The micro-apiary is now buttoned up for the winter. I think my bees are smart enough to know where “home” is – but sometimes you need to be obvious when you are dealing with user experience.
Though the regular entrances are on the bottom (landing pad), they can easily become blocked by snow (and dead bees). And, as the bees eat their way up the structure over the course of the winter, it is essential to have and upper entrance available to them. Those are the ones you see circled in spray paint.
FYI – the one on the right has two entrances, as it is two “Nucs” wrapped together to keep each other cozy.
The material used for wrapping is black 15 lb. felt/roofing paper. A Winter Insulating Homasote Board is the topmost item on the stack of hives to absorb excess moisture. 1/4″ T-50 staples keep it all in place.
It was the first time looking at the bees since November.
Good news and bad news.
The good news is that 4 of the colonies are doing great. Below is an image of one of the Nucs that wintered on top of an Overland Over-winter-inator-atortm. You can see that there are plenty of bees grouped in an area (the cluster). And what you can’t see is that there are plenty of honey stores left – so these bees have (in my book) made it through the winter.
Happy Nuc - March 2010
OK, now the bad news. The full-sized hive underneath the Over-winter-inator-atortm (Roger) didn’t make it. They all ended up in one of the top corners of the hive and starved. Below you can see them all in one area. On the surrounding frames there were many bees all the way into the cells where they died eating the last drops of honey that were in their vicinity.
Cluster of Dead (starved) Bees on a Frame
Below is the ball of bees as they died. The sad part is that there is plenty of honey and pollen left in the hive. I think that the problem was that they did not start out in the bottom box, then they moved up and to the side and got stranded in the corner.
Cluster of Dead Bees
The sad, but amazing testament to the way a beehive works, is that in this (very blurry-sorry) photograph below you can see the red dot on the back of the queen (2008) at the absolute top of the heap. The colony did their very best to keep her alive all the way until the end.
Lousy photograph, but you can see the red dot on the queen to the upper left.
But the show must go on, and the lessons learned absorbed for the next season. The remaining 4 colonies will be the backbone of our micro-apiary for the coming year as we continue expansion and education.
The Finson Farm Apiary - March 2010
And even better, the flowers are starting to bloom and Spring has arrived in Maine…
Found some queen cups and cells in Macintosh – here you can see a new queen is chewing her way out of the bottom of the circled cell.
A new queen is chewing her way out of the bottom of the circled cell.
The bees have started capping honey for the winter. Hope there will be enough good weather and plants for them to make some for us, too.
Capped Honey in Roger
With the new queen emerging from Mac, I split her off into her own “nuc” (nucleus hive). The newest one is the third from the left with the blue-colored center box. So we are up to 3 full size hives (for honey production) and 3 nucs (to overwinter for full hives next season).
Damn ants took advantage of my two weak nuc (nucleus) hives and crawled up and infested the place. They were there to steal the 1:1 sugar:water syrup that I had left to feed weak bees, as it was going to be a rainy week. The nucs were made with bees from one of my stronger hives (James) and super-fancy queens that were bred by Michael Palmer in Vermont. Acquired the Queens at a Nuc Workshop run by the Cumberland County Beekeepers Association‘s own Erin Forbes and Larry Peiffer. A very helpful class that I would highly recommend (I think they are going to do it again next year).
Ants in a honey bee hive (nuc)
Anyway, back to getting rid of the ants. Ground cinnamon sprinkled around the base of the hive and inside the top of the hive are a well know way of keeping the ants at bay – but I learned a super-nifty trick from Erin – I propped the entire nucs up on cinnamon sticks, too (see the red circles in the photo). That way any ant that wants to steal from my bees will have to physically traverse the cinnamon (which apparently they abhor). Take that, ants!
I propped the nucs up on cinnamon sticks to fend off the ants
We got two more hives installed over the weekend (Mac & Rodger) and it is starting to look like a proper artisanal apiary.
Finson Farm Apiary
While looking through Mac (the stronger of the two hives) we were able to spot the queen.
Seen below you can tell her by her elongated abdomen and the remnants of yellow paint on her thorax. The paint color indicates that she was born in 2007.
