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.