Westover and Sons, Apiaries

The western honey bee colony in my observation beehive built quite a bit of burr (cross-/brace-) comb attached to both the face of the brood comb and the glass/plastic of the beehive since there was quite a bit of space between the face of the comb and the glass, so I decided I should remove the comb (attached only to a top bar–not a full frame) and put it into a nucleus hive box (smaller than a full sized hive box) to make a nucleus colony out of it. I felt that if I did not do it pretty soon that it might become impossible to remove it later because of all the brace comb being built.

When I put the comb of bees into the observation hive in the first place, there was no queen. They raised 4 queen cells, had a queen successfully emerge, and apparently she also successfully mated and returned to the hive since she laid a large amount of eggs that became worker brood (capped now and starting to emerge as adults). That means that it became a full-fledged colony with a mated queen and it was starting to grow.

Since I had made this decision to convert it to a nucleus colony that could possibly grow into a full size colony although it had started from only one frame, I decided to start the process last night and complete it this morning. I was invited to a party last night here on campus, so that worked out ideally since I needed to “wait until dark” (good movie, starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind lady) for all the bees to come home before closing the hive entrance. I did that and removed the plastic tube connection through the window after it got dark.

Here is how I configured the nucleus hive: I first put in an empty frame with foundation on one side of the box. I next took the top bar and comb with bees out of the observation hive and put it next to the empty frame. I tried to make sure I did not “roll the queen” and kill her against the side of the observation hive, but I did not see the queen. I assumed that she was on the comb when I put it in. I next took a frame of emerging brood with nurse bees on it from each of the other two hives of bees and put them next to the first comb of bees (with “bee space” in between each frame/comb). That means that I had three frames/combs of bees and brood from three different hives (and progeny from 3 different queens) all together in the same hive box. You might wonder if the bees would fight and the bees from the different hives might ball the queen of the observation hive and kill her. That does not usually happen because the bees of her own hive will protect her from the bees that were introduced from the “foreign hives”. I will be checking in a few days to a week to see if the queen is still there and everything is going well.

Nurse bees normally have not flown outside the hive yet or become foragers, and they adjust to being mixed like that much easier and all become part of the same group, picking up the new queen’s pheromones and being “happy”. I left the new hive box nearby in the bee yard so older bees could fly back to their original colonies if they wanted to. This will become the new home to the younger bees who have never left their hive before. I had not done this particular manipulation before, but since I learned that it can be done this way, I decided to try it and see how it works out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This will make my “book learning” become practical experience. I plan to relocate this nucleus hive to the roof of my building this evening after it becomes dark. And the experiment goes on…..

Yesterday I got a call about a colony of Japanese honey bees (Apis cerana japonica) that had been built under the eave of a house in Nishi Urube, Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan. We did not know until we got there to look at them what the exact situation was, but after arriving we determined that, yes, they were definitely Japanese honey bees and not western honey bees, and that rather than a swarm of bees hanging under the eave of the house, they were an established colony of bees with wax comb full of brood and honey.

A swarm would have been easy to deal with, but instead we had to cut out the colony comb by comb and put them in the box. We did not see the queen so do not know whether we got her or not–hopefully she was among the bees on the comb that we put in the box, but if not, well…not much can be done about it at this point.

There was not very much honey in the colony because it had not been established very long, but the comb was full of capped brood. We gave what little honey there was to the homeowner, a Shimizu-san. She gave us each a bag of onions from her garden to take home.

Her home was situated right up close to the nearby mountains, so that was one hint that we would probably be dealing with Japanese honey bees. We expected to get stung, but the bees were very gentle and no one got stung. It did not take very long to remove the colony.

After returning to my friend’s house, I put the combs into a hive box side by side with a couple of sticks between each comb to keep them separated from one another. I tried this method and it was successful once before, so I thought I would try it again. If we are lucky, the queen is in there among the worker bees and they will quickly get organized and start building up the colony. If not, then there is a possibility that they might raise a new queen from a young larva. If unlucky, then the colony will abscond and leave the brood in the box to die. At least we did a good deed and removed the bees from this lady’s house for her, and we had a positive experience. “An education is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.”

Yesterday at lunch I mentioned to Kamitani sensei that we had not received any calls about bee swarms lately, and last night he sent me an email telling me that he got a call right after I left to go home. We decided to go pick it up this morning.

The swarm was hanging off the roof of a carport next to a business in Nishijin, Fukuoka, Japan. Part of the bees were up above the carport roof on top, while the rest of them hung down on the underside of the carport roof. It was a loose swarm since the weather today is rather warm. It was somewhat in the shape of a heart.

I started out by trying to catch the bees in my small swarm-catching cardboard box, but I could almost immediately tell that the box was too small, so I asked the man from the business if he had a larger cardboard box I could use. He brought out a big Scotties box and I went to work. I am really glad he had the larger box because that was probably the difference between success and failure in picking up this swarm.

After getting most of the bees into the cardboard box and taping the lid shut (while leaving a small trap door open), the bees were not moving down to join the box very quickly, so I got up on the ladder again and swept clumps of bees into the lid of the smaller box and then set it down on the ground under the trap door of the big box. The bees in the lid then climbed upwards and went into the big box. I disturbed clumps of bees in the lid that did not move much by herding them with my bee brush to get them to climb up into the box. It worked pretty well.

When we finally got to the point where no more bees would go into the box and the number of bees coming back out of the box was about the same as the number going in (and most of the bees were inside the box), I closed the trap door, brushed the stragglers off and put the box in the car on the back seat.

After returning to the office, I dumped them into a waiting hive on the roof of the Agriculture Building at the Hakozaki campus here at Kyushu University. When I checked on them later, they had all gone inside the hive and many bees were making orientation flights and flying in and out of the hive. I will check them again tomorrow to see if they decided to stay in this hive box. I think they will.

Out of all the swarms of the native Japanese honey bees that I have seen here during the past 4 years, this is the biggest swarm I have seen. It was quite heavy compared to any of the others. I was really surprised by it.

It seems like I am incapable of retaining lessons learned from the past. Every two or three years I have to relearn old lessons. So it goes like this: the evening of Memorial day I sealed up the hive in my driveway and drove it to East Dallas. Earlier in the day I had extracted some comb left over from last fall, so I took along some empty comb in a super so that one of the two hives back in East Dallas could clean it out. I had long ago learned one of the cardinal rules of beekeeping. NEVER mess with a hive at night. And the second rule that is like unto it: if at all possible, ALWAYS smoke a hive before you mess with it. So we got the new swarm situated and then I wanted to throw on the extracted super on one of the other hives. No need to smoke it, I thought. Never mind that it is dark, we’ll be quick about it. We took off the lid. The bees came pouring out. I still had the inner cover to get off. But the hive was like a boiling pot of bees, covering every surface. I knew just touching the inner cover that my arms would be covered with bees. See in the day, when bees are angry they fly and attack. At night they crawl and attack. Which means that they crawl onto you. As I was in the process of trying to get the inner cover off I felt the first sting. Right through my sock into my ankle. I beat a hasty retreat as I felt another sting just above my knee. We never got that super on. Paul was better protected than me so he threw the lid back on, probably crushing a couple of hundred bees in the process. Even though it was dark, some bees were flying and they followed us all around to the other side of the house and then finally dissipated. So there you go. Always smoke and NEVER mess with bees at night. Even if it’s only going to be “just a sec’.”

And in the good news/bad news category I discovered today that a probable fourth swarm has moved into boxes in my driveway in Richardson! Unbelievable. Maybe my dad is praying for bees to find me too.

During the week I was out of the country, another swarm moved into some supers in my backyard. There was a crack between two of the supers that let them in. So that’s the third of the season without even trying. Last year I couldn’t keep bees alive. This year I can’t keep the bees from coming to me. My hive in East Dallas swarmed. My friend was unable to capture them because they were too high up in the tree. Given the dangerous setup of ladders attached to each other that they used last year, when they say “too high” I know it was way too high and then some. I’m going to move these bees to East Dallas. I didn’t do too much inspecting. Did find eggs. And honey. But no larvae. So they are definitely new move-ins. I’m starting to believe that swarm traps are the way to go if you only need a couple of hives and are flexible in terms of timing.

Of course there can always be an alternative explanation for almost everything that happens, especially when one claims it is an answer to prayer, but I believe in the power of prayers and I would be remiss not to thank my God for his blessings to me. Let me explain why I start out writing this way. I lost all the hives of native Japanese honey bees I was able to collect last year, and I think it was mostly due to them getting too hot where I was keeping them on the cement roof of a building at the University. They received full sun in the morning and afternoon shade, but apparently that is not good enough because of how hot it got. So I have been “beeless” here in Japan for quite some time.

I was really hoping that this spring I would get some phone calls about honey bee swarms that I would be able to pick up and put in hives, and hopefully this time they would stay and not just abscond and fly away. The native bees are very wild and fickle and often leave the hive you think they would stay in. In the first place, though, I needed to find out where there were swarms, and as most people know, it is a very rare thing for one person to see a swarm of bees. Many if not most people have never seen a swarm of bees during their entire lifetime, unless they are a beekeeper or live near one. I found out through experience a long time ago that the best way to find swarms of bees is to figure out who people call to help them with the problem if they have a swarm of bees on their house or in their yard, and ask that office or person to contact me with the information so I could go pick up the bees. It works if there are enough swarms of bees and enough people calling at the times the bees are swarming, otherwise you don’t hear anything at all–the sounds of silence.

This spring, speaking to my friends that I knew were keeping the native honey bees, I found that their bees started swarming in March locally, but I received no phone calls for about a month after I knew bees were already swarming. I waited, expecting and hoping to receive some phone calls from the city health and welfare offices here in my city in Japan like I did last year. I even asked the other professor in my department who helped me last year to call the city offices again and remind them that we would still like to get calls about bee swarms. He did that for me, but still no calls. Finally I remembered the scripture that says, “Ask and ye shall receive,” and not just ask anyone, but ask God. I therefore started praying that I would get some phone calls and be able to get some bees into my hives as a result this spring. I prayed sincerely and from my heart that if my prayer was not in opposition to God’s will for me, that I would receive some calls for bee swarms. It was not until after I prayed and asked for God’s intervention that I started receiving phone calls and was able to collect some bee swarms. I also prayed that the bees would stay in the hives where I put them and not leave. Thankfully, they have stayed. Believe it or not, I have now been able to collect 5 swarms of the native bees this spring. One was last week and two were this week. On top of that, the last 3 have all been very close by my office at the university.

On Tuesday of this week, I received a call from a location that is just a few blocks away from the campus where I work. One of the students drove me and Kamitani sensei to the location, but when we arrived, we found out that the swarm had flown away just a little while before we arrived. That happens sometimes and was very disappointing, but sometimes it is for a good reason (at least I can think of some good reasons in hindsight). It’s usually best not to get too upset about things you don’t have any control over and try to second guess yourself. The people at the house where the bees left asked us for our business cards and we gave them our cards. On Thursday, the same people called from the same house and said another swarm of bees had come and was on the underside of the eave of their house.

There was no car available this time, so Kamitani sensei and I rode our bicycles there right before lunch, and I took my protective gear (hat, veil, and gloves) along with a swarm collection box, and using a ladder that they had there, I collected the bees into the box and set it on top of the ladder to let the remainder of the bees that I had not caught in the first try to join those in the box. After putting the lid on the box, I left a small trap door open so the rest of the bees could find the swarm by smell and join them in the box. If the queen is inside, the worker bees almost invariably will join and go in too. Otherwise they will all leave the box and go back to wherever the queen is. I went back after lunch to check on them and there were still many bees that had not joined the box, so I decided to leave it there and return later. I phoned my friend, Shiki san, and he had time and was willing to drive his truck out to the university and pick up me, my bicycle and the bees. I had decided to put them in another hive box at his house under the grove of trees on his property. That would give them a lot of shade and keep them cooler than the roof of my building. There were still around 20 or 30 bees that seemed to not want to enter the box for one reason or another, so we just left them.

On the next day, Friday (that was yesterday), I had two classes to teach, one at the Ito Campus in the afternoon, and after that class finished, I caught the intercampus bus and rode back to the Hakozaki Campus where my office is. At the end of the day, I got my things together ready to leave and ride my bicycle home, and right before I went out the door, a student came in with a note telling me that there had been another phone call from the same people where I had gotten the swarm the day before and now there was a third swarm just as large if not larger that the one on Thursday and it was in the exact same location under the eave of the house. I rode my bicycle over and took a look at it on the way home and talked to them, telling that I would come and pick it up in the morning. That was this morning. I rode my bicycle over to Shiki san’s house and took the swarm box and my protective gear and then he drove back there this morning and we collected the second swarm successfully too. I do not know (at this point) whether the 2nd swarm (remember, the first swarm flew away) was the same bees that had been in the swarm that we lost on Tuesday or whether it was an entirely new swarm. Also, I do not know whether the 3rd swarm came from the same colony of bees that produced the swarm we got the day before. They were both quite large swarms. All I can say is “Wow! What a blessing and answer to prayer.” My prayer after getting the swarm on Thursday was that there would be more calls if the Lord was willing. That prayer was answered almost immediately. Some people would say, “Oh, it’s just a coincidence,” but I don’t believe in coincidences–I believe that prayers can be answered, and I thank God for granting my requests (even though I am a scientist).

Me and Paul Larsen inspecting our hives in his backyard.

Last season felt like the rise and fall of my bee empire. In early 2013 I studiously put together boxes and frames. I had about 7 or 8 hives going into the spring. I was prepared for my most epic season yet. But disaster struck as hive after hive failed. The only good result was my hive in East Dallas swarming so many times that three of my friends got their first hive. Good for them that is. It was bad. I’ve never seen hive beetle infestations like I saw last summer. I still don’t know what happened. Was it the aerial mosquito spraying in the Dallas area? Poor weather? I heard through the grapevine that it was a bad year in Texas and not just in Dallas. But who knows. By the time this winter rolled around I was reduced to just 2 hives at my house and 1 hive in East Dallas. And then the East Dallas hive failed (the “hybrid” Langstroth/top bar hive). Two hives left. And I had the added problem that all my attempts to dissuade my bees from going to my neighbor’s wonderful backyard fountain had failed (including installing my own backyard fountain, in addition to my front yard fountain). So this spring I moved my two last remaining hives to East Dallas (pictured below).

I still had a mess of boxes sitting in my driveway back behind the house. Lacking room to put them in the garage, they just sat there. When spring came, bees came to rob them out. At least that is what I thought. But I began to be suspicious. Why are there 100 bees sitting on the outside of the box after dark? The box in question was the very bottom box of a stack of 8. The box was wrapped in a black garbage bag, but with weathered holes. I looked for incoming pollen but didn’t see any. My father Layne said it would not be unusual to have bees guard a robbing operation at night. I was less confident. So I finally took a look at the two hives with activity. Brood present in both. Wow. A passive trapping operation. So now I am back to the problem of having bees at my house which just won’t work with my neighbor. The plan is for my youngest brother to come get them and use them for his first beekeeping experience in College Station. So there you have it. A father, and now two sons keeping bees. I’m still a little bit demoralized, but I’ll pick myself up soon enough.

Last week I received two phone calls from government offices regarding people who had honey bee swarms in their yards here in Fukuoka. On Wednesday we got a call from an older lady who lives on the first floor in a high rise apartment near the airport. She had a swarm of native Japanese honey bees come to the cymbidium orchids blooming in a pot on her balcony. She let me come in through her apartment and onto the balcony. The bees were covering the blossoms and the side of the pot the orchids were planted in. She allowed me to take the entire potted plant with the attached bees with me. I put them into a cardboard box, put the lid on, and allowed the bees that had fallen off the pot to enter through the open trap door cut into the side of the box. The bees cooperated and entered the box fairly quickly and we were on our way. I gave her some compensation for taking her orchid plant and the bees.

When I took them back to my office and tried to put them in the hive box I had prepared and decided to install them into, they seemed to have other ideas, and after a short time, they began to form a cluster on the underside of the roof’s overhang up above the hive box. I decided to not bother them at that time, but to wait until the next day to try and put them into an empty hive. The fact that they did not stay in the hive where I initially put them bothered me and I worried a bit that they might abscond and I might lose them, so I tried to think of possible reasons why they did not stay.

One thing that came to mind was that the bottom of the hive was screened, but open, so the hive interior was not really dark. Thinking anthropomorphically, I wondered if it bothered them and they did not feel safe because it was not enclosed and protected enough. As a result of this thought, I decided to close the bottom off completely using a piece of wood, and to try again in the morning.

The building where I have the hives is a 6 story building, and when I arrived at work the next morning, I could see the cluster of bees under the overhang from the parking lot down on the ground where I was, so I knew they were still there.
I got an insect collecting net with an extendable handle and my protective bee gear and went up to the roof where I dislodged the cluster so it fell into the net, then I quickly dumped them into the prepared hive and put the cover on. This time they stayed, and are now working steadily, bringing in nectar and pollen and possibly water too.

The second call came on Friday, and I got my friend, Teruo Shiki, to come and take me to pick up a swarm of bees located in Aoba near Hakozaki (the university and my office are in Hakozaki so it was nearby). He had never seen a swarm of bees being collected, so he learned a lot by watching me. We found the bees about 2 meters off the ground on the trunk of a tree in a front yard garden. I held the cardboard swarm collection box I had prepared under the swarm and pressed against the tree trunk while I dislodged the swarm with a bee brush so they fell into the cardboard box. I then quickly put the telescoping lid on the box and placed the box on top of a ladder, as close to where the swarm was originally located as I could get it. There was still a great number of bees on the tree and of course many more flying in the air, so with my gloved hands, I carefully took handfuls of bees from the tree and held my open hands next to the trap door of the box. The bees in my hands quickly entered the box to join the other bees, so I assumed the queen was in the box. I did this several times because the bees did not seem to want to enter the box very quickly by themselves without encouragement and I wanted to hurry up the process. Finally most of the remaining bees took to the air and found the entrance to the box and started entering more quickly. It did not take much time after that for basically all the bees to go into the box except for one or two. At this point, I closed the flap on the small trap door (see photographs on the last post for what the box looks like) and we put the box in the truck and headed back.

This swarm I decided to hive at Shiki san’s yard, so we stopped by my office and loaded the hive from the roof into the back of his truck (along with my bicycle). It was so dark by the time we got back to his house that I decided to wait until the next morning to install the bees in the hive. We took a flashlight and decided where to locate the hive and which direction to face the hive entrance.

Early the next morning I went to his house and dumped the bees in the hive box. It is located under some trees in his garden where it will get some shade and filtered sunlight, particularly in the afternoons. The entrance is facing east. I pruned a small branch off the tree that was obstructing where I needed to dump the bees from, then after jarring the box once on the ground to make the bees drop into the bottom of the box, I dumped them into the top of the hive and put the lid on it. After that, I had to shake out the remaining bees.

I noticed that overnight the bees had already started building some wax comb on the inside lid of the box. It was a small piece about 2 inches wide and 3 inches long of perfectly white beautiful beeswax comb. Upon closer inspection, I could see it already contained a little nectar or honey that the bees had put into some of the cells, but I did not see that any eggs had been laid yet. Those bees seem to be O.K. with staying in that hive box too and started orienting and acting normally right away. I was very pleased with the outcome.

Pictured is the type of swarm catching box I use when I go out to catch a swarm of honey bees.

Swarming is the way a bee colony reproduces. They basically split into two colonies–one in the original location with a new queen, and one group leaves with the old queen to find a new home. Before they leave they fill their stomachs with as much honey as they can carry. For this reason, they are usually docile and do not sting. Also since they do not have stores and brood to protect, they are normally not defensive.

About one half of the bees fly out and land on some spot they have chosen on a shrub or the branch of a tree or the wall of a building or where ever they have chosen and form a cluster there. We call that a swarm. The group of bees flying in the air to a new location is also called a swarm. They settle into a cluster and may stay there for a short time or up to several days as scout bees go out and look for a good place to start a new nest. They prefer the hollow of a tree if they can find it but will also use many other locations, such as the hollow space inside a wall, under the floor of a building, in a water meter, etc. The scout bees return to the swarm and dance on the surface, trying to convince the rest of the bees that the place they found is the best. Other bees follow them out to check on the place. When ever the swarm comes to a consensus, they take off as a group and fly to that location and enter it.

If I get a call about a swarm, I often do not know how long it has been in its current location, so I usually try and go pick it up as soon as I can. Many times I have just driven up in time to see the bees take off and fly away. That usually happened when I waited a day or two to try and go get them. Many people worry that they will stay where they are, but they won’t.

When I get there, I will open my box and put it directly under the swarm cluster as close as I can. If they are on a small branch, a firm shake will usually dislodge most of the bees and they will fall directly into the box. Hopefully the queen will be in that group that falls into the box. Otherwise I would use a bee brush to dislodge them so the cluster falls into the box. I then quickly put the lid on and place the box with the trap door open as close to where the cluster was as I can. If the queen is inside the box, bees will group around the trap door and expose their Nasanov glands, releasing a scent the remainder of bees can smell that guides them to the location where the queen is, and the bees that remained on the bush or flew into the air will gradually all go into the trap door and join the bees inside the box. You may not get 100 per cent of them, but usually it is close to all of them. If the queen is not inside the box, then all the bees that are in the box will leave the box and go cluster wherever the queen is. There have been a few times when I have had to try 3 or more times to get the queen into the box, but have usually finally succeeded. Sometimes it may take 15 minutes to 1/2 hour or longer for the remaining bees to join those in the box, even if the queen is inside.

After they are all in the box except for a very few stragglers or scouts who have just returned, then you can shut the trap door and walk away with them under your arm. Make sure you have cut some slits in the sides of the box–big enough to let air through, but small enough so bees cannot get through them. Bees have to have air and can easily overheat and then die if you do not give them enough air. It helps to transport them in a air conditioned vehicle too. A stick inside the box help give them a place to hang on and form a cluster.

When you get them home or to wherever the hive box is that you are going to install them into, take the lid off the hive box and remove a few frames to make it easier to dump them in. Jar the cardboard box on the ground hard enough to dislodge the swarm so it falls into the bottom of the box. Take the cardboard lid off, take the stick out, and dump the bees into the hive box. Carefully replace the frames you took out and put the lid back on the hive box. Then back off and leave them alone so they can get organized.

Some swarms are so large that you ought to have at least two boxes for them. If the number of bees is small enough, one box will do. The bees will usually quickly settle down and start drawing comb and the queen start laying eggs very soon. They are desperate to get the new colony going and need to raise new bees to replace the old bees that will not live very much longer. Since they have been full of honey for a while, they are in a perfect condition to convert the honey into wax that is exuded from the wax glands in their abdomens, so a swarm will usually draw out and build comb very quickly. By the afternoon of the same day or sometimes by the next morning, they have decided whether to stay or not (and they usually stay), and start flying out, orienting on their new home, and start foraging for nectar and pollen that will be needed to feed the new brood that will be hatching in a few days. It is fun and interesting to watch. You usually leave them alone for a while and do not open the hive to examine the nest until they have settled and been working for at least a couple of weeks if not longer. You should be able to tell how they are doing by watching the activity at the hive entrance without opening it. If disturbed too soon, they might decide to leave the box you put them in and go find a better place to live.

One last thing, try and not leave the swarm in the cardboard box any longer than you have to. If you leave them in overnight, they may have already started building comb on the inside lid of the box and the queen may even have started laying eggs in it. The bees inside the box will also start chewing out the air holes so they can escape the box. The box will last longer if you hive the swarm the same day you pick it up. Hopefully you already have an empty prepared hive box with frames and foundation waiting for you to put them into before you even go out to pick them up.