Removing the bottom board - big surprise

Because of the upcoming hot weather in the eastern US, I decided last night to remove the detachable bottom board from my bee hive.  The process went smoothly, until I found what had accumulated on the bottom board.

The bottom board with its assortment of beehive junk. 

An attempted close-up shot of the writhing pile. 

At first I only saw what looked like the typical junk that falls through the bottom screen of a beehive.  Usually you will see a lot of pollen, flecks of wax, and an occasional bee leg.  However, when I tool a closer look, I could see that this pile of junk was writhing with hundreds of small hive beetle larva.  Hive beetles are not native (honey bees aren't either) and can be blamed for the failure of many beehives since they were first seen in Florida in 1998.  It was a disturbing sight.

The remains of the hive junk after I dumped it in a pile on my concrete patio and employed my pest management solution. 

Initially, I figured I would just leave it sitting outside for the local wild birds to pick through tomorrow.  However, when I read one of my reference books on honey bee parasites, I discovered that these larva were actually at the stage in their life-cycle in which they leave the beehive and occupy the ground.  I went back outside and, sure enough, many of the hundreds of larva had started the march from the bottom board (now resting on my concrete patio) towards to lawn.  Needless to say, I dealt the matter quickly and effectively.  Wax and pollen mixed together are very flammable (I don't recommend anyone else trying my solution). 

FInished transfering comb

Yesterday, when I attempted to transfer the remaining bees from the queenless behive to the successful behive, I placed the comb from the queenless hive in the freezer for 24 hours to kill any eggs and developing drones.  This evening I took the comb out of the freezer and placed it in the remaining beehive. 

Everything seemed to go well except that I was stung once in the ankle.  I immediately scratched out the stinger, and, later, took diphenhydramine (Benadryl).  This hasn't prevented my ankle from swelling up and aching, but I guess I deserve it for killing so many bees yesterday. 

Combining the hive didn't go quite as planned

A close-up on some of the hundreds of dead bees strewn in front of the entrance of my remaining beehive. 

Today was a sad day in my bee yard.  Following the methods outlined in one of my previous posts I attempted to add the dwindling population of my queenless hive to my strong hive.  The outcome was carnage with the introduced bees being promptly discovered and killed.  Within a few hours all that remained of the queenless hive was the dead and dying remains of its few hundred workers. 

Adding temperature and humidity sensors to my beehive.

First, as an update to my previous post, I haven't dismantled the less prosperous hive yet.  The weather in the eastern US hasn't been good for that kind of thing lately.

Because the weather hasn't been good, I've decided to begin working on an idea I had to implant an array of temperature and humidity sensors in my beehive to collect data on environmental fluctuations in the hive.  The two figures below show the positioning of each sensor group as well as the microcontrol unit(s).  A Raspberry Pi will also be used to compile and periodically transmit the data back to my server.  I know the Raspberry Pi is probably overkill, but it's fun.

The planned arrangement of the sensors on my hive as it might appear from the outside. 

A cross section of the top bar hive with sensors installed.  For this experiment, I'm placing the bulk of the sensor circuitry on the outside to minimize its intrusion on the bees and make servicing easier

These days it seems that sensors are moving more towards being fully functioning modules than simple electronic components.  With the older simpler sensor components, you often have to build supporting circuitry to power the sensing element and connect it to the rest of your project.  Depending on your knowledge of that particular sensor and the amount of supporting components you need, integrating such a component could take quite a bit of time.  The module solutions, on the other hand, are much easier to use because you often only need to connect them to your microcontroller, upload a program, and watch your data come streaming in.  I have no objections to using the module solutions, but it does tend to raise the price a bit.  Consequently, in most of my projects, as with this one, I end up only halfway incorporating module solutions in my effort to try to find a balance between how much money I'm willing to spend vs how much time I'm willing to divert towards building basic circuits.

For this project, I've decide to go with an NPX Semiconductor SA56004FDP for temperature sensing and the Honeywell HCH-1000-002.  Although the  parameters of both products appear to exceed the requirements of this project, they differ greatly in the ease with which I will be able to use them.  While the SA56004FDP is programmable with both i2c and 2 wire output options (and, therefore, easier to use), the HCH-1000-002 is simply a really nice capacitor that will vary its capacitance depending on humidity and will require additional work to integrate it with my MPU.

Fortunately, a quick search of the internet has found that someone has already done much of the work for me and posted instructions!  Someone named Carl Morey posted detailed information at http://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinoweather/files/ on how to build an "Arduino weather station." These weather station plans include instructions and schematics for circuitry incorporating an HCH-1000.  Brilliant!

More later. 

The other hive

Evidence of laying workers.  Several cells in this comb contain multiple eggs rather than the expected single egg. 

My second hive, which I don't discuss often, is near collapse.  At some point during her introduction to the hive, the queen must have been killed.  I could have accidentally killed her or maybe the sugar plug in her queen-cage malfunctioned.  Either way, it eventually became apparent to me that there was no queen in that hive.  Now, in spite of my attempts to save it, the hive has devolved into a nearly irreversible downward spiral, which will almost certainly result in its demise. 

Here is the progression of events thus far.  Probably within one week of installing the package of bees in my hive (ironically, this package was installed April 1st), the queen died.  Because both hives had identically sized bee packages and, therefore, the same population sizes, they were equally productive and I couldn't see any initial indicators that there was no queen.  However, by at least April 20th, I could see there wasn't a queen based on the absence of egg laying.  At that point, I attempted to enable the worker bees to create there own new emergency queen by transferring a comb from the other hive that was loaded with newly laid eggs.  Initially, this effort appears to work because the worker bees modified several of the normal "worker cells" into "queen cells," which are larger in size and resemble a peanut shell when they are completed.  I could see health-looking bee larva growing in these cells and one of them was even capped (during the development of a young bee, they go through several stages, which culminate in a "capped" stage where the bee's cell is given a cover of wax and the young bee goes through its final transformation from something that looks like a grub to an adult honey bee).  Unfortunately, although things appeared to be looking up for the hive, the recovery was derailed by what is called "laying workers."

To understand laying workers you need a little background information.  Not long after a young queen bee emerges from her capped queen cell, she will undertake what is called her "maiden flight," which is really a euphemism for leaving the hive to participate in an orgy of mating with many drones (males) and then returning to the hive.  All of the sperm from these drone is stored internally and she won't need to mate again during her lifetime.   After the maiden flight the queen's abdomen will enlarge (so much so that she won't be able to fly very well) and she will begin laying up to 1,000 eggs per day.  Most of the eggs she lays will be fertilized with the sperm she's been saving.  However, a minority of eggs she lays will not be fertilized.  When laid, these unfertilized eggs will grow into male bees called drones.  The fertilized eggs, on the other hand, can either develop into a sterile worker bee or a queen bee.  What determines this course of development is how the worker bees tending to the eggs treat them.  If the worker bees enlarge the egg's cell and feed the bee a special diet after it hatches the it will grow into a queen.  Otherwise, with a normal-sized cell and standard diet, the bee will grow into a sterile worker.

In most cases there can really only be one queen in a hive, and, consequently, the creation of new queens only occurs under special circumstances (I can think of three right now): swarming, usurpation, and emergency replacement.  In the spring, if the hive is doing well it will sometimes generate a new queen and split into two hives, which is called "swarming."  If the current queen is getting old and not laying as productively as she once did, the worker bees will raise a new queen from the older queen's eggs.  This new queen will kill the old queen and take her place.  Finally, if the queen has unexpectedly died, the workers will attempt to take one of the eggs the previous queen laid before she died and raise a replacement queen.

This brings me back to my currently failing beehive.  For this hive, there was no option for generating an emergency queen because the previous queen had not had the opportunity to lay any eggs before she died.  If a situation like this occurs in nature, the hive will gradually devolve into a rather sad scene.  At some point, a number of normally sterile workers will change into what is call "laying workers."  Basically, in the case of a laying worker, several workers will begin laying only sterile eggs (i.e. drones).  These drone eggs are laid in worker sized cells (drone cell are normally larger than worker cells), which causes them to emerge undersized.  To make matters worse, the laying workers will often lay several eggs in each cell, which ultimately won't work out.  Eventually, because no new worker bees are being produced, the population of workers will decline until the hive collapses altogether.

Although the loss of a queen in a hive with no eggs is a predicament, all is not necessarily lost for the bee keeper.  There are a number of ways you can "requeen" a beehive to save the hive.  One way is to move a comb full of recently layed eggs from another beehive to the queenless hive.  Typically, the bees will accept the comb as there own and raise a replacement queen from one of the eggs.  However, this needs to be done not long after the queen dies or laying workers could take over who will view any new queen as an enemy and kill her before she can emerge from her cell.

In my hive (i.e. the one that is failing), it appears that I reacted too late and layer workers had already developed.  About a week after I witnessed the encouraging formation of emergency queen cell, I checked the hive again and found that the cells had been dismantled.  At the time my hope had been that one of developing queens had emerged from her cell and killed the other developing queens which is what they do when they emerge.  However, my last hive inspection now suggests that laying workers killed the queens.  Since the previous inspection, the hive population has further decreased and the only developing brood appeared to be randomly placed undersized drones.  Finally, a close inspection of several cells showed instances of multiple eggs in each cell. 

Because this hive has laying workers and such a low population, I've decided to employ a salvage method described on this website.  Basically, I'm going to take the remaining bees from the failing hive and shake them off their combs in front of the successful hive.  The failed hive will be removed from the area and its combs will be frozen in a freezer overnight to kill any of the laying workers' eggs and larva.  Not finding any other hive to go to, the homeless worker bees are expected to join the remaining hive where they can live out the few naturally remaining weeks of there lives with a sense of purpose.  The frozen combs will then be thawed and placed in the remaining hive where the workers will make use of them (after cleaning out the dead eggs and larva, of course).  

If the weather is clear tomorrow afternoon, I will check the hive once more to make sure there is no queen and then implement the plan. 

Busy Bees

When a bees are relatively young and also when you move their hive to a new location during the night, they will need to take what is often called "orientation flights."  The first part of this consists of hovering in front of the hive entrance, looking at it for a while, and then landing at the entrance again.  Then the bee transitions to a more adventurous phase of looking at the front of the hive from a variety of angles before once again landing at the entrance.  This process continues with the bee going further and further from the hive until she is has a very clear impression of what the front of the hive looks like and where it is in relation of various other local landmarks.

Once a bee has become oriented, the nature of her flight changes dramatically.  Now, instead of loitering around the entrance of the hive, she streaks out of the entrance at full throttle.  Within about the first 10 to 20 feet of the entrance she'll simultaneously rise to an altitude of between 15 and 30 feet above the ground and turn herself till she is facing her distant target (i.e. some patch of flowers she had either just visited or learned about from another bee's dancing).  Finally, without cutting speed she'll then race towards the target. 

Interestingly, I've noticed that, when they are first leaving the hive, some of the bees will spiral upwards, while others will just veer upwards.  I don't know what causes this difference, but one possible explanation is the the spiralling bees are attempting to better orient themselves to the sun and the veering bee's already know where they need to go and don't bother with the spiralling. 

Anyway, because it is very hard to show to speed at which the bees leave their hive, I've attached a short video clip I made a few days ago of the bees entering and leaving their hive. Unfortunately, Blogger appears to have down-sampled the video quite a bit, so it's very hard to see anything.  If you look very carefully, though, you can see the bees streaking out of the entrances. 

Honey flow and a lot more comb

The last time I had checked this hive the comb on one side of this bar was not following the center line of the bar and had, instead, veered off course and attached to the neighboring bar.   This isn't good, because any time I check the bar the comb gets torn.  To correct to this problem, I cut out the crooked comb with a knife and shaped wax at the base to encourage the bees to rebuild the comb in a straight line.  Note the new white colored comb being built on the left side of the the comb in this photograph.  The rebuilt portion of this comb is now coming in straight and will soon be fully attached to the older comb. 

The comb on this bar is now nearly full size.  Quite a thing to see. 

Brood comb.  Note the larva developing in the cells on the left and the capped cells on the right.  The cells in the center are in the process of being capped.  Pretty cool. 

New comb being built on an open bar in the hive next to the other combs.  The soft newly built comb can be seen on the left side of this photograph, but there is currently no comb to the right.  What you are seeing on that side is the bees linking their legs together and forming a chain or rope.  This is called festooning, which bees do when they build comb. 

Black Locust in bloom. 

Honeysuckle. 

 For the last few days the bees have been in a frenzy collecting honey and pollen.  If they weren't converting the so much of the food they're collecting into wax comb, I'd consider this a honey flow.  At this time next year, though, if they survive the winter, they will have most of their comb built, so I probably will see a lot honey.  Right now two of the major sources of nectar appear to be the Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and Honeysuckle (Lonicera sp.).