Spring Notes – 2010
-->Febuary 21st 2010
SO my plan on leaving the bees alone over the winter has seemingly paid off. Each hive is teaming with hungry bees. I have started feeding the two hives that seemed the quietest. Last week I put started feeding the bees with an external feeder. This week when I arrived all of the syrup was gone. So I added more to the jars. I was totally surprised at how fast the bees consumed the syrup. At 9:30 they had full jars. One jar was smaller than the other. By 12:00 the smaller one was half full and by 3:00 it was just about empty. They were all over it.
Full jar of syrup…
A little time later….
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Spring has arrived early this year or so it feels. Morning temps are 30-32 but afternoon temps are in the 50′s.
Last year I fed them with a gallon can inside the hives. I realize now that because I would heat the syrup mixture up to dissolve the sugar, top it off with cold water and place it in the hive. It would create condensation as well as drip too much on the bottom board.
The one hive that has seemed the strongest already has bees returning with large pollen hips. I haven’t started feeding that hive and I am not sure that I will.
MARCH 10th 2010
Hmmm.. the two hives that were the busiest (the hives with extra supers) now appear WAY to quiet. No activity at all basically. I put a jar of syrup in front of one last week and it is completely full this week (full of ants actually). So did they swarm? Are they dead? Where are they? I still have yet to open up the hive and take a look as it was too cold out. I will do that this week. The hive that was the quietest is now the busiest.
I will take a look for swarm/supercedure cells and the queen. That will tell me something.
March 21st 2010
So I consulted my Bee guru Thom Lee and he said:
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May 15th 2010 – Requeening and Hive Health
Flash forward two months.
Hive one is the hive more in the shade of a big ratty fir tree than the others. It is fine. Lots of new bees and a healthy looking hive.
Hive two is the middle hive. This is the one that I started using a swarm from one of the first hives. It has been a very resilient hive starting with relatively few bees. There are a lot of bees in this hive now but no brood only drone cells and a dwindling supply of honey. I bought two new Carniolan queens from Beez Neez in Snohomish Washington and introduced one of them into this hive. I did not find a queen in this hive but I am not confident that it is a queenless hive. If I had to bet I would say there is a queen in there some where but is a weak one.
Carniolan Queens
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Hive three is my problem hive.
Last year it was the most aggressive and edgy hive (thank god for bee suits). This year they made it through the winter ok but in April or so I noticed a fair amount of moisture int he hive alonng with moldy comb and a big freaking slug! so not good! I built a new roof much in the style of my favorite architect Tom Kundig and this looks to be working better for the bees.
I found a lot of drone cells and a queen cell in this hive a week ago. I should have thought at this point that the hive must be queenless and they are raising all the drones and a queen for a reason – but no – I jump to the conclusion that there is a a queen in the hive already and this is a swarm or supercedure cell and all the drones are just encouraging the possibility that Varroa destructor mite will soon infest the hive….so I remove the queen cell and put it in the barn….wrong mister stealth beekeeper!
SO I put the other Carniolan queen in this hive and gave them two huge Kerr jars of syrup treated with Fumagilin-B due to a lot of Nosema apis markings on the front of the hive. The most notable symptom of Nosema apis is dysentery….yes Bee diarrea.
This appears as yellow stripes on the outside of the hive and in severe cases, inside the hive. Bees may also be unable to fly (“crawling”) due to disjointed wings.
Nosema apis is a unicellular parasite of the class Microsporidia, which are now classified as fungi or fungi-related.
Can you add a Queen of a different genetic strain than that of the hive?
All of my hives are Italian bees but Jim at Bees Neez said adding a Carniolan queen should not be a problem. However, according to the website carniolan.info “Cross-breeding of the Carniolan Bee with other bee strains results in a strong heterosis effect. The colonies are vigorous and honey yields above average. However, at the same time, this often leads to increased aggressivness and disposition to swarming. It is especially the case with the second and third generations after input of foreign genes. Crossbreeds made between the Carniolan and the Italian Bee breeds (although both are known as very gentle) are extremely aggressive.”
…should be interesting 
When I think about how all of my bees look when I originally started the hives they all look for the most part like completely different bees as time goes on…usually darker and in some cases almost black. I don’t know if this is caused from the introduction of wild bees or what but it has been interesting to watch.
So this hive now has a new queen.
{UPDATE ON CROSSBREEDING}
It appears to me that adding a Carniolan Queen to an Italian Hive has made no difference in there temperament. They behave the same as the other hives..no more aggressive or temperamental.