Drat...

Went in today to put the MiteAway strips on the top bars of the bottom of the two brood boxes. I also took the feeder off and wanted to put the super back on with the emptied frames so that the the bees could take the leftover honey off of them.

And when I opened it up, I found very very few bees in the box. The top box was practically empty. The honey in the feeder was about half gone, and while there were a few bees up there, there weren't that many. It was a shock given how many bees there were earlier this month.

Nearly all the bees in the bottom box were between three frames on the southwest side of the bottom brood box. There weren't that many of them, but they all looked healthy, and while some had mites on them, there weren't any of the crippled wingless ones. There were bees going in and coming out of the hive, at a pretty good rate, which is partially why I was so surprised to find so few bees in the box.

When I removed the sticky board on the bottom, there was a lot of wax flakes, a lot of bee heads, and a couple of hive beetles (sighs). That isn't good, either. I suspect that the really strong wasp and hornet nests nearby took their toll on the girls, as the wasps pretty much bite their heads off.

I'd been seeing some sign of pesticide die off, as nearly every morning there were a handful of the girls on their backs, feebly waving their legs in the air on the entrance board. On cold mornings there were a lot more dead than on relatively warm mornings. I wonder if they'd brought back some poisoned pollen? I don't know.

The boxes were also pretty heavy, still, so there was honey in the frames the bees had.  A number of the local keepers have experienced starving because August and September were far colder and rainier than the local flora is used to having, so they haven't been producing as much nectar. So they've been feeding at a pretty good clip. So they weren't dying off simply because I wasn't good about feeding them... there's just something else going on, and I'm kind of sad to see it.

I left the open mesh bottom board on because of the mites, to get rid of them, but maybe the ventilation is too much and it was too cold for them? Anyway, there seem to be a myriad of possible reasons, and no real way of sorting them all out.  So I just put the strips on for the ladies that were left, and if I get their mite problem taken care of, and reduce them to a single, well-honeyed brood box, it might give them a little more of a chance. But this winter really looks like it's going to be a harsh one, so I don't give them much of a chance with such small numbers before even getting into winter.

It's kind of a shock, but it's also kind of to be expected, as the local keepers have been writing, lately on our email list, about what a horrible end to the season it's been. The losses are huge already, and the mite loads have been crazy. Plus, the feeding/lack of flow problem, and a lot of keepers are already losing a lot of colonies. One lady even found an abandoned apiary that she was asking for help to clean out... so it's kind of sad all around.

Record Keeping

Mostly to say that today I treated the hive again with powdered sugar, as I'm still waiting on the beekeeping supply place to ship my mite control strips. *sighs*

I also put all the uncapped honey into the sugar syrup feeder I usually put on near this time of the year, and fed it back to the colony. I don't make mead, I don't really use honey quickly enough to use all the uncapped stuff I got out of the super, but I had to take the super off in order for the colony to fill its brood box. This way the girls will still get the benefit of their labor. It was actually pretty close to the density of honey, so I don't feel like it's feeding them something watered down that will bring on dysentery. And it was nearly five pounds of the stuff, so it'll just help them that much more for the winter.

Also pulling and replacing the sticky board which has a pretty large number of mites, so any treatment won't hurt.

Oh! And I got another half a gallon from the very last harvest. I wasn't expecting much, so it was nice to just see what I could get.

Final Harvest

On Saturday I went in and took the last eight super frames, I think the theory is that if the beekeeper takes all the supers off by the end of summer, the bees will still have the time, through the fall, to put in honey supplies in all the brood chambers. Two frames weren't built at all, four were half-built and half-filled and uncapped, and then the last two were completely full and capped. So the last two are the only ones I can jar to sell, the others might not be dehydrated enough for common consumption.

The local keepers say to use it for mead, and I may well do that as my husband's a brewer.

I also saw my first mite-damaged bee that had been in larval stage with the mite larva, i.e. her wings were stunted and she couldn't fly. I did another powdered sugar treatment, and changed out the sticky board. There's a LOT of mites on the board, so I've invested in some of the Mite Away formic acid strips for when the weather finally goes under 70 for a week at a time. It's time to bring out the chemical means to deal with the mites. They're just so thick on the poor girls now it was making me a little unhappy.

Still... about 60 pounds of honey from one hive for a year is really good. I've now given my yearly gifts to the neighbors that directly deal with the girls, and I'm starting to sell the honey to the rest of the neighborhood and my church. Mostly just through personal connections, since I don't process in a commercial kitchen. I think that's one reason why I'll never go beyond just the one hive, as I really don't want to get a license and have to do all the things a business would have to do. Honey for my friends and family is plenty.

I've also been using the diluted honey for brewing ginger ale, just soda pop, no alcoholic content. I simmer the ginger with a lemon and its juice as well as honey and sugar. Then I take the resultant tisane and water it down to make a gallon and add an 1/8 tsp of plain old bakers' yeast (actually instant yeast so I don't have to be careful rehydrating it). Then I give it a little time to dissolve the yeast, shake it up, bottle it, cap the bottles and wait a day or two and then I have highly carbonated ginger ale that isn't all that sweet, as the yeast has eaten most of the sugars, but it had the flowery hint from the honey over the bite of real ginger.

We've been bottling our own root beer too, with the same yeast, and there's something about the brew that slows down the yeast, so it takes three or four days before the root beer's ready, and only a day or two for the ginger ale. But hey, cheap, all-natural soda pop is fun. *grins*

In case anyone's interested in the recipe: 2 1/2 ounces coarsely grated ginger, 2/3 cup honey, 2 cups sugar, one lemon squeezed of its juice, and about 2 quarts of water. Put all that together in a pot (including the two lemon peel halves), and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat, let simmer for about 25 minutes, and then turn off the heat, cover and let cool for at least an hour. Pour through a sieve and a funnel into a gallon jug, add water to fill to a gallon and alternate cold and hot tap water to make the resultant liquid 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Add 1/8 tsp instant yeast (not regular dried yeast or live cake yeast, if you use the regular dried yeast, give it 10 minutes in a cup of warm sugared water first before tossing it in), cap the jug, shake a few times. Then bottle it and cap it, and put it out in the garage in the summer/in a warm area for a day or two and then test to see if the carbonation suits you. Makes 10 12 oz bottles and 1 8 ounce bottle.