisers and, as soon as I know how, that ad won't be showing up here.

A click every now and then would be a nice help towards offsetting equipment costs for rehoming all of these bees. I'm just a backyard keeper for right now, learning everything I can about honeybees (majoring in Entomology, hoping to specialize in honeybees and social insects), and rehoming what bees I can as a free service in exchange for hands-on experience. My promise to you guys is that I will never put pop-up ads or obnoxiously place banners anywhere. Thanks for reading!

Hive Inspections: Winterfell is feisty, Wildlings & Dothraki stage a revolution

Wow! Lots of changes in all three hives since last week. I did the inspections on Thursday in order to keep a solid inspection schedule. I feel this is very important when it comes to beekeeping. There are already so many distractions in modern life, and without committing yourself to a consistent schedule it will be very easy to fall behind. "Oh I'll just do it tomorrow, I just feel like watching tv today." could very well turn into more procrastination the next day. Just a few days is all it takes for a hive to fail cascade when at this small of a size. Now, don't take that to be scaremongering. If anything it should be encouragement to be a responsible caretaker of your bees, and you should already be super excited to visit them anyways! It's amazing enough to just watch them coming and going, and it's even more amazing to open up the hive to see what your bees have accomplished under your care!

Dothraki Hive

So it had been exactly a week from when the Dothraki bees got a new frame of brood for queen production. I inspected them first, since they're on the back patio and I don't even need to leave home for that. All of the queen cells are capped up, there's plenty of open honey with a good percentage already capped, and a really nice bouquet of pollen as well (which you can see in the very top picture). The pollen ranges from completely white, to pale yellow, to neon yellow, and then both dull orange and neon orange. There are foragers coming and going at a constant rate. I'd say about one in every eight bees is returning with their pollen baskets loaded. That's a pretty good ratio it seems, judging by the good stored in the hive. All of the queen cells have been sealed up as well. So in another week and a half or so, there should be a duel between the first two queens to decide who rules.

Apparently there was a drone cell on the frame that got transplanted from the Widling hive. I caught an awesome video of him getting kicked out. At least, I'm 75% sure it's a drone due to being a bit larger and darker, but it may have been a robber/stray bee as well. I didn't think to check at the time if it was a drone, since they don't have a current queen to have been producing them. The bees are also chugging syrup and building up lots of comb. I'm thinking they're taking the readily available food and only sending a few out as foragers due to smaller numbers, only one frame of brood, and it being riskier to collect nectar than it is to just hit up the entrance feeder.

I recommend watching in a high definition and expanded size

Notes: 
Pests: None, Bees: 2 frames of bees, Brood: 1 frame (L, CB, 4 sealed Replacement Queen Cells) with scattered laying pattern from Wildling queen, Honey: 2 frames, Pollen: mixed well among 3 frames, Syrup: 4 cups since last week


Wildling Hive

Last week when I pulled out the frame of brood I didn't look for the queen, but I did look for eggs. Looking for eggs is the fast way to check for a queen's presence. Eggs take on three positions as they mature: straight up on the first day, leaning like the Tower of Pisa on the second day, and then a very low lean on the third day prior to hatching. I saw eggs on day 2 so that means the queen was active in the last two days. No need to find her when she's been active that recently, not to mention that nature was getting ready to douse the hive and I in heavy rain. The first frame I pulled out had about 3/4 of one side with honeycomb, nice and heavy. Then as I went to set it back in I noticed a queen cell on the next frame. Upon checking the rest of the frames, the girls have not just 4 queen cells like the Dothraki, but SEVEN queen cells on just two frames of eggs. They were solidly capped cells, and they even made a crazy trio of queen cells. Of which each is only seperated by one non-functional cell from the other. That's sort of Hunger Games'ish, training and growing right next to the same people that will soon be trying to kill you.

I'm going to guess that stormy day last week with drizzling rain eventually coming down on the open hive + the inconsistent/scattered laying pattern of the original queen had the bees decide that it was time to replace her. Too many stresses at one time to tolerate an underperforming queen. Remember that this was the original queen from their old hive too, so she was already aged. Still strange though that both feral hives have fired their original queens. These bees have also consumed less syrup than the Dothraki hive. I'm guessing that it's most likely due to them having higher numbers of foragers and a good sized, productive farm 50ft away.

So within a day or two of the Dothrakis, these 7 queens should be thunderdoming it out to decide the victor in a brutal fight to the death. At least the first 2-4 will, the winner from that will then either face single challengers as the others hatch out, or the winner of the first fight will achieve victory quickly enough that she can go around the frames, killing the remaining queens as they lay helpless in their cells.

Other than that though, the hive is extremely busy. Lots of bees coming and going, about one in six bees has pollen. They've started building up another frame with comb, which makes up for the comb given to the Dothraki. Plenty of honey is in storage, not too much capped outside of some extra capping of their original comb. Then again they've only recently built up full sized cells on the foundation, the rest has been pre-existing comb that is rubber banded into empty frames. No big deal there, they're obviously happy and getting enough from the surrounding area that they aren't chugging from the feeder. There's also lots of brand new larvae (very small, compared to the fat larvae who are about to spin cocoons) and capped brood, so I'm not worried about numbers with this hive at all.

These bees were taken from a water meter cut-out and transferred into a Super sized nuc box, so that means they're on 3/4 sized frames. I didn't want them building wax down from the frames and attaching onto the bottom board. Not only would that be an incredible pain to get the screening cleaned out, but that'd be a ton of wasted wax for the girls when they need 100% material and labor efficiency. The day before I had gone down to South Florida Bee Supplies and picked up a Super box, as well as a nuc box (to be used as a hive trap), total of 30 frames (10 Super without foundation, 10 Deep without foundation, 10 Deep with foundation), another feeder, and some queen lure. So I spent about 10mins getting them transferred from the Deep and into the Super. The Wintefell hive was used as a table, which was actually a pretty poor idea.


Notes: 
Pests: One beetled that was imprisoned between a frame and hive wall (now dead), Bees: 3 frames of bees, Brood: 2 frames (L, CB, 7 Replacement Queen Cells, minute scattering of drone cells) with scattered laying pattern from previous queen, Honey: 3 frames, Pollen: mixed well among 4 frames, Syrup: 2 cups since last week

Winterfell Hive

Just look at that fresh, beautiful pure comb being built up on that foundation. That's frame seven, counting from the left side of the hive with entrance facing forward. These girls have frames two through seven built up with comb! They originally only had three frames built up with the fourth only just starting to be developed with small flecks of wax. All that in just three weeks. These girls are busy!

They also got a little fiesty haha. I hadn't given it much thought at the time, but all the vibrations and bumps from using the Winterfell hive as a table had gotten them nervous. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn't under 90F in the sun and I'm trying to be quick in order to not let the new wax get soft. Using only a veil for protection, I lifted the top off the Winterfell hive and started inspecting frames. I got two frames in and, due to sweat, had to suddenly tighten my grip on a frame in order to stop it from slipping. This jolted the frame and a single bee shot out like a little missile, buried herself in the top of my hand, and then grinded the stinger in deeper like she was at a club in Miami. Now, I'm no stranger to painful insect stings. Fire ants are the devil incarnate, but they're tiny and easy to brush away. It's a whole different thing when you have a full sized bee on your hand, and through the thoughts of "MOTHER OF GOD, IT BURNS!" it seems massive. It was definitely more of a surprise factor than a pain factor. I've never been stung before, so it was a bit more than I expected. That coupled with the visual of the bee on my hand, and the natural fight or flight instinct to run away from the danger, had me pretty surprised.

I did have a full frame of bees though, and dropping that would only make things worse. I lowered a corner so that it rested on another frame, then quickly (don't do that, be slow and smooth) pulled my hand back to brush the bee off. The fast movement + danger pheromone from the sting attracted three more bees right away. They started buzzing the stung hand as I lowered the frame back into the hive. After putting the frame back, I tucked the stung hand into my armpit to minimize the pheromone release and walked away from the hive, back to the van (about 30ft away).

For those that don't know, the stinger is coupled to a poison sac, that poison sac is attached to the bee's insides. The stinger is actually two serrated barbs, with the poison running down the channel between the two. Upon stinging, the whole package is torn out of the bee and the bee will die after a short time.
It really didn't hurt that much to be honest. It's just the newness of it and the reactionary "Oh crap!" of the primitive part of the brain. I ended up watching the poison sac pulsate for a few seconds because it was neat, then scraped it out with a credit card.

No time to lick wounds though, there's work to be done! Unfortunately my smoker was being a pain in the butt, so I just tossed on the jacket and gloves to get the rest done. The leather of the gloves will cover up the smell so that the bees don't get stressed from smelling the alarm chemicals.

Back at the hive, the next frame was the main honey frame. Wow this was heavier than I remembered. The outer side, which had nothing before, was now solid honey! As tempting as it is to steal some honey, they really need it to continue expanding at maximum efficiency. Plus I picked up some avocado honey from the supplier visit, can't wait to dig into that once my tongue heals up from it's hot sauce chemical burns. Long and unrelated story, but I tried the hottest sauce at Tijuana Flats, ow. Next up was what used to be a honey frame. The inner side now had eggs and capped brood. Just look at that solid laying pattern! That's what a healthy queen looks like, solid sheets of young from the same timeframe of laying. That really is beautiful to see, and photos just don't do it justice. Also, that funky looking, protruding circle cell is a drone cell. It's just being built off of a normal sized cell. Drone cells are good at this stage! This means they are happy with how much food they've built up, the health of the hive, and are confident in their queen. Drones (males) do no work whatsoever, they just sit around eating and being freeloaders. They do fly around looking for a queen to mate with, but if they're kicked out then they will go to a Drone Congregation Area to hang out with their bros.

This is the frame opposite of the one above, frame three. This frame has been freshly drawn out with wax and has a freshly laid sheet of eggs interspersed with a very small scattering of late stage larvae (the white filled cells). It looks like the queen passed over this frame while it was being made and decided a few cells were built up enough to lay few eggs. Five or six days later she came back to this frame, nodded her approval, and laid down a sheet of eggs. I'm actually really happy with how this picture came out and am probly going to make it my background. I love the angles and design of the comb, so precise but still organic. The lines formed in the corners make it a bit trippy too.

I did find the queen herself, not because I was looking for her, but just because there was a clump of bees on the side. She always has an entourage so I briefly scan any clump of bees I see. It's also just getting easier to pick her out by subconscious recognition.

Overall, I'm VERY very happy with these bees! Even if it was the "domesticated" bees that stung me first, and not the two feral (and supposedly more africanized) bees haha. I saw one hive beetle, but I'm pretty sure that's only due to having walked away with the cover off after getting stung. The beetle got contained to the lip of the hive by the bees, where I happily crunched it with my thumb. After crushing it in front of the guard bee assigned to it, the guard seemed to be like "Oh, hey thanks, time to take a break" and then just walked back into the hive without inspecting my thumb. It seemed pretty funny in the moment, maybe it was just being dehydrated, shot up with bee venom, and on an endorphin rush.


Notes: 
Pests: One beetle (dead, most likely from leaving cover off for a few mins and walking away), Bees: 5 frames of bees, Brood: 5 frame (E, L, CB, Drone) small number of drone cells, Honey: 3 frames, Pollen: mixed well among brood frames, Syrup: not currently being fed

Beekeeping 101: The Bees, Terms & Tools

So I've been receiving a good number of questions from friends and family who have been checking out the blog. Most of which are over beekeeping specific terms, things like "nuc", "nuc box", and "superseding".

Ann suggested a reference post that contained the hive names and origins of each. After some thought I figured that it would make a full post if I instead wrote a short primer that also included the specific information about my bees. This is by no means an overall index of terms and equipment. This post will instead cover all of the equipment and bees that I own or have written about. A part two will, of course, come later on once I acquire more beekeeping equipment!

The Bees (in order of acquisition)

Domesticated Bees:
 Winterfell Hive: Italian-Carniolan bees, purchased as a nuc from Bee Healthy Honey Farms

Feral Bees:
 Dothraki Hive: Collected from a swarm in Deerfield Beach, FL at 2000 EST on April 25, 2013
 Wildling Hive: Collected from a water meter cut-out in Boynton Beach, FL at 0800 EST on May 1, 2013


Equipment

Personal Equipment

Smoker (blue and yellow thing in the picture) - This one is does exactly as it sounds. It's what the beekeeper uses for pushing smoke into the beehive. It's extremely simple, a bellows is on the back side (same concept as an accordion) and it blows air into a hollow metal cylinder, the cylinder holds wood chips or any other clean burning material.

Veil - This too sounds like what it is. You know how a bride wears a veil which covers her entire head area? I wear one too, except I'm just not as pretty. This too is a fine mesh that surrounds the beekeeper's head area. They come in many styles. Some are a wide brimmed hard or soft hat with a netting hung over it, some are a wide brimmed hard hat with a square frame hanging down in front of the face which keeps the netting taut, some are attached to a jacket and some are not.

Jacket - This is a jacket made of thick material which covers the entire torso of the wearer AND also includes a veil built right into it. So it is a veil/jacket combination. The smallest detail on these jackets, but also incredibly important, are the thumb loops. There's a loop at the end of each sleeve for the beekeeper to slip his thumb through. This makes sure the sleeves stay up around the wrist and don't slip out from the gloves.
These too come in many styles: different combinations of pockets, different styles of attached veil, detachable veil or non-detachable, and thankfully, hot weather jackets! These are a thick mesh material on the outside supported by a more solid material framework underneath that holds the outer material away from the skin. All while letting the breeze through. I can't wait to upgrade to one of these, the intense mid-day Florida heat will dehydrate a beekeeper in minutes!

Hive Tool - To simplify it, this is a flatter, thinner, and wider crowbar. The purpose of this tool is to allow a beekeeper to scrape propolis and wax from undesirable areas of the hive box, separate frames and hive bodies when thickly glued together with propolis, and while it may not be advertised for this... scraping out stingers when your newbee hands get the shakes... resulting in nervous bees... like today. Ow.

Gloves - These are just like they sound. Medium thickness gloves made of supple leather, with a forearm extension of soft canvas. These slip on over top of the jacket sleeves, providing a bee-tight seal over the jacket fabric. This way there are no sneaky bee stings slipping between a jacket/glove gap.

Queen Clip and Queen Cage - Clips look almost exactly clips for women's hair. The difference being that it forms a cage on the side opposite from the thumb grips. This is used for isolating the queen from a swarm or hive. A Queen Cage on the other hand is a little plastic or wooden containment container that a bred queen is held in, with one end being a candy plug. These will be inserted into a hive and she will (ideally) be accepted by the workers once they eat through the candy plug.

Bee Brush - This is a long bristled brush that is extremely soft. This is used for brushing masses of bees off of things they shouldn't be on. For example, today I transferred a hive from a Deep to a Super and some of them hung around on the original box. They were gently brushed off of the original box and into the open top of the new box without being damaged.

Hive Equipment

Deep - This is the box that composes the main hive body. The main purpose of a deep is to house larger frames that gives the queen a ton of laying space. This way a large number of eggs and bees can be raised while the workers are able to build a thick ring of bee bread and honey to support the younglings. Many beekeepers in the South use a single Deep and then just stack supers on top since there's no real need to winter. I'll be using two Deeps for larger, stronger numbers and leeway in case of any problems.

Super (pictured is a "Super" nuc box) - This is box that is 2/3 as tall Deep. These are stacked on top of Deeps and almost exclusively used for honey. Some people have started using Supers instead of Deeps due to weight, and for good reason. A Deep that is fully loaded with only frames of honey can weigh 90lbs / 41kg! A fully loaded Super will weigh about 60lbs / 27kg. I highly recommend going with Supers over Deeps unless you're in your 20s, doing your squats, and eating your oats.

Nuc - This is shorthand for "Nucleus Hive". This is a term for selling and purchasing bees. They are housed in a half size (5-frame) box and is a complete hive. It contains a mature, laying queen, 3-5 frames of drawn out comb, eggs, larvae, capped brood, and a full regiment of worker bees. Up until the moment of purchase, these bees have been doing everything that any other hive does. They become active in the morning, fly out to collect their pollen/nectar, raise and feed young, and guard the hive. These are industrious girls ready to go to work the moment they are relocated to your home/bee yard.

Nuc Box - This is simply the box that a nuc is housed in. These have a ton of different uses, so you should definitely hold onto it if you purchase a nuc! I use these boxes as swarm traps (put some swarm lure in, rig it up in a tree, and cross your fingers that scouts from swarms will like it and tell their sisters to move in), for rehoming bees from cut-outs, and for the future when I do a hive split. It offers less space for pests to hide compared to a full size hive, more security with less interior space to guard, and it's easier for small colonies to regulate the temperature with less air to move.

Package Bees - This is a package of... just bees! A package box is a wooden frame, with screening enclosing the entire thing, a feeder to keep them fed on their journey, and a queen in her own cage with a few baby bees to feed her. These contain between 10,000 and 12,000 bees. I like the idea of package bees, but, as a beginner, I would only recommend package bees in the event that there are no nucs available in your area. It's usually only an extra $25-35 for a nuc, and you'll get a fully working hive + the nuc box itself. The package bees are going to have to draw out completely new comb from bare foundation if you're just starting out, and that means the queen won't be laying eggs until that comb is built up.

Top Cover (aka Telescoping Cover) - This is the lid that goes over the top of the entire hive. It's not a flat lid, but it has edging that comes down over the side of the hive box. This creates a better seal against the elements. I have no idea why... but someone in the club bee yard is using those corrugated plastic, political campaign signs as their top covers with bricks on top. I feel bad for the bees considering this is Florida. There must be so much moisture (and rain) going in those hives, as well as being an open invitation to hive beetles. Don't be that person, especially in a bee yard that you're sharing with other people! There's absolutely no reason to not spend the $18-20 on a top cover.

Inner Cover - This is a flat piece of wood with raised edges and a hole in the center. This provides a nice solid inner roof for the hive. This way the bees don't feel like there is too much room up top. They'll build comb anywhere that they can fit it. I highly, highly recommend one of these. If you don't get one, then don't be surprised when you lift the top cover and find panels of comb coming down off the top cover and attaching to your frames!

Queen Excluder - This is a sheet of plastic or metal that has worker bee sized slots cut into it. This allows workers to fit through, but not queens. This is normally placed between the top Deep and the bottom Super. This way the queen cannot get into the super to lay brood among the honey.
A lot of veterans call them Honey Excluders, since it makes it a bit more difficult for the bees to get into the Supers. If given the choice, nature always takes the path of least resistance. Not just that, but when the Deeps are properly managed then it's supposed to be pretty rare to get brood in the supers. I won't be using queen excluders on the basis that any extra abrasion on a bee's wing will shorten it's lifespan. Bee's work themselves to death due to their wings wearing out and becoming ragged after a certain amount of use.

Frames - These are basically picture frames, except they're for wax combs and not photographs. These hold in and support the wax comb. This way the hive is accessible, easy to work with, and easy to inspect (required by law). Not all hive styles use frames, some use top bars, but the concept remains the same. A wood or plastic support that the comb is attached to in order to meet Dept. of Agriculture requirements and make things easy to work with.

Foundation - This is the plastic or wax sheet that fits into the middle of the frame. Foundation sheets will be imprinted with hexagonal pattern of comb cells. The impressions act as a guide for the bees to
start attaching wax to right away and to skip the wax needed to build supports. When reading entries and you see solid black at the bottom of the comb cells, that is black plastic foundation.

Entrance Feeder - This is a small hollow plate of plastic or wood that an inverted mason jar is screwed into. The lid of the jar is perforated with small holes and attaches to the top of the feeder to act as a "roof". This way the bees can crawl into the feeder from inside of the hive, drink from the small holes in the lid, and then retreat directly into the hive. It cannot be accessed from outside the hive and can be refilled without opening the hive body itself. I really like this feeder setup a lot since I don't even need to touch the hive to measure how much the bees have been consuming.

Entrance Reducer - This is a small bar of wood that is laid across the entrance to the hive in order to reduce the opening. The bar has two openings, one about an inch long for a small setting, and the large setting is about 5 inches long. When a hive is small and new, or low in numbers for any reason, it is best to rotate the reducer to the small hole. That way the hive can be guarded with only a few bees, preventing other hives from coming to rob their honey. Once a hive gets strong it can be rotated to the larger opening, since the bees have both the available guards and the need to accommodate more forager traffic.

Bottom Board - This is simply the board that the Deep rests on. It has raised edging on three sides, allowed the fourth side, without a raised "wall", to act as a hive entrance. There are two options, screened or unscreened. Screened bottom boards have a metal mesh or "fabric" across the bottom that is too small for bees to get through, but large enough for them to push beetles and other debris out. Usually the screened boards have a nice space underneath that can fit either a plastic fast food tray filled with mineral to kill beetles/mites that land in it, or for custom made trays.

Landing Board - This is just an extension of the bottom board, usually in a downward sloping ramp. Honestly, I find these useless, or worse than useless. It's extra space for debris to accumulate, and feral bees have no problem landing on the side of a house to climb up into the roof. It's so much simpler for my bees to drop a dead bee, beetle, or piece of trash off the lip of the bottom board and onto the ground than it is to roll it all the way down a landing board.

Terms

Africanized - This is different than African bees. African bees (the breed) was introduced in Brazil, they have since spread into the southern half of the United States. Generally all bees south of the snow are a hybrid of European and African bees. Why are they not anywhere with snow? Because African bees produce massive amounts of brood and are not adapted to a snowy winter. The large amounts of bees will eat through their honey stores before winter is over and die. The gradient is between 10 and 99%, and these bees are Africanized bees, not "killer" African bees. Any wild animal/insect will defend it's young and bees are no different. They don't want to sting you since they will die and it weakens the hive, but if someone goes and knocks down their hive then they will react. The difference being the stronger the African genes, the more bees that will come to the defense.
Take all the news stories with a grain of salt. I was exceptionally rough with the feral bees today due to having to shift their "Super" frames out of the original box and into a "Super" box. No stings, no aggression. After all that knocking around, I lifted the lid on the Italian-Carniolans, pulled the first frame, and had a bee shoot straight out of the hive and zap me in the hand. I have yet to meet a mean feral hive, both in the "wild" and in apiary.

Queenright - A term used to describe a hive as having an established, laying queen.

Small Hive Beetle - These little jerks will sneak into a hive and eat the bee's honey. Afterwards they will lay their larvae in the honey and turn the comb into a wriggling, slimy mess. They won't destroy a hive by themselves, but they will definitely take advantage of a weakened hive. Bees also wont build on comb that has been slimed by the beetle larvae. Eliminate them with extreme prejudice.

Splitting - This is artificial swarming. Once a hive reaches a point where it is safe to remove 3 frames of bees, then a beekeeper can remove 2 frames of eggs+brood and 1 frame of honey. These frames will be set up in a nuc box and moved a few miles away from the original hive for at least a week. This allows the original queen's pheromones to fade and the bees in the nuc to realize "hey, we need a queen!". They will then raise a new queen, and she in turn will go on her maiden flight. Upon mating with drones, she will then return and begin laying eggs, thereby establishing a new hive. At this point it's safe to return the nuc to the original location without fear of the bees migrating back to the original hive.

Supersede - This is when the bees raise a queen cell with the original queen still remaining in the hive. This happens when the queen is damaged, becoming infertile, or simply is not laying consistently. The bees are raising queen cells in the center to top of the frames, and have decided they're going to throw a "surprise retirement" party for the current queen.

Swarming - This is when the original queen takes half the colony and leaves the hive. This happens when the hive is running out of space and there is simply not enough room to grow. Honeybee reproduction is on a hive scale, so the only time honeybees reproduce is when they swarm and establish a second hive. The remaining bees will raise a new queen, normally from the bottom of a frame, who will then take over queen duties for the original hive.

Varroa Mite - The bane of honeybees everywhere. These little mites hitched a ride from Asia and are now found across the entire United States. They are small mites that hop on the back of bees and bite into their abdomens, sucking on the bee's internal juices. They will then lay eggs in bee larvae cells, severely damaging the larvae as they develop. Mites alone aren't what is so devastating, it's the viruses that they carry.


That pretty much sums it up! Once I have more than three hives (which will be a bit more difficult to keep track of for readers) then I'll make a "bee roster" post and keep it updated as things change. I hope this helps :) As always, if anyone has any specific terms or questions they would like answered then please comment. I answer quickly, usually 6 hours or less, due to 5 hour work shifts. If I don't know the answer then I will research it, answer back, and link you references