Gory Details of first sting

Ok! I finally got the video up.  The first minute and a half will show how I managed to get stung.  I earned this one.  I will say that I wasn't expecting the girls to be hanging out behind the follower board.  My reaction was absolutely awful.  My girls were much more forgiving than I had any right to expect.  As for the rest of the video, it is how an inspection looks like when I am shaken up.  It is not pretty.  The only good points are when I get to the last two frames.  Those were the new-style frames.  They were a whopping success!  The girls drew the comb down through the wire as straight as can be.  Now it will take me until next July to finish culling out all of the old style frames.  I plan on starting the process on my next inspection of Team Dai-Gurren some time this week.  If I can find my queen I will get rid of the double comb first.  There is so much bad comb that the girls started offset just because I forgot to install a spacer between the first comb and the wall of the hive.  Near the end of the video, when I was looking at my last frame, I did hear piping.  I didn't see any queen cells.  I think I am in for a new batch of trouble soon.

Here is a video someone else took of piping for comparison.

It has been almost two days since I received my first sting.  I think the itch is worse than having the chicken-pox.  I sure hope I build up a resistance to this effect with time.

In about 5 more days I will inspect the nuc to see how it is doing!  The girls are still bring in lots of pollen.  That is very encouraging!  Also, their numbers are up to the point that my packages started at.

First bee sting ever details coming soon!

     I am still in the process of editing the video. I should have it finished tomorrow afternoon.  Got to work tonight and need rest.  I am only cutting out the dead time( about 8 minutes) and I am adding some captions.  After you see the video you will see why I named this blog what I did.  It is funny to me, and I am the victim of this joke.  Here is a photo of the sting 4 hours after the incident.

Finally! I have two queen candidates for my nuc.

It has been 11 days since I started the nuc with two frames of brood and eggs.  I am happy to say that the girls are working on acquiring a queen.  Of the three queen cells that I saw in the inspection 4 days ago, two of them now have pupae in them.  The nuc looked pretty good on this inspection.  It doesn't appear that any robbing took place despite the obvious attempts.  I guess the robbing screens really did do the job, even when the nuc was in no position to defend its self.  The next benefit that I am looking for is whether or not the robbing screen helps detour wax moths.  I will have to think of a way to measure this.  I don't have enough bees and equipment to run a comparison of hives with and without robbing screens.

I finally saw the bees bringing in a respectable amount of pollen earlier this afternoon.  Also the comb that was placed from the two different hives don't appear to be too close to each other.  I feel good enough about the nuc to wait two weeks before taking a peek in there again.  Here is a video of the nuc inspection.

I think the next time I start a nuc, I will start with one frame of capped brood with good pollen stores.  Then after 4 days, I'll add another frame with eggs.  I think I'll wait a week and add one frame of eggs if no queen cells are filled, or I'll add a frame of capped larvae if they have a good start on their new queen.  I'll go through this routine until the new queen is laying eggs.  After the nuc has four frames I will have to perform a trade instead of just adding frames.  

Finding a diversion!

    This has been torture trying to stay out of the nuc and letting the bees do their thing.  I would like to wait at least 4 days before checking the nuc to see if they have placed any larvae in the queen cups.  That means that I should wait until Tuesday before checking.

Here is a checklist of what I am worried about.
     1)  Is there a queen developing yet?
     2)  Do they still have sufficient pollen stores?
     3)  Are they getting robbed and I don't even know It?
     4)  Was there sufficient room between the new comb added and the old comb?
     5)  Are they even attempting to build up any honey?

The reason that I am worried about #3 is that I have seen plenty of activity near the entrance with very little pollen being brought in.  This may be due to the age of the bees.  It could be a bunch of outsiders visiting.

In an effort to divert my self I planted a desert willow, two red sages, and two agastache this afternoon.  It doesn't look like much yet.  I already see the plants as they will be.  You don't want me drawing on the picture as I see it.  My drawing skills make a toddler look advance in comparison.

I also need to add a poacher killed counter to this blog.  Here is widow #3 this year.  She is caught red handed with one of my bees

2nd transfer of eggs to the new nuc

     I apologize for not having any pictures or video.  The wind was still bad, just as expected.  There was no way to get video without having the wind drown out any other sound.  My hands weren't free since I needed to keep the comb low near the hive and work fast.  This was far from an ideal day to perform an inspection, but I just couldn't let the new nuc flounder any more when they had the new queen cells prepared.  Today I managed to tear one of the combs that was attached to two top-bars.  I pushed the comb back a little.  I am afraid that this won't qualify as a fix. There are several combs that were close to this same state.  I finally stopped this trend with a liberal use of spacers and with the new inch and a half top bars.

     I am beginning to think that with the wider bars, the bees are building thicker comb.  This may only be a matter of perception.  It may be just a result of not having a spacer between the first bar and the front of the hive.  (That is a mistake that I will never repeat again!)  I do know that the comb is straight and centered on the new bars.  They still haven't built the comb down below the wire.  That is not a problem, since are still only about an inch away from the wire at this point.  We should reach the moment of truth in about two weeks when we do an inspection of this hive.  I can say that that the new comb is almost artificially straight.  You will get to see the new comb in about two weeks from now.

     I am still worried since I did not see the queen in this hurried inspection.  I am pretty sure that I didn't transfer her to the new nuc.  I will have a better ideal this evening while observing the hive from the outside.  I have found that sitting near the entrance of a hive and watching the girls work is very relaxing.  It is amazing how few people will come up and interrupt ones musings.

Wind! Wind! go AWAY!

I did an inspection on the new nuc this morning.  It looks like they are heading towards starvation on the shortest route possible. On the bright side, they did build three queen cells.  They just don't have anything to install in those cells.  I was hoping to add a frame of eggs today from team Dai-Gurren.  Well it isn't happening.  The wind was blowing in excess of 24 MPH all day.  Tomorrow it looks like it will get down to 16 MPH.  It looks like it will be Sunday before I can add that frame.

I have been feeding the nuc.  I don't think the robbing is too bad.  The wax capings on the bottom were of the usual fine texture.  Pollen is what I am most worried about.  They have completely gone through the stores.  Here is a picture with two queen cells awaiting their prospective guest of honor.

On a good note!  Today is the first day that I have seen bearding on any of my hives.  Team Dai-Gurren is starting to rock!  It looks like there may be about a half-pound of bees hanging out at the porch.

Why did I name my blog "The Bumbling Beekeeper"

     After creating this blog and doing a google search to see if I could find it, I soon discovered that I was light-years away from being original.  I found one person in the U.K. that has been running his blog a year longer than my-self.  And I don't even want to consider how many blogs by the same name have faded into obscurity.  Even with all of the company I still feel that the title is very appropriate for this blog.  No matter how much experience we acquire, we will always be bumbling beekeepers in comparison to the real experts (the bees themselves).  From all of the reading I have done, I have learned that the bees pretty much take care of themselves.  All of the effort of inspecting hives and manipulating the comb is generally for the benefit of the beekeeper.  Much of it is to satisfy our curiosity of what is going on in the hive.  Some is to make harvesting honey easier.  Occasionally, we may come across a situation where we can actually assist the colony.  I am not sure when that is right now.  But, I will keep telling my self that in order to justify the frequent inspections.  It is an absolute rush being in the middle of a bunch of bees during an inspection.  I still haven't lost my apprehension for being stung.  It hasn't happened yet.  But, I know it is coming.  I predict that it will happen while inspecting the new nuc.

Since I think it is necessary to have a few pictures or videos in each blog, I figure I would post a couple pictures of my hives.  Also I will post my blueprint for my follower board which also acts as the internal cross-section of the hives.  My main hives are only 33 inches long on the inside.  And I built the hive bodies out of 2x6's.

I made the plans for the end-boards to be cut from a single 1 x 8  that is 6 feet long.  On the lower right, I had to record measurements of where my skill saw would actually cut when using my guides.  And yes< I could get my cuts almost to a 64th of an inch in precision.  I don't know why I bother.  The wood will shrink and swell by more than 16th of an inch.  I think that is the OCD kicking in.

I don't recommend building a hive with these dimensions, until my bees successfully overwinter.  These dimensions are an experiment.