removing medium honey super

My spouse, the voice of reason, captured many excellent photos during the removal of the medium honey super, but my favorite is the image of bees peering upwards between the frames.  I have an extra inner cover and extra 1gal pail feeder allowing the bees to leave the equipment and return to their hive in their own good time.  The AJ Beetle eaters were stuck solidly to the frames with propolis and required some coaxing followed by extra care to keep from spilling the vegetable oil.  The last slide is our 2010 MABA live auction item created by John Parris.  The under powered electric window box fan (not shown) failed to blow the bees off the frames, so  I returned to more conventional bee clearing methods--frame shaking and frame bumping.

small hive beetle sizes

AJ Beetle Eaters contents are logged for several weeks in side-by-side hives.   After emptying the AJ Beetle Eaters on to white paper, a log is kept of 1) the number of adult beetles and 2) length of each adult beetle (nearest millimeter). Sounds easy, eh?  It's messy, oily, and the clubbed beetle antennae can complicate the length measurement.

Do the adult small hive beetle populations change over time?

• Probably in response to cooler fall weather, less adult small hive beetles are captured over time
  
• I'm surprised--the hives maintain their unique small hive beetle size profile over time

How do the hives differ?

• Hive A is weaker (less flight activity) than hive B
  
• Hive A is younger (swarm capture) and hive B is older (early spring nucleus hive)
• Hive A has larger beetles than hive B.   Perhaps weaker (less flight activity) hives offer more small hive beetle treats (nutrition).

Unanswered questions:
When does the small hive beetle population peak?  Had I started the log sooner, then I could have captured the small hive beetle population peak.  Oh well, something for next year.  I'll wait for a further decline of the small hive beetle numbers before offering tasty (to small hive beetles) dry MegaBee pollen substitute to the bees.

clean the AJ Beetle Eater

Yikes, after a few weeks, the AJ Beetle Eater is covered with propolis. I frequently rotate spare Beetle Eaters into the easily accessible top boxes, but I also want to clean and reuse the Beetle Eaters . FYI, I use two Beetle Eaters per box. Early attempts at cleaning the Beetle Eaters with soap and water were a disaster. Now, I use a cleaning scheme that works with a minimal amount of effort:

• drain used AJ Beetle Eater components at room temperature
• clean components with paper towel (no water)
• freeze all the AJ Beetle Eater components
• one component at a time, remove from freezer and chip away the propolis with a paint scrapper and dab up the vegetable oil with paper towel (no water)

So, the results are 95% clean as new Beetle Eaters and ready for re-use. The paint scraper is appropriately less sharp than a hive tool for chipping away the frozen propolis.

AJ Beetle Eater

In the beginning, I spilled vegetable oil on myself trying to fill the AJ Beetle Eater. Now, I use a use a squeeze bottle ($3) with vegetable oil to fill the AJ Beetle Eater reservoir. Snap on the AJ Beetle Eater grill and suspended the ready to use AJ Beetle Eater on blue tape. The plastic pot is easy to transport to a hive inspection and between hive inspections, a plastic shower cap covers the oil filled AJ Beetle Eaters.

2009 wish list

Where does reading get me? Reading about bees is very satisfying and builds my vocabulary, but how much is appropriate to the tiny Atlanta in-town apiary? I mostly rely on listening to my Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association (MABA) friends, re-reading Keith Delaplaine's book "First Lessons in Beekeeping" and of course trying to learn from my mistakes. Here is my 2009 wish list:

• Running two AJ Beetle Eaters (+vegetable oil) per box, not one per hive as in 2008
• Purchasing nematodes (Southeast Insectary in Perry 877 967 6777) for spring SHB treatment
• Replacing concrete blocks with new hive stands that lift the hives higher and let more light reach the ground
• Painting a unique entrance for each hive as described in The Buzz about Bees by Jürgen Tautz
• Trying a bucket syrup feeder and certainly repeating the baggie feeding
• Purchasing more queen excluders and running a single deep brood chamber, not two as in 2008
• Trying a queen marking kit and practicing on a few drones
• Purchasing swarm traps (+lures), not the reactive ladder based swarm capturing as in 2008
• Trying MegaBee served dry using a bird (meal worm) feeder--no protein served in 2008
• Trying SuperBoost brood pheromone during the summer
• Trying Honey B Healthy (+water) for front entrance boardman feeding--not letting the neighbor water my bees using their salt water system swimming pool as in 2008

Why am I changing so many variables--not very scientific? My goal in 2009 is to reduce the SHB population and cover the single deep brood chamber with lots of bees during the summer SHB strength.