Hive Improvements



The door to the observation window is closed; the feeder is on the right.

Feeder is at end away from center entrance; plexiglass window on left to see who's eating; hole in hive provides access from inside (honey area); sliding plexiglass door allows easy access to feeder.

Observation window open; you can see a lot of propolis on the inside. The door is actually the wood that was cut out to make the window.

this is from inside; caulk used to seal the window; no other attachment needed.

Bottom board hanging open; you can sort of see the screen.

I was able to do this because I have done a lot of carpentry and have a full shop in the basement. Most of the materials were already there.  

Links and Observations

So, the previous sequence of photos verifies that the bees in a top bar hive build brood comb near the entrance and honey away from the entrance.

I did find some cells that are 4.9 mm, although most are 5.4 mm. Matt suggests that bees that start at 5.4 and do not have foundation will gradually move to small cell (4.9). Finding some 4.9 does suggest that.

At a beekeeping conference on Sunday, I heard that the cells are not horizontal, but angled upward at 4-5 degrees. Sure enough, they are. Makes sense to help keep things in. One implication is that, when brushing bees off comb, brush towards the bar so that any bees partly in a cell are not caught.

 I'm saving the bars for the next hives so the new bees will have a head start. There are a lot of bees in cells head first. I don't know whether the new bees will clean out the bodies or avoid them because they are dead. I started removing the dead ones, but it's a slow process; we'll see how much patience I have.

No sign of the queen. She may have been in the first batch I gave to Rachel.


Various Beekeeping Web Links:
Resistant Bees
The Barefoot Beekeeper
Dave's Bees
Warre Beekeeping
The Melissa Garden
Eastern Apicultural Society  - list of Beekeeping organizations under Links
Honey Bees - Letters from the Hive  - book
Honey Bee Suite
The Practical Beekeeper - this is Michael Bush, major expert
Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association
Philadelphia Beekeepers

Post Mortem - part 2

Seems like the blog software gets erratic when the blog gets long. This is a continuation of the previous entry, so you should read it first; it has comb 1 - 6.  Here's 7 - 10:

7. Similar to 6; some drone cells on left; even more honey cells; also broke when I moved it. It's hard to see but honey comb does not follow bar well. \Brood comb shows much more discipline.

8. Same as 7, but more honey cells.

9. Weird; odd shape; lots of drone cells; that's my finger at upper left.

10. Only honey; smaller than the rest.

Note: there was NO honey anywhere in the hive; when I took this comb out and brought the hive inside, there were still some bees moving around aimlessly. They ignored any food and soon died. There were also plenty of hive beetles. Any of those moving have been squooshed.

Post Mortem

It took me a while, but here are the pix of the last 10 bars in the hive. They begin from the center, at the entrance, and go to the end of the hive.

1. Most of the comb is dark because it's brood. Since it's reused, it keeps getting darker. The bees are dead, but they stick to the comb. It's like a freeze frame - very strange.

2. Very similar to first; orange at center left is probably brood that didn't hatch.

3. Ditto; near the top you can see the bees head first in cells.

4. Ditto; but then things start changing...

5. Less brood; more honey cells (light color)

6. This broke when I moved it; it was stuck to the side. The brood cells on the left are for drones. 6.7 mm vs. 5.4 mm, which most of the cells are. 

The Demise

Rachel picked up a load of bees on Sunday - about 2/3 of a shoebox full. Tuesday, with the warm weather, I opened again and went through the last 10 bars. Nearly all were dead - a few were moving very slowly. I brought the hive indoors and began dissecting the hive, taking photos of each bar as I went to see what I could learn. I kept them in sequence from what was the middle to one end.
I'll post those in sequence next time.
I collected and sorted through everything. I have 12 bars full of comb. Some have bees in the cells; I'm not sure whether I need to take them out or not, but I can reuse the comb in the next hive. There are also 8 bars with partial comb.
The cells are consistently 5.4 mm across. Even though they had no foundation to work from (foundation gives them a preset cell size), they still used this size. Bees naturally build to 4.9 mm, but most have been trained to the larger size. This has been done to increase the honey yield. However, I just read that this attracts varroa mites, which is one of the current major problems. Apparently, varroa is from Asia and there they like to invade drone cells, which just happen to be 5.4 mm. Going to 5.4 mm for all cells attracts them to the wrong place. Don't mess with Mother Nature...
So why did these bees build to that size? I think it's because the original group of bees from Georgia were trained that way so the first comb was built to that size. Also, they may have a genetic predisposition to do it from selective breeding. Have to check on that. As new bees came into being, I guess they just kept doing the same thing. Other beekeepers solve that problem either by retraining their bees are by purchasing bees that have been retrained.
Whatever the size, somehow the bees build nearly perfect hexagons to exactly that size. I measured 10 cells and got exactly 5.4 mm. There are patches of larger cells, probably drones, that are 6.7 mm. Drones are bigger, so the cells are bigger.
I collected about as many bees as the first time and Rachel can take them as well. I separated the hive beetles to see how many there were - a fair amount but not overwhelming.
I've also taken the hive apart and cleaned it up. I plan to add an observation window and a way to feed them.

The cells at the top and right are larger than the other cells. The smaller cells were probably not used.