First Hive Inspection of 2024

​On April 16th our local post office called to say our bees were here! Andy raced to the post office to pick them up while Cait made them some syrup and got the equipment loaded into the ranger. We were in a race against time, as thunderstorms were expected throughout the day. We installed (2) Three-pound packages of bees into their new hives. To help with observations and notetaking we previously painted the two hives differently, one pink and one green. During the installation we gave each hive a pollen patty and 2 gallons of 1:1 sugar syrup in a gravity feeder to assist them in drawing out the wax comb.

After installing the bees, we had a few days of cold and rainy weather but were greeted with some warmer days toward the end of the week. After observing our hives for a few days, it looked like the green hive was slightly more active than the pink.

On April 21st we did our first hive inspections to check on the colonies and look for eggs, a sign the new queen is doing well. We had warm sunny weather with temperatures reaching the low 60’s. Walking up to the apiary we were amazed to see hundreds of bees doing orientation flights. The air was peppered with buzzing bees! It was a bit intimidating at first, but we proceeded with the plan for the day.

The green hive had significantly more bee activity, so we started our inspections with the pink hive. During our inspections we removed a few frames until we could see the presence of eggs. This was a sign that the worker bees were drawing out comb and the queen was laying. Once the eggs were spotted, we replaced the frames, added a mite treatment strip (more on this later), replaced the feeder and closed the hives.

Varroa mites are a parasite that feeds on the fat bodies of developing larva and adult bees. These mites are considered the number 1 killer of honeybee colonies in the United States. According to the University of Minnesota’s Beekeeping in Northern Climates class “Small-scale beekeepers in Minnesota are experiencing 50-60% yearly losses on average.”. Each beekeeper should regularly test and treat colonies experiencing more than 1% mite infestation (1 mite per 100 bees). To be proactive in preventing mites we decided to pretreat our colonies using Hoppguard 3 miticide. Hoppguard 3 is made from hop compounds and safe for honeybees but deadly to varroa mites. We will remove the strips during one of our next hive inspections and continue to monitor mite levels throughout the year.

It wasn’t until our inspections were over and we were just watching the bees, that we noticed sugar syrup leaking from the front of the pink hive. We relit the smoker, reopened the top of the hive and checked the seal on the feeder pail. All seemed fine at this point, so we replaced the feeder and the lid. Using the hive tool we pulled out the entrance reducer off to help the excess syrup run out. We cant be sure what happened, but one theory is that the feeder was leaking when we first installed the packages of bees. That could explain why the pink hive was not as visibly busy outside the hive. We originally planned to inspect the new hives the day after installing them to check that the feeder wasn’t leaking and that the bees were clustered in the center of the box. We were experiencing thunderstorms so unfortunately could not complete a one day inspection. Luckily the bees don’t seem terribly bothered by the spill. We will keep watching them to see what happens and check in for another inspection in about a week!