Bee Syndicate S2 E5 03/01/2016 Got Wood?

So, I left out the fact that these bees reside on a 40+ acre chunk of land out in a relatively rural part of the state. So, while he doesn't want to just give me the bees I will be able to use his land/tools equipment to start my own hives. These are about 2 year old hives at this point.
Short term goals.

  1. Evaluate existing bees (I have a somewhat distant relative I'm going to ask for help with this.) I need to learn if the bees are healthy first, or if I need to do some serious work with the hives.

  2. Start building frames/boxes. I'll need empty ones.

Long term, I really want to get at least one hive with entirely natural comb. I want to compare natural wax hives to pre waxed hives. But brother bought so many plastic bases, I'll just use them for now.

Did your bro give you any indication that the hive may have problems? The first thing you will want to look at is the pattern of the brood Look at the frame in the middle of wherever the bulk of the bees are in the brood chamber and in most cases you will see something like this

This is a healthy looking brood comb. the queen in most cases will work out from the middle resulting in a sort of rings or bands of brood development with just a few spread out out open cells among the sealed brood (Shotgun pattern) the brood cells are then surrounded by some food stores. This is a good indicator that the hive is "Queen Rite" (good strong queen)

in the pic below
Left Drone brood
right worker brood

Drone brood cells are larger because the males (drones) are bigger bees and need more space. as where worker brood cells are capped almost flat with the comb.

If the hive has a lot and or is predominantly drone brood the queen is likely old and is running out of sperm to fertilize worker eggs. and the hive is not queen rite.

If you have a hive that is not queen rite you can re queen it with an bought or otherwise acquired queen, or you can clip off one of the queens hind legs. This will cause her to produce less of her queen pheromone and the workers will begin work to replace her.