Pollinators, Pollen, Protein and Productivity!

It is April 30  and the brown, drab, lifeless landscape of late winter and early spring has transformed into a breathtaking wonder! Trees adorned in white, pink and purple demand to be noticed. The countless shades of green, the plants that grow inches overnight, the smell of lilacs, and the melodious buzzing of the bees never cease to amaze me.
The overwintered colony whose cluster was only 3 to 4 frames months ago is now bursting at the seems of its two deep hive bodies. I dare say, swarming is close at hand. I have started the OTS, On The Spot queen rearing system by removing the queens from some of my larger hives and making an artificial swarm with each.  This ensures, they can't swarm on me.  I notched the remaining brood frames in each hive and will check 7 to 10 days later for queen cells and then make splits.  I hope to get pictures of this process for the next blog.  For now, enjoy these pictures.

This forager is bringing back red pollen. I've been told it is from the purple dead nettle, picture below.

Purple Dead Nettle, suspected source of the red pollen pictured above.

Hives near the Purple Dead Nettle.  However I couldn't find a honeybee on these a the time.

Honeybee on Willow.

Bumblebee on Maple bloom

Native bee on crab apple blossom

Honeybee on crab apple blossom

Honeybee coming in for a landing on crab apple blossom

Honeybee forager with large load of pollen, crab apple blossom.

Bumblebee on Bleeding Heart bloom.

Bumblebee on Quince bloom.

Honeybee on unknown flower

Honeybees on freshly drawn comb.  Forgot to put the queen excluder on this hive and they built this above the frames.

New wax with eggs laid in each cell. Honeybees tending to larva.

Moving and relocating Honeybees in Michigan

"Out of sight out of mind" is a saying that many old time beekeepers repeat.  They know and have had the displeasure of moving colonies due to complaints about their bees. If no one can see your hives, the less likely they are to complain or request them to be moved.
The twelve hives I had to move today were not out of sight.  Their new locations will be.  I wanted to get the bees moved and settled in their new home before I pull the overwintered queens which happens in late April.
This time of year, one can't just pack up the hive and move it whenever one feels like it.  The temperatures really need to be above fifty degrees. If it's too cold, the bees are in cluster.  If bees are knocked off the cluster during the move and it is too cold for them to get back in cluster, the brood and or bees could be chilled.  After keeping them alive through a Michigan winter, I really don't want to off them in a move.  In Michigan, the weather is a pain in the butt!!  I needed at least two days over fifty with no rain.  Watching the forecast, I decided this weekend might work. Today was fifty-five and tomorrow should be over sixty.
This morning's temp was only thirty-three degrees, brrrr!  I went out in the morning and closed off all their entrances with hardware cloth (#8) and my husband secured each hive tight with metal banding.   By the time noon rolled around, it had hit fifty.  We loaded them up with a two wheel dolly on to the trailer.
Once we arrived at their temporary hold over spot five miles away, I opened up the entrances.  They were ready to be OUT!  After they have oriented there, I will move them back here and place them in their new locations. Hopefully, that will be tomorrow evening.

These bees escaped the screen somehow, a few more staples needed!

Honeybees not pleased to be caged in before the move.

The two wheel dolly was very helpful, needs some modifications though.  Larger tires and a longer base would be great.

All loaded in the trailer, now need to be secured.

Thanks Wayne for making sure we are all secure with tie down straps :-)

At temporary location 5 miles away.  Honeybees very eager to fly after being confined for a few hours.

Honeybees reorientating to their new location. Will stay on trailer until final move days from now.

March in Michigan-A Month of Extremes for Honeybees

We are now almost half way through March. Dreams and hopes of a gradual, even tempered spring warm up have been dashed by falling snow.  I awoke this morning  at 0530 to what I hoped was the bright reflection of the moon across the landscape.  I squinted my eyes and looked closer.  Nope, no reflection of the moon, just two inches of white snow. Just a week ago my bees had been buzzing in and out of my crocuses, gathering pollen.  Now their bottom entrances are covered with snow and no smart honeybee would even peep her head out of the small top entrance. The same top entrance that just days ago they were flying through with pollen loads on their hind legs. 
Temperatures have fallen into the teens the last few nights with day time temps in the mid-twenties.  Nothing to do now, but wait.  Wait for a day above freezing to check their food stores again.

So much for an early spring. Snow fall overnight, March 13, 2017.

March 7, 2017. Honeybees on Crocus

Rearview, honeybee on Crocus. March 7, 2017

Working hard on a windy day to gather some pollen. Honeybee on Crocus, March 7, 2017.

An older type of Crocus protects the bees from the wind while they are down in the flower. Honeybees in Crocus, March 7, 2017.

Honeybees in Crocus bloom, March 7, 2017. West MI.

Honeybees bringing in pollen in February in Michigan!

Record temperatures in West Michigan this week have honeybees bringing in pollen like it was a summer morning! With temps hovering in the sixties and then breaking seventy with sunshine yesterday, the Silver Maples could not hold back.  They burst forth in bloom.  Skunk cabbage and Willow may also be blooming.  The bees were bringing in a variety of pollen until sunset.  Pollen means brood rearing and the bees will have to keep that brood warm.  More brood puts a higher demand on the colony. A demand I hope they can keep up with in the coming months.  A true Michigander knows we have not seen the last of snow even if he/she won't admit it. Hang in there Honeybees! I am checking my colonies regularly to make sure they have enough stores. If they are low, I am replacing with sugar bricks or frames of honey I saved from last fall.

Silver Maple bloom, February 22, 2017. Honeybees working these flowers, too high up for me to get a good shot of them.

Incoming with pollen loads, February 22, 2017.

Lost loads of pollen I gathered from "front porch" where the bees land. February 22, 2017. West Michigan. The yellow pollen may be Skunk Cabbage or willow. Tan to grayish green may be Silver Maple.

Unbelievable! First Crocus bloom on February 22, 2017.

INCOMING!! Twas like a summer day!! Silver Maple flow I guess :-) February 22, 2017.

Having trouble with pollen load staying in corbicula "pollen basket" I opened up entrance more after seeing what they were losing while flying in.  February 22, 2017, West MI.

Sweet Honeybee landed on my finger.  This was actually taken February 17, 2017.  I don't believe this was true pollen. We live near a lot of farms and the bees will gather what they can from animal feed and bird feeders if no real pollen is available.

Spying on Honeybees during a Michigan Winter.

My husband has tools, lots and lots of tools.  The Snap On tool guy loves my husband.  I never really took an interest in the tools until my husband told me that he owned a Bore Scope, a long flexible tube with a small lighted camera on the end.  He says to me, "Ya know you could stick that in the top-hole of your hives and look at your bees."  Of course I could.  He also recently brought home, on loan for a jar of honey, a thermal imager.  I played with the thermal imager first.  Because of the wraps on my hives it is harder to see where the cluster is, however it would show heat coming from the top entrance hole.  Heat from a live cluster of honeybees.  I tried it on a friends hives who had no wrap on his hives and it was much easier to identify where the cluster was.  The thermal imager was exciting, but the Bore Scope was thrilling.  Thrilling enough to get me out poking it through the top entrance holes of my hives in nine degree weather with a windchill below zero.  Gotta love Michigan! 
Between the imager and the Bore Scope, I think I can confidently say with ninety-five percent certainty that a large majority of my hives are alive!!  That is much better than last year at this time, they had all met their demise except for two sick stragglers who died a couple months later.  I took a couple of pictures of the screen of the Bore Scope, I took video too of the bees but have not yet figured out how to get them to play on this blog!  The Scope was very helpful to see which hives had enough sugar brick and who could use some more very soon. You could get it down in between frames and see how much honey was left on the sides of the cluster.  A couple hives that I thought were down in the bottom box had moved up to the top box.  All useful information this time of year.  If we get a little warmer weather soon, I will be able to give bricks to those who need it without popping tops of those who have enough yet.  Saves me time and energy.  Energy I need to get through this Michigan winter!

Honeybees on top of their sugar brick inside the hive. Viewed on the screen while end of bore scope is in the hive.

Honeybees in Michigan winter staying cozy in their hive.  Seen through the tiny bore scope camera stuck in through the top entrance hole of the hive.

Baby it's cold outside!!! Nine degrees, below zero wind chill. Nine out of eleven hives in this yard alive :-)

Bore Scope came in handy to peek inside the hive without having to disturb them or pop covers off.  Able to check food stores and where the honeybees are at.

Michigan Overwintering Honeybees

It is December 11, and Old Man Winter has finally hit West Michigan. My hive tops are laden with 8 inches of snow cover.   As I stand basking in the warm light and heat of my kitchen baking cookies, I look out at the hives adorned in their black cloak of tar paper and I smile. The thought of them all clustered together to maintain life and keep their queen at a balmy 90 degrees is nothing short of miraculous.  God, our and the honeybees creator, is to be praised!!  Such detail, intricacy and wisdom!!  To walk out into a snow filled apiary and place your ear up against the cold hive box and hear the low hum of bees vibrating their wings muscles collaboratively to maintain heat and life is amazing!!  I took a few winter pics of some of my hives and a fellow beekeepers. Enjoy.

Quickly peeked in on this cluster Dec 4, 2016.

Honeybees on sugar brick. December, 2016

December 11, 2016.  Yes, hundreds of thousands of Honeybees alive in those boxes! I can hardly stand to be outside in the whipping wind and snow.  The Honeybees are clustered down, maintaining the required temperature for survival and consuming the honey they had stored over the summer.  These hives have a barn for a wonderful  windbreak.

The snow actually helps insulate, but you need to make sure you have ventilation, somewhere for that warm air rising from the cluster to go so it doesn't condense on the underside of top cover and drip back down on the bees.  Honeybees can do cold, they can't do WET!

Can't get enough of awesome apiaries! Just to know there is life in those boxes in the dead of winter gives me hope for spring!

Goodbye Summer, Goodbye Nectar Flow, Hello Fall

This summer was a whirlwind of honeybee activity.  I started late spring with ten nucs.  Seven nucs were given to me by a generous beekeeper. Two others I worked for by assisting another beekeeper to make splits and one was the swarm I hived on that cold June morning.  How did it get to be almost the end of October?  Well since June,  I worked with and split the ten into thirty-three hives using the OTS queen rearing method by Mel Disselkoen.  I sold two,  and am forging into the fall with thirty-one hives.  I did not even take a lick of honey from the bees this year!  I focused mainly on making more bees.  Now the focus turns to keeping them alive for the winter.
Because of last winters losses and the probable varroa mite infestation, I did mite counts this summer.  If the mite count was high, above threshold, greater than two mites per 100 bees, I treated.  I used the oxalic dribble (medium strength) per guidelines on Scientific Beekeeping website. I did the dribble while there was no capped brood in the hive, that window where all the brood from the old queen  had emerged and the new queen had not started laying or was just beginning to lay.  Treating during this window of time means there are no mites hiding beneath the capping and all mites should be phoretic, hitchhiking on the bees in the hive.  So all the mites in the hive are exposed to the oxalic acid.
I didn't want to treat, but I do not wish to lose my bees again either.   The brood breaks are an excellent way to knock back varroa and keep there numbers to a manageable level, BUT even if your bees are "clean," drones carrying varroa mites from any hives in your surrounding areas can enter your hives uncontested and re-infest your hives.  Many beekeepers have done mite counts in July and August and find them to be below threshold and then suddenly in September their hives are inundated with mites.  Beekeepers call this a Varroa Bomb.  Getting nailed with drones infested by Varroa or your strong hive robs a neighboring weak hive that is full of Varroa and your bees unknowingly carry Varroa back to your "clean" hive.  It is a sad state of affairs and one must remain vigilant.
This summer was so busy with the bees, my son's graduation open house and a trip out west, I didn't get many "in the hive" pictures but I did manage to catch them foraging here and there.   Enjoy the images of summer 2016.

Honeybee on Anise Hyssop

Honeybees water color at hive entrance

Honeybee on Lemon Queen sunflower

Home Apiary with splits

Honeybee on Basswood bloom.  Right in my own back yard! The smell of this tree in bloom is intoxicating.  Love standing underneath it and listening to the happy hum of busy bees!

Honeybee alighting onto Basswood bloom.

Honeybee on Sunflower bloom

Honeybee on Buckwheat bloom

Honey bee gathering nectar from Buckwheat bloom

Buckwheat blooming in my backyard.

Honeybees on top of frame

Honeybee on Anemone bloom

Honeybee on Japanese Anemone bloom

Honeybee on Anise Hyssop bloom.  See the pollen she has started gathering in her "pollen basket" on her leg?

Honeybees on Japanese Anemone bloom

Honeybee on Zinnia bloom