Wayne's Bees

[pholcomb]

Picked up a package of bees with a Wayne's Survivor queen from Larry Tate yesterday morning. Installed them as soon as I got home. Will let yall know how they do.

Thanks Wally for bringing these bees to market.

Paul

[beeramm]

I originally wanted to start with some Waynes bees but inquired too late to get some. I was curious what the queen looked like? Light or dark, etc?

[Wally]

Most of them are dark. They vary quite a bit.

[pholcomb]

Yep. The queen was dark.

Paul

[pholcomb]

Due to the cool rainy weather and too many hours at work, except to fill up the feeder, I didn't open up my hive of Wayne's Bees for almost a month. I installed the package April 9th, did a brief inspection a few days later to make sure the queen had been released, and that was it until today.

Finally got in and was pleased to find 4 and 1/2 frames of foundationless frame drawn out and with plenty of capped brood in what looked to my inexperienced eye to be a pretty good pattern. Didn't see the queen but I didn't pull the middle frame all the way out. Better yet, about 5 pm there were orientation flights outside the hive entrance.

So far, Wayne's Bees have been as laidback as my Carnis. Not a bit spicy. I suspect that might change in a month or so.

Paul

[Wally]

I doubt you will ever notice it under normal circumstances. If you work the hive more than a few minutes, if the weedeater or lawnmower gets too close, if you go in in bad weather, you may see a bit of difference. Otherwise, a 5 minute check on a nice, warm day, you won't even know they have stingers.

[herbcoop]

I've stood and sat down off to the side front about 4' from the entrance for an hour a couple of different days and only had 1 do a fly by then flew off guess it was just checking me out.
I have mowed 2 times by the hive within 6' with no problem of course this was in back of the hive
I was amazed as well doing a hive inspection how nice they were, I got one head bump but I figure it was my fault for taking longer than I should have, just enjoyed being inside and looking at them.

[pholcomb]

Haven't posted in a while but I'm still keeping bees (just barely.) Had two hives going into winter, a two year old hive of Wayne's Bees and a new hive of Carnis, both from Larry Tate. The Carnis looked good in Oct but didn't survive the first cold spell in November.

I'm surprised that the Wayne's hive that I got from Larry in April of 2013 was still going strong yesterday.

I've never treated it and never fed it pollen supplements, just sugar water. Not sure if the original queen is still in there. I'm not aware of a swarm, but I wouldn't know if there was a small swarm. Took about 40 lbs of honey from it this past spring, then fed some frames from deadout hives most of the summer. I didn't start feeding sugar water until August. It didn't feel too light when I tipped it yesterday.

You can see from the pic that the bees were furiously bringing in pollen yesterday. Most of it bright yellow/orange, which I think is from some late winter camellias still in bloom. Also saw a lot of light green pollen, which could be from a number of flowers or trees at the arboretum.

The next week is going to be tough. Fingers crossed.

Paul

[pholcomb]

The Wayne's Bees hive survived the winter. I did an inspection last Wednesday and had bees in all four boxes. Didn't see any queens cells but I only pulled a couple frames. Added a medium of frames with empty drawn comb to the top and started feeding sugar water. We'll see what happens...

Paul

[Jacobs]

It looks like I may finally have a Wayne's bee queen. David gave me a frame of nursebees and brood from one of his Wayne's bee hives on May 20th. I shook additional nursebees from 3 different hives into a nuc with this frame. I began seeing pollen going into the nuc about 3-4 days ago, and checked the hive yesterday afternoon. There is a queen and there are single, well placed eggs. She had not been laying long enough for there to be larvae.

[Jacobs]

My nuc from last year did not make it into winter, but I bought 2 Wayne's Bee queens from Beez Needz early this spring. I put them in small nucs and let them build on their own. Both have been in 10 frame medium hives for awhile and have really built up. I have pulled 2 frames of eggs, larvae and nurse bees from one of the hives to do 2 trapouts from trees. Those trapouts are done and both trapout nucs came home a couple of days ago. I looked this morning, and both queens are laying. I plan on evaluating the laying patterns, and if good, putting them in 10 frame mediums with a couple of frames of brood from other hives for a quick boost. If these work out, this will get me up to 4 Wayne's Bee hives.

[Jacobs]

I still have both Wayne's Bee hives from last year. The one at Brown Summit looked close to being a deadout in February when Wally and I went through it. There was a very small area of capped brood, eggs and larvae. We boosted with 2 frames from another hive. The Wayne's queen fired up, got ahead of me and swarmed. I put 1 virgin queen from the hive in a nuc and left 1 virgin queen in the original hive. The nuc now needs to be put in a 10 frame, and I just took 10 medium frames of honey from the original hive. I used eggs and brood frames from the other Wayne's Bee hive to do trap outs last year and this year. I now have 4 Wayne's Bee hives at the house, 2 in Brown Summit, and 3 newly mated queens in nucs. David will probably take one and the other 2 will most likely wind up in hives in McLeansville.

I have not treated Wayne's Bees for varroa mites and do not intend to. If a queen does not inherit mite tolerance, I'll let her go, but so far, I have lost none of the Wayne's Bees to mites.

[Jacobs]

I have 2 Wayne's Bee hives in Brown Summit and 4 at home. I lost 1 last year at the Arboretum that did not inherit varroa mite tolerance. I lost 1 at Brown Summit not too long ago. It looks like something happened to the queen (marked) in that one and the new queen (unmarked) did not get mated. This happened fairly late in the season, and given the smaller clusters for over wintering Wayne's Bees, it looks like it didn't take too long to finish off this hive.

After the snow and cold weather, I am seeing larger numbers of dead bees in front of my Wayne's Bee hive than in front of other hives. I don't know if this is the normal reduction of hive cluster size or if something unusual is going on. These hives are functioning and active for now. I hope to start boosting brood rearing in my home hives in January. If it works out, I will have young nurse bees and brood to boost hives with smaller clusters (Wayne's or others) by sometime in February.

Is anyone else with fairly strong Wayne's Bee hives seeing what I am seeing after the snow?