What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

[Terri Yaki]

I'm just observing for now and waiting for the clock to tic the time for my next intrusive look inside the colonies. I'm a little concerned because it looks to me like my primary hive is seeing a lot less activity than it had been and I'm worried that they might have swarmed for some reason.

My next decision is going to depend on what I see in the nuc that I created with a queen cell. Sunday or Monday will be time to cut bait if there is no queen and/or no eggs and I'll need to know ahead of time what I'm going to do with them. Do I put them back where they came from or do I add them to my swarm hive? I'd like to add them to the swarm hive because they could use the boost and they are currently living in a single deep. It would be so easy to lay down some paper and add another deep on top.

[The15thMember]

I think you can do whatever you want with the nuc.  Combining them with either their parent hive or the swarm should be simple, especially if they have no queen and no brood, what we call "hopelessly queenless".  Bees in that situation are very amenable to being combined.  Alternatively, you could also give them a frame of eggs and see if they can get a queen mated before winter and overwinter the nuc, but it's getting later and later in the season, and I don't know at what point your drones will be gone.

[Terri Yaki]

I could find out on drones. I'll check with my mentor and see what he thinks. I am concerned about having a small nuc like that going into winter.

[Terri Yaki]

My club has queen cells available for $10 this weekend, would that be a good idea?

[The15thMember]

My club has queen cells available for $10 this weekend, would that be a good idea?

For the nuc?  If you want to try to overwinter it, sure.  I don't know anything about overwintering nucs, but I know it can be done.  Are they local queens?  If so, even better.   

[The15thMember]

I checked 3 hives' supers today to be sure they had room for sourwood.  The one colony looked fine, but had a few beetles running around, so I put a Swiffer square in there.  The second colony had 3 full supers, but only 3 frames capped that I wanted to take, so I put those above the escape board and gave them 3 blanks.  I thought about giving them another box, but I think I'll just keep an eye on things and rotate frames in and out instead of having a 7th box.  The third colony had only one full super, so I checkerboarded and gave them another box.   

[Terri Yaki]

I've heard of using swifters for SHB, how do they work? I haven't seen any in my hives yet but I believe I caught a couple roaming in the wild. They might be in there and I'm just not seeing them. That happens a lot with me. And the queens are raised by one of our club members. She sent the email out twice so I'd guess that she has more than she can sell. She claims that they're mite resistant and all but I'm not quick to buy into that feature.

[The15thMember]

And the queens are raised by one of our club members. She sent the email out twice so I'd guess that she has more than she can sell. She claims that they're mite resistant and all but I'm not quick to buy into that feature.

Well if they are mite resistant, $10 is a great deal.  That sort of thing is highly variable though from what I've heard.  Honestly $10 for a local queen sounds like a great deal to me regardless, although I've never purchased a queen, so I don't really know. 

I've heard of using swifters for SHB, how do they work? I haven't seen any in my hives yet but I believe I caught a couple roaming in the wild. They might be in there and I'm just not seeing them. That happens a lot with me.

I've never seen one outside of a hive (except like in stored wax or something like that), so if by "in the wild" you mean like somewhere else in your yard, I'd kind of doubt it.  They don't tend to be just hanging around visible in the environment in my experience.  For the Swiffers, I buy the cheap generic brand and cut one sheet into 4 squares.  Then I'll take one of those squares and place it between 2 boxes with the sheet between the box edges so the bees can't remove it.  I just put one in today, but if I'm seeing a lot of beetles sometimes I do 2 or 3 scattered around the hive stack.  The bees tend to rough up the fibers as they try to remove them, and the beetles' feet get caught in them.  The trouble is the bees sometimes get stuck in them too.  As long as I'm catching more beetles than bees though, I think it's worth it.         

[max2]

I have just over 70  x 5frame nuc boxes ready now. All the frames are assembled and ready to have the foundation inserted, just in time.
I still use 22mm Hoop Pine with Weathertex lids and bottoms. They are more expensive to make but will last  for many years.

I may  fill most of these if the orders keep coming.
With Varroa not far off, I'm not game to make any predictions  at this stage .

Looking at the hives from the outside, Spring could be good for us. Never trust the weather too far ahead.

[Terri Yaki]

I found two in the vicinity of the hives. One was on the outside of it crawling up it and another was on the concrete wall that the hives sit on. I'm not a biologist (though I do know what a woman is ) so I can't say that they were SHBs but there were some sort of beetle a little bigger than a pinhead.

[The15thMember]

I wouldn't be surprised to see one in those situations, but SHBs are much larger than a pinhead.  They are more like the size of the eraser on the back of a pencil. 

[Terri Yaki]

That sounds more like a medium sized hive beetle.

[The15thMember]

   There are large hive beetles too, they just aren't invasive apparently, because they don't seem to have made it out of Africa like the small hive beetle did.  Something about this picture terrifies me.  It's like those old 50's movies where a giant insect attacks New York or whatever, it's just the bee hive is New York and the bees are the people. 

[Lesgold]

Everything is bigger in America 😁😁😁

[The15thMember]

Look who was in my apiary today!

[Terri Yaki]

Awww, it's still so small. Any idea how old it is?

[The15thMember]

Not very old.  We heard a baby deer crying sometime last week, and we've been seeing a doe around, so we're wondering if maybe she is only a week old or so.  She was small enough to fit through our woven wire perimeter fence.       

[Terri Yaki]

I'm surprised they weren't born earlier but I am not familiar with their gestation period. We must have one in the wooded area here too because mama's been hanging around for a couple of weeks. They don't bear them there, they bear them across the street then move up here when they are able.

[Ben Framed]

Had one on our yard a few days ago also Reagan.

[The15thMember]

I'm surprised they weren't born earlier but I am not familiar with their gestation period.

According to our state wildlife commission, June fawns are common in my area.  Fawning season for our state is late April through June on average, with mountain does being later than the rest of the state typically.