The reader who posed the original question has shared more information. It turns out I was right about new wood and no starters. He says, “I built a Warré hive . . . of new wood without foundation nor starter strips, just bare top bars.” He goes on to defend his decision to go with Warré, but I don’t consider that a problem. The shape and design of Warré hives is just fine and I have stolen a lot of good ideas from Warré beekeepers.

However, he goes on to describe the ants, “The ants are tiny and black, and I assume they are Argentine ants (I live in California).” Based on reader comments, it seems that California is one of the places where ants can definitely be a problem and Argentine ants can cause bees to flee.

The good news is we haven’t lost the beekeeper. He says, “I am okay with waiting until next year to try again.” He doesn’t want to buy a nuc because it won’t fit in his Warré, which is a good point. He adds, “After reading your posting (and reader comments) I accept that even without ants, my bees may still have left. But I will try and figure out a way of keeping ants out of my next hive.”

So for next year, I recommend the following:

• Use starter strips or a bead of wax on the top bars (same as in a top-bar hive)

• Keep the queen caged until the bees begin to build comb

• In addition, you could place a pheromone lure inside the hive for a few days to give it a good homey smell before dumping the package

• Use one or more of the reader-suggested ways to control Argentine ants

That’s where we stand at the moment. Besides being a bit wiser about ants, I’m ecstatic about having a new word in my bee vocabulary. But the thought of having to wait a whole year to hear how it all works out is nearly unbearable.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

It all started with this e-mail:

I’m a new beekeeper and I installed my 1st package last weekend. By Sunday morning there were ants walking on the outside of the hive and ants inside the hive walking around my container of sugar water. Should I try and control the ants or leave them alone and hope that the bees can control the ants? I sprayed soapy water on the ants (but avoided spraying bees), which killed them. Is that enough? Or should I place those small metal containers with ant bait around the base of my beehive?

I hate ants but I answered with equanimity:

Don’t do anything more for now. The bees are just getting accustomed to their new home. As they start building their nest and “taking ownership” of the hive, they will take care of the ants. Ants and bees are very closely related, both in the order Hymenoptera. Anything that kills ants will kill bees, so it is best to not use ant bait. The bees probably wouldn’t go for the bait, but if any gets in the hive it could do some damage.

The killer wrap-up came a few days later:

Thank you for replying. My bees ascended last Saturday around 12 noon, 7 days after their installation. There were a lot of ants in the now empty hive. I’ll try again next year after I figure out a plan to keep out ants. (The package cost $99.)

No way! His bees absconded! I was mortified. Still, in my heart of hearts, I don’t think it was related to ants. I tried to get more information from him but, so far, I haven’t heard back. My guess is that he installed his new package on brand-spanking-new equipment, did not use foundation or drawn comb, and then released the queen before any comb was built. The colony—not finding any delicious used-comb odors—decided to sample the market. Sure enough, they found something they liked better and were off. It happens. I’ve had it happen more than once.

Bees may abscond because of excessive heat, noise, strange odors or just because they feel like it. It’s hard to assign a reason but a well-fed package with a strong young queen has lots of options. In my own experience I have found that new wood, especially with no foundation, is a crap shoot—maybe they will hang around and maybe they won’t. After learning the hard way, I always advise people who are starting on new wood to keep the queen tied up until you see comb. Like us, bees hate to walk away from a down payment.

By the way, I don’t know if he made a typo when he wrote “ascended” instead of “absconded” or if he is a literary genius. But I have never encountered such a poetic allusion to bees on the run. I imagine them at high noon arising from the hive in a slow spiral, circling up through the trees, up past the clouds, up through the blue, up, up until they mingle, glistening and shimmering among the stars and indistinguishable from them. Magic and melancholy all rolled into one.

In any case, I can’t think of anything so discouraging as losing a new package, especially when it’s your first and your only. I wish I could say something consoling and reassuring. I wish I could issue a recall to his bees. Instead I feel like I led a lamb to the slaughter. So what do you think? Did the ants do it?

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The following applies only to checkerboarding:

When:

Checkerboarding is done in the early spring before the bees begin swarm preparations. Since there is no disturbance to the brood nest, many beekeepers like to do it as early as possible. In any case, it needs to be completed before the expanding brood nest starts to contract due to backfilling.

Where:

Checkerboarding is done in the two supers that are directly above the brood nest. The boxes may be of any size—but they should be the same size.

What:

Alternate frames of honey are removed from one box and replaced with frames of drawn empty comb. For example, in your first super you may remove frames 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 (which are all full of honey) and replace them with frames of empty drawn comb. When you’re done, the even-numbered slots have honey, and the odd-numbered slots are empty.

You take the frames of honey you just took out of the first super and put them in the second super in the same position they had before, that is, in position 1, 3, 5, 7, And 9. This time, the even-numbered spots have frames of empty drawn comb, and the odd-numbered slots are full of honey. When stacked atop one another, the boxes look like this from the side:

Why:

Checkerboarding breaks up the solid band of honey that rings the top of the brood nest. This band of honey signals the bees that winter preparations are complete and it’s time to swarm. When the band is interrupted, more storage areas are exposed, and the bees defer swarming until the empty spaces are filled. Eventually, optimal swarming conditions pass and the colony may not swarm at all (see Checkerboarding).

How:

In my opinion, checkerboarding is easiest when you overwinter in three brood boxes. By early spring, the brood nest is usually in the middle box, with a box full of honey above and an empty box below. You can just put the brood box on the bottom and use the other two boxes to checkerboard. Your extracting supers can go above the checkerboarded boxes.

You can also checkerboard without three brood boxes, as long as you have a box of honey and a box of drawn comb to use for setting up the checkerboard.

Variations:

The original checkerboarding model used only empty drawn frames between the frames of honey—and the purists still do. Many beekeepers, however, have had good results using frames of undrawn foundation or even foundationless frames.

If a colony does not span the entire box, you can just checkerboard the middle frames, say 3 through 8, and leave the end frames alone.

Results:

Done properly and at the right time, checkerboarding will

• Prevent swarming
• Increase hive population
• Produce a larger crop of honey
• Eliminate the need for invasive swarm-control manipulations
• Prepare the hive for winter without supplementary feed

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

In beekeeping, backfilling refers to filling an empty brood cell with honey or sometimes pollen. In other words, a cell that previously held one or more generations of developing bees, is now used to store food.

This may occur at different times of year. For example, in the fall when the colony has finished drone rearing, the drone cells may be filled with honey. There are several good reasons for this: drones won’t be raised again for many months, the cells are the wrong size for workers and, since they are close to the main nest, they are convenient storage areas. A well-stocked pantry right at your finger tips—er—tarsal claws!

But there is another time when bees start backfilling . . . just before swarm season. But first, let’s back up a few weeks.

In the early spring the brood nest expands in a process that is the opposite of backfilling. As the bees use up the nectar and pollen adjacent to the brood nest, they turn those empty cells into brood-rearing cells. This allows the colony to raise many more bees—enough bees to maintain the hive and prepare for winter, as well as enough bees to swarm.

Then, as swarming time gets close, the bees begin backfilling the outermost brood cells with honey. This shrinks the nest size, which in turn decreases egg laying by the queen. It means that, after the swarm leaves, the brood nest will be small enough that the remaining bees will be able to care for it. Backfilling provides a way of scaling down the entire operation so a greatly reduced workforce can still get the job done. Ingenious!

It is important to understand the concept of backfilling if want to manage swarms. Checkerboarding—a popular but often misunderstood swarm management technique—is based on this backfilling behavior. Checkerboarding should be started at the peak of brood nest expansion, just when the nest stops getting larger and begins to shrink . . . but more on that later.

Just for the record, “backfill” can also be a noun, the name for the stuff you put in the hole, as in “They already capped the backfill.”

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Backfilling a hole with dirt. Flickr photo by Archaeobobalist.

Within a few days of the solstice, the worker bees slowly begin to raise the temperature of the brood nest from a cool resting temperature of 70-75° F (21-24°C) to the brood rearing temperature of about 95°F (35°C). This increase in warmth spurs the queen to lay eggs. She will build a small brood nest and gradually, over the course of many weeks, increase the size of her nest. If all goes well the hive population will explode with the first warm weather of the new year.

But the transition is not easy. Maintaining a warmer nest requires more food just when food stores are getting low. If food is too scarce, brood production will be held in check. If food is readily available, the hive will bloom along with the flowers. As most beekeepers know, the hardest time to keep a hive alive is during early spring when the number of bees may far exceed the available food—especially when a cold snap follows a stretch of balmy weather.

Although we seldom think of it, the summer solstice (the first day of summer) marks the beginning of the end of bee season. Think of the old adage:

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;

A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;

A swarm of bees in July isn’t worth a fly.

The poem reminds us that a swarm captured in May or June has the potential of surviving and storing enough food for winter, but a later swarm—say one captured in July—has a much lower chance of succeeding. So what’s the difference? What happens between June and July?

The answer, of course, is that the summer solstice happens between June and July—somewhere around June 20-21. At the summer solstice the hours of sunlight begin getting shorter and the bees start making preparations for winter. Brood production drops, hive populations taper off, and winter survival outranks reproduction as the number one priority. Most often a late swarm cannot maintain the number of bees needed to prepare for winter because brood production is decreasing . . . the length of daylight has the last word.

The take home message for beekeepers is this: forget the labels we put on our seasons, forget all the business of changing our clocks to fit our notions of day and night, and instead watch the sun. In the end, it is the change in daylight hours that governs the life cycle of our honey bees.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

Winter Solstice Arrives in the Northern Hemisphere. Photo taken 12-22-2011 11:45 UTC by NOAA/NASA GOES Project.

What does this have to do with bees? Not much. But a recent discussion of robber bees reminded me of the syndrome. It seems that robber bees, if captured and held within the hive they were robbing, will eventually change allegiance and become part of that colony.

Opinions vary, but three days seems to be a number many beekeepers cite for the length of time the robbers must be held captive. This agrees with the 72 hours often cited for how long you must keep bees locked in a hive before they will perform a reorientation flight. (Beekeepers wanting to move a hive just a short distance can lock the bees in the hive and move it. When released after three days, the bees will reorient themselves to their new position.)

Several beekeepers I know of have used robbing bees to boost the population of a failing hive. Once the robbers were inside the hive, they just locked down the hive and waited for three days. By then, most of the robbing bees called the new place home and the colony population was greatly increased. One beekeeper even used a one-way bee escape over the entrance, so robbing bees that got in could not get back out.

Bees locked up like this in the heat of the summer need good ventilation and a source of water. Otherwise, there are few downside risks. Yes, there is a chance of the queen getting killed, but she may have died anyway had the robbing frenzy continued. From what I’ve heard, queens locked up with robbers usually make it.

An alternative to keeping the bees locked up for three days is to screen them in just long enough to move them several miles away. Most of the robber bees will re-orient and join the hive in the new location.

Although it is far better to avoid robbing in the first place, this is a fascinating twist on using bee behavior to your best advantage.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com