Plain Talk: A Fall Hive Check (257)

Episode 257 – Plain Talk: A Fall Hive Check 

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Jim Tew: Honey Bee Obscura podcast listeners, it's an absolutely spectacular fall day. You know me, I have to start with the weather. I don't know why I do that, but it's just important because to me and the bees, the weather is critical. This year is done. I got some busy work things I want to do with these hives for right now. Then I guess I'll more or less call it a year. Spring is on the way, one way or the other. Podcast listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here at Honey Bee Obscura podcast, where about once a week I just try to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

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 Tew: Listeners, it's one of those perfect days. I thought I'd finally gotten through the lawnmowers, and then the lawnmowers finally shut down, and what starts up, leaf blowers. I hope you can't hear that, but I'm afraid you can. All through my perils in the last few years, I've become an avid entrance watcher. I'm doing that now. You remember those two packages I bought early last spring? One of them was beautiful, got a good grip on life and took off, and the other one just could never get both feet on the ground. I'm going to do one of those don't-try-this-at-home things, but I'm just going to pop the lid on that hive. I don't think it's doing well at all.

My premise, for the season, is what should I be doing out here to deal with early-season dead-outs or hopeless hives or whatever? As I look, there's reasonable flight. The seasons and the bees have personalities. Right now, there's no frenzy, there's no insanity, there's no mass flight. There's just bees kind of buzzing around on a beautiful blue-skied, fall-colored day. I talked about that goldenrod and the fall asters and the smell. That's gone. Listeners, if you're a bee and it's early November, we've already had a frost or two, and you've got a nice day, what do you do? There's nothing to forage on. I don't know that any propolis or resin/gum is still going, so I don't know if any propolis is being produced.

There's good activity, but I don't know what they're doing. I guess they're just making hopeless foraging flights. I suppose if they need water, they might be collecting that, but there's nothing else to get. There's one hive here that probably could stand something. I've seen two yellowjackets go in the hive, and then I've seen a fisticuff just a bit ago. There's some early robbing probably going on there. Is that what they're doing? Are these bees out looking for other lesser colonies that they could rob out? That would be kind of ignominious, wouldn't it, that all they're foraging for is their weaker neighbors?

I don't know what they're doing, but there's a gentle breeze flowing. It's about 40 degrees, but in the sunlight where these colonies are, it's much warmer. Here's bees I had last spring that survived, surprisingly, in one of the expanded polystyrene boxes. I didn't have a look at it for all kinds of reasons. It was really weak. I put a robbing screen in and closed the entrance down last spring. It's still there. That box of bees is still here, so sometimes bees surprise you.

The other two boxes that I talked about, I told you last spring that one of these was going to swarm for sure. I'm assuming it did. I had some empty equipment stacked back up here, and a swarm moved in. It's that swarm's destiny right now. It is a powerful colony. It's got the most flight, the most bees, and it's the most disorganized. The equipment is in the wrong place. There's an inner cover in the wrong place, but it's the strongest hive. Tell me what to do, plain talk beekeepers. If it's working, do you fix it? Or since the bees have got their nest made the way they want it for the winter, do I just leave it alone?

Well, for a whole list of reasons, I'm going to leave it alone. I don't see any signs of runaway varroa. There's no massive bee die-off. I'm back at that colony with robbing because maybe I should close the entrance down some just occasionally, it's like they're able to fend things off for a bit. I don't see any. I said I don't see any varroa. There's no pupae out front. I would think by now they've really cut back on brood production. There's a lot of you who are rolling your eyes, saying, "Jim, get a smoker out and open them up."

All I do is just be looking. There's really nothing I could do right now. I just don't want to bother them. They've got their nest made. They've done as good a job as they can, and my domesticated equipment is setting up their nest. It's just my destiny and theirs. I'm not really sure that opening anything would make any changes. There's another stronger hive over here, and it had some robbing going on.

I guess I'm comfortable saying from a plain talk beekeeping standpoint, since all the goldenrod is gone, all the asters gone, all the landscape plants, nothing's out there, it looks like that the only resources available might be from each other's colony. There was a little bit of fisticuffs there. I'll put that on the list too for reasons not to open hives up, or not all of them. I'm going to open the one here in a bit. In fact, while I get ready, why don't we take a break and hear from our sponsor?

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Jim Tew: Got to step back inside the dark barn here. I was going to have some power run to this barn, but I never got to it. I would have to kind of say probably don't try this at home. This may be the death of this podcast, but all I want to do is have a quick look. Oh, there's bees right there. They're way up top. I checked the weight. They're right under the inner cover. That was a quick review, listeners. Like I said, I don't know what I would do. I talked to you and given talks at other places that some prominent scientists have said that we're ventilating the colonies maybe too much. I'm paraphrasing what they said.

They're not always taking the inner cover, and propped it up a quarter of an inch so that moisture-laden air could get out. Well, according to some people, that moisture-laden air is desirable because it helps with the humidity of the brood nest as the bees are trying to produce brood. I've talked to you about it before. I don't quite know what to do. The reason I didn't pop that top off, that inner cover, first of all, because there seems to be a good number of bees, they're way up top already. Just by doing the heft test, let me do it again.

I go behind the hive. All I'm doing is picking it up. Oh, it's got weight to it, but this is one that I could stand some help during the winter. Since the bees propolized everything up, I'm going to leave it. This could be disastrous next spring, but I'm not going to do what I've done forever. I do have some of the colonies that are slipped back. I'm from the south, and I always slip back some of the upper deeps, about half an inch or so. I need to close off those entrances, I guess, but I hate to do it because then all these bees have got to relearn that entrance in the dead of winter, and I'm afraid I'll kill them outside.

I'll take your advice on that too. Should you change entrances this late in the season and make bees learn to come from the back of the colony to the front of the colony? I guess, I'm thinking as I talk to you, maybe I'll just close off part of it with a wood plug. There's a big woolly bear caterpillar on one landing board, and the bees are ignoring it. They come right up. They don't bother it. It doesn't bother the bees, so I guess another question, do bees actually know their natural adversaries and that woolly bear caterpillar doesn't seem to have any concern about bees, nor them about that? That's off the subject.

I've seen yellowjackets that are fooling around inside the colony. I don't know what they're in there for. Are they trying to get honey? There was just a blue bottle fly that just went in. I've commented in the past that these bees are a little bit like beavers. They build an ecosystem that houses other organisms, some symbiotic and some deleterious. I know right now there's a green bottle fly and one yellowjacket inside a colony that didn't seem all that upset, and there's consistent robbing on the one next to it. I keep saying the same thing over and over again. Let me come at it from this way. I said this at the Ohio State beekeepers meeting, and I was embarrassed when I said it, but it's true.On the way home, I thought, "Well, that was stupid." Now here I am doing it again. I'm 77 years old. My kidneys function at about 40%. I'm pretty much deaf in both ears. I have hearing aids that really bring life to me. I have arthritic hips, and I'm not nearly as quick as I used to be and spry when I move. The question is, am I healthy? Well, at this very minute, I feel good. It's a great day to be out here. The bees seem okay. Yes, all of my parameters considered, I'm healthy. When I look at this beehive, and there's more robbing going on, and it's really kind of too late to open it.

Even though it's a nice day, and even though they have a small brood nest, I don't want to break them up. The robbing on this one colony is approaching significant. Norm Gary, a prominent researcher, said that when we put in entrance reducers to prevent robbing, that all we do is direct the robbers right to the reduced entrance. He was suggesting use grass or something more porous that causes the robbers confusion, but lets the inside bees have an idea what's going on. I'm seeing yellowjackets. I've seen one fly. I've seen abundant amounts of robbing. That would be, essentially, my report for the day.

There is something over here on one colony that looks, for all in the world, like a queen cell on the outside of the colony. I don't have a clue what that is. Maybe it's a pupae for some other species of insect, but I don't have a clue what that is. It looks like a small honeybee queen cell hanging off the top rim of the outer cover. I don't know what that is. If I pick up the back of this hive, oh, man, it is 100% dead weight. They're solid. Overall, as I walk around these colonies for this time of the year, outwardly, they seem healthy. Inwardly, I guess I'm a little bit like a physician, do no harm. If I open them up, I don't have any honey to give them.

There's no reason at this point that I know of for a late-season varroa treatment. It looks like I can stand some entrance reduction procedures. There's no bees matted out front. Just all in all, it's a very quiet day in the bee yard with flight and normality. It seems to be going okay. Checking that one colony, I'm struggling trying to decide if I should do any more. I've said that feeding is always a last-ditch effort, but this may be a colony that can stand some feed. If I'm going to do it, I need to do it sooner than later while the feed stays warm-- Not warm, but doesn't freeze up and granulate. I'm sorry. I'm thinking quite the same time, and I'm trying to talk. I shouldn't do two things at once.

Out of about 10 colonies here, there's only one that's questionable. Then there's one that seems to be having trouble convincing other bees that it's not open-season hunting here. The season's actually over, beekeepers. There's just not much I can do. I could put on some liquid syrup. That might help some, but it's clearly fall. Whatever I was going to do this year is essentially done. There's some equipment here that I could repair this winter and possibly rebuild that. I want to see if I can clear off some of these plastic inserts and reuse them just to see if I can do it. I guess it could be busy work for that.

I'd be a bit of a shamble because of neglect, but once the weeds die back, it'll be a better time to catch up with what's going on. All things considered, everything looks pretty good. I've gotten some nice letters from some of you. I had one writer give me some real insight into some smoker developments that are going on. If I get his permission to talk more openly about it, I'll do that. I've had other people who were complimentary, and then I've had some who are the people who don't like bees because they're exotic animals, they don't like honeybees, and they displaced native bees, but that's an opinion, and they're authorized to have it. We got that comment.

A lot of you write me. I don't always write you back in a timely way, but I do appreciate you writing me and keeping me in touch. On this nice day, it's just a nice day to be quiet, to be an old retired man. I just love the solitude and the quietness back in my messy, weedy bee yard as the bees do their bee thing, and I just watch them do it. I always enjoy talking with you. I hope I didn't waste your time. I'll be here this time about a week from now talking to you again. As I watch the bees argue and fight amongst themselves, I'm Jim telling you bye.

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