Today I went into Hive #1, my survivor queen’s colony to add an additional brooding box on it. I am actually very happy to see how well that they are doing.
The history behind this queen, her colony, and why I call them survivors is based from an inspection back in March. The winter here in Connecticut was mild, I was feeding them sugar water and had sugar blocks available for them as well if the weather became cooler. There were a few nights did drop down in low temperatures. I was winterizing the hives differently compared to my past few years. I think that was part of this downfall to this hive and to a couple of others, but this post is not about my over wintering failures. This is out this queen’s success in building a new colony for herself.
So, back in March, I was breaking down the hive and notice one little worker bee fanning, and thought it was odd behavior, I took a mini video of it. Honestly, I just thought she was a little confused bee, I kept on breaking down the hive and moving forward with it until I noticed another bee appear on one of the sugar blocks. It was a queen bee! Usually, a beekeeper comes out of the winter with a colony of bees without at queen, not the other way around. How did this happen? So we pulled a frame of stored sugar water and bees from the strongest hive that I had at the time and added it to her hive. It wasn’t a lot of worker bees but it was enough to get her to this point of the year.
She started to lay eggs and the bees were that were there cared for those eggs and larva. At first it wasn’t a lot. She is laying more, they are not the “ideal” looking frames according to what others beekeepers say, but I will take what she gives me. There were a lot more bees when I open that hive and I presented the colony with a boost from sugar water frames and pulled the hives that didn’t make it. It didn’t take long for the bees to get into the upper brood box. I really hope that they do well.
Thank you for reading and bee kind.
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