Tag: Queen Release

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.

 

Two Queens Released and Rob Out!

Things seemed to be turning positive with our first (and only) rainfall for June coming last night and providing a whopping 7 tenths of an inch in eastern Henrico! I have no idea if it was just coincidence or not, but all of the hives were incredibly gentle this morning and seemingly glad to leave the desert conditions.

I have a bunch of things going on in the apiary, but there were two critical tasks that needed to be accomplished today. On Saturday, I released two new queens into two new hives! I have never ‘released‘ a queen into a hive before. All of my hives have raised their own queens (I had no marked queens in my bee yard, up until this point.) I was a bit nervous, but I was resigned to the real possibility that both would fail. It would be a learning experience and I would move on from there.

So, I started with the Bob hive. A bee had seemingly flown up out of the hive and fed the queen before I even put the cage into the hive. I was somewhat hopeful here. I opened up the hive and quickly (but calmly) pulled the frame with the attached queen cage. Again, the bees had completely covered the wire that covered the side open to the air. I had been somewhat concerned with the heat that the queen would die if they didn’t give her water, but I could see her walking about, directly on the wire, opposite to the bees. Clearly, they were not biting her, or you’d think she would be at the other side of the cage. So, I pulled the plug (opposite the candy end, as they had not done a bit of damage to the candy) and held the cage to the top of a frame for her to walk out. Two minutes later, and I became a bit concerned that my new queen was a bit mentally challenged. She clamored about, but never exited the cage.

Upon closer inspection, I could see a staple holing the wire caging onto the wooden container, so I used my pliers and pulled it out, pulling out the wiring. She was now open to the air. I held the open in next to a frame and down she went, into the hive! Of course, I had pictures in my mind of a bunch of bees jumping her, so I put the caging aside and began to look for her. I also wanted to destroy any queen cells. I found her in shortly thereafter (actually, it took a bit as she must have shot over to another frame real quickly.) Bees were all about her, feeding her and then I actually saw her seemingly lay an egg! I lost the cell in the masses, but I am about 90% sure she put an egg in there. Regardless, things looked good. I removed the rest of the frames and ended up finding 3 queen cells, all of which I destroyed. I’ll check back again tomorrow, just to be sure that no queen cells exist. You can’t be too careful with this.

As to the Apache Hive, I was a bit more concerned about them, mainly because they seemed to ‘ball’ the cage when I introduced it. But, I found them in the exact same position as before (it clearly was not balling, but feeding) and released her in the same manner as the Bob Hive. As before, things went smoothly and I found her being groomed or fed. But, here is where things went wrong…

To begin with, I forgot to look for queen cells. This is not a big deal, as none can hatch before I check them tomorrow, but it now reduces my ‘queen cell check’ to one inspection, instead of two. More importantly, I did not get the top of the hive down securely, but had no idea of this fact when I left.

When I returned home from work, there were probably 10,000 bees around the Apache Hive. They were literally pouring out of the hive and a small swarm worth of bees were hanging off of the front. No other hives were experiencing this, plus it had one of my newer (and better constructed) robber screens. This couldn’t be robbing! Were my bees leaving? Had someone happened within the hive that made them leave.

Well, I went to open the top and that’s when I realized that the top was not put on securely. Bees were scrambling in through the gaps that I had left! Damn it! For a good 4 hours, masses of bees had been hitting this hive. In retrospect, I made it worse by giving them a whole frame of honey during the initial split. I have been told to never give a new split that much honey (unless you are giving them 10 frames of bees). I basically gave them 4 frames, 1 of which was solid honey and a beacon to the lazy bums of my other hives. It was heartbreaking, as I was really under a lot of pressure from life issues today and these two queen releases were the only bright spots.

Well, there’s nothing for it except to chalk it up for experience. I will always double-check my tops on the smaller hives going forward. I will never give a small hive a full frame of honey in the hot summer (it not only contributes to robbing, but can also create an issue with the Small Hive Beetle, as the bees do not have enough number to adequately protect it.

I can only hope and pray that the queen is ok. I am sure that a very large number of my bees in the Apache Hive perished in fighting the foes. Hopefully, this will not doom them. I will get that frame of honey out of the hive tomorrow, assuming that the mass robbing has stopped. If it hasn’t, I will have to figure out other methods.

Another one for the story books.

Where to begin…

My love of beekeeping is becoming an obsession, according to my wife. Regardless, I truly love it for the educational experience  that it is. Everyday is a new experience.

Today, I created another new split, introduced queens to two new splits (one of them being the one that I created today), checked on the Geronimo hive after a long time letting them alone, received a swarm call and collected the swarm. That’s a lot for a day! As I want to record my experiences as a reference, I will focus primarily on the inspection and the splits.

My first task this morning was to introduce one of my new queens. Two days ago, Doug Ladd alerted me to a gentleman by the name of Bobby, outside of Rice, Virginia, that had some queens with some very good genetic history. I believe they are F1 hybrids off of a pure strain that is very hygienic (which means that they clean the varroa mite off of themselves or maybe remove larva with varroa in the cell with them.) I was interested in some new blood, so I made the trip yesterday and picked up two new queens. I now needed to have some hives to put them in!

I took the queen cage and wiped a tad of water along the edge, since I had made her wait over night on top of my aquarium. I then removed the plug that protected the candy and carefully pushed a small nail through the candy. Bobby advised me to do this, but I was very careful here, as I have read of other folks accidentally impaling their queen during this trick! I think you want to do it to give the bees an idea that they can eat through the candy to get to the queen.

So, I go out to the new hive, which I am going to call the Bob Hive, after my brother’s dog (since these bees came from the Albo hive.) The robber screen had worked and the hive entrance was working as expected now. I knew that I had to be quick. When Bobby showed me how he put the queen cells in, the little cage actually dropped into the bottom of the brood chamber (by accident, of course)! Bobby probably has decades of experience, but I decided to take a frame of foundation and wedge the cage between the wire (I do not embed) and the foundation.

I popped the top of the Bob Hive and removed the inner cover. As I grabbed a frame of foundation, a bee flew up out of the hive, landing on the queen cage and stuck its little tongue down into the cage!!! Ha! It’s supposedly a good sign when you see this, as it means that they are feeding her. But, who would have thought some gal would fly up a few feet above the hive and feed her! At any rate, I wedged the box into placed and lowered it into the hive. The bees pretty much swarmed onto the wire caging. I am not so sure that this was a good sign. They use the term ‘balling’ to mean an aggressive stance. They were so thick on the wiring that I couldn’t tell if they all had their tongues out or were biting at the cage. I had already decided that I would probably lose one of these queens, but it would be a great learning experience, so I pushed it into place, replaced the top and put a mason jar of MegaBee syrup on top. I’ll check back on them in a few days.

On to the inspection and new split creation. Cracking the Geronimo Hive, my absolutely strongest hive, made me once again realize the difference in my gentle hives and the Westover Hive(s). I broke that whole thing apart and do not believe one bee banged into my veil (vs. always a dozen or more when I go this deep on Westover). I will probably requeen the original queen from that swarm next Spring. At any rate, like the Albo hive, they had 5 or 6 Deep frames (both sides) of capped honey. They actually were storing a bit of honey in the Illinois super, so they are doing very well. The brood pattern is insane. If that queen decides to use the whole frame, she literally uses the whole frame. She doesn’t miss. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor. I picked 4 frames out of this hive, including one that was all honey, one that had a bit of pollen and some capped brood, one that was capped brood and larva and one that was sort of misformed (it was on the outside of the Geronimo Hive, and was partially drawn.) I replaced all of these with drawn foundation.

Finally, I moved all of Tom Fifer’s original frames to the outside of the brood chamber, for removal next Spring.

It should be noted that I was prepared with this split, having learned my lesson over the past few weeks. I set the new box up with a robber screen installed. I also created a cover that was easy to remove and replace, as I dropped the necessary frames into it. There was tons of fighting going on in the Geronimo hive as other bees came to steal their honey, but nothing on the new split (a marked difference from my past adventures of late!) A late season split needs careful attention.

Some 10 hours later, I put my second queen into this split, which I will now call the Apache hive. Unlike the Bob Hive, these bees didn’t even act like they noticed her. Not one of them got onto the cage. In fact, the majority of them were face down into the honey cells. I am sure this means something (besides simply that they were hungry), but I will have to wait until tomorrow or Monday to really know what it meant. I put a mason jar of MegaBee syrup on them and that was that.

Well, that was not that, as I was to find out when I received a swarm call around 6:30, but that story will have to wait until tomorrow!