Just when I thought harvesting honey was a lot of work, try going through 4 deep boxes to find the queen on a blistering hot day only to have to go through 2 of the boxes twice! That's 48 frames we painstakingly examined before we found her majesty which is pretty funny since every other time we've been in this hive we've found her right away, even when we weren't looking for her! But, in the end, we did find and mark our old queen (white dot for 2021 enclosure) who is starting to slow down just a little in egg production.
Whilst we were searching for the queen, we did a thorough inspection and assessment of each and every frame in the hive so we could most evenly divide resources between the old hive and the new hive (for a breakdown of what was on each frame, please scroll to the end of the post). Yes, we took our big, booming honey factory and split it into 2 hives to prepare for placing our new Flow Super on a second hive next year! One technique that we used to great effect was separating the 4 boxes while we did the inspection so that 3 of the boxes would sense the absence of the queen and those bees would be more willing to accept the new mated queen we snagged from the A2B2 Queen-rearing program. Thank you to Paul Mazur for bringing her to me!

So, after we found and marked old "Flo" white, we took a sample of 10 larvae to send to MSU for a European Foulbrood surveillance study. Then we did a quick alcohol wash to see if our previous treatment with Formic Pro strips and our Integrated Pest Management drone board technique are keeping our mite levels down. We were happy to see only 1 mite/300 bees! So things are looking great on the Varroa front.

Finally, we distributed the frames so that both hives had equal amounts of brood, pollen, honey, and drawn comb and made two hives, one with 3 boxes and the old queen, and one with 2 boxes and the new caged queen. We left her in a queen cage plugged with marshmallow, and were optimistic that she would be accepted because the bees that covered the cage were easily brushed off and were more happily interested in her than angrily trying to murder her through the cage. Two days later we checked the cage and found it empty and the bees acting content, so it looks like a successful introduction.

Plan for Next Check:
1. Make sure new queen is laying well.
2. Mark new queen with yellow dot (2022).
3. Add a 3rd box to the new hive with 4 frames of new wax foundation and 4 frames of drawn comb from the old hive.
4. Feed both hives 1:1 sugar syrup to encourage them to draw out the foundation frames before winter.
5. Place robbing screens on box hives.

The next Flow Hive check will be on Sunday, August 14th, 2022 at 10am at the A2B2 Teaching Apiary next to the Project Grow Garden in the Campus Farm area of Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Hope you can bee there!

Frame Inventory:

Green Box = #1 - lots of back-filling of the brood chamber with honey
1. little pollen, mostly capped honey
2. honey, pollen
3. pollen, nectar, honey (moved to box 5 = wet box, deep white on bottom of old hive and replaced with wet honey frame from box 5)
4. same as 3 (moved to box 4 and replaced with wet frame from box 5)
5. same as 3 (moved to box 5 and replaced with frame of nectar where some of the frame still needs to be drawn out from box 4)
6. same as 3
7. same as 3, but slightly more capped honey
8. mostly capped honey

Flow Hive Brood Box - Tan = #2
1. honey - 80% capped on one side & 20% capped on the other side
2. capped honey, nectar, pollen (moved to box 5)
3. capped brood, honey, pollen, eggs, open brood, drones present
4. eggs, drones, capped brood, open brood
5. capped & open brood, no eggs, pollen
6. eggs, open & capped brood
7. honey, pollen
8. capped honey - 100%

White Box = #3
1. 100% capped honey
2. 100% capped honey one side, 70% on other side
3. bare foundation - starting to be drawn out with wax
4. same as 3 (moved to box 5 and replaced with wet frame from box 5)
5. capped brood
6. capped & open brood
7. black plastic foundation - starting to be drawn out with wax
8. 100% capped honey

White Box = #4
1. nectar, drawing out plastic foundation (moved to box 5 and replaced with wet frame from box 5)
2. only partially drawn, some nectar - looks like bees ate off wax coating (moved to box 1 and replaced with pollen frame from box 1)
3. almost 100% capped brood, dark comb
4. drawn comb and nectar (moved to box 5 and replaced with pollen frame from box 1)
5. capped brood, but still some wax being drawn
6. nectar, drawing out wax (moved to position 7 and replaced position 6 with wet frame from box 5)
7. barely drawn out comb (moved to box 5?)
8. 100% capped honey

White Box = #5 (box of extracted honey frames after all the swapping)
1. nectar
2. pollen
3. wet
4. bare foundation
5. wet
6. bare foundation
7. pollen
8. honey

Current Hives:

Original
White Box = D1
1. nectar
2. pollen
3. wet
4. bare foundation
5. wet
6. bare foundation
7. pollen
8. honey

Flow Hive Brood Box - Tan = D2
1. honey - 80% capped on one side & 20% capped on the other side
2. wet honey frame?
3. capped brood, honey, pollen, eggs, open brood, drones present
4. eggs, drones, capped brood, open brood
5. capped & open brood, no eggs, pollen
6. eggs, open & capped brood
7. honey, pollen
8. capped honey - 100%

Green Box = D3
1. little pollen, mostly capped honey
2. honey, pollen
3. wet honey frame
4. wet honey frame
5. nectar where some of the frame still needs to be drawn out
6. pollen, nectar, honey
7. same as 6, but slightly more capped honey
8. mostly capped honey

New - the new hive was put together while the mite check was going on, so may not be the correct box or frame order
White Box = D1?
1. 100% capped honey
2. 100% capped honey one side, 70% on other side
3. bare foundation - starting to be drawn out with wax
4. wet honey frame
5. capped brood
6. capped & open brood
7. black plastic foundation - starting to be drawn out with wax
8. 100% capped honey

White Box = D2?
1. wet honey frame
2. pollen
3. almost 100% capped brood, dark comb
4. pollen
5. capped brood, but still some wax being drawn
6. wet honey frame
7. barely drawn out comb?
8. 100% capped honey

Hello again, from the Flow Hive Team! Yesterday's check was a rousing success, but we are still one check away from a honey harvest.

We found the queen and tons of brood as well as tons of bees in all three of our deep brood chamber boxes. There were also lots of bees in the Flow Hive and they were well on their way to filling it with honey! There was also plenty of pollen for the bees to feed to all that brood and the brood were all plump, white, and floating in copious amounts of royal jelly.

We decided against doing a mite check today due to the hot weather predicted over the next few days which would mean that we wouldn't be able to treat with FormicPro if the mite count was above threshold (3%). So, we're going to wait until the weather is more cooperative before our next mite check. One positive, though not at all scientific sign with regards to the mites, was that some drone comb at the bottoms of the frames got ripped open while we were inspecting and those larvae didn't have any mites on them.

One task we did preform was a reverse of the bottom deep with the middle deep brood box and placing the queen in the bottom deep. There was more room for her to lay in the bottom deep, so we wanted to place that on top of her so she could find it more easily.

The next Flow Hive Check will be a honey harvest on Saturday, July 2nd, 2022 at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Hope you can bee there!

And there was much rejoicing! Today we saw the young queen that the hive made last summer. She is fat and happy and laying like gangbusters, so though there was still only about 4 frames of bees, we expect an explosion of bees at the next check. The colony had also taken down about 2 full quarts of 1:1 sugar syrup this time, so we refilled those feeders and left them with 3 full quarts.

Another interesting thing we did was to move the deep box with all the bees in it above the one with just comb so that the bees are closer to the sugar syrup. Normally in the spring you would make sure that a growing hive had plenty of space above it to expand and even take empty boxes from the bottom of the hive (left empty when the bees moved upwards during the winter), and place them above the top boxes where the bee cluster moved to (called a reverse). However, when a hive has very few bees in it to keep the brood warm, you don't want those bees to have to travel through an entire empty box to get to their sugar syrup on top of the top frames. When the colony is a little more robust, we'll see if we have to move that box of empty comb back to the top to give them more space or if the queen found her way down into that empty box all on her own.

No Varroa mite check today because there just weren't enough bees.

The next official Flow Hive Team check will be on Saturday, May 21st at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Hope you can bee there!

Plan for Next Check:
1. Make sure hive is still queenright.
2. Check for signs of crowding/swarming cues.
3. Check for signs of disease.
4. If enough bees, perform a Varroa mite check.
5. Refill syrup if still taking it, if not, remove feeders and add queen excluder and Flow Hive Honey Super.