I inspected both my home hives on Wednesday (after dealing with Susan’s bees, for which there is a whole other story!) and was very happy with what I saw; well up to a point anyway.
My “Blue”, nice and calm, hive has practically filled a super with light coloured nectar/honey - it’s not yet capped, but could this be linden tree honey? Wow! That would be great! There is lots of nicely packed brood in the hive too and although I didn’t see the queen I’m sure from the larvae I saw she is there. There is a lot of pollen too. I allowed myself to bask in a warm glow, just for a bit! I didn’t even see any Queen Cells - very happy about that!
My “White” hive is also strong, but these bees are less calm. They fly about a lot around and in front of you as you work the hive, but as yet they don’t get aggressive and sting. They follow you for a bit as well, but are not too persistent. These bees are filling supers too and the deeps are full of brood and stores as well. So this is good. I saw larvae and the queen - also great. And I saw Queen Cells! Not so good! There were Supersedure cells; three grouped together on the bottom of a frame and a fourth still open on another. I cut them all out and thought that would be sufficient.
Later on yesterday I went to the bee club and was convinced that I need to do something more than cut out the Queen cells. So I went back this afternoon and used the Demaree method of swarm control on the bees. The reasoning is that if the bees have already capped Queen Cells, their swarm urge is strong and it is unlikely that cutting out queen cells will stop them from swarming. The Demaree method separates the queen from her brood and this simulates swarming. Hopefully the nurse bees have been fooled into thinking the hive has swarmed!
I isolated the queen in the bottom deep (under a Queen Excluder) with two frames of capped brood and some frames of foundation. On top of the excluder I put two of my supers, then two deeps that contained the remains of the brood, and finally the last of my supers. The hive stack now has an unconventional look about it and is now taller than me (but only if you include the height of the stand!). I need to wait about nine or ten days before I go back in to cut out any more queen cells in the top deeps and separate more the brood from the queen in the bottom of the hive.
At least this gives me time to ask a few more questions about what I’m doing!!!
Bee Lucky!!
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