[susan rudnicki]

Also, you should have some kind of ant barrier control to prevent ants from mobbing a young, defenseless colony.

[susan rudnicki]

HI, Kayla—-yes, typically this would be too much space for them to manage and they are probably struggling with temperature regulation. They have to keep the brood nest at around 95 degrees by generating heat to keep the brood warm. You should purchase a couple cardboard NUC boxes and keep those on hand for 5 frame colonies that will be transferred once they get “teenager” sized. Do you have a mentor? Where do you live? What reading material have you done to learn about this craft? Michael Bush has his complete book on Natural Beekeeping on-line and it is very useful. Please see our “Resources” page and you ought to have a copy of Rob and Chelsea’s book to help you. You can help them at this vulnerable time by feeding with a baggie feeder filled with purchased honey. Check the info on the web or any of various books on making a baggie feeder. Write back with the answers to the questions above. I leave in 2 days on a long Europe trip with my family, but will try to answer questions beforehand.
Susan, Forum moderator

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, David—yes, the FH is the new darling of the uninitiated set—meaning, those who have not kept bees. However, I can link you to a few reviews which question the claims, especially, the “ease” of maintenance, the long term wear of the plastic frame mechanisms (bear in mind, all the views you are seeing so far are pristine, not-used or barely been used, honey boxes) and the expense, which is considerable.

These reviews have been done by experienced beeks, so should be taken into account. Keeping bees is about 90% space management and caring for the bees—not taking off honey, which tends to be the focus of the FH and the FH proponents.
Have you read any basic books about the bees as a superorganism, or society, the management of bees throughout the year, and the skills needed to do this work? If you live in the city, preventing swarming is critical to not annoying the non-beekeeping public living in close proximity. This takes education and the acquisition of a skill set.
Since HL is a education organization, I would strongly urge you to focus on the skills needed to manage and keep bees healthy and alive—not so much on the boxes they occupy.
Here is my phone if you want to chat Susan, forum moderator
310-374-4779

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Amy—just to get the picture straight—this is a established colony, NOT a swarm. It can be relocated by someone with the correct skills and time. Watch out for so-called “bee savers” that trash the structure the bees have built and only take away the living bees—this kills all the brood (babies) and dumps the honey.

[susan rudnicki]

Excellent! I just did not know if you would be screening the potential adopters, so being the Forum “chief” it is my job to do these reminders. Yes, I know David Bock—he buys lots of honey from me when I am up in excess. He used to be my student.
I am guessing the “advice” was the queen excluder piece over the entrance.
And, yes, I do pick up swarms quite a bit in the South Bay. Took one today from West LA College. I pick up bees for United at the airfield, as they often turn up on luggage transfer equipment or other equip. at LAX. Instead of exterminating, like they used to do, they just pay me what they used to pay the exterminator, and get to market the “green and sustainable” message with the public.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Mike—I don’t know if you are aware, but the mission of HL is to encourage best practices for the urban environment where most of the public are not beekeepers. By posting this with no mention of asking about preparation by a potential adopter, we could appear to be promoting passing off bees to anyone who responds, whether educated or with a mentor or not. Do you have a mentor or are you arranging for responders to your post to be mentored by you in beekeeping? There have been some serious mishaps in the club in the past when bees were taken on without adequate preparations and education—animals killed, neighbors stung, visits from the fire department resulting in hives killed by foaming, that kind of thing—and we want to be responsible and careful going forward. With the adoption of the new LA city beekeeping code, it is very important to emphasize strong educational development and safe practices for urban beekeeping. The many folks strongly against the adoption of the code are watching carefully for the incidents they predicted of mismanagement.
By the way, are you coming to the meeting on Sunday? HL has one every last Sunday of the month and it is a good opportunity to interact with the bee community.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Timothy—I tend to look at this with the long view. A queen is not what is needed— You have not gained the skills needed to manage a hive of feral, urban bees and this could be a invitation to later dangerous issues. In our club, there have been incidents of stinging resulting in the death of dogs and chickens, usually by people checking in on the cusp of distress, who we have never heard from before. Again, this is not what HoneyLove (or any bee club, for that matter) exists to do. Bees are wild creatures and we do not control them, but work with them. Solving the issues you have already had with “remote mentoring” is what I have ended up doing, but for you to become a competent beek, you need on-site mentoring with a experienced teacher. Please contact Tyson Kaiser, who I believe is in your area. His website is SweetBeeRemoval, 323-892-4170. He has the experience and skills needed to move you into a better place with beekeeping.

[susan rudnicki]

Timothy—My earlier answer is wrong. Since you report NO brood, there has been no laying queen for at least 21 days. A emergency queen cell must be made from a young larva and hatches, at the earliest, 16 days later, or 5 days before the last of the worker brood would emerge. But you report NO worker brood and a capped queen cell. A viable queen would have emerged before the last of the worker brood emerged.
Also, the “beginnings of a emergency cell” are likely a queen cup, which is not a queen cell, and can not have a viable fertilized egg or larva in it anyway—too much time has elapsed since a queen was present.

[susan rudnicki]

OK —I will make remarks within your note—

Opened the hive today. Worked it from end to entrance. I have about 18 bars of honey, a mix of capped and uncapped. There is absolutely no brood and no queen or eggs.

Since worker brood take 21 days to emerge, you have been queenless longer than the 8 days since you damaged the combs on inspection. Even adding in the 3 more days till now, the “Bee Math” works out to a queenless colony for more than one brood cycle.

There is 1 capped queen cell, and the beginnings of an emergency queen cell.

A queen takes 16 days to emerge, so it is possible the capped cell is viable and would be a emergency QC. The other one is a dud—the math does not work for them to have had a 4 day or younger larva if they have been queenless this long. Bees in duress will often make “dud” QCs because they are so desperate to have what they need.

This means that ten days ago when I opened the hive the last time, I removed the only comb which contained brood, and assumably the queen was either dead or I may have killed her, or, they may have swarmed shortly thereafter.

A swarm event is more organized, as I mentioned earlier, with multiple QCs in preparation. I doubt they swarmed—they may have ABSCONDED.

I’ll wait and see what happens to the 1 queen cell. As usual the bees were very easy going to work with, and there did not seem to be any less bees than normal. I assume the bees are bearding because they don’t have a queen to tell them what to do with all of their free time.

First, attrition is taking place all the time, and will soon become apparent. Second, bees do not take direction from the queen. This is a common misunderstanding of colony dynamics. The workers’ behavior is driven by chemical influence of the queen’s pheromones, but even more strongly by the pheromones of the open brood. As the open brood diminish in a damaged hive, the oviarioles of WBs may develop such that they begin laying eggs which are only fated to be DRONES (since WBs don’t mate) This is called a “laying workers” colony.

THE book to read on colony dynamics and bee society is Jurgen Tautz’s “The Buzz About Bees:Biology of a Superorganism”

Learning “Bee Math” is essential to being a competent beek. Michael Bush has it posted here—http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm You need to be able to make calculations based on what you observe and what you can apply with math to determine the remedy for a problem, if you have one. There is no other way.

Thanks.

[susan rudnicki]

Nope, the package industry is a volume operation, mostly out of Georgia, FL, and CA, and to add insult to injury, the queens are often hurried to the post and poorly mated. This adds to the failure rate. Read up on Michael Bush’s posts.

[susan rudnicki]

Timothy—I was just trying to figure out how you speculate they have swarmed, once or twice, as you wrote. Bearding is not a sign of having swarmed. Bees don’t swarm without a queen, but they may abscond and leave the brood behind after a disturbance. If you killed the queen and they get their act together, they may draw emergency queen cells to replace their lost queen. This requires a larva no older than 4 days of age. They can not make a queen from just any age larva. I would offer the opinion, since it is my particular bent, that doing beekeeping as a “rogue” is not a good practice in the urban environment. Our collective reputations as urban beekeepers must be carefully guarded in consideration of all our neighbors who are not beekeepers. These folks do not appreciate stinging events or swarms from neglected hives. HoneyLove tries very hard to urge people to join our educational community, read the bee literature widely and acquire a mentor. We often hear from folks who drop in only when they are in trouble, and this is not really what we exist to do. I hope you can understand.
Susan

[susan rudnicki]

I have quite a bit of rendered beeswax from my foundationless colonies, no treatments. 310-374-4779—NO cell phone Susan Manhattan Beach

[susan rudnicki]

HI, Timothy—are you a HoneyLove member? Forgive me if I don’t remember you, but I go to all the meetings and am the forum moderator so know most of the TBH members.
Firstly, in Spring, the bees are brooding up rapidly if they are healthy. Seasonally, bee’s attitudes are also variable. If you have been inspecting every other week the last four months, can you please advise prospective adopters how many frames of brood are in your colony? Ten bars built out is not very many for a year old hive—have you been harvesting honey regularly?
Second, did your inspections reveal swarm queen cells? The swarming trajectory does not happen in just the short time since your breaking the comb—they must prepare by restricting the queen’s food intake and draw swarm cells and the earliest a queen is capped is after 8 days from a egg. What is the evidence for a swarm? You may have caused absconding by the intervention you described, which is not a organized event.
Who has mentored you over this past year? As you have mentioned, a well educated beek is going to need to assess this hive to see if it still has a viable queen. The ONLY way to know this is to see eggs in the combs.

[susan rudnicki]

HI, Timothy—are you a HoneyLove member? Forgive me if I don’t remember you, but I go to all the meetings and am the forum moderator so know most of the TBH members.
Firstly, in Spring, the bees are brooding up rapidly if they are healthy. Seasonally, bee’s attitudes are also variable. If you have been inspecting every other week the last four months, can you please advise prospective adopters how many frames of brood are in your colony? Ten bars built out is not very many for a year old hive—have you been harvesting honey regularly?
Second, did your inspections reveal swarm queen cells? The swarming trajectory does not happen in just the short time since your breaking the comb—they must prepare by restricting the queen’s food intake and draw swarm cells and the earliest a queen is capped is after 8 days from a egg. What is the evidence for a swarm? You may have caused absconding by the intervention you described, which is not a organized event.
Who has mentored you over this past year? As you have mentioned, a well educated beek is going to need to assess this hive to see if it still has a viable queen. The ONLY way to know this is to see eggs in the combs.

[susan rudnicki]

Ginger—please refer to the guidelines shown on the posting site for listing bees.
NOTE: For all posts regarding the sale/donation/trade of honey bees or beekeeping equipment, please use our new “bulletin board” forum and give full descriptions of your situation

The post put up has no information to guide a decision. For swarms this would be—how long have they been there, how high the location, nature of the location—tree, building, etc. Please help our beekeepers by providing this information.

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