An Update With Will (194)

Episode 194 – An Update With Will

James Tew: Listeners, do you remember several weeks ago, I had a project that I was involved with my grandson? We bought two splits early in the spring and set those things up, got them going, and then I went home and left Will, the beekeeper, in charge. We had an update, and we talked about setting those up. Now I have Will, the beekeeper with me to give us an update. Let me tell you, it's a spoiler alert here, there's been some ups and downs, right, Will?

Will Laditka: Yes, good to be back though, good to give an update, let everyone know the issues I've dealt with. If anybody else ever deals with this as well, you know you're not the only one, right?

Jim: Okay. I'm Jim Tew and I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura where I talk about something in a plain talk way about beekeeping. I've got a new beekeeper here with me who's going to go along and discuss some of his successes, my grandson, Will Laditka. Laditka

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Welcome back, buddy.

Will: It's good to be back.

Jim: If you can keep your bees alive, we'll make this a regular session. If you don't keep the bees alive, you can get on with your life. For those people who didn't hear the first exciting saga, it was just a cliffhanger. Do you remember we bought those two nukes and we brought them over, and we released them, and I gave you equipment? That was instrumental. I gave you drawn comb. That go okay for you when you got them set up?

Will: I had noticed on specific frames towards the outside, the ones that they didn't already draw out when we put them in, I had noticed on the outside, new comb development, and as well as in the feeders. Quickly, the feeders that we put on top, they had built comb all up in there, everywhere. They'd filled up the space really nicely, which was really good to see at the start, all that new comb being developed. Up top was all their honey stores. I would open those hives up and that comb would break off because it would come with that. Every time full of honey, there's honey everywhere, and it was a great signs both hives seem to be doing it.

Jim: They were putting comb and storing honey in the feeders.

Will: The space that comes up into the feeders so the bees can access the food put in there, yes, they had built comb up into that just to fill up the space.

Jim: First of all, that could be called ladder comb, like a ladder you climb. The bees will put comb there and they're storing honey there, but they're also using that to build a pathway to get up to that feeder. Sometimes I wonder, well, this is totally off the subject, this is just you and me and the people listening in over our shoulder, I sometimes wonder if they build that comb in those areas because they're in a hurry to get back to get another load. Instead of going down way into the colony and building comb somewhere else, let's just put it right here so we can go back and get the other stuff while it's available. I'm not surprised to hear that it was there. It could have meant that they were under-supered and needed more space, but I'll bet you that they were just trying to get that food into that nest as quickly as they can.

Will: Yes, but it was good to see a new growth, them using the space I had given them efficiently. As I kept checking the hives, I kept seeing frames fill out and be drawn out with different things being put in. It was all good signs. Eventually, I did go in and I put a second super onto the first one and one of the hives really needed it. Ironically enough, the smaller of the two hives ended up growing much quicker than the other hive that started larger did. When that hive that started smaller needed it, it had gotten to about seven or eight frames drawn out.

I knew it was time for me to put that second super on soon so they didn't run out of space. The hive that started larger, I'll refer to it now as the smaller hive. The smaller hive really didn't need that deep quite yet, but I thought while I'm out here and I'm putting it on the other one, I might as well just throw it on, right? I added another super to both of those. It seemed to be looking good. Activity was good overall.

Jim: Listeners, every time Will says super, he's referring to deeps. Actually, I only gave Will deeps. He's 18 years old, football player, plenty of strength, so he can handle these boxes much better than I can. When he's calling them supers, they are supers, but they are deep supers. They're actually just a brood box. He's still building brood nest with deep boxes. Just to be sure we're all speaking the same language. Will, tell me about the ants again because I've been intrigued by that. That sent me back home and made me read more about ants and beehives. Just a couple of quick sentences, don't go into it in great detail. Maybe somebody has already heard it, but you kept ants for a while apparently.

Will: Yes, I was a bit of an ant keeper too as well. As soon as I had put in the feeders on top of, at that point it was just one deep, as soon as I had put food in them, I had noticed on the smaller hive that just walking up to it at a glance, you can see ants running up and down the sides. I opened it, and they're all in this feeder, and they've drowned in there. They're floating everywhere. They're all on the sides. I was really curious about that because just 15 feet to my right, there's another hive, same size, same thing, no ants. It was really curious to me how they had found the one hive and not the other.

Jim: I'll leave a pregnant pause here because I don't know. It is a puzzlement. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe we just set those cement blocks up that we put the hive on. Maybe it was on top of one of those black ant nest. I don't know. How did they find it so quickly? Why would they run up that block right away? I don't know, and I don't know. How did the ant part of the story end?

Will: Taking all the food, putting it back into my bucket where I had all of my sugar and water mixed together, and I just took the feeder off, put the lid back on, left it like that for, I would say four days. Came back out, no ants. I had made sure to clean the equipment, put it back on, refilled it, and I hadn't had a problem after that. That seemed to get rid of them. Not sure what I did differently that time that didn't make them want to come back, but I hadn't had that issue since.

Jim: That continues to be a puzzlement. Why did they find it literally within hours, and then why did they give up on it so easily after you just did a few basics? I'm sorry, Will and listeners, I can't come up with a good hypothesis on that. I do want to say this, I've really been intrigued with ants and with wax moths here of late because they are not Johnny-come-latelys to the bee world. Ants are older than honeybees. Honeybees have never known a world that didn't have ants in it. It's an old, old relationship. They've got some kind of deal worked out. They both need to survive. This is nothing that beekeepers did. This is something that ants and bees did amongst themselves. What's been the thing that bummed you out the most, and what's been the thing that helped you the most up to this point?

Will: It's been the same event that's bummed me out, and it's been the most helpful. The smaller hives, it was one of the ants, and it wasn't growing near as quickly as the other hives. The other hives had exploded, I'd say it was 20,000 to 30,000, honestly. It had not grown nearly as quick. I had noticed some wax moth damage in larvae in the upper box. At the time, I didn't think a whole lot of it because the bees weren't really using that upper deep. I was like, "Not a big deal. I guess it happens." I hadn't noticed any in the other hive because the other hive had obviously grown into the box a lot more. Quickly I noticed that there was a war going on that my hive was not winning. It seemed to be getting out of control. One day I went out there, and suddenly, not a single bee was left. The wax moths, within the course of just a few days, had completely taken over that hive.

Jim: Give it just a minute to accept that. Give the listeners a chance to accept the fact that not only were you keeping ants for a while, then you kept wax moths for a while, apparently, and the bees in one of the colonies that had been the stronger colony has gone. Let's just think about that while we hear from our sponsor. Just a minute.

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Jim: Will, you described a lot that went on, so let me be sure that you and I and the listeners are on the same page. Two nukes that we set up, one a little bit stronger than the other, and right away the one that was a bit stronger was attacked by ants, and you got those under control. All this time, the weaker colony was plodding along, growing, doing its thing, uneventfully. Then in the stronger colony that had had the ants, then you said you noticed wax moths in the upper deep. Now, listeners, I gave well-drawn combs. If he put those two deeps together and the bees didn't need it, then there was a chance that the wax moths were happy to find that unprotected upper deep and moved into it. Wax moths now, Will, that's where we are on this discussion. When you say you noticed wax moth damage, what did you see? What did you notice?

Will: It almost looked like when you see the nest of a spider, that kind of bundle, but it was so widespread that I knew it wasn't just a bunch of spiders in my beehives. There was larvae crawling around. As a new beekeeper, I can't look at these larvae and go, "Oh, that's a wax moth." It took me a quick Google search, but eventually, I did put two and two together that the damage I was seeing and those larvae crawling around were the result of wax moths. Just a quick Google search, learn more about them. Pretty much that, that's all it took. It didn't take too long for me to figure out what it was, but it was, the issue was attempting and learning that there isn't a whole lot you can necessarily do. That was the biggest struggle with me was, as a new beekeeper, how do I help my bees fight off the wax moths invasion of sorts?

Jim: I don't know if you can help fight them off because while I've given you and the listeners a bit of a lecture about how this old relationship with ants and bees has gone on so long, you need to know too that this relationship between bees and wax moths is an old one. In this case, the bees were here first and the wax moths adapted to the bees to exploit that specialized niche. They're really good at it. You as a beekeeper are going to be coming in underpowered trying to turn those around. What went wrong? Can you tell me anything about the queen's output? Did the colony not thrive because of poor queen productivity or did you get that far down to the brood nest?

Will: Yes. At the end of the day, I really do think that this queen in my colony, even despite the ants and the wax moths, I really think the queen was not as near as efficient as my queen in my other hive because the ants hadn't really done any damage to the hive itself. They were all just in the outside trying to get the food. It wasn't much of an issue for the bees specifically. Despite that, the growth of that hive really was not comparable to the other hive. That hive started with thousands more bees, and it quickly lost that advantage and had quickly become the smaller hives.

It really wasn't ready for that second deep. If I had known at the time that I could have brought in wax moths or something like that, I probably would have waited another week, maybe even two because the growth was much slower. Maybe that's due to queen productivity, maybe that's due to whatever. I really do think that it was that queen productivity. I just don't think she was as good as my other one. I think that putting that second deep on too early just drew the wax moths right in because the hive wasn't growing that fast and they didn't need all that space. I really think that is what caused it in the first place, but I can never be 100% certain.

Jim: It's intriguing because I've been told, and I've said, and I've repeated that wax moths, and my and you're part of the country, don't really show up until probably early July, maybe even mid-July in some of the years. It sounds like that you were having wax moth issues already third week, fourth week in June. When was this? Was it early July by then?

Will: It was just before the 4th of July weekend. I had first seen them, or no, correction, it was just after the 4th of July. Still early July, probably the 7th or 8th that I'd first seen them, but it was very quick. Extremely quick. Over the course of the week, I think I had gone from seeing couple larvae to my hive being completely gone. It was out of nowhere. I just stood there looking at my hive shocked because they were just everywhere all of a sudden. It was unreal.

Jim: Between you and Google, I like your working hypothesis that you put on an extra 10 frames of drawn comb on a colony that had some issue, probably queen productivity, that was dragging it down. Then you gave that to them right about the time that wax moths were recolonizing on an annual basis, the area they'd been frozen out of last winter. They found this unprotected 10 combs and took it over. Then from there, it was not a small step to go ahead and take over the colony down below that did have the bees on it. Now, what we don't know, you said there was no bees there.

In nature, the bees will abscond. In the natural scheme of things, the bees will abscond and just leave. Possibly a little swarm took off somewhere. Of course, you wouldn't know that. They gave up, and they'll just go try their luck somewhere else, or they gathered it out there. The queen finally had no function, was not being fed properly. What happened to her, we don't know. The colony could have tried to stay there. Here's the bottom line. One colony is down. That leaves the other colony. What in the world is the appraisal of the one that we haven't talked about so far, that began life as the lesser of the two, but yet here it is still here?

Will: The one that started smaller between the two hives was the more docile one. It was so much easier to work with. When I put on that second deep, I barely had to use any smoke. This was 10, maybe 8 full frames of bees. I put three puffs on them. That was all I had to do with the entire time. It was so painless. There weren't even any bees. There's always those bees flying around you, trying to sting you. I maybe had two the entire time I was working on that hive. It's been so easy to work with. They've been so efficient in their growth.

It's almost been sneaky. There's lots of activity out front, but you don't hear from them much. They're just working and working and growing and growing. You take the box off, you look up, there's all these bees, but they're just working and working, growing and growing. As I put the second deep on, they've expanded into it well because I took some of the outer frames from the first deep and put them in the middle of the second deep to help funnel growth into that second deep. From there, they had expanded out well. They're probably halfway full in that second deep as well.

They're looking really strong. They just keep chugging along, I guess is how I should say it. Haven't had any issues with ants or wax moths or whatever. They're just chugging along, just working and working and working. That hive has been really successful. I'm really confident going into the winter with this one. I guess that's why you get two hives, right? You get the one that had a weak queen and deals with all sort of stuff. Then you have this one that just thrives.

Jim: Yes. The second hive, in a way, is a little bit like an extended warranty. Just in case something goes wrong, the whole bee project doesn't. Crash and burn. Will, I got to be direct. You're not out of the woods yet because this upcoming winter, they've got to get through that. Now you're down to one hive. You're like a twin-engine plane that's only got one engine. You got to get through this winter. This is beekeeping. If it doesn't get through the winter, then next spring, you know what you got to do if you want to keep into this. Will, as we wind this down, this is not a trick question. Not to capture you or trick you. I'm trying to give, the listeners an impression, especially those new. How much time did you have to spend on this bee project to get these two going?

Will: It was really minimal. It probably took us an hour or two to get them installed. Then once every three days, I would go and just lift the lid and look at activity. Then maybe once a week, I would actually crack some frames apart. It's not that much work, I guess I should say. It really isn't. You almost want to leave the bees alone because the more you open them up, the more they're stirred up, this and that. It's good to keep tabs on them visually and taking frames out. I really haven't been in and out every single day, messing with the bees every single day, startling them, scattering them.

I really just left them to their own devices. I think that proves well. It's always good to keep tabs. For the most part, you just got to let the bees be bees. It's not like a dog where you got to feed it and walk it. You don't need to take your bees on walks. You just leave them on their own.

Jim: [laughs] Right, yes. I'm glad to hear you say all that because it is important. When I was new, I was crazy. I wanted to be in the bees every day. I became their worst enemy. They couldn't work, they couldn't grow, they couldn't function because that crazy guy is here again. We need to realize that these bees pretty much are on their own. I'll come back with you sometime. I don't know what's up. Maybe before winter, late fall, early fall. We'll see where that one hive is. I know you're making plans. You're a high school senior, and you got some big changes coming in your life.

We'll see where you think this whole bee thing is going. Is it going to go on hold? Are you going to try to come home and work bees? I'll see, as a young, energetic beekeeper, how are you going to run this, or are you even going to run it at all? We'll see how it works out. Can we talk again sometime?

Will: Sounds good to me.

Jim: All right. Thank you for the time you've given me. I know you had other things to do, and I appreciate the update. I've enjoyed hearing and talking from afar.

Will: Thank you.

Jim: All right. Bye-bye, listeners.

[00:20:41] [END OF AUDIO]