hive preparation for winter

 

Refer to Derek’s 2024 paper in the Journal of Thermal Biology, “Are man-made hives valid thermal surrogates for natural honey bee nests?” Derek reports that “bee space above combs increases heat loss by up to ∼70%; hives, compared to tree nests, require at least 150% the density of honey bees to arrest convection across the brood area.”

In a hive, brood heat typically circulates by (1) rising between frames, (2) striking the inner cover, (3) spreading sideways, and (4) descending through the cold bee space.

To improve insulation, I added an external Bee Cozy (R-value 8) and took internal measures to limit brood heat circulation by blocking the bee space above the combs. I used letter-sized plastic sheets (the type made for overhead projectors), placing one spliced and trimmed sheet directly on the top bars beneath each hive’s inner cover.

Moving the BroodMinder sensor

Graph Interpretation
This hive is built from three stacked 5-frame deep boxes—what I call “the tower.” By late July, my BroodMinder temperature graph became nearly impossible to interpret. Frustration set in: back in May, this same 2025 swarm showed far steadier brood-temperature regulation. Why, I wondered, does the BroodMinder sensor not come with clearer instructions? I should have known better than to confuse gadget guidance with actual beekeeping wisdom.
Temperature Events (red pins)
The BroodMinder “temperature events” logic drops red pins everywhere, but that wasn’t my real concern. The bigger story was that this hive swarmed in early June. That event lowered brood temperature by nearly 10°F. Gradually, though, the colony recovered and brood temperatures crept back into a stable thermoregulation range by late June.
Sensor Location
At $40, the hive gets just one sensor from me. This colony began as a single five-frame deep in mid-April, so I initially placed the BroodMinder at the top of that box, above the brood frame, as the BroodMinder instructions suggested. Since then, I’ve twice bottom-supered, so the hive now stands as three stacked deeps. I’m open to moving the sensor—but only with a theory in hand. Random changes don’t sit well with me. My best reasoning so far: (1) the brood nest shifted downward as I added boxes underneath, and (2) bees prioritize brood temperature regulation over regulating honey storage temperatures.
Conclusion
In early August, I finally moved the sensor from the top of the third box down to the top of the second. Coincidentally, Atlanta cooled off that same week, with outdoor highs never breaking 70°F. As the graph shows, this new placement hit the “brood sweet spot”: readings stayed firmly in the Brood Zone Band (92–98°F) despite the cooler weather. For once, life is good—and I’ll just have to find another beekeeping puzzle to obsess over.
Looking back, there was never much at stake. I changed one variable: the location in the stack where I measured temperature. Still, I can’t resist narrating the drama.

deconstructing counting board debris

Green contours surround 2 varroa mites

 
My beekeeping journal
I have several notebooks to journal my hobbies. There is one for the backyard chickens and one for the worm farm - you get the idea, I’m a mess! What’s going on in these journals? Usually, it's just my pencil or ink block letter writings, but when I get excited about a topic, out comes the straight edge and I draw with a mechanical pencil, colored pencil, and highlighter.
The big picture
I usually capture photographs of my counting board and hive inspections for ease of use when I later write in my beekeeping journal or need to capture time and date for my blog. Here, I’m focusing on my counting board debris for a small spring swarm trap capture and using a chatbot interface (for example, ChatGPT). In the spring, the debris begins as beautiful, clear wax mirrors; over time, I see grainy lumps of pollen; then darker wax cappings appear.

In the summer, I find small hive beetles and female varroa mites in my debris observations. For spotting tiny varroa mites, I use a magnifying glass and methodically raster scan (line by line style) the counting board. The mites are approximately 2mm in width (left-to-right) and are nearly all found resting on their feet (back facing upwards). If you look closely you can see their feet sticking out on the mouth side of the insect. I asked the chatbot 1) what is the size of the varroa mite, and 2) is a varroa mite an insect? The chatbot supported this observation as a female mite and goes on to say that a male mite is much smaller and rarely seen outside the brood cell. Here’s a table that chatbot produced. The table values look reasonable, but if you type “add sources” to the chatbot reply, you might be more confident with the results.

Trait	Insects	Arachnids (like Varroa mites)
Body segments	3 (head, thorax, abdomen)	2 (cephalothorax, abdomen)
Legs	6	8
Antennae	Yes	No

Taking the iPhone photo
Here are my steps to photograph the debris board.

• Place the debris board in bright indirect sunlight
• Touch the iPhone screen to focus
• Adjust the brightness slider (icon looks like the sun) until the debris-free region matches the expected white color

I took an additional up-close photo that captured a small portion of the counting board containing varroa mites. Why? This is necessary if you want to see the varroa mite legs with the pixel resolution of my iPhone
Computer vision prototyping
I typed “how to get started with OpenCV and Python” into the chatbot prompt and followed the numbered steps. I made incremental progress by replying to the chatbot with write code using OpenCV and Python to: 1) read my JPG file, 2) define the mite color by clicking on the image, 3) calculate a mask using color distance, 4) dilate the mask, 5) threshold the mask, 6) find external and internal contours, 7) filter contours with area limits, 8) filter contours with approximate convexity limits, 9) filter contours with approximate circularity limits, 10) draw the filtered contours on the my JPG using a heavy green line, and 11) write this result to an image file. This seems like lots of work, but it's a factor of 10 easier than writing my own code from scratch. Sometimes the chatbot would suggest that I upload the file to execute all the steps for me. FYI, there is a “+” icon near the prompt area to browse your computer and upload your JPG file.The mites are reddish-brown and have a shiny spot when their backs are facing the iPhone. In photography, the shiny spot is often referred to as a "specular highlight", and this requires infilling with the processing step #4, dilation.
Computer Vision Conclusion
To detect all the mites I had to trial-and-error adjust my program filters. The computer vision project was interesting, but I quickly reached the pixel limit of my iPhone and my hobby lighting skills. The best news, the filtered contours drew my attention to a few mites that I missed without the program.

BroodMInder Temperature Event

In the beginning
On April 13, 2025, a swarm selected my swarm trap, I transferred these swarm trap frames into a five-frame deep box and added a BroodMinder temperature sensor to the top bar of a brood frame. Hourly the BroodMinder stores the temperature °F (purple line), and when I am within bluetooth range, the temperature data is transferred to the cloud using my iPhone.   The outdoor temperatures °F (red dashed line) are provided by a web provider (Weather Source). 
Flash forward and the graph interpretation
Flash forward to June 2025, and the hive has been twice bottom-supered into something we call ‘the tower’ - a stack of 3x5-frame deep boxes. In an ideal hive, the brood temperature (purple line) is centered in the gray band (92-98 °F) with very little fluctuation over time. However this is not such an “ideal” hive, bursting with overwintered bees. The brood temperature of ‘the tower’ fluctuates in sync with the outdoor temperature and on a good day achieves temperatures in the gray band. I have not discussed the red pins, but hang on, I'm getting there.
The red pins
If the brood temperature is above 92°F, then the sensor logic compares previous temperature measurements with the current measurement. Large temperature increases over a short period of time are flagged as a ‘Temperature Event’ or a swarm detection. “No way,” I said.  “Experimental feature,” I said. On June 3, 2025, I was out skating and my spouse called to say, ‘the tower is swarming, the bees are pouring out of the entrance.”  When I returned to the house, things looked normal-ish…well, the flight activity was less vigorous. After transferring the brood temperature data to the cloud, the graph shows that the spouse’s phone call and the red pin align in time, 11:30 AM. I guess the ‘Temperature Event’ detection worked - it’s not an experimental software gimmick after all. 
Adjusted expectations
The BroodMinder does not inspect, manage, or automate my beekeeping; I put those fantastical expectations aside. Apparently, I created more beekeeping tasks for myself like replacing its battery annually, weekly transferring the brood temperature data to the cloud, and the biggest task of all - interpreting the graph. After the temperature event, “the tower” brood temperature continued to fluctuate in sync with the outdoor temperature. After 16 days, the brood temperature reappeared in the gray band. A re-queening intervention was not attempted and, in hindsight, not required. For a small first-year hive, the broodminder is an interesting data logging tool, and requires lots of graph interpretation.  If graph interpretation is your thing, here’s a link to the BroodlMinder. 

Budapest beekeeping startup

Farmers Market; Tánczos selling Acacia and Linden honey

András describes the bumble bee colony 

 

Zoltan led the honey extraction and honey tasting 

Examining brood comb

 

As a young person, my dad, amongst his other farming community chores, kept beehives in Bakonyjákó, Hungary. Visiting this farming community was on my bucket list, and since work sent me to a conference in Vienna, Austria, I could not resist a piggyback visit to Hungary.

In preparation for the trip, we contacted a Hungarian-speaking guide. Also, I had ChatGPT create a list of common beekeeping terms in English, Hungarian, and the Hungarian phonetic pronunciation. I spent hours repeating out loud the bee vocabulary and listening to Google Translate. Warning, others say I can be annoying in my repetitive habits.

Unexpected first contact with a beekeeper
Setting off from Budapest by car to Bakonyjákó, a wrong turn for lunch brought us to a farmers' market. At the first food stall, we met Tánczos selling honey. Without any spoken words required, I was offered a wooden tongue depressor and jumped into honey tasting. The guide helped me understand that the two varietal honeys are acacia and linden. I spoke to the beekeeper using my limited German and discovered my new friend has 30 hives.

An afternoon with a beekeeping startup, Mézerderdő méhészet
Our guide found a beekeeping activity for us. András greeted us at the entrance of the startup wearing a green hoodie with the text, Méhész vagyok, mi a szupererőd? The guide whispered, “I’m a beekeeper - what’s your superpower?” Three years ago, Zoltan and András purchased a plot of land at the edge of Budapest, and they now run a part-time beekeeping startup focused on what appears to include insect education, beekeeping experiences, and honey sales. The plot supports 50 hives, all with vigorous flight activity, and colonies kept in two box styles. Half of the hives were traditional Hungarian style of boxes, all of the same size, and the other half a mix of box heights, including a very tall deep box.

The afternoon was shared with 30 paying visitors who split into two groups. We set off with András and started by looking at their native and commercial bumble bee hives. My ChatGPT vocabulary is only vaguely useful, perhaps confused in translation, but the guide says family when describing a colony. I’ll guess that these guys interchange the words colony and family when speaking to visitors. Their relaxed and playful style of education wins the trust of the crowd. Somehow, the visit and the word family (instead of colony) shifted my perception, and I find myself in a The Matrix movie moment. The beekeeping experience includes passing around honey supers and brood comb, extraction of a few frames, honey tasting, and more honey tasting. These guys are living the life, and it felt like I had run away with the circus.

Saying goodbyes, I had more questions for András and found him smoking a cigarette - yeah, this is beekeeping in Hungary, and smoking is part of the relaxation culture.

tulip poplar windfall, other spring flowers and phenology '25

 

Based on my Atlanta backyard observations and record keeping, I found this year's first Tulip Popular flower windfall a few days early (day 93) - see my table below.  I compared my first tulip poplar windfall observations with other spring surrogates.  The National Phenology Network leaf out model is another way to determine if spring is early, on time, or late.

Spring Leaf Index Anomaly Map uses the first leaf out of cloned lilac and honeysuckle cultivars as these woody plants are among the first to leaf out or bloom and are common across much of the country.  The model also uses temperature and weather events beginning January 1 of each year.  The current spring is compared with a 1991-2020 average. The map shows that the 2025 Georgia Piedmont region's first leaf out day of the year is a few days early compared to the 30-year average.

Other Atlanta nectar sources at this time (not shown):

• Chinese Wysteria (invasive)
  
• White Clover
• Spiderwort
• Amur Honeysuckle (invasive)
• Dandelion

1st Tulip Poplar Windfall	Day of Year
10-Apr-2011	100
27-Mar-2012	87
19-Apr-2013	109
12-Apr-2015	102
15-Apr-2017	105
5-Apr-2018	95
11-Apr-2019	101
7-Apr-2021	97
6-Apr-2022	96
24-Mar-2023	83
6-Apr-2024	97
3-Apr-2025	93
median	97

Growing Degree Days and swarm collection

In Better Beekeeping, Kim Flottum described Growing Degree Days (GDD) and how this measure of heat accumulation predicts plant blooming. A growing degree day is a formula that reflects temperatures above 50°F which is the most common base temperature.

For example, red maples (Acer rubrum) begin to bloom when they reach a GDD threshold of 30–50 GDD (base 50°F). I started thinking that there was a relationship between GDD and swarms. I returned to Kim’s GDD page over several years struggling to relate GDD and collecting swarms - my favorite aspect of beekeeping.

At first glance, GDD calculator rules and heat accumulation bookkeeping results might look abstract - you are not alone.

Atlanta, GA	Atlanta, GA
First Swarm Date -	Growing Degree Days
Date from David Marshall	(GDD BASE 50 °F) data from NOAA GDD calculator
2-Mar-22	173
25-Feb-23	312
1-Mar-24	176

Explanation of the Atlanta first swarm date versus Atlanta GDD table

Thanks to MABA’s swarm commander, David Marshall, I have three years of swarm collection data and combined these three first swarm dates with NOAA’s GDD plot. GDD measured on the first swarm day shows that 2023 GDD has a surprisingly large value compared to 2022 and 2024. In the table, two of these 3 data points (2022 and 2024) are extremely similar, but I nevertheless connected all points with a straight line. Wow, a relationship between GDD and swarm collection seems within reach!

Explanation of the Accumulated GDD graph

• Smooth brown line is an average of several decades of Atlanta’s GDD calculations
• Blue line is Atlanta’s historically highest GDD calculation (2017)
• Red line is Atlanta’s historically lowest GDD calculation (1915)

Black line passes through Atlanta’s first swarm dates of 2022, 2023, and 2024. For simplicity, Atlanta’s GDD curves for these three years are not shown, but those curves lie between the blue and brown curves. I hypothesize that years with GDD curves closer to the blue curve also have their first swarm date earlier in the year - as much as eight days earlier in the Atlanta area compared to an “average” year.

Explanation of NOAA’s historical last freeze day

Georgia includes a wide range of historically average last freeze dates, which implies that your local bee club GDD curves do not match my experience in Atlanta. Please do not hesitate to share your club’s swarm collection dates with me - I promise to treat your data with respect and acknowledgment.
In summary, it’s not too early to make a plan to find your swarm traps (bait hives) in winter storage and spruce up that trap (paint, frames, and lure) before the start of the 2025 swarm season. Keep an eye on your local GDD curve. In hindsight, Atlanta’s 2023 higher-than-average GDD trend was detectable in late January.

learning from natural honey bee nests

It’s winter and I’m thinking about my bees in these recent cool temperatures; my curiosity turned to Google Scholar and searching for the beekeeper and engineer - Derek Mitchell. Here I found Derek’s 2024 paper in the Journal of Thermal Biology - Are man-made hives valid thermal surrogates for natural honey bee nests.  This is a highly technical read with an exotic mix of scientific units, but I found take-home nuggets useful to my hobby beekeeping. My goal is not to keep bees in a tree, but to modify my wintering of bees in a thin-walled wood box by learning what bees have, on their own, achieved living in tree cavities.

	Man-made hive	Tree nest
Top ventilation	Beekeeper’s  choice	None
Wall properties	Thin low R-value	Thick high R-value
Comb to wall surface	Continuous bee space separation	Comb attached to the wall with a few small gaps
Comb to roof surface	Continuous bee space separation	Comb maximally attached to tree cavity roof
Comb to bottom surface	Continuous bee space separation made more complex with multiple boxes	One continuous separation
Vertical comb length	Single frame height whether using one or multiple boxes	Continuous

Made with HTML Tables

Using 16 variables adjusted to experimental observation, Derek used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and compared the convective air flow and metabolic impact to bees in a standard British National Hive (one box of 35 Liters) versus a synthetic tree nest (45 liters).

Derek writes, “bee space above combs increases heat loss by up to ∼70%; hives, compared to tree nests, require at least 150% the density of honey bees to arrest convection across the brood area.”

Derek recommends blocking the bee space above the combs in a man-made hive, which I interpreted as adding a clear plastic sheet resting directly on the top bar frame. I have a box of letter-sized plastic sheets designed for overhead projector presentations - it seems perfect for the task. Stay tuned for how this works out for me as I am over-wintering two hives with a different number of boxes. One hive has two medium boxes, and the other hive has one deep box. I spliced sheets together with tape and trimmed the extended sheet to fit inside my eight-frame box. Each hive received one trimmed plastic sheet beneath its inner cover resting directly on the top bar frame. No doubt the bees will glue the plastic to the top bar frame and this will require some vigorous spring cleanup effort. 🤣

Perhaps you want to give this small modification a try and use different materials (e.g., wood, thick acrylic, or coroplast).

Broodminder - thermoregulation

 

Not inexpensive, but I purchased the most affordable BroodMinder sensor which measures the internal hive temperature. The sensor is a thin profile temperature data logger that rests on the top bar and syncs with my iPhone (then uploads to the cloud) where data is graphed and accessible on my iPhone or web browser.

The dashed red line is local weather data.   I'm naturally skeptical about weather data.   When I placed the broodminder in hives without bees, I found that temperature data tracked the weather data accurately.  

Hourly internal temperature data values from the sensor created the solid cranberry-colored line. Ideally the solid line tracks within the gray band (92°F - 98°F) and represents a queen-right hive.  There are many reasons why the solid line is drawn below the gray band, but I had no information as to why the temperature had climbed above the gray band to 105°F.  I'm puzzled and reached out to BroodMinder Support and Theresa Martin (author of Dead Bees Don't Make Honey) for assistance in shaping a theory.

I checked the sync with the iPhone which recorded the coin battery strength.  Nothing suspicious there, the battery was 97% of full strength.   

During the inspection of the counting board and an internal hive inspection, I discovered that the small hive beetles had compromised the honey.  The 105°F was likely created by the fermentation of honey.   I found the BroodMinder sensor and temperature graphs very helpful, internal temperature is one of many ways to monitor hive health.

Google Alerts

After a few missteps, I shaped my internet news query about swarms - my favorite aspect of beekeeping.  For the past few months I received daily emails from Google Alerts and I'm ready to share how the news media covers the topic of swarms.  I was not surprised to see the media crafted eyeball attracting internet headlines (clickbait). 

Here are 7 different internet headlines about the same bee event.  The beekeeper never appears in the headline so it's hard to describe the story as balanced.

3 workers stung by swarm of bees while trimming trees in New Jersey - FOX 5 New York

Police: 3 people hospitalized as bee swarm takes over Paramus neighborhood News 12 - New Jersey

Neighbors told to stay home after swarm of angry bees injures 3 tree trimmers, cops say
- NJ.com

Bee swarm injures workers in Paramus as police urge residents to stay inside -
northjersey.com

Cops in NJ warn of 'large swarm' after bees attack 3 workers - Audacy

Angry Bees Attack Three Tree Trimmers In Paramus: 'Cover Your Face!' (Update)
- Daily Voice

Bees Sting Employees In Bergen County Town, Sending 1 To Hospital | Wyckoff, NJ Patch
Paramus police closed Howland Avenue for a time and dispatched a beekeeper to the scene, Chief Robert Giudetti said. "The Bee Keeper arrived and accessed the situation determining if the bees are left alone they will return to the nest in the trunk of the tree ... The bees returned to the hive and the scene was cleared."

Some of the news was sad

75-year-old grandfather killed by swarm of bees while working on Texas ranch - New York Post
75-year-old Bryce Smith was clearing some trees on his property in Bedias. He was using the bulldozer and incidentally took down a bee hive while clearing the trees.

Where is the line between exploitation of the public's fear versus suggesting caution about bees?  Do semantics matter to our neighbors, or is it just me?  I cringe when people write hive when they mean nest, or write swarm when they mean guard bees.  I'm shocked by these dramatic internet news headlines, but still interested in exploring Google Alerts.

water foraging during June 2024 heatwave

In Atlanta, June 2024 was both hot and dry.  The daily temperatures were warmer than normal, touching the record high for a few days.  We accumulated 1.74 inches (4.4 cm) of rain compared to a normal June rainfall of 4.54 inches (11.5 cm).  

I rolled out the garden hose and watered daily.  The bees responded by drinking from the birdbath and packing around the edge of the ant moat that hangs above the hummingbird feeder.  

Next, I set out decorative bee-watering items with a dash of kosher salt.  How much salt is enough?  Follow this link to Salt preferences of honey bee water foragers and read that minimal salt is required to attract bees.  The unrelenting heat and the bees' keen memory of their new water source required that I top up the water several times a day.  I added a large chicken waterer 9/10 gal (3.3 liter) with a dash of kosher salt that kept up with the bees and evaporation at the waterer.  In my opinion, the key to attracting water foragers is to provide a permanent and dependable location for water.

NOAA's headline, June marked by record-setting U.S. heat waves, severe weather, highlighted tornados and flash flooding in Florida.   In Atlanta, the June 2024 experience was hot and dry.

Honey Bee Swarm Seasonality

Using David Marshall's (MABA’s swarm commander) 2022-2023 Atlanta swarm records I created a histogram graph with eight bins. The raw data has many of days with no swarms and combining two years in a simple graph does not completely patch days with no swarms days or sufficiently smooth the data. The histogram peaks on March 28 ± 10.5 days, and then there is a long tail into the summer months. 

I discovered a paper, Seasonal Cycle of Swarming in Honeybees, that combined six years of Ithaca, NY swarm emergence dates - I digitized the paper’s Figure 1A.  I created a histogram plot with nine bins. Figure 1A and the resulting histogram graph show a bimodal seasonal pattern – peaking on June 9 ± 7.5 days with a smaller peak in the summer months. 

 

 

I exchanged emails with one of the authors, Thomas Seeley, and shared how spring frost and fall frost climate data might reconcile these Atlanta and Ithaca swarm peaks. 

• The Ithaca x-axis contains fewer days than the Atlanta y-axis and is consistent with Ithaca's shorter growing season.
• In Atlanta and Ithaca, the peak swarm (orange circle) appeared before the local last spring frost.

I’ll leave it to the readers why honey bees in Atlanta don’t have a smaller summer peak like Ithaca – I don’t know. Having a pattern bias has sometimes served me well in making quick decisions, detecting missing data, or spotting corrupted data - what the typical swarm season pattern should look like is still up for grabs!

 

Swarm Trap - May 5th 2024

Swarm summary: It was an unusual swarm trap season.🤣 My neighbors helped me see a swarm select a sycamore tree cavity, and 43 days later this bee nest swarms and selected my swarm trap 7 houses away. Flight vigor at the bee nest has since increased - the bee nest is a gift that keeps giving!

 

I was hoping for something else! 

• 9th March - I installed 4 swarm traps in my neighborhood
• active scouting began at two 40-liter swarm traps hanging from crepe myrtle limbs. Each swarm trap contained:
• 5x deep frames with plastic starter strips
• UV-reactive blue swarm trap entrance
• synthetically produced Nasonov pheromone
• 23rd March in the early afternoon - my traps are passed over as the bees selected a cavity in the sycamore tree trunk using a cut-off limb entrance and active scouting of swarm traps subsided
  
• 29th April - sycamore bee nest entrance was obscured by a huge bee beard - see the 2nd photo.
  

In a roundabout way, the moment I've been waiting for!   

• active scouting restarted at the two 40-liter swarm traps
• 5th May at 5:30PM - bees selected my backyard 40-liter swarm trap and the sycamore bee nest entrance is no longer obscured by a huge bee beard - a flight journey of 290 feet (88 meters) - see the 1st photo.
  
• over the next 6 days after dark, I moved the occupied swarm trap in 5 steps towards my empty backyard hive stand.  The after-dark move was made easier by leveling the next location during daylight hours.
  
• 13th May - I transferred 5 deep swarm trap frames to 8-frame equipment and moved the swarm lure to the 8-frame landing board. No smoking or brushing of bees was required. - see the 5th photo.

tulip poplar windfall, other spring flowers and phenology '24

Click on the image and notice that ants have discovered the tulip poplar flower. These ants are not thought of as pollinators just clever at finding sweets.

Based on my Atlanta backyard observations and record keeping, I found this year's first Tulip Popular flower windfall right on time (day 97) - see my table below.  I'm curious how my first tulip poplar windfall observations correlate with other spring surrogates?  The National Phenology Network leaf out model is another way to determine if spring is early, on time, or late.

Spring Leaf Index Anomaly Map uses the first leaf out of cloned lilac and honeysuckle cultivars as these woody plants are among the first to leaf out or bloom and are common across much of the country.  The model also uses temperature and weather events beginning January 1 of each year.  The current spring is compared with a 1991-2020 average. The map shows that the 2024 Georgia Piedmont region's first leaf out day of the year is similar to the 30-year average - spring is on time in the Georgia Piedmont region and surrounding regions show that spring is a few days early.

Other Atlanta nectar sources at this time (not shown):

• Chinese Wysteria (invasive)
  
• White Clover
• Spiderwort
• Amur Honeysuckle (invasive)
• Dandelion
  

1st Windfall	day of year
April 10, 2011	100
March 27, 2012	87
April 19, 2013	109
April 12, 2015	102
April 15, 2017	105
April 5, 2018	95
April 11, 2019	101
April 7, 2021	97
April 6, 2022	96
March 24, 2023	83
April 6, 2024	97
median	97

Made with HTML Tables

MABA swarm hotline

For me, collecting swarms or attracting swarms to bait hives is the most exciting part of my beekeeping.  Possibly making spring my favorite beekeeping season.  

 

Sunday at 1PM I received a text from the MABA "swarm commander" - a homeowner has called the swarm hotline about a swarm in their yard.   The best part of the text details...the swarm address is 3 miles away and the swarm is just a foot or two above the ground.  I'm all in and arrive in the next half hour.

 

I strongly relate to E.O. Wilson's connection to nature as not outgrowing his childhood bug phase. Knowing everyone does not share this view, I consciously met the homeowner's insect concerns with lots of listening about the swarm of bees. The re-framing education moment comes next - I say "that huge ball hanging from the tree canopy is a wasp nest, these bees likely have their nest in a cavity, like a tree."   

A few weeks ago, I patched up and painted my old wood nucleus box.  Wow, I'm ready for the swarm call-out, or so I thought.  Good - my bee toolbox has a bag of gloves. Bad - the gloves are too small, too old - they split and I quickly gave up wearing gloves.   The bees don't like the brushing or the hand attached to the yellow brush - my poor hand!

I added a swarm lure to the nucleus box entrance, brush, brush, brush again...and I'm nearly there.    I leave the nucleus box for collection just before dusk, 7:30PM.   So proud of myself to discover no bees returned to the trunk of the shrub.

winter-flowering ornamental cherry tree 2024

Year after year, this tree has produced great bee photos foraging on winter-flowering cherry tree.   The time was 2 PM, the temperature was 57°F (13.9°C), blue sky, sunshine, and a loud buzz of bees on this quiet street.

What's next?  Crabapple trees (thanks to Trees Atlanta) are beginning to leaf-out and those flowers will be here soon and attracting honey bees too.

does the cluster provide insulation?

I discovered 2 interesting articles by Derek Mitchell (PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds), one is intended for a general honey bee audience, the other a hard-core engineering-science article.  This blog post contains 2 images from those articles.

• Honeybees cluster together when it’s cold – but we’ve been completely wrong about why
• Honeybee cluster—not insulation but stressful heat sink 
  

 Facts about bees wintering in thin-wall wood hives:

• bees move from the hive edges towards the center of the hive to form a cluster
• as temperatures fall, the cluster shrinks - see the image from Derek's article
  
• the cluster core is hot compared to the cluster periphery.  
• bees in the core consume honey and keep bees in the periphery warm.
• in extreme winter temperatures, bees on the periphery risk death by hypothermia
• the cluster periphery is denser than the core

Derek writes, "Since the early twentieth century, the outer layer (mantle) of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in the winter cluster has been said to insulate the cluster core."  

A shrinking cluster increases density, reduces porosity, and increases heat loss. Here I'm using porosity to describe the amount of empty (air) space, or porosity = empty space ÷ total space.  Typically a thermal insulator reduces heat loss by trapping air and is therefore low in density.  The higher density cluster periphery is not a thermal insulator - has never been a insulator.  Beekeepers need not stress bees in extremely cold temperatures when insulation is readily available. 

• take a quick look in beekeeping catalogs and you'll discover flexible hive wraps - flexible wraps roll-up for easy storage and reusable next winter
  
• solid foam board insulation for home improvement is available for purchase or free as building waste

Bees have evolved to live in trees (a nest with extremely thick wood walls) that provide real insulation - see the image from Derek's article. To those protecting popular opinion, to the skeptic, to the frugal beekeeper, consider winter insulation using a side-by-side test.

Winter Top Ventilation

If you turn to page 116 of Seeley's book The Lives of Bees, you'll find a reference to Derek Mitchell a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds.   With web-based searching, I discovered Derek's 2017 article in the American Bee Journal (Vol. 157 No. 8) Honey Bee Engineering: Top Ventilation And Top Entrances.   The article illustrates that adding top ventilation significantly reduces humidity and the depth of the heat pool when compared to an uninsulated hive.  Why?  Warmer air is more buoyant and flows faster through the top vent.

Providing hive insulation in winter reduces bee-generated heat loss and this increases the temperature of the heat pool found at the top of the hive - see the image from Derek's article.  I'm using the word heat pool as temperatures measured relative to the top of the hive -- I recognize, pool is commonly used with liquids that fill upwards from the bottom of containers. I currently use insulated hive wraps in winter and plan to close my top vent moving forward.

In email conversation, Derek recommends adding more hive insulation above the hive compared to the hive sides to discourage condensation from raining down on the bees.

Derek has simulated the heat flow of a winter bee cluster in a thin-walled wooden hive and compared those results with measurements collected by other researchers.  I plan to discuss this article in an upcoming blog post.

nematodes as a biologic control

On December 24, 2022, Atlanta experienced a historic single digit 8°F (-13.3°C) minimal temperature.  This cold snap turned green ground cover brown and likely pushed small hive beetles (SHB) deeper into hives and compost piles. 

My bee yard has high shade, good soil moisture, and summer soil temperatures for SHB reproduction.  I used biological control, Beneficial nematodes (Heterorhabditis Indica), to treat the soil for SHB larvae.   At dusk, I watered the liquid nematode suspension onto the soil.  Direct sunlight (UV light) is fatal to nematodes.

It's one thing to see and squash adult SHBs with my hive tool and another stranger thing to take a leap of faith releasing after dark 'The Smallest Show on Earth' -  Step Right Up! Step Right Up!

• Moved the insulated FedEx mailer with 2.5 million microscopic nematodes to the refrigerator. 
• Removed the leaf litter at the hive locations and then wet the soil.  
• The next step was washing nematodes from gel transport material - small gel pieces can clog the watering can.   I used a large strainer with a fine mesh to remove and rinse the numerous gel pieces.
• Added more water to the bucket and stirred it to keep the nematodes from settling to the bottom.
• At dusk, I watered the biologic control onto the soil.

clean wax with slow cooker 2023

I switched to a round slow cooker (crock pot) to clean the crushed honeycomb and this led me to simplify my crushed comb cleaning steps using a colander.

• crushed honeycomb - link for bee yard and kitchen activities
  
• after several days of straining, I rinsed the crushed comb in warm water
• selected a colander of the same diameter as the round slow cooker lid
• line colander with cotton fabric and I mounded with rinsed crushed comb 
• added lid and joined cotton fabric edges with 2 bull clips
• removed the colander and added 1 cup of water and lid to the slow cooker
• be safe and melt the wax outdoors
• set slow cooker on high for 1 3/4 hours
• turned off the slow cooker and let it cool undisturbed to room temperature with the lid on

ChatGPT generated haiku 

Crush, strain, honey's flow,
Slow cooker's gentle embrace,
Clean comb's sweet glow.