Great notes. Will follow up on recommendations. Thanks to all who helped.
Hive dive notes 6/28/2025 (Jason Rubio, Theresa Griffin, Claire Moody)
When you have a lot of hives like the apiary does you sometimes find after you’ve closed a colony up that you could have moved frames from or to another colony. It helps to leave a colony “open” (supers off) and just put a lid on the top brood box temporarily. This only occurred to us when we got to the last two colonies! It works best if you go through the strong hives first. Hope we remember this next time.
We sterilized our tools between each inspection.
Notes in red are the to-do list.
Hive 11 - Super Strong...Two deeps LOADED with bees, capped brood, larva, eggs, honey, pollen. Two supers: one loaded and heavy; one just being started. Not a lot of space for queen to lay. Needed to make decision whether to add a third deep or not. Decided to swap five frames with open and capped brood from #11 to #12 which was minus everything. Gave hive 11 five empty frames, some drawn, some undrawn from #12. Put some of the empty ones in the bottom box and some in the second brood box. Seems like there should have been swarm cells but there weren’t.
This colony was not happy to have us in there.
Hive 12 – Two deeps. Bottom one had bees. No eggs, larva, or capped brood anywhere. Two scrawny queen cells on bottom of one frame but they looked very old, not likely viable. Second box had virtually nothing. Since we needed frames for Hive 11, we moved empty ones from here to #11 and moved frames with capped and open brood from 11 to here. Hopefully they will make a queen. Otherwise this colony should be combined with another colony. There are lots of empty frames in this box which could be moved where needed. Really, really could have used the empty frames in other hives we already went through.
Hive 14 (horizontal) - Desperate for more space. All frames covered with bees, loaded with honey or brood. Building comb off of “following board”. Moved two empty frames from nearby empty bait hive to this hive for emergency space but it could use more empty frames. Didn’t go through every frame looking for queen cells. This is another one that should have had queen cells.
Hive 1 – Shot gun pattern that was noted at last inspection continues on all brood frames. Several frames of capped brood and larva. Not sure about eggs. Possible European Foulbrood based on brood pattern and possible dried out larva. This colony definitely needs some intervention.
Hive 10 – Queen cells were found during last visit (6/7). Started four mating nucs at that time in addition to leaving queen cells in Hive 10. FOUND QUEEN in Hive 10.
Mating Nuc 1 – Very few bees, no queen. Should be combined with another colony
Mating Nuc 2 – Pollen and Honey. Some bees. Maybe give this one another week.
Mating Nuc 3 – FOUND golden QUEEN – laying; Needs to be moved to ten frame box OR sell queen. Added pollen patty.
Mating Nuc 4 – FOUND QUEEN – laying; Definitely needs to be moved to ten frame box soon OR sell queen. Added pollen patty.
About mating nucs - The ones that were successful had eaten their last pollen patty or most of it. Maybe should move frames of capped brood from horizontal hive to new colonies started from MATING Nuc 3 and 4, if they are going to be kept as full colonies.
APIARY COMPLETELY OUT OF DEEP FRAMES.
Good work from the hive dive team. We will followup with the recommendations that Claire has suggested. Thanks to all who helped with the hive dive this week.
Hive Dive (June 7th, 2025)
Visitors include eight 9-year-old kids and their parents from Brad York’s church. Also in attendance were a few TBA new beekeepers.
Conducting the evaluations: Brad Jacob, Renee and Jim Munly
Notetaker: Claire Moody
The goal was to evaluate five hives. Each colony turned out to be a completely different situation than the rest. It was very, very helpful to have several minds to talk through what we saw and what we should do. Remember to sanitize your tool between hive evaluations.
The first colony (#3a) was a single deep. There was a medium amount of bees and nectar, quite a bit of eggs, larva, and capped brood and plenty of space for expansion. What it does need is a pollen patty.
The second colony (#7) was two deeps overfilled with bees, eggs, larva, capped brood; plenty of honey and nectar. We did find the queen. There absolutely should have been swarm cells but there weren't any. We took off the feeder, added a queen excluder and an empty super. This colony also needs a pollen patty and MUST be checked again for swarm cells next week. It could easily be split but a better idea would be to move some of the capped brood frames to weaker hives of which there are a few.
The third colony (#8) had likely swarmed. There were no eggs, larva, capped brood, not many bees. There were a couple of swarm cells opened from the bottom and couple of swarm cells chewed from the sides. It’s likely there is a virgin queen in there though we did not find her. This will need to be checked for a mated queen in about two weeks (June 21st).
Colony 9 had lots of eggs, larvae, capped brood, and about eight frames covered with bees. It had honey and nectar but very little pollen. We did see the queen (marked blue). It had been a single deep and we added a second brood box.
Colony 10 was the most fun of all! It was two deeps full of bees plus a super above a queen excluder filled with honey not quite capped. About eight of the frames in the top box had multiple queen cells on each frame! We did not find the queen but there were so many bees it’s hard to imagine they swarmed (but they could have). We made an executive decision to divide up the frames with queen cells and made four mating nucs since raising queens is one of the goals of the club. Mating nucs do not require lots of frames of bees as would be the case if we were trying to get them to BUILD a queen cell. So each mating nuc had the frame with the queen cells, two frames with capped brood and bees, and a honey frame. (They are in cardboard nuc boxes. I’m going to wrap with insulated foil for additional warmth since the queen cells may still have to be kept in the 90’s. I have to look this up or ask Ramesh and next week’s bee meeting.)
We turned what was a hive with two deeps into a single deep with one frame with swarm cells on it and put the super full with honey back on for the bees to hopefully cap over.
Since all of the queen cells were capped but we don’t know for how long, we should wait about three weeks before checking for mated queens. (June 28th).
Food for thought: APIARY TEAM COULD MOVE EXTRA QUEEN CELLS FROM MATING NUC FRAMES TO INCUBATOR AND SELL UNMATED QUEENS. THERE WERE MULTIPLE QUEEN CELLS ON EACH FRAME.
What a huge gift to share all that is happening. Everyone will be better beekeepers thanks to you! So thank you so much!
Thank you for the report. This is a good idea to help all of us know what is going on at our Apiary. These are busy and exciting times.
By the way, I have been out to the Apiary and Garden Learning Center a few times lately and I am still surprised with what has been developing over the last two weeks.
We will try each week to write an update on the Beekkeepers Forum about the TBA Apiary.
The most exciting thing is that we caught two swarms. Both were unmarked queens so we don't really know where they came from. One was caught in the tree to the west of the apiary and we retrieved it using the basket and pole method. The other surprised us by occupying the swarm trap stationed in the northwest corner of the apiary. Both are producing eggs and larvae at this time.
We have added a third deep box to two hives that are very strong, and equalized some frames of brood to other hives that could use additional bees. We added supers to several hives. By the end of this week all hives should have a super installed. One hive has a second super. Let's make some honey. Blackberry vines are starting to bloom in Tillamook County.
We had a call from one member that something was going on in one of their hives. A super strong brood pattern suddenly changed to a spotty pattern. The hive was inspected and determined it ;probably has European Foul Brood. A cool damp spring is conducive to EFB occurring, as it is much like the common cold in humans. EFB is present in most hives all the time but is controlled by the colony. Without the member inspecting the hive and noticing changes it could get out of hand.
This Saturday Brad Jacob and Claire Moody will be leading the Hive Dive at the apiary. There is always something to learn each time hives are inspected so join them to observe and participate.
If you haven't been at the apiary lately you will be surprised with what has been developing over the last two weeks.