BeeCam Livestreams

Scout bees were checking out the swarm lure towards the end of April 2024. Eventually a swarm arrived and was re-homed May 2, 2024 into an 8-frame deep hive box - Hive One - with some pre-drawn comb from 2023's colony.

Hive One is doing well, and weekly inspections indicate steady brood rearing and a healthy queen throughout the active season. The original deep box was full as of June 16, and an empty medium box was added so the bees can stockpile for the winter. A third box was added towards the end of July 2024. A fourth box went on early in September 2024 to wrap up the season, but heavy drought conditions in the area resulted in very little honey produced, so this box was removed early October 2024. Oxalic acid treatments for Varroa mites starting after they were housed in May 2024 and repeated roughly every two months, most recently October 28, 2024, indicate mites are in check as we head into Winter. This combined with plenty of honey stores (more on that below) give Hive One good odds to survive the winter.

As of the end of January 2025 the bees are doing well. On days above 50F, they will start to engage in cleaning behavior, carrying off dead bees and other refuse. Dead bees out front may appear to be a bad sign, but only strong colonies will maintain a clean hive inside. With only 10 lbs of the 70+lbs of winter stores consumed, and the worst of winter likely past, I and the bees will start to prepare for spring with mite treatments as the weather warms and the resumption of brood rearing.

The 2024 colony appears to have made it through the winter as of March 1, 2025. A mite treatment at the end of February revealed very few mites in the hive (only 3 dead observed). The bees will start to forage on plants in bloom whenever the temperature approaches the low 50s Fahrenheit. This early in the season, that will be Witch Hazel and Crocus, and you might see bees bring back a darker and lighter colored pollen corresponding to these two plants. As March leads into April the variety will increase.

Temperature in the brood chamber spiked to 90F around February 25, 2025, indicating the bees were preparing for the queen to lay the first new bees since last Fall. Once the temperature is warm enough, a hive inspection will confirm the presence of brood and see if the development is consistent with eggs laid around that time. As of March 9, I've yet to do a thorough hive inspection, but the bees have been bringing back a lot of pollen. Also on March 9, the entrance reducer was set to its larger setting to help with the traffic jam at the smaller setting.

Starting at a total weight of 120-140 lbs at the end of last Fall (~70 lbs of honey, depending on when you start counting: Nov or Oct) the bees exited the winter with 100 lbs total hive weight as of March 10. That indicates a consumption of around 20 lbs of honey over the winter, which is quite a bit less than I've been lead to believe bees consume. From March 10 onward, the hive weight has been increasing with bee forage activity, up to around 110 lbs nearing the end of March. This should prove interesting to watch over the summer as well.

On March 22, 2025 a hive inspection reveals lots of capped brood, new eggs, and larva, with every indication that a round of bees had already started hatching. The deep box on the bottom had laying on the central six (of eight) frames, and the second medium had some brood on the inner two to four (one side) frames. Some drone brood was observed, but no queen cells, yet. As it takes around 21 days for a bee egg to hatch, these observations fits well with a timeline of the Queen starting laying just before March. Regular checks of the bottom board revealed wax cap debris consistent with hatching bees over the several days leading up to this inspection, which leads me to believe the temperature spike in February was a decent indicator of new spring brood.

Update - 4/18

On April 15, 2024 the queen bee that overwintered decided it was time to increase the number of bee colonies in the world. This process involves the worker bees preparing several new queens in special cells by feeding the growing larva in that cell special food containing hormones that stimulate the growth of a queen bee. Once these new queens are nearly ready to hatch, the old queen will leave the hive with a large fraction of the available flying bees as a swarm to find a new home. I caught this on the cameras setup to monitor the hive and you can find the videos here. The plot on the right shows a seven pound drop in hive weight at the big spike in bee activity when the swarm departed — a pretty big swarm, very likely to establish a successful new hive. The new queens will hatch around a week after this swarm leaves, and have a battle royale to be the new queen of the existing, well established, hive. If one happens to hatch first, her odds are very good. Some time after that, I should start seeing new eggs being laid, indicating a successful colony reproduction.

Update - 4/19

A second swarm popped out of hive one this morning, prompting me to do a full disassembly and inspection to see how many queen cells we are dealing with. The result? Too many! Generally a second swarm so soon after the first indicates a very congested hive, and indeed Most cells in the hive were either full of honey or capped brood, and the box was full of bees. Some dozen or so queen cells capped, uncapped, and ready to cap were present, along with what seemed to be a young queen. This young queen remains in hive one, with roughly half the hive's resources, and one viable queen cell as an insurance policy. Approximately four other queen cells were moved to hive two with half of hive one's resources and bees, splitting the colony in two to simulate a successful swarm.

We'll monitor both hives over the next several weeks to see that the queen mates successfully and starts to lay new eggs.

On October 2, 2024, the hive was fully disassembled to inspect for pests and disease at the end of the season. During this inspection, the old hive base base was swapped for one with a sensor platform I designed, with temperature/humidity sensors deployed in the hive as it was reassembled. This base has an integrated scale to track the weight of the entire hive and can record data from the temperature/humidity/brightness/pressure sensors deployed during the inspection. All of this is fed back over the ethernet network running the cameras, and processed into the data available on the live metrics link. This also has a measure of (roughly) how many bees are detected on the live feed at any given time.

Weight is perhaps the most important, and will monitor the honey consumption of the bees through the winter. The base plus the brood box as-is weigh about 40 lbs. At least 30 lbs of that is "equipment" (including the top and cover here) with the other 10 lbs being mostly honey and bees. The remaining weight - about 90 lbs - is all in the two medium boxes (the hive is configured as pictured above). With empty medium boxes and frames weighing about 12 lbs each, this leaves at least 70 lbs of honey so far this season all told. The bees will continue to forage until nightly frosts kill the flowers and/or the daytime temperatures are below 55 F, so the season is mostly over as of the end of November except for an occasional warm day.

Along with hive weight, it will be interesting to follow Temp-Brood and Temp-Top which track the temperature in the bottom (brood box) and top of the hive. The bees actively control the environment inside the hive, and will strive to maintain around 95F (35C) if brood are present. With no brood in the winter, the temperature will drop substantially depending on how the bees are positioned in the hive, but the bees will keep a local area warm with energy provided by stored honey. Some heat will rise to the top, along with a considerable amount of humidity from tens of thousands of respirating bees, which will provided a critical water source as it condenses on the cool hive outer walls.

Combined, this temperature, weight, and humidity data will allow me to keep track of the colony's health through the winter, when opening the hive is not possible without stressing the colony.

A second swarm finally moved into the bait hive on the morning of June 23, 2024, and was moved to a new hive - Hive Two - next to the first hive. Hive inspection on June 29, 2024. After solid growth through the first half of July, filling 7 of 8 frames in the deep box with comb, honey, and brood, the population of the colony began to decrease. A very sparse brood pattern presented by mid August. The queen was still present as of September but had stopped laying new eggs.

Regular Varroa treatment was done, along with Hive One, and no particular infestation was observed through the season, however the low population of bees eventually led to an infestation of small hive beetles that had to be cleared September 5, 2024, losing 4 frames of drawn comb to the beetle larva. Unfortunately the queen decided to abscond (leave) the morning of September 11, 2024, and bees were observed leaving the hive all at once, presumably try to escape the issues they enountered this season.

After a winter without any bees, hive two is back in action with a split from hive one. Four deep frames with capped brood and honey were added to the box, along with some medium frames containing around queen cups at various stages of development (two capped, two uncapped). Four bare foundations were added to the deep to encourage new growth. Half the honey resources (~30lbs) from hive one were donated as well to get them started. This strategy should start both hives off as new colonies this year.

After several weeks the new queens in both hives should have gone on mating flights to drone congregation areas and started laying eggs. Until then, not much for the beekeeper to do!