Summer Bee Keeping Activities - Part 1 Taking Inventory

I have heard it said (there are a lot of sayings in bee keeping haha) that a successful year of bee keeping starts in July, and that in many regards, July marks the "new year" for the bees since the month coincides with the end of the swarm season, which is a natural way for bees to reproduce and start new hives.

As a bee keeper, July is a good time to see where everything is at following all the busy Spring Bee Keeping Activities. It is also the time to start preparing for winter. Yes, you heard that right... getting the bees through the winter is the bee keeper's greatest challenge, and that starts by taking inventory early in the summer so that there is plenty of time to make any necessary changes.

Number of hives

I'm going to let you in on a little secret among bee keepers. If you ever ask a bee keeper how many hives they have, you will probably not get a straight answer. At best, you will get a rough estimate (whether they acknowledge that or not). And a lot of the times you will get a range, like 150-200 hives or something like that.

Photo: We give each of our bee hives a fun music-themed name and a number to making record-keeping easier. This is hive #15 - called the "Water Under the Bridge" hive.

At Gathering Table Farms, if someone were to ask me today how many hives we have, I would probably tell them that we have 20 hives. And while that is true, it is not completely accurate. This is because that number changes from week to week, and we usually, along with most bee keepers, have a few starter hives constantly in the works and a few hives we haven't checked in a while or that are struggling. For instance, do I include the starter hives in that number even though they haven't reared a queen yet? Or what about that struggling hive that probably isn't going to make it, do I include it in the total number? If I were to be exact on that question, I would say we currently have 13 fully established hives, 2 starter hives that are building up, 5 splits (2 that have a queen and are building up and 3 that are in the process of rearing their own queens), and 1 weak hive that we are closely monitoring. And these numbers will probably change next week... imagine if we had over 100 hives, this question would be even more challenging to answer.

This is why it is important to keep records as a bee keeper. To be able to track the number of hives throughout the year and to nail down exactly how many hives we currently have, and the different stages of each hive. And also to have a clear idea of how many hives we want to end the year with. Our goal is to have 20 healthy fully established bee hives make it through the winter, so our plan over the next couple months is to shoot a little high to get to 25 hives by the end of the summer in case we lose any during the cold winter months.

Overall colony health

A basic question in bee keeping is what does a healthy hive of bees look like? When taking inventory during the summer months, this is an important question to answer for each hive.

Photo: One of our bee keeper apprentices assessing the health of hive #16, one of our demo hives called the "Welcome to the Jungle" hive.

Starting in July, we rate on a scale of 1 to 10 for how healthy each bee hive is. Some factors to consider include the size of the hive (how many bees are there), signs of diseases or pests, food stores (pollen and honey in the hive), healthy queen that is laying eggs, mobility of the bees (do they look healthy). For example, we have one "weak" hive that has remained that way since coming out of almonds in March. It has a queen in it, but for whatever reason it declined in numbers and has remained stagnant. We have tried a couple things to boost the hive, like introducing frames of healthy capped brood (baby bees about to hatch) from another hive. But it just doesn't seem to be growing. We have a couple options going forward. We can continue to try to boost it for another few weeks, but by August if it hasn't progressed we will likely either combine it with another hive or retire it and keep it in a "nuc" box to have on hand in case we need an extra queen or extra frames of bees for our other hives.

Summer is the time to address any issues in the hives, because by the time we get to fall it will likely be too late to make any adjustments and the bees will probably not make it through the winter. By being proactive we can identify any potential problems early on so that we have plenty of time to address them.

Queens

The next two items are subcategories of the previous category, but are both worth having their own category because of their vital importance to the health of a bee hive. Without a queen bee, a bee hive won't survive for very long. So during the summer months it is important to take stock of the queens, to determine if all our hives have healthy queens going into the fall and winter months.

Photo: Each hive has one queen bee that has a noticeably longer and slendor shaped body than the other bees.

Now you may be wondering how to find the queen bee in a hive. As you can imagine, during the summer time when a bee hive can have tens of thousands of bees, the queen can some times be challenging to spot. The good news is that you don't have to find the queen to know she's in there. If you see eggs in the hives, which are much easier to spot, then you can be almost sure that the hive has a queen. This is because an egg turns into larva after 3 days. So if you see eggs then you know that a queen was in the hive within the last 3 days.

Once you determine that there is a queen in the hive, you have half the work done for making sure that hive has a healthy queen. The next step is to look at how many eggs the queen is laying and what we call in the bee keeping world, the "brood pattern." Brood just means baby bees that haven't "hatched" yet. During the summer, a healthy queen should be laying hundreds of eggs a day (sometimes over a thousand). Also, the queen should be laying in a consistent or solid pattern. If both of these look good in the hive, then it is safe to say that hive has a good, healthy queen.

It is important to track as best as possible the age of each queen. This is why keeping records is very important in bee keeping. A queen remains healthy and productive for one to two years. After that typically the amount of eggs being laid decreases and the laying pattern may become "spotty." Both can cause serious issues for the overall health of a bee colony, especially the closer you get to winter.

Photo: This frame was introduced from one of our hives with a healthy, productive queen (notice the solid capped brood pattern) into a new, queenless hive so the bees could rear a new queen. The queen cells are the peanut looking cells hanging on the side of the frame.

Our farming philosophy is to try and let a hive requeen on their own, if possible. The bees will naturally identify an aging queen and "replace" her by rearing a new queen that eventually takes things over once the old queen dies. But it is still important to monitor hives with older queens, and to intervene when necessary (such as if the bees fail to rear a new queen, introducing one for them).

Mites

Last but not least, is keeping a handle on managing the biggest pest currently to bees. I say "managing" because as a bee keeper we will always have mites in our bee hives. But if left unchecked, they will cause the hive to collapse.

Specifically I am referring to the Varroa Mite, which is also called the "Varroa Destructor." Quite a name, huh! These pest has only been in the United States since the late 1980's. Before then, I have heard that bee keeping was a lot simpler. The problem with these mites is that they feed on the backs of the bees and transmit diseases that can spread quickly though a hive and between neighboring hives.

I plan to do one of the summer activity blog posts specifically on how we manage mites in our hives. So stay tuned!

Blessings,

Jeff