Category: Bee Keeping Journal

3 Campus Hives; Officer Ed, Woody’s Pond and Berm are still viable and strong.

5 Niagara Way Hives are still viable and strong.

Three more colonies at the campus have collapsed. The last commercial colony that was previously doing so well has died off. And two of the smaller 5 frame NUC colonies have perished at the campus.

Additionally, the 10 frame colony that was installed at the neighboorhood foster home died off. This colony was packed full of honey but simply did not have enough bees to survive the winter.

The small 5 frame NUC that was installed at the Barrett location, surprisingly has a viable working colony. This colony was moved indoors for the terribly stretch of below zero temperatures and high winds that are expected in the next week. The remaining 5 frame NUC at the campus was also moved indoors. Two other small colonies were moved indoors as well. We will need to feed them with honey frames from failed colony supplies.

11 Hives with Queens.

Niagara hives were inspected during a mild winter day. Any hives that were opened were opened quickly and only to add sugar. Bees were out foraging for a small period of time at the sugar water feeder. One Colony collapsed and died off.

The colony that dies off seemed to simply not have enough bees to keep the colony warm. For next season we need to prepare the colonies better with fall feeding regiments with both sugar and pollen.

12 Hives with Queens

Four more hives have died off. Two out of the three commercial hives have died off. It seems that all the hives which were exposed to any sort of poisoning have not recovered. While they had queens, the queens may have not been viable. The Woody’s pond hive is doing extremely well. I supplied all hives with more sugar.

I was called out to the back property behind the campus. Anecdotal evidence calimed that there was a hive located somewhere in a pile of logs. Tree clearing personal would not move the logs because of the swarm of bees. I spent two days looking but could not find any signs of the bee colony. Either the Colony left or maybe they were never bees.

16 Hives with Queens.

One of the Nuc hives collapsed. Not sure what happened. The numbers of dead bees is significant. The entire hive just seemed to die. Loads of honey was present and sugar supplements. Added sugar to tops of hives as needed.

17 Hives With Queens.

Hives are looking good with marginal numbers going into Winter.

The campus hives do not show any further die off from external pesticides. The entrances look good. The honey super was added back to the Woody’s pond hive.

The Niagara Street starter colonies were given a new hive stand. The smallest hive was given a brood frame from the other Warre hive box.

All campus hives were visually inspected. The previous commercial hive which suffered a poisoning last week was inspected. There is no further dead bee accumulation at entrance. An inspection reveals a healthy queen with eggs, larva and brood present. The hive activity looks normal and the numbers look good. This colony was given sugar water.

The wild17 swarm genetics hive was pronounced dead. When I approached the hive it was immediately obvious that the hive was being robbed out with huge numbers of bees. The traffic at the entrance was astonishing. The activity inside the hive was all robbing and was completely disorganized.

This colony simply did not survive the poisoning. I believe that the queen stopped laying and there were not enough workers to keep the hive going. Through out the recovery process, I never saw any new eggs being layed except for the odd couple in various locations. Not only did the colony suffer a huge loss in bee population, I also think the queen was damaged from the pesticide exposure and stopped laying.

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Even after removing the hive, for the next hour bees were still arriving back to rob out the absent box. I closed down all the entrances on the adjoining hives and all other hives as well. We are well into a dearth and the hives are starting to rob each other. I moved this box and the fully drawn frames back to the Niagara street house. I moved one of my smaller 3 frame starter colonies into this hive body.

The campus hive located at Woody’s pond was inspected. The honey super is full and was removed. The entire super was extracted. The colony is very strong and should recover in quick time. The super will be added back in a few days.

A portion of the Niagara Street hives were harvested. A total of 3 Waree boxes were harvested from the hives. The frames will be spun. The numbers in both of the hives look excellent.