Here is a summary of the Honey Hives for 2024 and the start of 2025. After a successful year of splitting and catching swarms that at one time had the apiary up to 11 hives, the hives only produced about 20lbs of honey. The first disappointment of the honey year was when the black locust trees didn't bloom which meant no early spring honey. The goldenrod were a better late summer crop this year, but since many people don't appreciate this honey's strong taste, we didn't bottle this for sale in the Matthaei Botanical Gardens gift shop.

We went into winter with 8 hives, but I'm afraid we are now down to 4 after some late February or early March losses. Just today I added winter patties that have sugar as well as a little pollen substitute to the living hives, and saw that they all had plenty of sugar after being low on sugar earlier this winter which required several feedings of dry granulated sugar.

Stay tuned for future updates as we will be adding a third Flow Hive honey super to the apiary this year! This purchase was made with a gift card the club received from Flow Hive as a reward for club members purchasing Flow Hives with the A2B2 club discount code.

As always, if you have questions about the Flow Hive or would like to join the honey hive maintenance team and get some experience with a Flow Hive or just some hands-on beekeeping experience in general, contact Jen at mentorship@a2b2club.org.

After a disappointing loss of hives over the winter, the Honey Hive Team is back in beesiness with 5 hives! How did this happen? Well, it started with catching a swarm hanging off a pine tree in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary, then the A2B2 Queen Rearing Program was kind enough to donate 2 overwintered nucs, then we were able to split the winter survivor hive which has grown like crazy in just the last few weeks. We already have one Flow Hive super on and the bees were working on filling it as of yesterday, so fingers crossed for a bountiful spring harvest!

Watch this space for further updates and opportunities to help out the A2B2 Honey Team!

The good news is that there was some activity at the entrances of four of the five overwintered honey hives this past Sunday. The bad news is that the hives did not have as much activity as I was expecting for an above 40 degree day. That being said, I've definitely been fooled before into thinking a hive hadn't made it through the winter and then come spring it was busting at the seams. Time will tell, but what I can say is that some of the maples are already producing pollen and there are dandelions blooming. Time to get equipment ready for the spring! And watch this space for the March update.

It's with a heavy heart that I report that our Yellow Queen hive absconded last month. Absconding is when the entire colony of bees leaves a hive. Absconding this late in the season is usually a result of high Varroa mite levels. Reports of unusually high mite counts were reported in October in Washtenaw County this year.

It's been a crazy year for bees with outstanding Spring honey production, a lack of a late summer dearth, and tragically high Varroa mite counts late in the season.

The good new is that we were able to do an Oxalic Acid dribble on our remaining hives and to feed them 2:1 sugar syrup to prepare them for winter. We currently have 6 hives that we will be overwintering on November 4th (weather permitting).

My thanks to all who were able to volunteer this year with the Flow Hives. We will still need a few checks on the hives over the winter, but mostly we'll be leaving the bees alone for the winter. Hope to see you again next year!

Our next Flow Hive check will be Saturday, November 4th at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary in the Campus Farm Area of Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Since our last post, we've had a few checks and mini-checks and harvested a bit more honey from the Flow Hives, so I'm just going to sum up some highlights here:

1. An alcohol wash mite test on our Yellow Queen hive in July revealed 12 mites per 300 bees or 4 mites/100 bees. Since this was above the accepted threshold of 3mites/100 bees, we decided to treat the entire apiary with FormicPro strips when the weather was cool enough to do so.
2. Two of our hives had marked, laying queens laying single eggs in the worker cells, but also had what seemed to be laying workers with many cells containing multiple eggs! I asked Anna Heck, the bee expert at MSU, what she thought about this and she said that it sometimes happens. A check about a week later confirmed that the situation is about the same though the hives are strong and have a lot of worker brood present, there are still cells with multiple eggs in them.
3. We harvested about six more pounds of honey from the Flow Hive Supers, though harvesting is getting more difficult due to robbing from yellow jackets.
4. Because the yellow jackets were so bad at harvest time, I've applied entrance reducers or robbing screens to almost every hive entrance to protect our bees from robbing.
5. We are back down to 10 hives because the swarm we captured out of the pine tree unfortunately didn't have a queen, so we combined it with another hive.

Our plans for the next check are to make sure the hives have enough space and are queenright.

Our next Flow Hive check will be Saturday, August 12th at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary in the Campus Farm Area of Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Well, the honey side of the apiary continues to grow! Looks like all three of our second split hives from our stellar white queen have made new queens, so if you're counting, we now have 10 marked queens! But I mentioned having 11 in the title didn't I? Yep, so we had noticed a swarm in the pine tree on the teaching side of the apiary, but hadn't had the time or resources to capture it as it was 15+ feet off the ground on a thick, stumpy branch. Finally, on Sunday we decided it was time to do what we could to capture it and after 3 hours of using 2 brushes and a bucket on long poles, we finally felt like we had most of the bees in our hive body. Fingers crossed that that included a laying queen, but even if it didn't, we have plenty of queens to go around. From here on out our main tasks should be harvesting honey, checking and treating for Varroa mites, and bolstering our hives for the winter by distributing our wealth of resources amongst the hives!

You will notice we did some swapping of slightly weaker hives into nuc boxes and slightly stronger hives that had been in nuc boxes into full-sized hives. This is space management based on issues with not having enough drawn comb for all the hives to be full-sized.

7/9/2023
Sunday, Hot, Cloudy to Sunny, 80F
 
Swarm in Trap:

• Still some bees making wax, took out waxy frames, frame with a queen cell, and bees for other hives; some bees still there when left

Stand 1:
*Hive 9 – Swarm Caught this evening from pine tree*
               - did not see queen, but painstakingly moved most bees from high up in pine tree to box using a bucket and brushes on poles; used a lot of   
                  lure (lemongrass oil); bees older and grumpy; had been on tree at least 5 days
                - has one frame of brood and eggs from Hive 8
                - many bees on brood frame and surrounding frame
                - if no queen, will newspaper combine with Nuc 3
                - D1 = green
 
Nuc 2: White Queen

• Moved white queen from three 5-frame deep boxes into two 8-frame deeps
• Saw queen, good amount of bees and brood
• Added old flow super with spacer on top above queen excluder
• Will now call Hive 7: D1 = White, D2 = White, Queen Excluder, Old Flow Super, Spacer, Inner Cover, Outer Cover

 
Hive 5 – Yellow Queen Split w/ Dark Queen marked red

• Found queen and moved her into D1 with space to lay
• Removed several queen cells, one capped
• D2 has 5 foundation frames
• (D1 = White, D2 = Blue)

 
Hive 2 – Yellow Queen

• Didn’t go into hive
• Harvested 7 lbs of honey from 2 frames (17.5% water content is much higher than our 1st harvest which was 15.75%)
  
• (D1 = White, D2 = Blue, Queen Excluder, New Flow Hive Super)

 
Stand 2:
Nuc 3 – From White Queen Hive - new red queen

• When went back to catch swarm, found and marked queen red
• Queen was on medium frame with comb and brood present from tiny swarm from trap
• D1 = white, D2 = white, non-telescoping outer cover

 
Hive 1 – Previous White Queen Hive - new red queen

• Moved from two 8-frame deeps into two 5-frame nuc deeps
• Found and marked queen red
• Nuc 5: D1 = white, D2 = white, telescoping outer cover

Nuc 4 – From White Queen Hive – new red queen

• Found and marked queen red
•  D1 = White, D2 = white

 
Hive 4 – Swarm Hive w/ Honey-Colored Queen marked red

• From Original White Queen Split
• Almost no capped brood present
• No signs of disease other than lack of capped brood
• Eggs present, Saw queen
• D1 = green, D2 = white

 
Hive 3 – White Queen Split Combined with Original White Queen Nuc w/ Queen marked red

• Flipping east frames to west and west to east
• 4 frames brood D2
• Eggs present
• Looking good; only hive with good D1
• (D1 = White, D2 = White)

 
Stand 3:
Nuc 1 – From 2nd White Queen Split w/ Queen marked red

• Moved from two 5-frame nuc deeps into two 8-frame deeps
• Hive 8: (D1 = White, D2 = White)

 
Hive 6 – Yellow Queen Split w/ Queen marked red

• Moved from two 8-frame deeps into two 5-frame nuc deeps
• Nuc 6: (D1 = Green, D2 = White)

Next Check: Sunday, July 23rd, 2023 at the A2B2 Teaching Apiary next to the Project Grow Garden in the Campus Farm Area of Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Plan:
1. Do mite checks on most hives and treat with FormicPro as needed.
2. Harvest more honey from the Flow Hives.
3. Continue to monitor and manage space issues and encourage hives to draw out comb on foundation frames.

Today's check turned out to be all about marking queens (5 new queens!) and pulling regular honey frames to extract to give our ladies more open comb space. It was a hot, 80F day in the bee yard and we also fixed Hive Stand 2 and placed carpet under all of the hive stands to cut down on foliage and ticks. We also ended up taking home the old Flow Hive Super to extract one full frame and to store until the hives are larger and more stable. Right now we need them to make wax and it takes 6lbs of honey to produce 1lb of wax!

Stand 1: (Closest to Project Grow Garden)

Nuc 2 – White Queen

• Saw queen
• Gave 3rd five-frame nuc box filled with mostly foundation frames, but moved up some comb frames
• Lots of brood, eggs, larvae
• (D1 = White, D2 = White, D3 = Green)

 
Hive 5 – Yellow Queen Split w/ Dark Queen marked red

• Found and marked queen red
• D2 all foundation being drawn out
• Took 2-3 honey frames
• Needs 3-4 wet frames
• (D1 = White, D2 = Blue)

 
Hive 2 – Yellow Queen

• Removed D3 because it wasn’t needed
• Saw queen
• Replaced D3 with New Flow Super
• (D1 = White, D2 = Blue, QE, New Flow Hive Super)

 
Stand 2: (Middle Stand)

Hive 1 – Previous White Queen Hive

• Was 3 tall, but broke down into D1 and two nucs all with capped queen cells
• Saw brood but no eggs which makes sense because we removed white queen a week ago
• Tons of queen cells both open and capped, removed all open queen cells
• (Nuc 3: D1 = White) (Hive 1: D1 = Tan) (Nuc 4: D1 = White, non-telescoping outer cover)

 
Hive 4 – Swarm Hive w/ Honey-Colored Queen marked red

• From Original White Queen Split
• Lots of eggs
• Making new wax
• Found and marked queen red
• (D1 = Green, D2 = White)

 
Hive 3 – White Queen Split Combined with Original White Queen Nuc w/ Queen marked red

• Removed 2 honey frames from D2
• Found unmarked queen and marked red
• Wet frames need to go to D1 – F3, F7
• Removed New Flow Hive Super
• (D1 = White, D2 = White)

 
Stand 3: (Closest to Black Walnut Tree)

Nuc 1 – From 2nd White Queen Split w/ Queen marked red

• Found and marked queen red
• (D1 = White, D2 = White)

 
Hive 6 – Yellow Queen Split w/ Queen marked red

• Found and marked queen red
• Pulled 2 honey frames and moved 4 frames up to D2
• Needs 2 wet frames
• Removed Old Flow Hive Super
• (D1 = Green, D2 = Green)

So, if you're counting, that totals 7 marked, laying queen in the Flow Hive Apiary as well as 1 hive and 2 nucs with queen cells for a total of 10 potential hives!

On Sunday we went back into the apiary and replaced the eight wet honey frames that we had extracted for a total of 28lbs of honey! Our buzzy ladies were very happy to be getting back open comb frames with a little leftover honey.

On Thursday, a quick check of the swarm traps revealed that we'd caught a small swarm (our 11th hive) that we intend to use to make wax and to bolster our other hive's bee populations.

This is proving to be a VERY BEEZY bee year!

Plan for Next Check:
1. A little early, but we could check Hive 1 and Nucs 3 & 4 for eggs and new queens.
2. Possibly removed more honey frames for extraction to give more empty comb space.
3. Possibly harvest from the New Flow Super.
4. Check all hives still queenright and give more boxes of foundation space where needed.

Date for Next Check:
Sunday, July 2nd at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens next to the Project Grow Garden in the Campus Farm Area.
Hope you can bee there!

So the official Flow Team check was Sunday, but it was so beautiful on Saturday that I couldn't help going out and checking on our hives just in case the rain started early on Sunday.

Saturday:
Nuc: I moved the nuc into new equipment and maybe saw one egg and no queen, but the workers were acting like they had a queen, so I think maybe I just missed a newly mated virgin queen. We'll have to double check on that at our next visit.
(Nuc: D1 = White, D2 = White)

Hive 1: Our tallest hive with the older, white queen had eggs today, so I didn't disrupt them further.
(Hive 1: White Queen: D1 = White, D2 = Tan/Wood, D3 = Green, D4 = White)

Hive 2: Spotted our yellow queen today and everything else looked good, so didn't do anything more.
(Hive 2: Yellow Queen: D1 = White, D2 = White, D3 = White)

Hive 3: I saw eggs and that the newspaper combination appeared to have gone well. At least 3 of the Flow Frames were full of honey.
(Hive 3: White Queen Split Combined with White Queen Nuc: D1 = White, D2 = White, Queen Excluder, New Flow Super)

Hive 4: I saw tons of eggs, so gave this hive that was a caught swarm from the White Queen split another box of foundation.
(Hive 4: Swarm: D1 = Green, D2 = White, D3 = White)

Hive 5: Didn't get too far into this hive, just checked that they were okay on space. Last check we saw a lovely new dark-colored queen.
(Hive 5: Yellow Queen Split w/ Dark Queen: D1 = White, D2 = White)

Hive 6: This is definitely our problem hive. Though there were at least 3 Flow Frames filled with honey, these ladies were very defensive and had no eggs, young larvae, or signs of a queen. We did see two capped queen cells and several other old queen cells that were being broken down. It's possible that this hive has a virgin queen or has a virgin queen about to emerge. I should have given this hive a frame of eggs and brood from the Hive 2, but I didn't think of it until it was too late. This hive has a White Deep of Foundation on top of the Flow Super mainly for ventilation because they were bearding a lot.
(Hive 6: Queenless Yellow Queen Split: D1 = Green, Queen Excluder, Old Flow Hive Super, D2 = White)

Sunday:
Yesterday all our hard work finally paid off in a little more than 12lbs of honey harvested from just 4 Flow Hive frames! We would've harvested more, but got rained out, so next check we're bound to harvest more.

Hive 1: We ended up taking our white queen out of her hive and placing her in a new nuc (Nuc 2) because she had some open queen cells present and she's such a good queen we didn't want her to swarm on us.
(Hive 1: D1 = White, D2 = Wood, D3 = White + Nuc 2: White Queen Nuc: D1 = White, D2 = White)

Hive 4: There were plenty of eggs in the swarm hive, but they didn't need a third box, so we removed it.
(Hive 4: Swarm: D1 = Green, D2 = White)

We also set up two new hive stands and shifted the hives around a little bit. So now, facing North and going West (Closest to the Project Grow Garden) to East (Closest to Black Walnut Tree): Stand 1: Nuc 2 , Hive 5, Hive 2; Stand 2: Hive 1, Hive 4, Hive 3; Stand 3: Nuc 1, Hive 6

Finally, we placed the swarm traps in the far corners of the bee yard and put a little swarm lure (lemongrass oil) in them.

Plan for the next check:
1. Harvest more honey!
2. Check Nuc 1 and Hive 6 for queenrightness.
3. Fix Hive Stand 2 to be higher off ground.
4. Check all hives for space except Hive 1 which is in the process of requeening.

Next Check: Our next exciting check will be Saturday, June 17th, at 10:00am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens next to the Project Grow Garden in the Campus Farm Area.
Hope you can bee there!

Hello!

On Thursday we added some boxes filled with plastic foundation that we'd ordered to the nucs and a few of the hives.

Today we did an abbreviated hive check of half of the Flow Hive hives including the two nucs, Hive 5 (Queenless Yellow Queen Split) and Hive 3 (Queenless White Queen Split w/ New Flow Super).

The Good:
Nuc 1 - Had eggs though we didn't spot the queen.
Nuc 2 - Was acting queenright though we didn't see a queen or eggs, but did note some queen cells, one that looked like a queen had emerged and another that had a hole in the side, so we're hopeful that a virgin queen just hadn't started laying yet.
Hive 5 - We saw a lovely unmarked very dark, almost black queen. (D1 = white, D2 = white)
Hive 3 - Had several Flow Frames almost ready to harvest!

The Bad:
Hive 3 - Had no signs of a queen, or queen cells, or brood of any kind with D1 being filled with honey, pollen, and nectar. Because there were no signs of queen cells, we combined the queenright Nuc 1 with this hive by placing Nuc 1's frames in a box and putting that box on Hive 3's bottom board as the new D1. We tried very hard to get a sheet of newspaper between this new D1 and the old D1 from Hive 3, but were only partially successful for reasons that including a stinging incident. We will have to see if this combination worked out okay at our next check and hopefully find and mark the queen from Nuc 1. [D1 = white (former Nuc 1), Newspaper, D2 = white (used to be D1, filled with honey, nectar, pollen), Queen Excluder, New Flow Super]

Also, the swarm traps are still empty. :(

The word of the day is "bearding" because I, like so many beekeepers before me, misdiagnosed one of our hives and several of the other teaching apiary hives as preparing to swarm when really they were just bearding (had many bees hanging out on the outside of the hive) to cool down the interior of the hives. Not surprising since it was 90F in the bee yard today!

Next check we'll peek in Hives 1, 2, 4, & 6 and mark any new queens that we find (time and weather permitting). Check to see how the combination of Nuc 1 and Hive 3 went. Recheck Nuc 2 to see if it has a laying queen. And maybe do the long-promised harvest from the Flow Supers.

Our next Flow Hive check will be Sunday, June 11th at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens next to the Project Grow Garden in the Campus Farm area.

Today was a bit crazy in the bee yard. We thought we were going to remove the Hop Guard III strips from our two queenright hives, maybe harvest some honey from our queenless split, and maybe check to see if the nuc had a new virgin queen yet. What we ended up doing was going from three hives and a nuc to six hives and two nucs. Let me explain...

Our queenright hive with our older white queen looked pretty swarmy when we got into her to bolster the nuc and queenless hives with a frame of open brood and eggs just in case they hadn't made a new queen. So, we pulled some swarm cells and placed them in another nuc and gave her more space by adding a 4th box. (Hive 1: White Queen: D1 = White, D2 = Tan/Wood, D3 = Green, D4 = White + Nuc 1 = Green Nuc + Nuc 2 = Tan Nuc)

While we were doing that, our "queenless" split from last check swarmed. We hypothesized that they were feeling overcrowded and had swarmed with a virgin queen. Fortunately, the swarm bivouacked low on a post of the Project Grow Garden and we were able to recapture it. We even saw what appeared to be a mated queen with the swarm. So, then we had the original "queenless" split who was queenless once again, and the swarm from it. We stuffed some grass in the entrance of the swarm so that they stay in that hive and don't try to find another home. (Hive 3: Queenless Split: D1 = White, Queen Excluder, New Flow Super + Hive 4: Swarm: D1 = Green, D2 = White)

Once we rehoused the swarm, we thought the rest of the check would go smoothly, but once again, the bees had other ideas. Our younger yellow queen had also decided that she might swarm on us despite already having 4 boxes, and those bees had made a bunch of swarm cells, so we ended up splitting that hive into three hives. We moved the queen to a new location in the bee yard and gave her an extra box. Next to her, we put one of the other boxes with some open queen cells. In her old location, we left a box with some open queen cells and the Flow Super. (Hive 2: Yellow Queen: D1 = White, D2 = White + Hive 5: Queenless Yellow Queen Split: D1 = White + Hive 6: Queenless Yellow Queen Split: D1 = Green, No Queen Excluder Right Now, Old Flow Hive Super)

Needless to say, our bees were busy making more bees instead of honey, so no harvest today.

As we were leaving the bee yard, one of the teaching apiary hives swarmed, but bivouacked about 30ft up in a pine tree where we couldn't get at it. In light of so many swarms, we set up 2 swarm traps in the apiary on the off chance that they will catch any further swarms within the bee yard.

Just to make things more complicated:

Stand #1: Closest to the Project Grow Garden/Farthest West = Hive 5 + Hive 2
Stand #2: Next Metal Stand = Hive 1 + Hive 4
Stand #3: Wooden Stand = Hive 3 + Nuc 2 + Nuc 1
Stand #4: Single Metal Stand = Hive 6

Just to make things even more complicated:
White Queen and descendants = Hive 1, Hive 3, Hive 4, Nuc 1, Nuc 2
Yellow Queen and descendants = Hive 2, Hive 5, Hive 6

Our next exciting check will be Saturday, June 3rd, at 10:00am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
Hope you can bee there!