Adventures in beekeeping.

 I attempted to join my lonely queen bee and her few attendants with my strong healthy queenless hive using the newspaper method. The bees totally ignored the queen and her supply of helper bees dwindled even more. 

Yesterday things were pretty critical for her so I popped her into a queen cage with four of her friends and placed her in the queenless hive. I then went through the other frames to see which ones to keep in the hive and which ones to take out. Then I noticed it. Uh oh. I small very fresh looking empty queen cell. Oh boy. That means I just threw my good expensive queen in a hive with thousands of bees that are going to try and kill her. 

She was still in her cage and therefore ok so I went through some more frames and saw three frames full of day or two old eggs. Holy cow! What an impressive layer! Then I noticed that a few cells had more than one egg. Not good. That could mean a laying worker. Bad news. A laying worker is a huge problem as she only lays drones and she will totally take over a hive and ultimatly kill it becuase as bees die, they are not being replaced. They are very hard to get rid of because they look JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER BEE in that congested hive. There could also be several laying queens.

I retrieved my queen and rearranged my hive to work as a two queen hive with excluders to keep the queens apart (if there really are two queens). I am hoping I have two queens because with the set up I have with them now, the workers will care for both queens and two layers in a hive will build up numbers very quickly! Here's hoping! 

Hive inspection

Went out to check on my big hive out on the ranch today. Getting a little bit worried about them. Now that they don't have the medium hive to rob, they aren't doing as much. They haven't touched the top super at all, not even to draw out a frame. Just nothing. The lower supers still have plenty of capped brood and some honey stores, but they seem to have stalled out. I don't think we will get any honey from them this year.
  The medium hive has been back at the house for a month now. They really picked up once they were away from the big hive. The queen still has a pretty spotty brood pattern, but they were hatching today so the empty ones might be from brood hatching. I actually got to watch one of the girls emerge from her cell today. She came out all fluffy and a pretty pale yellow. Her stripes were a pale yellowish gray. Very fun to see. This hive has loads of honey stores, lots of brood and new bees. I am going to have to get another box on that hive ASAP. THIS one might produce some honey this year :)
   The nuc is doing alright, but it has only been a month since I got the queen and stole some brood from the big hive to get her going. I noticed a worker coming in this morning with her pollen baskets clear full of a pale pollen. They also had some bees hatching today. I didn't see the queen but I am pretty sure she was on the far outside frame. The bees on that frame were clustered in a certain spot so I am guessing that's where the queen is. This hive produces very dark almost black bees. The queen is carnolian/caucasian cross and you can tell a big difference between the bees that she has hatched vs the bees I gave her. These bees are not as aggressive and are fairly easy to work. When I gave brood to her, I only had smaller frames and I was hoping they would have drawn out the only two deep frames they have but it has not happened yet. Once they do, and the queen starts laying eggs in those, I am hoping to phase out the shallower frames and replace them with deeper ones. Not exactly sure how I am going to to this, but I will figure it out.
   I just hope I get some sort of a honey harvest this year and enough I can give the ranchers who were nice enough to let me put my bees in their field. They even picked out the perfect spot for them.

What a bee-utiful day!

Yeah, I know. That was a lame little pun, I couldn't help myself. For the last couple of weeks, Hubby has been building new beehives for me. We ordered a nuc that we will have to pick up sometime in May. I am also going to split my hive this spring.  The first hive was completed today.

Pretty nice, huh? Here is the old and new hives next to each other. The bees kept flying into the new hive to see if there was anything good in there. I hope they give it up soon so that they don't rob the new bees when I install them in the hive. I think I am going to have to do some research on the subject.

We also opened the existing hive today. This was the first time I ever had help (hubby got his own veil today, hooo hooo!) and I never felt comfortable taking it all apart without an extra set of hands, so this was a first for me. We had some funky architecture going on with some frames. This one was just weird. Loads of brood though, so I know the queen is doing a good job. Look at the little white spots near the bottom, those are larva. Gross little white worm looking things. Those will soon be busy little bees. I also saw a few drones, I still kind of like those guys. I feel bad for them, they are so gentle and sweet.

The queen is in this picture, can you see her?

How about now? She's almost in the middle of the pic 

Anyway, all seems to be well in the hive and I am looking forward to fall when I can have my first harvest!

Crazy bees.

It is HOT. I am not complaining, we had too long of a winter to complain about the heat once we finally get it. But it is so hot that my bees just hang out on the hive in the evenings enjoying the cool evening temps. My queen comes out onto the porch and her secret service guard bees freak out and get VERY aggressive. The crawl all over her and sting everyone (me) that gets close. She is really causing them some serious stress. I would hate to have their job.

The first time I saw this, I completely freaked out and called my big brother (once again big bro comes to the rescue) to ask if my bees were running away. We finally decided it was simply too hot to stay in the hive once the outside temps cool.

Makes for a cool pic, but the bees are certainly more on edge when Queen Anne is taking risks.

Oh, by the way, Orajel works very well on bee stings : )

Opened my hive yesterday

So I decided to open my hive for the first time yesterday. Here goes nothing.

Taking off the inner cover.

The bees are all hanging out in the middle two frames.

Checking for brood and looking for the queen.

The bees had build comb on top of comb. (After a panicked phone call to my brother I found out this is called bridging and is common and normal.) When I was looking at the frame, this extra chunk of comb crashed to the ground at my feet covered with thousands of bees. I was a bit freaked out.

I picked up the chunks of comb and placed them on top of the hive to allow the bees to wander back into the frames. Of course they didn't and I had to brush them all off the comb before I removed it.

I never did see the queen and couldn't see any brood either. I put everything back together and brought the excess comb into the house. A few hours later, I DID notice some eggs in a few cells of comb. So I DO have a queen and she IS laying. All is well in the hive!
Kind of cool, isn't it?