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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Chris and Lisa Laudeman <chrisandlisa AT laudeman.com>
  • To: Meredith Friedrick <friema16 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Newbee questions
  • Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 11:12:36 -0400

Hi Meredith,

I expect you saw Randall's response to your note. As always, he has very good information well presented. He's a great resource (Thanks Randall!).

I would just echo his sentiments: You're learning. Look as often as you would like. You won't kill 100 bees, but if you did, that's not too many when you have 30,000 or 40,000 more. If you want to look "minimally" you can go right for the brood frames and look for eggs/larvae. That's another thing to learn to spot, i.e. where the brood cluster is. That's also where you're more likely to find the queen. Bright sunlight helps with seeing eggs. I also need my reading glasses. If you find larvae in the earliest days of development, open cells nearby usually have eggs present. You can then check a couple of frames for honey and pollen stores. All the while looking for things like deformed wings or odd brood patterns.

I regularly observe entrance activity. You eventually get a good feel for how much traffic you should see in addition to behaviors like Randall mentioned. You'll usually see bees tussling in little groups if there are robbers. When foragers are bringing in pollen, you can be sure that those ones are not robbing, and the pollen is needed for rearing brood. So, it's reassuring to see lot's of pollen foragers coming in. You can (maybe should) regularly check the weight of the hive. Just gently lift the back. Eventually you get a feel for how heavy or relatively heavy the hive is. Then one day in late summer or mid-winter, you lift the hive and notice how very light it is.

It sounds like your hive is doing fine.

I'd be happy to come up and have a peek with you. Send a note back to me, and we can see what the weather and our schedules look like and figure something out.

Take care,

Chris

On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Meredith Friedrick <friema16 AT gmail.com> wrote:
I have my first hive (installed on April 16) and things seem to be going very well.

I successfully moved the hive about 200 yards about 3 weeks ago and it doesn't seem to have hurt the number of bees at all.

To preface my questions, I want to share that my goal is to increase bee populations in whatever way I can.  I'm not that interested in having lots of honey for personal consumption or sale (although I would love to taste some from my own hive). 

History -- The last time I checked the frames (one week ago), they had filled out foundations on 6 of 9 frames with heavy bee concentrations on both sides of the frames.  I moved the exterior (empty) frames into the center and the interior frames to the exterior in order to encourage them to fill out the empty frames.  I also have a medium super on top in case they run out of room in the bottom deep.

My questions are as follows:

1.  In bee school, I was told to open the hive "minimally" because each time you do, you kill 100+ bees.  What is "minimally"?  How often should I look inside the hive, given my goal?

2.  I was also told yesterday that I need to actually see the eggs in order to verify that I have a good queen. I haven't been able to do that because of lack of contrast between eggs and my new foundation.  I have lots of capped brood and tons of bees.  Is this something I need to get someone else to come look at? I looked for the queen the last time and didn't readily find her, but given the increase in bee numbers from the previous entries, I thought that she was there. I have seen her on previous inspections.

3.  Generally, what observations can I make from the exterior in order to know that my hive is doing well?

Thanks,
Meredith Friedrick



 

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