Green Corner
In the middle of May, Beekeeping Club installed a beehive on campus. Our bees are thriving now, following a very eventful summer of trying to establish the hive.
In late May, the queen bee was laying so many larvae (called “brood”) that we had to add another box (called a “super”) to the top of the hive, in effort to encourage the bees to pull more honeycomb and make room for her. In early July, the beehive seemed to be in good shape, with lots of brood and plenty of pollen and nectar to be turned into honey. We saw a few swarm queen cells (worker bees trying to make a new queen bee), which explains why we were unable to locate the queen during at the time. We believe that half of the hive swarmed a few days after July 4, probably due to a lack of space. To help, we added another super.
Although we still could not find the queen for the next couple of weeks, eggs and larvae of all ages indicated that there was a new queen actively procreating. However, we also saw an abundance of male bees, called “drones,” which usually means that there is a “laying worker”—not a good sign. A laying worker is a regular bee who tries to help out in the absence of a queen bee, but can only produce drones since only the queen bee can produce females. Drone bees do nothing for the hive other than consume resources, mate with the queen and attract mites. Long story short, their numerous presence was concerning. Fortunately, it is easy to detect a drone brood as opposed to a regular brood within a hive. Drone bees are longer, so the brood cells are rounded on top, creating a popcorn-esque look. To combat the excess of drones and protect our hive from mites and loss of resources, we used a fork to open drone cells that had not yet hatched.
By the middle of July, due to the presence of so many drones, irregular brood patterns and general lack of organization in the hive, we concluded that the hive was queenless. We ordered a new nucleus colony (a queen bee and about 10,000 bees), and blended it with our hive. By placing a piece of newspaper between the old hive and the nucleus colony, the bees are given time to adjust to each other as they eat through the newspaper to open the hive back up. Interestingly, the new nucleus colony that we got was actually a different breed of bees than our original hive. It was very interesting to see two different breeds of bees in there for a few weeks, before the new queen’s breed took over the population entirely.
One of the characteristics of our new breed of bees, the Carniolan, is that they are well adapted to surviving the winter. They cut down to a small winter bee population, and form a very tight “cluster” around the queen to keep her warm. All honeybees utilize this cluster formation to keep the queen bee at about 95 degrees, but cluster size is important, because fewer winter bees means the hive is less likely to run out of food storage before the winter is over
In the next few weeks, we will begin insulating our hive for the winter. The most important thing is to protect the bees from wind, so we will place hay bales on the North and East sides of the hive. We will also make sure they have enough honey stores to last them a few months, and if we feel that they don’t, we will provide them with extra food. If you have any questions about our activities with the hive, or you would like to be included in more regular beekeeping updates via email, please feel free to contact me at oliponis@exeter.edu for more information.