New deer blind and trail camera pictures you don't want to miss.

Here we go!  The first post, not about bees.  To the left is the skeleton of the deer blind I've been working on, and recently finished.  The nice platform underneath was there when we bought the house last year, and it's in a perfect place to sit in a funnel between two fields.  As soon as I saw the platform, I wanted to build a blind on it, but we didn't have quite enough time last year, so in true redneck fashion, I suffered through the first year by sticking a pop up blind on there and tying it down.  Dropping things down to the ground between the cracks in the floor got old, however, so this year I'm riding in style.

To the right is my completed deer blind, and I think it looks great.  The roof is steel roofing panels that the previous home owners were kind enough to leave in the garage for me (although I don't think they thought I'd use them for THIS!)  The side panels are just underlayment sheathing I painted up with cheapo green paint and camouflage spray paint, and I think it turned out pretty well.  The best view, however......

North

West

And East 

 out the windows.

We've also got some nice trail camera pictures from my last trip out to check cards.  The first (and most mundane) of the pictures is this guy here.  He's a nice 6 point right now, and it's tough to see in this picture, but he's got two little nubs up between his forks that look promising, and I think he's going to be a very respectable 8 point pretty soon.  This camera is about 35 yards out the east window of the blind up above.  Hopefully, he decides to hang around. 

Here's a beautiful Sandhill Crane that decided to walk about 5 feet in front of my trail camera, which I really appreciate.  This is just a cool picture to catch. And finally, the one we've all been waiting for, a picture of the elusive....

El Chupacabra!  The mysterious, frightening, possibly fictitious goat sucking critter believed to inhabit the southern United States, Central America, and various islands in the Carribean. 

Wait...maybe its just a coyote.  The jury is still out on this one.  Stay tuned,

Ruthless Virgins

So, let's get the bad news out of the way first.  Nuc 1 (at left) isn't doing great.  They seem to have failed to raise a queen from the limited queen cups they had remaining after the Small Hive Beetles had their way with the comb, and two frames had to be frozen as you will remember from Pests!.  At this point, the plan of action is likely to re-join Nuc 1 and Nuc 2 into a single hive.  At this juncture, it would probably be too late to get a viable nuc before winter.  While this is unfortunate, it's not entirely unforseen.  The hope now is just that we can get two good hives through the winter.

Now, on to some good news!  Nuc #2 (pictured at right) is doing just swimmingly.  They have hatched out a virgin queen, and that queen has taken her nuptial flight or flights.  These flights send queens into Drone Congregation Areas (or DCAs.)  In the DCA, drones from several colonies congregate together for the purpose of catching a virgin queen on her nuptial flights.  There is no known rhyme or reason to the choice of location for DCAs, but they typically occure anywhere from 50-130 feet in the air.  When the virgin queen flies through, she will attempt to avoid being caught and bred, allowing only the fastest, strongest, and longest enduring drones to breed with her. (A special nod to our old buddy Chuck Darwin!)  As many as 10-15 drones will mate with her, after which they will immediately plunge to their death.  The now mated queen will return to the hive, after which she can begin laying fertilized eggs that will grow to be worker bees. 

The picture at right shows two of the four queen cell husks in the nucleus.  We have talked several times about queen cells, but never about them hatching.  As you can see, these two cells appear to be ripped open from the side. Inside the queen cell, the larvae grow head down, and when they are ready to hatch, they chew a circle around the bottom of the cell, letting it drop open like a hinge.  So, how are these cells blown out the side, you ask?  After the virgin queen hatches, she moves around the hive destroying any other queen cells she can find, and engaging in a fight to the death with any other virgin queen she finds.  When destroying queen cells, the virgin will come at it from the side.  Unfortunately, the husk that contained our hatched queen had already been mostly torn apart by the bees, and the picture quality wasn't good enough to see what I've described above.  Our queen has now laid some eggs in the nuc, and only time will tell if she has been properly mated, or if she failed to do so and will only lay unfertilized eggs that will become drones, but I am hopeful that things will go well. 

Finally, I am glad to report that hive #1 is doing so well that they are ready for a honey super.  This smaller box sits on top of the two deep hive bodies and is for the sole purpose of collecting honey.  A queen excluder is placed in between the hive bodies and the honey super, and is a framework of holes that will allow workers to pass through, but keeps the larger queen out.  The workers will fill this extra area with honey that we will be able to harvest and keep, as the hive bodies hold enough honey to sustain the hive through the winter. 

I would also like to let all of my wonderful, loyal readers know that we will soon be coming into more posts about other "Back 40" topics, so it won't be ALL about bees. 

Pests!

So, poor, unfortunate hive #1 just can't catch a break.  As we discussed last time in Splitsville: Population, a few thousand?, hive #1 is going through another Supersedure, or replacement of the queen.  As this is the second time they've gone through this process this season, they are an understandably weak hive.  This weakness means that they are more susceptible to infiltration by other pests.  In this case, it appears that a small hive beetle has laid eggs in some of the comb.  The eggs hatched, and the larvae started eating their way through the honeycomb. 

In the picture to the left you can see a bunch of small, maggot-looking worms.  These are the larvae of the Small Hive Beetle (SHB).  The eggs have rapidly hatched, and these clusters of larvae have started making their way through the frames, eating pollen, honey, and wax as they go.  A strong hive would have no problem plucking these larvae out and disposing of them before they could wreak too much havoc, but hive #1, in its weakened state, was unable to do so.  There are several treatment options available, however I do not have any of the pharmaceutical or chemical treatments readily available, and because earlier today I thought they may have been Wax Moths (a whole different pest that I'm sure we'll discuss at some point),

I elected to freeze the affected frames.  The freezing will kill the larvae (and unfortunately, that includes my bee larvae and eggs left on the frame), and allow me to return these frames to the hive so that the bees can clean out the cells, rebuild the comb, and eat the honey they have stored there.  To the right, you can see some of the damage caused by these larvae in just a few short days.  The outlined area follows the worst of the damage, with the wax being eaten clear down to the foundation in some spots.  The dark brown portion towards the middle of the outlined area looks to be still standing, however it is so riddled with holes that it is completely unusable.  Some dead bees were removed already from that dead, brown area.  The final picture below shows some of the damage on another part of the frame.  This is closer to what the center of the above picture looks like, where it appears to be okay at first glance, but by looking closer, you can see how badly it has been affected. The outlined areas show the worst damage again, and this time it's easiest to see in the chunky, crystallized look of the top of the cells.  These cells have been riddled with holes as the SHB larvae passed through them, especially in the largest portion circled, that goes from the top down to the right bottom.  In the section on the bottom left, it is most apparent by looking at the outline of the combs.  Where it is stark, and very well outlined on the healthy sections of comb, the lines fade and become more indistinct, and in some cases disappear as the wax has been eaten away.  Hopefully, the larvae has been confined to these two frames, and the freezing process will fix the problem.

Splitsville: Population, a few thousand?

Welcome to splitsville.  We have quite an interesting situation going on here.  Due to yet another supersedure (replacement) of the queen in our Hive #1, we have an abundance of queen cells that have been made.   You may remember us discussing the long, peanut shaped cells once before in Death of the Monarch. 

These cells have been created to house queen larvae to replace the old queen.  The first time this happened, we bought a new queen to speed the process between queens.  This was unacceptable to the bees, however, and once they stabilized again, they superseded, again.  This time, we've decided to let the bees do their own thing and raise their own new queen, even though it means a lot of down time before the hive starts growing again.  In any case, now that we have these supersedure (SS) cells, we've decided to do a split into a nucleus (nuc) hive, so that we will have a spare queen on hand if this happens again.  If it doesn't happen again, it's very easy to introduce the nuc into a standard 10-frame hive and then we'll have another full hive.

This here is the five-frame nuc, after I loaded it with the following:  1-Frame from Hive#1 with the SS cell.  This is the frame that will provide the nucleus with a queen. 1-Frame from Hive #1 with soon to be emerging brood.  This will provide the nuc with bees to forage and build comb as well as care for the eggs and larvae. 1-Frame from Hive #1 with some empty, drawn comb, and some space to draw new comb.  This gives the queen someplace to lay once she starts laying, and gives the workers work to do while trapped in the nuc. 1-Frame from Hive #2 with lots of capped honey for food, and 1-Frame from Hive #2 with more capped brood, to help work the hive (nuc).  I also shook several frames worth of bees into the nuc to provide plenty of workers immediately.  You can see in the picture above that there is a feeder attached to the front of the hive.  This is especially important because what you may not be able to see is that the opening to the right of the feeder is covered with window screen.  This will stay in place for 2-3 days, to prevent the bees from all leaving and going back to their original host hive tonight.  However, in 2-3 days, they will have become accustomed to their new home and will begin foraging to provide for it.

NOW, on to the very interesting part.  This will require some background:  When we ordered our first hives, I specified that the queens were to be marked, and not clipped. (It's a common practice to clip the wings of the queen to prevent her from flying in an attempt to control swarming.  I elected to pass on this.)  So my unclipped queens were marked with a white dot on their back. 

Now, in hive #1, we had to requeen as already discussed.  In this case, I DID elect to have a clipped, marked queen, she was marked with a yellow dot.  So, until very recently I had a clipped queen in Hive #1 (yellow dot), and an unclipped queen (white dot) in Hive #2.  Hive #1's queen (clipped) recently disappeared.  During inspection today, I discovered a clipped queen with a yellow dot in hive #2.  So, what has happened, is my queen from hive #1 jumped ship and went over to hive #2.  At this point, it's unclear if there are two queens in hive #2 (not unheard of), or if this new queen went over to hive #2 and killed off the old queen.