Queen Cells | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

20 Day Queen Emergence?

No matter how prepared that I think I am for Spring in the Apiary, I always seem to bee beehind! To date, I have created 22 Nucs, which is quite a number given it is only March 17! I have also supered a large number of my hives around Richmond, Va and actually had a queen hatch in my hand (I wonder if I’ll EVER see that again…)

The hives are healthy, period. Many folks have been warning that the bees will have eaten up all of their stores. I had two problem hives (one at Westover and one at Sherwood Forest), but both went into the Winter with low stores. So, warm or cold Winter, these gals were going to have a problem (both made it with a little help). But, not a single one of my other hives came close to eating all of their stores. Instead, I would say that I have to PULL frames of honey on most hives just to give the queen space to lay! The bottom line is that I will probably ignore the warnings that ‘a warm Winter means they eat more stores’ going forward. It probably is a worry to the folks that take so much honey that they have to feed in the Fall/Winter, but it appears to me that my strategy already deals with this possible obstacle (although I doubt we’ll see another warm Winter like this for some time).

On that note, I created a Nuc off of a strong hive last Sunday (3/11/2012). This time of year, I create the Nucs in the same yard as the hive. My hives are building up so quickly, they they seem to be able to give 2 to 3 frames of brood without missing a beat. Add a shake of Nurse bees, and the Nucs come out strong. Well, the one from last Sunday wasn’t acting right. It usually takes 2 to 3 days to begin seeing a forager or two and I wasn’t seeing sqat. So, I took a peak. Somehow, I must have mostly shaken out foragers into the Nuc, as there were VERY few bees. I decided to go back into the original hive and shake again. All three frames of foundation, from last Sunday, were 75% drawn and 30%+ full of nectar as of Thursday! These were Medium frames, but that’s a huge build up in my opinion. I had no idea this amount of nectar was coming in. What was the takeaway? I needed to get supers on all hives, which I have pretty much done as of today.

The final (and wildest, to me) bit of news came from my two early Nucs. I created both of them on Feb 26. In my mind, with the cool nights, these queens should have hatched on or around the 13th. Maybe the 14th if the cluster couldn’t keep the hive warm enough. So, I went in to check both Nucs for the first time today. The primary goal was to find open queen cells. If I spotted the queen, all the better.

Nuc 1 revealed nothing. This Nuc was a risk, as I had not found eggs but had seen 1 day old larva. I had been wondering if a Nuc could really get itself together in time to make a queen with nothing but larvae that would be too old in a day or less. The queen may have emerged and they may have torn the queen cell down, but I sort of doubted it. I would give it a few more days to be sure.

Nuc 2 revealed what I expected. Three queen cups and one of them open. After a brief span, I could see the queen prancing around the frame. Interestingly enough, I noticed two unopened queen cells – neither of them damaged (like you would see if the first hatching queen had stung her on the side). This was odd, as the Bee Math didn’t add up. This was 20 or so days after I created the Nuc! I figured that the queens were probably dead or maybe I just missed where they had been stung by the queen that hatched.

A few hours later, I got to thinking about the Nuc without any evidence of a queen and decided to take a risk. Why not cut out those two other swarm cells and put them in the Nuc? Couldn’t hurt, right? Both parent queens are good and the Nuc is ‘for sale’, so a queen offspring from either parent would be fine. So, I went back into the Nuc and cut out the two swarm cells (fortunately, both were about an inch apart) and began carrying them to the other Nuc (across my yard, maybe about 150 yards). As I looked at the small patch of wax, 3 nurse bees and two queen cells, I noticed a head poking through a small crack in one! Good lord, this queen cell not only had a living queen, but she was coming out right now! The next part is amazing. In less then 5 seconds, she came all the way out!

So, this poor queen comes out thinking she has a new hive to rule, which turns out to be a patch of wax about 3 inches across with 3 Nurse bees and another queen cell! I doubt there are many queens who are greeted with such a small domain in the first few seconds as an adult!

At any rate, I was set on a course and I just prayed that she would keep hauling around the small wax while I made my way to the Nuc, which she did. When I set her in the hive, it was very hard to tell if they attacked her or accepted her. Several bees seemed to probe her and then she went down between the frames. I left the other cell on top of the frames, just to be safe. In retrospect, I should have taken the other cell and created a quick Nuc with her. But, so much was happening so quickly that I really didn’t have time to think (or what little thinking I did was not very efficient!)

Regardless of the outcome, that was definitely exciting.

Nuc building, Patience with Queens & Laughable Errors

It’s been one heck of a Spring. My beekeeping pretty much consumes 80% of my spare time, although I have managed to get my garden in the ground. The weather in Richmond, Virginia has been super, in my area. We could use a bit more rain, but we’ve definitely had enough to keep the flowers blooming and full of nectar. Holly started blooming nicely in my area and the Tulip Poplar has been putting on a real nice bloom the last week. My supers are filling up quickly.

But, there have been quite a few lessons along the way. I learned a good lesson with raising queens from swarm cells. I cannot simply put a frame with bees and a queen cell into a small (3 frame) Queen Castle section and expect good results. In most of the sections, I only included that frame and a frame of honey and one with pollen. The problem, I believe, was not including a full frame of capped brood with each one. Of the 6 that I started, only two had a decent amount of brood (the rest where queen cells on the bottom of honey frames). Those two ended up with laying queens. The other four ended up with nothing that I could find. In all cases, I saw the queen the first couple of weeks after she hatched, but somewhere along the way, she vanished. Without the capped brood, I suppose there were not enough bees in the cell to tend to her needs. I may have monkeyed with them too much too, as I was enthralled with watching the progress (and those 6 starters were just experiments anyway – I wanted to learn.) On a positive note, all of the queens that I started normally (in Nucs with 1 brood, 1 pollen, 1 honey, 1 partially drawn empty and 1 foundation) have done very well. In fact, one of them is literally building up almost as fast as a swarm! That queen is on steroids. I only had one queen that I was not happy with (poor brood build up) and I killed her, letting them raise another one as we speak. The bottom line is that I am very comfortable making Nucs now and will definitely make a few to sell next year (I will probably sell a few this year, since I have more then I want at this point.)

Another lesson that I learned was to have patience with the queens. Most of my queens do not start laying on Day 25 and one waited until Day 41! I do think that I ended up losing a couple of viable queens due to my impatience this year (there were TONS of dead bees after two of my combines) and, looking back, I only gave the queens 31 and 34 days to show signs of laying. I really need to have patience with everything related to bees. I have been told that I have the patience of Job, due to the projects that I start related to growing trees and shrubs, but that is clearly not the case with the bees. When you know that the flow is on, you want all of your bees to be kicking at 200%. I am constantly worried that I need to do something with a hive or queen to make sure they are hitting on all cylinders. I need to remember my lessons from last year – let the bees do their own thing and stop messin’ with ’em!

I will close with a dumb error. The Westcastle swarm was building up strong. It was definitely the original, old queen (as opposed to a secondary swarm with a virgin queen) and she pretty much started laying on Day 1. Those bees were taking down the syrup nicely, as they build up all of the fresh wax. After about 10 days, they were 90% done with the deep and I dropped a medium on them. I put 2 gallons of syrup on them, thinking it would tide them to the next weekend. Once the week was up, I went to check the feeder and expected it to be empty so that I could give a peak inside (this hive was going to get moved to an outyard back on the 22nd.) But, only about half of the syrup had been taken… This was a drastic slowdown, but I figured it was because the main flow was on. Finally, I checked yesterday and there was still about a gallon left! Frustrated, I gingerly removed the feeder and attempted to pour it into a nearby pitcher. Finally, I could check on the hive. What the heck!?

To my dismay (cheered on by a couple of foul words out of my mouth), I had put a super full of empty, foundationless frames on them! Good lord. They had drawn wax all over the center of the frames, exactly perpendicular to how the frames sit (across several frames.) I had to pull it all out and put it in a tray in front of the hive. They began to work on it (getting the honey out to take back into the hive), while some tried to work on me (for messing up all of their hard work.) I marked the queen (Blue, for last year) and put a super of foundation on them. I’ll check the feeder in a couple of days to see what we have. Hopefully, they will go back to consuming a lot of it and drawing out the Medium. I want to get a frame of eggs from them to secure the bloodline and then move them to one of my Varina outyards (aka my honey and drone yards for the Nucs that I raise in my backyard.)

I guess that was not my last point, as it occurred to me that I have one other big lesson for this year. Four times, I have noticed swarm prep (either actual swarm cells or back-filling of the brood nest.) In all four times, I took the old queen and (in some cases) half of the queen cells. In all cases the bees swarmed anyway. Although I will take old queens with solid history in the future, it will not be because of a swarm management strategy. I will try something else on that. I can say that the one time that I did prevent a swarm (and who really knows if they were going to swarm or not) was when I took the old queen at the first sign of massive drone laying (something I had learned, this year, was a precursor to other swarm prep), it did stop the swarm and the bees appear to have built up nicely even without a queen through late March and early April.

But, who knows. I might be learning the exact wrong things. Regardless, I will continue to use my experiences to drive my adventures and mishaps!

Let ‘Em Do Their Thing

I once read where Michael Bush, a big time beekeeper up North, said that he never replaced the queen from a swarm. He didn’t want bees that couldn’t figure out when it was time to supersede their queen and needed him to help them along. I have a ton of respect for Michael Bush and agree with him for sure, but I am not 100% sure that I will never requeen (the Albo hive comes to mind.)

Two queen cells — Am I Going to Get A Siamese Twin?

At any rate, I went into my only hive that came through the Winter with an issue yesterday (the one with a baseball sized brood nest, apparently a failing queen) to see what they were up to. There were definitely very few bees and only a handful of capped brood (I did not see eggs or larvae or queen). Amazingly enough, they had a pair of queen cells, side-by-side! It seemed like the old gal must have had enough left in her to push out two decent eggs and move along.

My paranoid nature has me wondering if these eggs were any good or not. I absolutely believe that the bees will choose a better egg then I would and they will make the most of any situation, but I have to wonder if the failing queen’s best is really any good or not. The hive was in ok shape, with several frames of honey and a fair amount of pollen (they really haven’t had much brood to feed). There may have been 40 capped worker cells, spread all over the place, and an equal number of drone cells. The bottom line is that this hive’s last hope rests in these queen cells. I was hyper vigilant to put them back in the hive carefully so as not to damage them.

As of right now, I only know that I had a pair of capped cells on March 20. If I assume the worst case scenario, those queens might not emerge until March 29. I will probably have to wait until April 1 to check and see. The key is that I absolutely must be ready with either a frame of eggs (from one of my Nucs with proven queens) or another swarm cell or two. Otherwise, this hive could be in real trouble. I may go down this weekend to check on them and simply give them a frame of eggs anyway, just in case. I hate to risk jostling those queen cells, but it’s probably the best course of action. That way, if those queen cells are no good, these bees can go to work on March 26 (with the new eggs) and possibly have a mated queen by the middle of April.

Only time will tell…