Hive beetle War strategies

As of today I have two excellent strong hives of honey bees left.  Besides being strong hives, they are gentle as can be and a pleasure to be around.  And that's something I want to continue.  Because once they get overrun with varroa and hive beetles that can change.

Secure base.  Nothing gets in except fresh air

Slides into base (lubricated with beeswax of course)

The first thing I did was completely caulk all new frames in the hives to allow no crevices where hive beetles can hang out.  Plus that saves the bees time and energy so they won't have to fill these areas with propolis.  Several members of the Pinellas beekeeping group had some innovative ideas how their hive bottoms and covers were modified to add ventilation and close off areas where hive beetles hide out.  The hive bottom boards were screened but under the screens they had trays that could hold either diatomaceous earth  OR oil.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages.  I decided to start off with the diatomaceous earth which is fatal to hive beetles ... especially their larvae.  Oil is a bit messy and you may end up with low spots due to the angle of the hives not being completely level.

sliding bottom board pan for oil or diatomaceous earth

fine mesh screen vent in the bottom board promotes cool bees

So now the bottom of the hive has closed off access to hive beetles while still retaining a fine screened ventilation slot.  Plus the pan of diatomaceous earth to catch hive beetles being pushed out by the bees.

Modified inner hive cover

Fine aluminum screen - Nothing gets in but fresh air from the cover

The top covers of the hives also have major modifications.  Besides extra venting, the bottom of the inner covers are completely screened with fine mesh to keep out any hive beetles (or other pests like wax moths, etc.).  They may get into the upper chamber but it's impossible for them to get in where the bees are.  And I think this will be a major help because above inner hive covers is where these nasty beetles love to hide out and plot their strategies to lay eggs in the brood chamber infecting the baby bee larvae.

The final method of hive beetle control is one I've mentioned in previous posts.  And that's adding an entrance reducer.  This gives the beetles a limited area to gain access to the hive.  With a couple hundred bees hanging out by the entrance keeping watch this really limits the options for hive beetles sneaking in.

Adding beeswax to honey super frames

I'm happy to report that the bee farm bees were ready for a honey super so some beeswax was melted in the slow cooker we got at a resale shop and then applied to medium frames.  I used a foam brush to apply the wax which was somewhat clumsy.  Need to refine this technique somewhat.  Also tried a mini roller which might work better.  A constant learning process for sure.  Fun fun fun

Honey Bee Sunday Garden Brunch

Today the bees were enjoying a nice Sunday brunch at the honey bee garden cafe behind their hive.  Plenty of sunflowers to pick from as well as gladiolas and other delicacies.  It looks pretty and there's something highly therapeutic about watching plants you grew from seeds transform into beautiful plants.

Beans !

New palm trees are doing well and the vegetable garden has it's share of wins as well as a few losses which are to be expected.  Beans are growing like a bean as they say.

The other advantage of the bee garden is it benefits butterflies and native bees as well as honey bees.  We can't forget about these important pollinators which are also very important to our environment.

Honey bee garden

bees on sunflowers

Honey bees enjoying sunflowers

honey bee garden

Moving a giant palm tree

In my typical attention deficit disorder (ADD) fashion, instead of doing all the things on my todo list I instead started thinking about how to dig up a large palm tree in our backyard that was growing into our giant oak tree.  Even though I knew it was too large for me, I kept thinking about how to engineer a method to dig it up.   After that I would consider options for moving it.

The one challenge involved with this task is the tree is about 8 feet in front of the bee hive in our backyard.  I had to use a pic axe and saws as well as construct a large wooden structure around the tree.  Fortunately these beautiful laid back bees paid me no attention and let me do whatever I wanted to without any guard bees chasing me off.  They are the best bees one could ask for.

So eventually I got the tree down and it was massive and even more intimidating after it was down.  I couldn't budge it at all it was so heavy.  Couldn't even pull on the top of it.  So now what ?????  After realizing this was way more than I could handle, I called someone to move it for us.  But it was $200.00 which in retrospect seems like a bargain.   After talking it over with the wife we decided to save our money and I would have to cut it up.  Not something I wanted to do.

That's about the time my brain became preoccupied with how I could move this tree.  After all, the ancient Egyptians moved giant stones with human power and built pyramids so why couldn't I employ some engineering techniques to move this 40 foot 1000 - 1500 pound palm tree?   Our son had a crazy plan that involved taking our rear fence down and dragging the tree out into the middle of a busy road and then chain hoisting it to a tree.  It would have involved shutting down a busy road and causing a traffic jam of people watching us wrestle with this massive tree on the side of the road.  He had to go out of town and told me to wait for him ....  I had to do something quick before he returned from his trip.

My plan kept formulating but I never thought I could complete the task.  My plan of attack was to move the tree a a few feet at a time and if it got too impossible I would get the chainsaw out and cut the tree up for trash day.

The first task was to get the palm tree out of the hole it was in.  A structure of 4x4 wood and 2x4's and a heavy duty metal crossbar held the chain hoist as the palm tree was hoisted up.  Several times the assembly snapped due to incorrectly sized screws and the structure collapsed.  The third try worked and the tree was hoisted out of the hole suspended by the chain hoist.  But now what ?

root ball dangling over the hole.... now what?

Two heavy duty ramps were placed over the hole and a large wagon was placed under the root ball and then the chain hoist lowered it onto the wagon.  The wagon's tires compressed completely due to the weight of the root ball and the wagon looked like it was going to roll over on it's side due to the hill it was on.  At this point I thought that this project was near impossible but we'll try to get it at least away from the hive so I can use a chainsaw to cut it up.  To lift the top part of the tree needed a floor jack to get it off the ground.   Then a large rolling home made floor cart was placed underneath so the top of the tree wouldn't drag in the dirt.  Chain hoist was used to advance the tree forward.  Fortunately there were always just enough places to attach the chain hoist.

Supported by wagon and cart

Supervised by Curious George from his perch on the giraffe

One step at a time.  If the wagon doesn't tip over on this hill we might be able to get it away from the hive.  And then we realize we made it to the first 90 degree turn.  Now this will be challenging.  Especially since you can't really turn the wagon as the axles and wheels are almost non functional.  And the front cart's wheels keep digging into the dirt.  But slowly and methodically we keep pulling this large tree forward and slowly use a chain hoist to turn the corner.  When we turned the corner I was in disbelief.  It seemed impossible, especially considering the length of the tree.  Now I was becoming more optimistic.  If we could squeeze down the narrow path and make it to the pavers we might even be able to get it to the next turn.

So on and on this went all day and we were drenched in sweat.  Eventually we made it to the front of the house but the biggest challenge remained.  How to get this monster to the bee farm.  A 40' tree in the back of a pickup is more redneck than I want to be.  A friend said that it was impossible to use a truck to move it and offered his trailer.  I have a massively cool crane that attaches to my hitch so if I used a trailer I would lose access to my hitch and crane.  Oh and the weight limit of the crane was around 700-800 pounds ... less than half of what I really needed.

Keeping Yvonne busy operating the hoist ....

A big advantage at this point was the wagon was no longer on the verge of tipping over on the uneven ground.  Now the wagon was level.   Fortunately we kept finding places to attach the chain hoist and dragging this monster to the front of the house actually worked.  The one big turn in front of the garage was challenging and I made sure I had plenty of chocks ready to deploy in case the weight and the wagon on the driveway's hill decided to make a run for it and roll out into the road.  The front of the palm was actually quite ready to start rolling and it took a lot to keep it from following the natural path of gravity.  The last step before nightfall was to see if we even could get this monster into the back of my truck and if so how ridiculous would this look.

Almost to the driveway ...

In the driveway - look at those poor tires

As I never thought we would make it this far, the newest challenge of loading a 40' palm tree into the bed of a pickup was overwhelming.  But I just kept telling myself that worst case scenario is we cut the palm up and chalk it up to an interesting day : )  Once I hooked up the crane and attached it to the root ball, I realize how heavy this thing was.  The crane was very very taxed and I worried about something snapping.  There was easily over a thousand pounds being lifted.  Possibly up to 1500 pounds I estimated by considering other things I've easily lifted with the crane. 

Up but not enough room to swing the palm straight

Once the palm was in the air I realized there was not enough room to swing the palm around straight.  This meant I had to pull the truck up about 2 feet.  The only problem was the crane's stabilizer was firmly on the pavement.  So I chanced dragging it several feet on the driveway and it worked with no problems.  Whew .... that was stressful while the heaviest part of the palm dangled over my tailgate which I unwisely forgot to remove before this complicated operation.   The final step was to swing the palm around and gently lay the root ball in the back of the truck bed.  No problem.  I also used a heavy steel piece I had to hold the palm up so it didn't touch the tailgate at all.

Safely in the bed of the truck. "Crazy" I think

And the obvious sets in.  This is way too long for a pickup truck.  But then again, this IS Florida where things like this are more common than you would think.   The plan was to wake up early on Sunday morning before any traffic was on the road.

Keeping it off the tailgate

Sunday morning was beautiful and we got going around 5:30am.  The end of the palm tree had green leaves which could be cut and save about 10 feet from our payload length.  But having green leaves will help the plant survive the shock of the move and that's not something I want to do.  Yvonne had a great idea to wrap the palm fronds in a plastic wrap I had and that would make the end more manageable and keep the leaves safe from hitting the road.  As long as the plastic is only on for a short period it will work.   So we wrapped it up and pulled the leaves toward the truck to shorten the load somewhat.  Securely strapping the palm down so it's not going anywhere took some time and then we were ready to roll.  Yvonne followed in her car and had her cell phone ready if the load shifted.  I'm sure if the palm wasn't securely fastened a bump in the road could have the palm standing straight up in the bed of my truck.  Or even worse, hitting the brakes it would stand straight up and then going over smashing the cab !  But the trip was uneventful since it was tied down secure.

Palm ready for a road trip

Once we got to the bee farm a large hole was dug after determining where to transplant it.  Now the trick was to get the root ball perfectly lined up in the hole.  Not at all an easy challenge.  But we got it pretty close and used the crane and truck to shift it just right.

After stabilizing the tree I realized I need to build a supporting structure or it would fall over in the first good wind.  Unfortunately my tools were at home so Yvonne went home to get what was needed.  I had the required lumber at the bee farm for this task.  Once we finished up the structure and the tree was planted I just sat back and couldn't believe we actually moved this from our back yard.  It's amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it.  A fun challenge and some interesting exercise was had by all.  Plus I proudly received my official "Redneck" membership badge today.

clap clap clap clap clap clap clap !!!!

Crazy crazy crazy ...

It's been so busy on the bee front that I just haven't had the heart to write about all that's going on.  Because it's one step forward and three back.   After much work and effort, a good portion of our bees are dead or vanished.  Plus being out of town for a week just didn't allow much time to blog.

To sum up the bee situation.  The hive at home in the backyard is very strong and everything is smooth.  They may even get a honey super next week.

The hives at the bee farm are in pretty bad shape. Only one out of five hives is strong and a survivor.  And one hive has about a 10% chance of making it.  The others are gone.  Varroa mites, hive beetles and wax moths really took their toll.  Pesticides is also a possibility for some of the problems.  AND a virus that may have been introduced by the varroa.

After doing battle with all these bee killing dilemmas, I have learned A LOT.  My next batch of bees will be better prepared to combat all these possible threats.  The bee yard has been resurfaced with crushed shell which will aid in fighting the hive beetle larvae hatching into attacking beetles.  Plus I'm working with another fairly new beekeeper and we're coming up with modifications to the hives that will take into consideration the Florida factor and how hive beetles enter the hive.  Hopefully this will limit the bee losses.  Around the country beekeepers are losing on average 60% of their bees annually.  So far this year in only a few months I've already lost 70% !!!  But I'm in this battle for the long run and will continue to perfect my beekeeping.

And the other reason I'm not blogging is it would be one disaster after another.  The gardening has been consecutive problems one after another.  The way I'm trying to face that is instead of looking at all the plants getting decimated by insects, critters and mold, I'm will positively focus on all the plants that are doing well and thriving.  And plenty of them are doing well.   But the bottom line is that whole thing is also going to have to be rethought.  I tried using natural tonics from Jerry Baker's books to create organic veggies.  Only problem is the tonics don't seem to work and even make things worse sometimes.  So I need to talk to some master gardeners and get some solid advice before the fall planting season.  This summer I'll just focus on ornamentals and work on irrigation and shading some areas.  And that's ok ... another learning process which is how most people learn before getting a beautiful perfect garden.  Just like the bees, it will be much better next year.

We've harvested some honey already.  Tonight we harvested 5 frames of honey on our new motorized extractor.  And it worked great.  The extractor is a good quality American made 6/9 frame extractor.  Quite an extravagance but as I said earlier, I'm in this for the long run.  The frames came from a hive that needed to have the honey super removed.  Their numbers were so decimated that they were spending most of their energy fending off robbers.  No foraging was going on and I'm pretty sure this hive will be done by the end of the month.  No queen, no brood, no foraging .... things look pretty grim.  If I can give them some brood and a queen they may have a chance but that's a longshot.

The magic swarm trap / magic oak tree are unfortunately no longer attracting swarms.  Because I could sure use some more bees around now.

Re-Orientation of the wayward bees

As dusk neared last night it looked like there would be around 500-1000 bees hanging out in the location of their original hive.  They thought this was still their home.

Bees will exit their hive and immediately go looking for nectar / pollen without first checking and looking around where they started from.  That is unless you place something in the path of the door that alerts them to the fact that something is different.  In my case I put a palm branch.   Yesterday in the pouring rain some bees got through without re-orientating to the new location.

The solution came to me in a brilliant brainstorm.  I built a one way trap out of a few parts I had laying around in my garage.  I used the bottom of the swarm trap vacuum that I built and strapped an inner hive cover with a one way entrance to that.  Inside all of that I placed a little lemon grass oil to make them mellow during the night.  And sure enough it worked like a champ.  As darkness approached, all the bees marched into the temporary home I made for them.  And they couldn't get out.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture - a screen was between hive and camera

This morning as it was getting light I grabbed the trap and moved it back to the new hive location and opened up the box.  At this point I've done all I can do and if they return to the original location they'll just have to figure it out on their own.  And that did happen.  I think many of them figured it out but there were a bunch of lost bees once again out front.  I was going to say something about girls and navigation / getting lost etc.  but I know I'd be getting in trouble from someone in mentioning that it's a pretty common trait for the fairer sex.   I'd be willing to bet there's probably no lost Drones in that group of lost Honey Bees out front.

Bees are driving me crazy !!!

After much agonizing, I decided that the hive in front of our house needs to move to the backyard.  Even though I had a wild hive there for years, the liability of keeping a bee hive in the front yard is too high.   Despite the fact that a wall of jungle separates the front of the house and the sidewalk/street.  And I love watching the bees from my easy chair.

Yesterday I built a new hive stand in the back yard and moved the bee hive in the front onto a wagon to be ready to move in the darkness of morning.  The new hive stand was completed and ready to go.

This morning while it was still dark I pulled the wagon to the back of the yard and installed the hive on the new hive stand.  Just in time because the heavy rains started shortly thereafter.  During the rainstorm I saw about 50-100 bees gathered and flying around where the hive used to stand.  One of my fears.  So to do what I could to ease the situation, I went out and placed a hive trap in that location so the wayward bees would have a place to duck in and get out of the rain.  Many of them took advantage of this refuge too.

Once the sun came out in the afternoon, I noticed the box out front had many bees buzzing around it and were going in and out of the box.  Not good.  So I suited up and dragged the box out to where the hive now sits and I opened up the box so the bees would be in their new digs.  Unfortunately an hour later, there is a ton of bees where their old hive was.  Clinging to the wall and clustering.   And I do not have a good feeling about this.

I'm guessing tonight will see a large swarm hanging out front by the wall.  Geez .... one lesson after another bam bam bam.  This can make a person crazy.

 

Finally some answers to the dying bees dilemma

It's been several weeks since I last posted because the dying bees dilemma has been quite time consuming and mentally draining.  The Bees kept dying and the initial diagnosis by the state inspector was only partially correct.  After the inspector came by the second strong hive ended up with a massive pile of dead bees in front of it.  And still .. bees walking around in circles on the ground very disoriented.

I called the state inspector and told him the problem was getting worse despite taking his advice to place feeders on the weaker hives and constrict all hive openings to make it easier for the bees to defend their hives from robbers and to make it harder for wax moths and hive beetles to gain access.

Despite these steps, the dying was actually intensifying. So a little more than a week after the initial inspection he came back out with another inspector to give it another look.  This time the inspection found the culprit. And it was grim. The hives were infested with varroa mites very bad and it caused a virus which they deduced caused the walking in circles on the ground.   In one weeks time, the hives were starting to look critical.  One of my weaker hives that looked very healthy last week was completely dead.  As we opened up that hive, two frames were covered in hive beetle larvae (looks like long magots).  Last week this hive had a lot of brood and honey.  Now nothing but hive beetle larvae and quite depressing.

My other two strong hives were border line.  One may make it and the other probably won't.  And finally my last feral hive I caught (swarm) was quite healthy still. 

The way they explained it to me was once the varroa mites weakened the bees and gave them the virus, the hive beetles and wax moths were able to get the upper hand and take over.  The hives were weakened which means a perfect target for robbers.  So it was a chain reaction.

What to do?  The next day I treated all my hives with powdered sugar.  I used an old 1940's flour sifter and filled it with powdered sugar.  Open up the hives and sprinkle several cups onto all the bees !  The net result is thousands of white ghost looking bees (not very happy I may add) all over the place.  The sugar gets on the bees and dislodges the mites which fall through the screened bottom of the hive.  The bees groom each other and in no time they're all clean as well as had a little snack of sugar.

I placed monitoring boards under the screened bottom to inspect after the sugar treatment.  And sure enough, the boards were filled with little red spec's of varroa mites as well as a good many hive beetles.  Until I figure out a more permanent solution for the mites the sugar treatments will be applied on a weekly basis for the next month. And the weaker hives will get feeders.

And after the inspectors checked out the bee farm hives I returned home to find my house hive fighting off honey robbers !  What a day.  The house hive also got a feeder and an entrance reducer.

It's been a heck of month so far.  Just part of the learning process.  So much to learn still.  Looks like I'll need to get the magic swarm trap out again.

The great bee war of 2015

Since I was due to be inspected by the state for my initial beekeeper registration process, they bumped me up the list so the inspector could take a look at the dying bees problem and help determine a cause.

And he did come up with a cause and not one that I would have thought possible.  The new swarm I brought in last week decided it wanted some of the honey that the strong hive next to it possessed.  And then the robbing began.  Robbing is a term beekeepers use as bees will often raid weaker colonies to rob honey if their need is great.  The dead bees in front of my strong hive were the bodies of the raiding party who didn't succeed in their plan.  The entire new swarm is dead and their hive is empty. 

Lesson learned:  After catching a new swarm, feed the bees with sugar water until they get some comb established.  I didn't feed them since there was so much blooming and the abundance of pollen and nectar. 

The state inspector taught me a lot and it was pleasure having him inspect my hives and sharing his bee wisdom. 

Dead bees everywhere

While visiting the bee farm yesterday I noticed a large dark spot in front of one of our strongest hive.  Unfortunately the dark spot was a pile of dead and dying bees.  And it spanned a good size area.  I immediately suited up and opened all the hives to look for anything that might have caused this disaster.  Nothing inside the hives gave me any clue as to what caused this tragedy.  The good news is the hive still was loaded with healthy bees.  The bad news was the next morning there was a fresh new batch of squirming bees in agony on the ground in front of the hive entrance.  It will probably be a couple days before we know how many will die.   

 

A couple new plants

After going into the hives yesterday, I then noticed all the milkweed plants were stripped bare by a bunch of hungry caterpillars.   What a day.

Butterfly Love

While gardening today I kept watch on the monarch butterflies which seem to be attracted to the bee garden.  As I mentioned before they seem to always be zipping through the heavy flight path of the bees by the hive entrances, even getting occasionally banged into by bees while flying through their congested traffic pattern.  Several theories have played out in my head why they do this and my number one theory was because I thought they love the heavenly smell of honey that emanates from the hives.  But today the real reason for this mischievous behavior was discovered.

Another butterfly phenomenon that was observed is how two are always zipping around together to where it looks like one may be chasing another.  Which indeed was the case.  While taking a break this morning and wondering what they were doing it all became crystal clear in a moment.  That's when I noticed two butterflies locked in capitulating bliss in the butterfly garden.  I never really considered where baby butterflies came from but now it's abundantly clear.  It explains the buzzing of the bee hives by the butterfly.  Of course it's the guy butterfly showing off in front of his girlfriend.  He's probably shouting in butterfly "Hey check this out ... I ain't afraid of them steenken bees" as he swoops through in front of five very active beehives.  And apparently it worked because they finally did hook up in the end.

I took a video of the two butterflies in the heat of the moment but decided not to post it as we're a PG-13 blog and posting x rated butterfly video just didn't seem right.  So you can just let your imagination run wild ....