Forcing a Change

I had hoped to pull the trigger sooner but Murphy rules and plans went awry, miscommunication was the order of the day.  At the last minute, Tim answered the call and agreed to meet me again, after work this time to insert a frame of eggs and install a trap mechanism of my making.  I don't have much in the way of photos of this event.
You see, like any good teacher, Tim stepped things up a notch.  Example is followed by experience, so this time yours truly got to wear the veil and dance with the bees.  I should have handed Tim a camera to immortalize the event, just in case something truly interesting happened, but I am afraid I was just a little to jazzed to be thinking about anything but my impending doom.  As it turns out, while I was shaking like I was on my fifth espresso and might have been mistaken for having fallen in the creek by the time I was finished (in my defense, it was hot and humid), the whole operation turned out to be rather uneventful.
The new frame with Tim's brood were inserted in the first slot, substituted for an empty frame removed from the back of the box, and my trap out device was fitted to the end of the transfer tube and installed in the access hole of the box in its place.
Judging by the swarm of activity by the time we were leaving, there is a lot of turmoil, no doubt agitation over not being able to get back to the wall.  With luck, they won't go back to trying to find another way in.  Unfortunately if they do, I won't be able to intervene till the middle of next week as I will be hiking the AT this weekend.  We'll just have to cross our fingers and hope.

Behind the Veil

No that's not me up there communing with the bees.  Tim Conley was kind enough to drop around with some of his gear to lend his expertise in assessing just what the heck these bees are up to.

The mystery of what the wall colony bees have been up to is revealed.  Even though Tim thought their efforts were less than impressive, I confess I was positively giddy to see that they had indeed been busy making comb and laying up pollen.  Tim also reported that there appeared to be a few queen cells but that all were 'dry' (no eggs, no honey).

Given the population that appears to be using the box, the amount of resources invested and particularly the creation of queen cells (which I take to be a sign that the population present yearns for a queen), I think it is time to try inserting a frame of eggs to see if we can a) lure the queen down, or b) give this crew a chance to make a new queen.  Either works for me.

And there was much Rejoicing!

With the misunderstanding regarding the conditions of getting a frame with eggs from Jason resolved (God bless him for the generous soul he is), I visited the hive today to see if there was enough of a population left to make it worth the try, and if not to see what they might have been doing in there so far.
Imagine my intense pleasure to see that the box has returned to it's former glory.  I did not uncover the clear tube to see if the traffic between wall and box has returned.  Given the swarm of activity to and from the box I can hardly believe that it is not back in full swing.  Apparently it just took them a while to find and take advantage of the opportunity.

Is it also possible that the Queen had paid the box a visit?

At the recent SIBA meeting, I learned to my surprise that workers who become queenless will develop ovaries and start laying eggs (the eggs have not been fertilized but can still develop into drones!!)  If this was occurring in the box during the period they were isolated, could it be that the queen was provoked into putting things back in order and reasserting herself?  I don't know.
All I can say is I am thrilled to see that the bees are back.  Tim (also with SIBA) has generously offered to suit up and take a peek at what is going on after he sets some new hives on 7/7.  At this point I am inclined to leave them alone till then and decide what to do next after we know more about the internal state of the box.

If the Mountain will not come to Mohammed...

I was not able to raise a response with my e-mail broadcast to try to obtain a 'trade frame' so I made it my mission to make time (long overdue) to attend the Southeast Indiana Beekeeper's Association meeting out in Moore's Hill.  A great group of folks that are seriously excited about keeping bees and more than happy to share what they know and help the newbie along.
Once Jason discovered what I was up to he set me straight on the whole frame trade thing so that option is back on the table.  I also talked with Tim, who will be setting hives soon at County Farm.  He was kind enough to be persuaded, after that operation is complete, to take a peek at what I have going to help plan what needs to happen next.
I will be checking in on the setup this weekend to see if there is anything left of the box-resident population and if not, see what they were doing during their brief tenancy.  I also need to take another look at the feasibility of closing the new soffit entrance - with or without a lift.

A Ray of Hope?

Jason, with the Southeast Indiana Beekeepers Assn., has generously offered a frame of eggs to help jump start the return to the box.  The thinking here is two fold.  First, if there is a population of workers in the box, cut off from the main hive, they may well re-Queen themselves with the new eggs.  There is also the hope (and I wish this had been floated sooner :-) that the resident Queen might well make the trip to the box just to find out who the heck has been laying eggs in HER domain.
At this point I need to accomplish two things.  First, I need to find a frame to trade for the one Jason is providing (unfortunately, my home made frames probably won't do. They are foundationless) so I am at the mercy of a kind soul willing to sell me a single frame.  I have put out the word via e-mail - hopefully I will get a taker.  The second thing is that I will have to do an assessment of activities in the box.  If I open it and there is little or no worker population left to take care of them, adding an egg frame would just be a waste.
Stay tuned.

And now Panic.

Even though the blockage has been removed there doesn't seem to be any recovery of traffic.  Worse still, the traffic that WAS there, to and from the box, has declined significantly.  My fear is that if the box is abandoned by those who had adopted it, it will be almost impossible to restart the trend, given the inaccessibility of their new traffic route.

Disaster.

My latest vist showed traffic to the box was way down and still no activity in the access tube.  I climbed up to investigate.  There were no dead bees in the tube as in days of yore, but when I blew into the clear access tube, it was apparent that the interior end was completely blocked.  Later, I gathered some tools and returned - a straightened coat hanger and a shotgun cleaning rod and brush being the core.  I used a drill and the hanger to rip the foam inside the wall, destroying it's integrity.  Tests indicated that this would not really open a passage, so the cleaning rod followed to grind out the debris and leave a passage the bees could use.  It must have worked.  as I was packing my gear, a half a dozen bees made a noisy transit down the tube to express their displeasure. Fortunately for me they were few and disoriented and did not mount an attack, if anybody followed them I couldn't say.  I hastily reinstalled the transit tube connection to the box and departed the scene, lest they get their bearings and return for a little payback.  Now I am just crossing my fingers and hoping they return to using this opening.  At least there is still a fair amount of activity still in the box, even shut off from direct access to the main colony - perhaps they will mend the rift on their own.  If I have to try to seal their alternate under the soffit, it may well prove to be the undoing of this effort.

Division in the ranks.

I didn't get to visit long, but there seem to be two camps now.  There is a steady coming and going at the box but also up near the peak of the roof.  Apparently, if the mob of bees that were hanging around the new foam were a road crew, they have given up as there are no bees on the site any more.  It is a little disconcerting that I didn't see any traffic between the wall and the box, but it was late and traffic was down all around, so it may just be the time of day.

You'd think they had a cave in...

Not sure what is going on here.  A few days after their backdoor got slammed shut, the bees are holding some sort of vigil on the site.  I don't know if this is a new generation of workers from the field crew that was out when I sealed it and now they don't know how to get back in, or a work crew to try to clear the obstruction.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.  Hopefully, if they are lost, they can play follow-the-leader behind the old hands still using the box route to get back in the game. 

There is still a lot of dislocation with a fair number of bees apparently looking for another access route near the soffit trim up near the roof peak.

Jail Break!!

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly so I left the bees to their own devices, checking only occasionally to ensure that the rig was stable and unharmed by the weather.  Unfortunately this was a mistake.  The last time I checked on them was about two weeks ago.  Since then, the industrious little buggers decided to do a little foam mining and opened another entrance right next to the tube.  This jail break was not in the plan and offers a lesson - insulating foam is not a sure fire deterrent when hoping to control bees. My response was to wrap the foam application straw with some medium steel wool and use it as an insertion tool, foaming the opening and the steel wool as the straw was removed to create a foam/steel wool composite that should foil any future attempts to chew their way out.  I have checked back for two days after this application and everything seems ok.  The tube is still in use and the patch is holding.

Success!! Well, for Phase 1, at least.

A visit this weekend, on a bright, warm, sunny day finds the bees VERY active and making the full trip from the wall through the tube...



...and in and out of the box.


And in further good news, quite a number of bees are hauling in some pretty large collections of pollen (see the circled bees).

Now we settle in to wait and see how things develop.

Try, Try, Again.

The next visit revealed that it wasn't necessarily the case that the bees died because of the slope of the tube. On my next return, the tube was once again plugged with dead bees. Unsure of what the issue might be, I cut off about 8 inches of the tube to clear the obstruction and shorten the run from the wall to the box.

Once this was accomplished, I watched the bees in action for a bit and observed that they would crawl out as far as possible from the wall but did not seem inclined to follow it as it turned into the box. Instead, they would flail at the side wall trying to escape to the sky so clearly visible. Apparently the lure of the wide open blue was blinding them to finding the route that would actually set them free.

Capitulating to the realization that I had presented too complex a puzzle for them to solve in one step, I located some opaque flex tubing (from an old hand held vacuum) and cut enough to cover much of the clear tubing. This was threaded over the clear, leaving only about four inches of clear tube visible right next to the wall. This modification seemed to improve things a bit - a few bees made the trip, but it was a cloudy, wet day and the bees were not very active. It may be that the route will have to be completely blacked out and perhaps exposed later after they have learned the way, but we will try this for now.

If at first you don't succeed...

The first inspection to reveal bee activity was on Wednesday, March 1. It was not encouraging. The clear tube was filled to the point of blockage with dead bees where it made its turn to go into the box. In addition, the bees still kicking seemed to be having a hard time with the slope of the tube and were struggling when trying to return to the colony after descending into the tube. My initial assumption is that the dead bees were caught out being unable to return to the colony.


Some emergency adjustments were made to raise the box so that the tube runs mostly level.

Initial Setup - February 20th, 2012

The first step was to put install a box between the bees and the outside world. In that the bee colony entry was about 14 feet up a wall, two large straight ladders were lashed together to make the A-frame to support the box. Next, while the bees were dormant, all of the entrances to the existing hive were filled with foam, except one. The main entrance was fitted with a one inch clear plastic tube and sealed in place with the same foam used to close the other entrances.

The thinking here is that the clear tube will provide a way to gauge how much traffic is occurring between the existing hive and the box for comparison with the amount of traffic going in and out of the box entry. If at any point the traffic to and from the box exceeds that going from the box to the wall, we will know that the bees are using the box for more than transit. If traffic to the wall ends but the bees are still active to and from the box, we will know our job is done.

For a brief but more illustrative presentation of the layout visit my small clip on YouTube.