But if I video it, then I have to edit it, and render it. But first I would have to learn how. So it's probably not gonna happen as such, but I do have a camcorder, maybe I will do some video shorts in summer when they're putting on a show.
Anyhooo. I went up there today to see who survived the winter.
If anybody has survived, I have to find the queen, I took out the queen excluders last thing last year so they can move freely to the food I gave them, but now the queen needs retrapping into the brood box.
Also, I have to feed them to give them a boost, I remember how the National Hive was weak all year because I was too derp to feed them when I got them. I've bought some pollen substitute because pollen is what they feed to the newborns.
The National Hive (Last years weak hive) had some activity at the hive front but very little.
The WBC has this action going on
Ok, so I've seen this before, where the hive slider has been thrown out, in fact I've seen it twice. Whatever does it, does not just move it a bit, it moves the entire slider out and onto the floor. The only clue I have as to what is doing it is last year when the slider had been replaced with leave and other rammel. We'll come back to this though.
The bees are plentiful and active in the WBC, being the strong hive, I expected this.
Right, so I'm looking for queens and as I remember it, this job is going to suck a lot. They're not easy to spot and you can't prove it's not on the frame you just looked at, just because you didn't see it.
I make an unusual decision to start with the National Hive, I have a plan to cut some corners if this job is a nightmare, and I would rather cut them on the WBC because it's so hard to work with. Also the bits I need to cut the corners, I only have for the WBC hive, I couldn't cut them with the National, because I have no spare parts.
It's a bit difficult to explain, but if I couldn't find the queen I was going to put a spare lid in between the broodbox and the honey super with a bee valve in it, hopefully over the week or two the bees would wander downwards and not be able to get back up at all, thus putting the queen back in the brood box with no effort to me. As it turns out, this corner didn't need cutting. But I'd already worked out this as plan b.
So I opened up the National.
Ok, the bucket I left up there has spilled. This surprised me, it's never done that before, I guess freezing and thawing causes this. There is no book that told me to leave that bucket there, it was my idea, and it turns out the have sucked a bit. Well, ok, lesson learned. I'm hoping the bees clean this mess up for me.
In the National Honey Super, there is this stuff.
This is what honey would look like if they made any. Personally I believe this is sugar water, treated by the bees and capped as though it were honey. There are very few bees in the super and most importantly NO BROOD. If there is no brood, then there is no queen there. And if she's not there, she's in the brood box where I want her, so plan C is forming in my head. No need to find the queen, find the brood, you know where the queen is.
There is few bees in the honey super, so I lift that away and this here is the brood box. Now this is odd, because this was the weak hive, yet it's occupancy is about the same as it was at the end fo the year. I was expecting sorely reduced numbers here, in fact I am surprised the hive even survived the winter at all.
Based on what I see before me, a busy brood box, and a quiet honey super, the queen is most likely in the broodbox anyway, so I've put the queen excluder in place. A new queen exlcuder actually instead of the flimsy green plastic crap you may remember from last year. Plan C will back fire if the queen went up to the supers in the last few minutes, but I will find out at the next inspection if the super is suddenly full of brood.
So I put the national hive back together and move onto the WBC. With my Plan C new and approved, I'm a bit more happy about the WBC, it's such a pain, but plan C is soooo easy. "Find the evidence of the queen, not the queen herself, I'm so fucking clever."
Well here is your answer, this is how much they eat over a couple of months. Not much.
But they do eat the plastic. In fact at the back you can see holes in the fondant, they've walked round the back, eaten through the plastic to get at the fondant at the back, rather than take it all from the front exclusively. Not everything bees do makes sense or seems logical or clever.
Right so anyway, about that door slider and leaves stuffed into the hive front. Once the lid was off the WBC I could see leaves inside the outer skin, suddenly I know what has happened, mice. I took off all the outer skin and the whole nest fell out, and here is the WBC hive, all naked and shit.
The mice are long gone, but evidence of them is all over.
The nesting is all over the floor there, but you can see where they have been gnawing at the hive case. Bastards. I knew mice were considered a problem, but I really did not think they could remove the sliders like that. Well, next year they won't I assure you. Unless they can use a claw hammer to pull out nails.
Now I know I've had mice I have to remove all the supers and brood box to get out any shit, literally, they might have left behind.
This lump of comb fell out and worried me. Mainly because it's huge. Also in this picture (I didn't notice at the time) you can see a stain to the left of it where something has dribbled down and out the front of the hive.
This is quite good, the hive is supposed to be angled forward for this very purpose, to evacuate any spills rather than having them pool and festering.
So I clean things up a bit, and I put the brood box back where it's supposed to be and start thinking about finding evidence of the queen. I notice something odd.
By now you, being the smart one, will have noticed I have pointed out a dead spider to try to trick you into thinking that's the odd thing, but you're too good at this, you've spotted it too, where are all the bees man?
This is supposed to be the strong hive, yet the bees are only occupying 7 framesides. That's about as bad the National was doing last year, and half what the National is doing today. So now I'm getting worried. Have we lost the queen over winter? Suddenly I forget plan C, I'm back to plan A, got to find the queen. It occurs to me at this point that we've never actually seen the queen from the WBC hive at all, ever.
Well, today is that day. So I start pulling out frames and inspecting them, one by one.
the fuck is this?
the fuck is that?Those fucking mice have been busy little bastards. That dribble we saw on the hive base... here's where it's from, gnawed comb.
They even gnawed through the tension wires.
Bastards I know, but you're smart cookies, I know what you're thinking. "Gav! Check that out, fresh brood! Plan C is working again!" and you're right, particularly on the second mouse damage picture there you can clearly see new workers emerging, and capped larvae. So there must be an active queen, I don't need to find her, finding evidence of her is enough. You can even see the bright yellow pollen the mice have damaged. Pollen means young, they need it mainly for their young, so where there is pollen, there is a need for pollen, there must be young, there must be a queen.
Plan C, I love you!
Here's a nice frame, a little bit of mouse damage in the lower corner, but a fair amount of new bees emerging.
Staring at them does you no good btw, they're stoney still and don't do anything. They appear to be dead to the naked eye, but they'll be fine, I remember worrying about this last year.
Here's a close up of that delicious pollen they store in the brood box. It's kind of funny they store 99% of the honey at the top of the hive and 99% of the pollen at the bottom, but I guess that's how they roll. The young are at the bottom, the pollen is for the young, only a fool would store the pollen at the top.
Now I remember last year and the main lesson was not feeding the bees made them weak, so this spring I was top ready for over feeding them to boost them along.
Now in the honey super in the national you saw capped sugarwater and/or honey, whatever it is. And there is twice as much of it in the WBC hive as the national, because the wbc has two super boxes instead of the nationals one. (Which you may remember was because the wbc was doing well last year I thought they would fill 2 boxes of honey and the national I thought would fill just one, in the end, they filled none) so the bees are not wanting of honey/sugar. They've got loads. But they do need pollen. I saw one bee come back to the wbc with pollen. And I didn't have the camera, I waited a while, but no others came, so I got no photo of it. But I did bring my own pollen.
Yes, that's right you can buy pollen substitute. Turns out pollen is nothing special either, it's just proteins, you make it yourself. Or buy it.
Here it is on the WBC in place of the ambrosia fondant (which is now in the bin).
The National Hive were on it instantly, the WBC will find it eventually. They have higher to climb to find it, and half the bees to find it with.
I'm a bit concerned for the WBC hive. How did they get so weakened? Is it normal for a winter? Is it the mice that did it? And since they are so weakened, how did they do this?
That's uncapped honey. So it must be brand spanking new honey not yet dried. How did they manage to get all together? And from where?
It's quite a puzzle. We're looking forward to a spring harvest, but we're wondering how to go about it, they have a lot of sugar and/or honey and particularly in the WBC, it's difficult to tell which it is. In the national it's all pretty colourless and very likely sugarwater, but the WBC it's more yellowy. We're actually considering harvesting the WBC "honey" to see what we've got. Remember last year, they did make honey, just not enough to be worth harvesting. Add to that whatever they have been upto already this year, we might actually be harvesting honey in a couple of weeks. Does not make sense for a February harvest.
Personally I think we fed them way too much and it's all sugar water, but Fledge is all doughy eyed and looking forward to honey and I don't know enough about it to shatter her dreams. We should drag it out and see what it is.
