I inspected the split today to see if they released the queen. When I opened up the hive, it was overflowing with bees. I had put 3 frames full of capped brood and half of them emerged. All those nurse bees easily accepted the only queen they’ve ever known. The nurse bees will not have much to do until the queen starts laying, which should happen in the next day or so. This should give them plenty of time to draw out new comb.
The new split was not a very large split and I’m sure it has been losing its foragers as they fly back to Antheia across the yard. To help give it a boost until the brood starts to emerge, I swapped the location of the hive with Chloris. For the past week, Chloris has had a lot of bees hanging out in the front of the hive. After swapping the hives, there were over a dozen bees flying in front of the hive acting confused. That’s a decent number given that it was raining. A forager brought back white pollen, landed and walked in to the hive. It walked out a few seconds later, flew around and then repeated the process. If bees could talk, this one would say, “wtf? I have the right address, but this isn’t my house!”
This weekend started off with making a split for the queen that was installed today. It’s good to make the split queenless 24 hours before introducing the new queen (in a cage). This makes them more willing to accept her. The split was created from 3 frames of capped brood (and bees) from Antheia and a frame of pollen and honey from Hegemone. I intentionally did not give the hive any eggs or larvae because I did not want them to try and raise their own queen. The split was a little small, but it will get a big boost in numbers when the brood emerges. All those empty cells give the queen plenty of space to lay.
The installed queen was purchased from <a href=”http://www.carolinabees.com/”>The Carolina Bee Company</a>, and she is a graft from a feral hive that was evicted from the roof of a school gymnasium after many years. Her genetics are a welcome addition to my apiary.
Hegemone appears to be queenless. There were no eggs or larvae, but a few empty supercedure cells. There was an uncapped queen cell with something in it, but I’m not sure if it was a live queen. Just to make sure the hive has everything it needs to survive, I gave it a frame of eggs from Antheia. This will ensure that they can raise start a new queen cell if needed.
The swarm from Hegemone that moved itself up on to the shed has finally been brought down to earth. The hive is doing really because it was heavy. I almost dropped the hive at the bottom rung. I worry that I caused comb to collapse because I saw a white pupae get dragged out the front. I won’t know until I open up the hive tomorrow after work.
All the bees left from the swarm installed in to the top bar hive at the Garner garden
I went to the Garner garden to check on the swarm that I put in the top bar hive and add the rest of the top bars I made. There was very light bee traffic at the entrance of the hive and when I opened it up there were only small cluster of bees. I looked through the cluster and didn’t see the queen. It’s really depressing seeing the small cluster of bees continuing to work despite there being no hope for them. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the bees that were put in the hive or what became of the queen.
A few possibilities:
- I never caught the queen
- The queen died or was critically injured during the transport out to the garden
- The queen died on a mating flight
- The queen didn’t like the top bar hive and flew off with the swarm and the bees clustering in the hive were left behind.
I screened up another hive that will be moved out to the garden tomorrow and any bees left in the top bar will be shaken out at the entrance of the new hive. Hopefully they are accepted in to the hive and help boost its productivity.
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