Seeking new location for hive

[Kayla Stormont]

Hi all,

I have one hive in a community garden right now and the bees’ temperament has taken a turn for the worse. They’ve been in the garden for a year and haven’t been an issue, but recently started to harass gardeners who aren’t near their hive. I noticed a shift in temperament over the past month or so during inspections (more bees upset with me when I open the hive despite smoking them and moving very slowly and handling gently). Until now, it wasn’t an issue as they ignored anyone passing by when the hive was closed but I just received several complaints about bees consistently bothering and stinging gardeners.

I need to move the hive out of the garden ASAP and I want to put them somewhere with lots of open space so I can properly monitor and manage the hive without worrying about passersby. I’m reaching out to see if anyone has space for them or knows someone who may have space (I would keep managing them). Like I said, I need to move them ASAP to prevent any other issues with the gardeners.

Thanks in advance,
Kayla

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Kayla—I am the Forum moderator and made the presentation at this month’s HL meeting on managing for Spring buildup. Were you at the meeting? I also think this must be the colony you wrote about last June—did you ever get a mentor? I know Chip Clements reached out to you. His number is still on that message in the archive –323-791-6581
I am suspicious that this issue is not about the bees temperament, but a management issue related to being too crowded. You do not say the number of hive bodies or the sizes of the ones there. Can you please list this in another note? Spring (and ESPECIALLY this Spring because of the abundant forage) is the time when the queen is making LOTS of eggs and brood and the colony is exploding in numbers. Are you keeping records of all your inspections? The dates (which should not be more than a month apart for this growth period), what you are seeing in the amount of EGGS, OPEN BROOD, and CAPPED BROOD and the moving up of brood frames as the brood nest gets too congested. Giving away your hive because these things may be off kilter is just going to find you getting into the same rut with the next hive. If you are unfamiliar with the operation of opening up the queen’s laying space, you need a mentor. Everyone needs a hands on teacher to learn with the greatest confidence and with fewer errors.

[susan rudnicki]

Kayla—another issue that may be irritating the bees with a possibly congested brood nest, are the gardeners using string trimmers or other equipment by the hive? Is this possibly happening? A temporary screen of reed fencing, purchased by the roll at home depot and 6 ft high, can be installed directly in front of the entrance, even just 6 inches in front, forcing the flight path directly up from the hive and out of crossing with pedestrians.

[Kayla Stormont]

Hi Susan,

Thanks for the response. I do have a 6 ft fence in front of their entrance and along the side of the hive that blocks them off from the path through the garden. The bees have one deep box that is full and a medium box that they have only just started to fill out, still lots of space there. No queen excluder so I don’t think the brood nest is too crowded but I wasn’t able to checkerboard when I added the medium box because they are deep/medium. I have been keeping logs of my inspections which I do every two weeks and have consistently seen eggs, open and capped brood (both drone and worker).

The biggest issue is that because of its proximity to people, I haven’t been able to do a complete inspection in about a month and a half because there are people walking by or wanting to come into the garden to work. I’d like to keep managing the hive and I want to address whatever the issue is, temperament or not, but I need some space so that I can be more thorough and not worry about passersby. I did reach out to Chip and he has been incredibly helpful! I’ve just come to a point where addressing the issue is difficult to do in the current setting so I’d like to move them to a place with less foot traffic so that I can really dig in and figure it out.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Kayla—without doubt they are too crowded in one deep and since not seen for 6 weeks they could be on verge of swarming—bees are building up at a furious pace right now. A common misconception is that a empty box on top means the broodnest won’t get crowded. The queen will not move up into a second box unless a couple or three brood frames are moved up into the higher box and empties put down below. Move the brood together into the center. Yes, I know you don’t have another deep, but you must put one on or accept what will inevitably happen—swarming. One deep is just not enough space for bees to live. This operation is called “brooding up” not checkerboarding. Walt Wright of Kentucky named the checkerboarding epithet to describe the interspersing of empty and full frames in the honey storage boxes ABOVE the brood nest. So, if a full honey box is to be “checkerboarded” you need two boxes, staggering the 10 frames above and below each other with the empties and full honey frames. It is a swarm prevention measure. Ideally, you would want to move the frames with mostly drone brood, a common situation at this time, up into the higher box and when those hatch, the bees commonly fill those large cells with honey.
So, did you come to the meeting last week on the two topics I mentioned? Chip is doing quite well and should be a great contact for you. Community Gardens are a notoriously poor choice for bee locations, unfortunately, because of the problems you are noting OFTEN occur. But your bees are also crowded.

[Kayla Stormont]

Got it! I did not know that about the empty box, thanks for sharing! I did not make it to the meeting last week unfortunately. I will get another deep box on there to give them some space and will see if that helps at all.

I do think that they may need to be moved in any case. As you say, the garden is probably not the ideal location for them in the long run. It was great for a while and the gardeners actively wanted bees in the garden, but we’re all learning the challenges that come with that. So I’m still looking for a place to re-home them and still manage them, taking all of this into account.

[susan rudnicki]

Kayla—I strongly urge you to check out Michael Bush’s website—his entire book on Natural Beekeeping is here. Particularly the swarm prevention advice, here—-“The first mistake people make about preventing swarms is they think you can just throw on some supers and they won’t swarm. But they will. Yes, it’s nice to have room for them to store the honey, so the supers are helpful, but the bees intend to swarm and the supers will not deter them from the plan to do a reproductive swarm.”
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

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