Another Split, To Stop A Swarm
A close up shot of eggs. They are the tiny white things in the cell that looks like a grain of rice.
I went through the hives to make sure the bees have plenty of food stockpiled. To my surprise, Hegemone had lots of swarm cells. All of the queen cells were uncapped and looked to be empty. They are just preparing to swarm. I think I caught it in time to do a preventative split. I removed 11 frames of brood, pollen and honey to start the new hive. Eggs are very difficult to see in ideal conditions. Many of the brood frames from Hegemone that were not completely capped had very dark comb, which is not ideal. I was able to see eggs (possibly larvae) when I looked at the frame in direct sunlight.
The extended period of 90+ degree days has kept me from being outside and building more equipment. I have everything I need to start a 5 frame NUC, but I don’t think pulling only 5 frames would have done much to prevent Hegemone from swarming. I am lacking 10 frame hive tops and bottoms, but luckily I had scraps of plywood to make due. I used the queen castle bottom, which has a small inch wide entrance on three sides, instead of a full width entrance on one. The three entrances are designed to give each of the 3-frame mating hives their own separate entrance. The top box of the split has one frame of capped brood and my last nine assembled frames. It’s time to endure the heat and get to work assembling frames. I also need to finish building the long hive and get that moved over to the Garner Grows Community Garden.
Hive count is at eight and I need to be more attentive to Hegemone in the next couple of weeks to make sure she doesn’t swarm. If the hive caps those queen cells, then I will probably make a few more splits that will be sold. The hive has sent out 3-4 swarms this year, so it’s not really surprising that they want to send out another.
I added a second hive body to the swarm hive by the raspberries and to the split with the purchased queen. The new queen’s hive was especially unfriendly today and netted me a sting on a finger. The bees were attacking the hive tool, headbutting my veil and encouraged me to put on gloves. Such are the joys of inspecting a hive in a dearth. I also think I kept the hives open too long and triggered a little bit of a robbing frenzy. All of the hives are strong, so I’m not worried but there will be a few more dead bees than usual in front of the hives.
I was curious to see if a dead bee could still sting and also wanted to boost my resistance to stings, so I stung myself on the hand. The answer is, yes a newly dead bee will still sting and pump venom.
