Another Swarm???

I went into Diane's hive on Friday (June 7) they were a little aggressive and I got stung twice on my upper arms, through my suit!  Not very impressed! 

I have 4 supers on this hive. Three are pretty full and one us still filling, and as I was looking at the lowest super, wouldn't you know it; I saw a capped Queen Cell. I didn't have time to deal with this there and then but I did bring it up at the bee seminar later that day.

Anyway, the advice was to go and find the Queen and once I find her remove the queen cell! I might be too late given it is now nearly two days later! 

I'll take a look and maybe add a super, just to encourage the girls to fill it!

Next inspection June 15. 

UPDATE:

I went in to the hive this morning (June 9) to see what I could see! I found a number of swarm cells but couldn't find the Queen! Lots of eggs and brood however!  Anyway, I removed all but one Queen Cell. The bees were quite well behaved. They stung my suit a few times but settled down after being smoked for a bit.

I'll go back in a couple of weeks and see if the numbers of bees look any different then!  There's no point going in before as if there is a new Queen she'll need to settle in and if there isn't a new Queen the other one will be OK by then I think!

Next inspection June 23.

Earth Day at Kirkwood Farmers Market.

What a way to end an excellent week of beekeeping! Yes, Earth Day was last week but here in Kirkwood they held their own local version yesterday. Sadly it was wet and cold, but surprisingly well attended!

Walter from Cornucopia (the local cook shop that stocks some of my honey) asked if I'd like to have a stall. I jumped at the chance! I had no honey to sell but I love taking my observation hive places.

But it's been so cold lately and the hives are so far behind (developmentally) that I wasn't sure if I could find enough frames of brood etc. to full the observation hive. However, I had a brainwave! I sealed off the nuc below the observation window and decided to put in just a single frame of bees from my mating box. You'll remember the queens in these boxes had died or been killed off. I pulled a frame from one side of the box and thought no more of it.

I generated some interest at the market, which is actually quite easy when you have a hive of bees on display. People are always so interested and know quite a bit about the issues bees are currently facing, so it's nice to be able to talk about what is being done locally to help maintain bee populations.

I kept telling people that the frame was just bees and a bit of maturing brood, until one 9yr old girl said she saw the Queen. No way! But she was spot on! Clear as day, there was a Queen, quite black with a black shiny saddle on her thorax on the frame. She'd been busy too, lots of eggs and larvae were on the frame and we alao saw her laying. She was not only recently hatched, but mated too!

What had happened? This is my hypothesis. First the timeline: On 5 April I pulled one frame of eggs and brood from a hive at home and from the gardens. On 6 April I added new queens purchased from the club to these frames in the mating box. On 13 April I found the queens had died or been killed and I saw queen cells being raised on one side of the mating box. Finally, yesterday, 27 April, I had a new laying queen.

I'm assuming the bees started to raise a queen almost immediately after the frame was removed from the donor hive. One of these queen cells could therefore have been formed around a 3-day old egg. So the egg could have been laid on 3 April. This queen should then have hatched 16 days later, on 19 April. Now Queen cells are capped after 10 days so the cells I saw could have just been capped when I saw them. It's been 7 days since the queen hatched and I believe its perfectly possible that she took her maiden flight, got mated and started laying within a week of hatching. Quick, but not unusual!

My only worry now is did her trip to the cold day at the market upset her? And if not, what do I do with her? Well, I think I will split one of my hives in a couple of weeks time and I'll install her (or should that be invest her?) as the new Queen.

It's certainly been interesting this week!

Well, that wasn't planned!

Last week (April 26) I took delivery of 3 Queen bees from the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association. I thought it was way too early to get queens (well certainly too early to make splits) as its been so cold here this winter. But there's not much that can be done if everything is firing in Louisiana and there are queens there ready to shipped out!

The 3 Queens.

Anyway, I took the queens and installed them the same day. One went into a weak hive, together with some eggs and brood from an adjacent stronger hive (I had already disposed of the resident queen the previous day). The other two Queens I put in a mating box along with frames of brood/eggs I took from the strong hive in my back yard and from a hive I have at the botanical gardens. No worries!

The strong hive in my Back Yard

I checked on the mating box on Wednesday; the candy plugs in the queen cages had been eaten away. I therefore assumed the queens had been released. So all good, right?

Wrong! I checked the hives this morning. One side of the mating box is raising Queen Cells! (can you spot one?) So that means the Queen in that side is dead! I found the other Queen dead inside her cage!

Spot the Queen Cell!

The dead Queen!

So that was a waste of time! Still, at least the Queen in the weak hive is alive! I found her still in her cage!  She hadn't been able to find her way out. She doesn't sound too clever to me!  All in all it wasn't a very encouraging start! But you have to look on the bright side...

1. I'm now raising my own queens which is actually what I wanted to do in the first place!

2. The hive in my back yard is nice and strong and it was no problem taking brood and eggs from it.

3. The single surviving queen walked out of the cage and onto a frame in the weak hive without being assaulted by the other bees!

I have hope!