As this is the bee season, we're all trying to lure some swarms. TomW has put a few bait baskets high up in trees, and he has prepared several of these buckets. Meanwhile, a local beekeeper has also put 2 bait hives near the wild colony in TomT's neighbour's wall.
December, finally some nectar flow and the frames are filling up! As the bees are likely to swarm at this time of the year, it is best to keep an eye out for queen cells, and destroy them before they hatch. Or try to do a hive split. Mr Wang thought it was worth trying with Dom's remaining colony. He brought these 2 queen cells, took 2 healthy frames out of Dom's colony and installed them in a the second box, between the 2 frames. He explained that it is important to place the 2 boxes next to each other, centered around the previous position of the colony's entrance, indicated in above picture by the brick on the ground. A few days later both queen larvae had died, so the split was not successful. In the mean time, the bees had built some new queen cells, which were removed. TomW's Japanese pile box is going quite well, the bees have filled up the entire space and are expanding downwards now.
After the swarming, TomT's remaining colony with the new queen also decided to abscond, so he is left with 3 empty boxes. The wax moths were feasting on the remaining honeycomb.
It seems the standard Flow hive is not ideal for Apis Cerana; maybe the box is too large, and the entrance too wide, maybe some other reason. November. We were still wondering when that nectar season is going to start, worrying about the hornets. Lots of hornets. TomW's Japanese box seems to be doing well, with comb growing steadily down. TomT's mountain colony died off after the queen disappeared, and then the remaining comb was invaded and eaten by wax moth. TomT's Flow brood box seemed to be doing fine, but still not full enough to put the Flow super on. He did not check inside for a few weeks, and then one sunny Sunday found out that half of the colony had left! The weight sensor shows it happened in the morning of 18 Nov, a sudden loss of about 1kg. We had a look in the hive a few days later, and it looked very bleak: only half the bees left, a few empty queen cells, no queen to be found, and no brood either, making us think no new queen had survived. Luckily Mr Wang came over to have a look, and he spotted a small new queen! So not all is lost, it is possible that she is still waiting for her mating flight and then will start laying eggs. Mr Wang also advised to leave only 2 frames, and use a separator board. The 3 extra frames had a bit of honey, so he suggested to leave 2 of them inside the box, on the far side, so the bees can recover the honey. He said we could have started 2 or 3 new colonies with all those queen cells; this is the swarming season as the bees know there is a lot of nectar.
A few days after TomW's colony absconded, Dominic also lost a hive. Then we had some more wax moth, lots of hornets including the Asian giant hornet, and now STILL NO HONEY. With summer behind us, we were expecting to be harvesting honey in October, but the bees still seem in survival mode, no nectar explosion yet. Some days they are active, some days they prefer to stay inside the hive. There seems little we can do about that so we're just waiting it out now. 2 pictures of wax moth in early September with some live worms in the second. This seems to be a seasonal pest because we don't see any at the moment; maybe they only become a problem when the colony is at its weakest point. TomW has added another box to his Japanese pile box. A few weeks ago he found his queen outside the box and put her back, marked with a red dot. He has noticed this colony keeps very quiet, with sometimes no flying for days. Below a collection of hornets whacked by TomT. There are 2 common types, a yellow one (Asian hornet?) and one with a red band (greater banded hornet?). Both of these come an hover in front of the hive entrance, trying to grab bees. The bees seem to be able to handle them, doing their Mexican wave to warn any incoming bees, or maybe to scare off the hornet. However, the Asian giant hornet really scares the bees into the hive, and that hornet tries to get in to kill off the bees inside. TomW and Dominic have spotted several in Wang Tong, but TomT has only seen one, close-up in the last picture.
After cleaning up his hive, TomW was worried that is got a bit crowded with only 3 frames, and indeed, this morning his Chinese box colony decided to leave, and settled on a tree branch about 5m above the hive. Luckily he has a long ladder and a few long sticks. The first attempt to get the bees inside a cloth bait hive resulted in the bees moving to a higher branch, a good 7-8m high. That did not stop TomW from climbing the ladder and then a few tree branches to get close enough to put the black bait basket just above the swarm. The bees did not show much interest to settle into the basket, so we gave them some time and had lunch. It seemed they needed a bit of a nudge to move into the basket, and after some prodding they did, and we almost thought we nailed it. But moving the basket down it got stuck behind a branch and suddenly the bees swarmed again, this time to another tree, about 50m away, a good 8m high. By this time, Dominic had joined us. After looking at it from roofs and balconies, we decided it was out of reach so the only option was to prod it again to move them to another location. This time they went a few houses further, and settled in a nice garden in Wang Tong. Luckily the gardener was at work and we could get close to the tree to try our luck again. This time access was a bit easier, about 5m high. We tried the same method, holding the black bait basket above the swarm, and prodding the bees to move into the basket. Unfortunately, they did not like the idea, and flew off, over a row of houses, out of view, and after walking around checking trees for half an hour, we had to give up.
During a regular weekly hive inspection, TomW noticed some webbing and a few larvae in his hive, and after a closer look, it was clear that some frames were invaded by wax moth. Below pic shows part of the comb eaten away by the bees, in defense against the moth larvae tunneling through the comb. Also quite a few dead unhatched, uncapped bees, showing their white heads with black eyes, resembling a skull. After reading up on this pest, the best way to get rid of the worms seems to be to put the frame in the sunlight for 10-20 minutes: the worms don't like the sun and will try to get to the other side of the frame. You can then pick them up to remove them from the frame. Dominic did the same to a few of his frames, and found quite a few worms as well. A more drastic way is to freeze the frames overnight, that kills the eggs. The wax moth seems to especially become a problem in weaker colonies, or colonies that have more comb than they can handle and protect for pests. So it makes sense to take out extra comb. TomT also checked his frames and found quite a few dead bee skulls, but no worms coming out after exposing the frame to the sun. Mr Wang seemed not too worried about this, he says it's a difficult time for the bees to defend all their comb. TomW and Dominic decided to downsize their hives by taking out a few frames, so the bees would have an easier time to defend their comb.
Three weeks ago, we had helped a friend to remove a colony from a cabin on Sunset Peak, and we put the colony in a local spare beehive box. This box does not have any ventilation, so TomT decided to buy a Chinese BeeBrother box with removable bottom plate, meshed top, and ventilated roof cover. We got the 3 bee clubbers together to move the colony into their new box. The plan was to take out the old comb; the bees were obviously not interested in that and apart from a few drops of delicious honey, it had started to mold already. We looked out for the queen on the new comb, ready with a queen cage, but couldn't spot her. We held the comb above the new box, and banged the roof board so most bees fell off into the new box. Then we took off the combs one by one. At this point, there were many bees inside the new box, and also many bees congregated on the outside and inside of the old box. We tried to figure out where the queen could be, and we held the old box, with all those bees on the front, above the new box, banged it to move them into the new box. We wrapped the old box in a blanket so the bees would not assemble there anymore. At this point we were quite confident that things were going well and the rest of the bees would make their way into the new box, so it was time for a beer. After a while, TomW suggested to have a look, and, lord behold, the new box was empty, somehow the bees had all flown off while we were watching. This was a little disappointing. We started to look around, for they do not go very far in such cases, and we saw some bees high up in the big tree. From the roof we could see a bee ball at about 7-8m distance, too far to reach. They were under relentless attack from a few hornets, the biggest we have ever seen. Luckily Dominic had the great idea to put their old hive box back into position, so they might find their way back to their old home. At the same time we also put the new box, with their old comb frame on the roof to lure them in. A lot of bee activity in the air, and we thought we had lost them. However, while cleaning up, we noticed some activity at the old box, and it seems they found their way back. So we put in the frame with their old comb, and inserted a cloth under the roof board to avoid them building new comb from the roof. A rather eventful day of beekeeping! To be continued.. Sunset Peak, at 869m, is the second highest mountain on Lantau island. It is dotted with a few dozens of concrete cabins that were built over 50 years ago and now owned by some long term Lantau residents. We heard that a friend of us had a bee colony in one of those cabins, between the glass window and the shutters. So TomT put on his hiking shoes and went up with some friends to try to remove the colony and bring it down to Mui Wo. It was a very clear day, and after a 2 hour hike, we got to work, with the airport in the background. The plan was to cut off the comb, looking out for the queen bee, and pinning her down on the comb with a plastic queen cage. Put the caged queen in a shoebox, wait for the worker bees to join her, seal the box, and walk it down to Mui Wo. However, we did not find the queen sitting there waiting for us, so after cutting all the combs, the bees were regrouping in a ball in the other corner of the window, and i had to sweep them into the box in several steps. Somehow the queen ended up in the box because the workers seemed to find their way to the box as well, so we waited about 20 minutes for them to assemble in the box. I had put 1 piece of comb inside, and the rest, with brood and honey, in a ziplock bag. Now it was time to seal the box with some masking tape, and begin the 2 hour trek back down the mountain, carrying the box in my hands. Back home, we put the shoebox into an empty hive box, with plastic queen stoppers on the entrances to prevent the queen from leaving. We fixed the comb into a wired frame, using elastic bands and hoping the bees would repair the comb. However, a week or so later we found out the bees were not interested in their old comb anymore, we had probably damaged it during transport. Instead they had started building comb from the roof of the hive. This was bad news, as it is difficult to manage this wild comb, so we planned to transfer the comb as soon as i received a new beehive box from BeeBrother on Taobao.
After some experiments with feeding the colonies during a few wet weeks and over HK's first summer storm, it was time to have a look at our hives. TomT finally decided to feed his bees with sugar water, using a bottle feeder, and a zip lock bag in the roof space of the Flow hive, an estimated 1 kg of sugar in total. The result was clear when we inspected a few days later: capped honey on several frames, and lots of shiny cells. We were not sure at first if it was honey or uncapped brood, but as they were all over the frames, we assume they are brood. So we're expecting to see a lot of capped brood soon, and new bees. Moving on to Dominic's 2 hives, we found a similar situation: some capped honey, lots of uncapped brood, also larvae visible in third pic below. Then we had a look in TomW's C box, also lots of shiny uncapped brood cells, and good progress on the foundation frame. We're also dealing with some predators; TomW found these 2 frogs, and several hornets, also at TomT's hive.
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Mui Wo Bee ClubApicultural adventures on Lantau Island, Hong Kong Archives
October 2020
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