Day 48: Zaga's Hive

Nuc with bees, smoker, and hive with feeder already in place.

Before we are to the point where day 48 is too far from my memory to be able to accurately document it, I am getting my act together and posting! Day 48 I picked up Zaga's Nuc from Bee Weaver (actually from Dan and Laura Weaver's house just down the road--it's so cool that they live so close to us), brought it home, and installed it. I was tired of suiting up and I figured the bees would be too disoriented with the move to be aggressive so I just put on my veil. I didn't even wear gloves. Oh it was marvelous! I'll be honest: The past few weeks when I've had to cover up entirely and almost died from heatstroke, I questioned the wisdom of keeping bees. The blush was definitely wearing off the rose. But installing Zaga's bees in their new home made it all come back again! Beekeeping should be done naked, but I'll settle for clothes appropriate for the weather an a veil to protect my eyes.

So Zaga's hive is a cute little green and yellow Langstroth from Bee Weaver that sits on a stand that is only about eight inches off the ground. First thing I did was put a closed-top divider feeder in the box and remove the extra frames to make way for the frames in the Nuc. Then I opened the Nuc box and pulled out the first frame. What beautiful, glorious comb it had! It was all fresh and white with fully built out frames full of brood, nectar and capped honey. I put it in the middle of the hive and went on to the rest of the frames. They were all beautiful, and I was easily able to find their industrious queen (shown at left). If you click on the photo of the bees you can see the queen. She's the one with the big yellow dot on her.

Side note: Some queen breeders mark their new queens with a spot of paint on the thorax. They use a different color every year so you can tell the age of your queen by the color of her dot. The system is an international one with white or grey used for years ending in 1 and 6, yellow for 2 and 7, red for 3 and 8, green for 4 and 9, and blue for 5 and 0.

When I had all the frames placed in the hive, I reluctantly closed it up and left the nuc box in front of it so the few bees still hanging around in it could find their way into their new home. The other activity in my bee-day was less pleasant: I had to decide what to do about the elevated varroa count in one of my hives.

The first obvious step was to consult an expert with a different management strategy to see what he does. When I picked up Zaga's hive, I talked to Dan Weaver about his varroa management strategy. Bee Weaver does not specifically test or treat for mites and they haven't for over 10 years. They breed their queens for resistance and hygiene, and they use their lifetime of experience with the bees to recognize problems early enough to manage them by tweaking rather than major intervention. Dan can scan a hive and see mites on baby bees, larvae that is more yellow than it should be, and other early signs of varroa-related problems. I can barely find the queen yet so I can't rely on my ability to see the subtle signs of a hive being out of tune. Most beekeepers lack the experience the Weavers have (five generations of beekeeping will do that for you), so it's not a wonder we have to do more intensive inspections (like the sugar shake).

Going beyond how to determine if you have a problem is what to do about it if you do. Because Bee Weaver breeds their queens for resistance and hygiene, if a colony is showing early signs of varroa, one of their strategies might be to re-queen the hive. Re-queening has two potential impacts on the varroa population. First, it breaks the brood cycle of the bees. The old queen is removed and is therefore not laying, and the new queen is in a queen cage for 3-4 days before she gets out and starts to lay. Varroa reproduction is tied to bee reproduction as the mites lay their eggs in the brood cells with the larvae. Second, the new queen is probably going to have better genetic traits for fighting off varroa as that's what they are breeding for.

Re-queening can also fix an aggression problem. And there, in a nutshell, is my situation with Hive #4. So my initial plan, after consulting with Dan, is to re-queen with a new Bee Weaver queen. As I can be challenged finding the queen, Dan is going to come over and do the re-queening for me on Sunday.