On June 13th, I merged hives #7 and #6. The process that I used is to use a piece of newspaper to separate the two brood boxes. I cut slits in the newspaper to allow the queen pheromone to pass from hive #6 brood box to hive #7. The bees will slowly chew through the newspaper and this will allow the bees from former hive #7 to get used to the queens pheromone and I also believe, that the introduction with the queens pheromones will reduce fighting between the bees between the two colonies. Hopefully, this is all going well and the worker bee laying colony, Hive #7, will turn around and the worker will stop laying eggs. I was up to nine hives and now down to eight, it was a little sad.
Also on June 13th, I checked on hive #2, they are doing very well. They are making comb on the plastic frames and I added some shredded wax to the hive to give them an extra boost. I’m happy to see them doing well.
On June 14th and 15th, the bees was uneventful, they may have a little bit neglected because on the 16th of June, I got a message from Burr Farm, “I think your bees are swarming.” with a beautiful picture of a large cluster of bees hanging off of one of their blueberry bushes. We were able to get the cluster off of the bush with a gentle shake into a new brood box and some swarm lure. There was a small cluster of bees on the ground over near the corner of their of the brood box, so I investigated it and found the queen bee. I caught her in a queen clip and released her into the new hive. At that point we waited for the swarm to settle down and moved the hive down to the bee yard at Burr Farm. I noticed a few scouts, bees looking for a new home, that came back to where the cluster landed on the branch, which I had my little “childhood fun”, of capturing them with a Tupperware cup and then releasing them into the bee yard, for three or four times. I didn’t get them all but I’m sure the rest found their way to the hives.
Honeybees will hang in a cluster after swarming from a few hours to a couple of days until they find their new home. They often swarm out of the hive and land on something close by, branch, post, tree trunk, engine lift; from my experience. I’m sure other items could be added to that list. One more colony of bees is a plus, back up to nine hives.
I would like to add this note about bees colonies and swarming. Beekeeping is about taking care of many different “organisms”. Some of the organisms are the cute little fuzzy bees, the queen, the workers, and the drones. As a keeper of the bees, we need to make sure that their health is in all in check. Another “organism” is the colony of bees. The colony cannot survive without all to those three different types of bees. When the colony is big and strong enough, the bees swarm to create a new colony. They take essential bees to in their current colony outside of their old colony and develop their own colony, even the drones. Whether a beekeeper catches them is a matter of luck.
On June 19th, I went to inspect the split that I did a while ago at Burr Farm where I installed a queen bee in a queen cage on June 11th. It was overdue for a queen release inspection. I noticed that the queen wasn’t release and I thought that the bit of cork that was left in the candied side of the queen cage was the problem. So, I did a quick release, from the cork on the other side. The queen came out, flew a little, landed on some worker bees in the hive and then started flying around, and I tried to wave her down into the hive with no success. I watched her fly away in to the sky, like a small child watching a balloon float away. When I looked further into that hive I noticed a capped worker pattern being laid. I even noticed eggs that were laid on the same frame I used to install that queen cage into the hive. I should looked at the frames, prior to the release of that queen. That means there was another queen in the hive. I should have asked myself “Why?”. There were signs and I missed them. Hindsight is always 20/20. Either there was queen already in there and I missed it, or a new queen from the neighboring hive flew out and came back to this hive. I don’t really know. This is definitely a lesson learned for me and I hope other people can learn from it as well.
June 20th, I took a peak into hive #1’s honey supers. The top honey super looked 90% full. So I added another honey supper to it with comb that was drawn on the frames. Hopefully they will fill that soon. I also looked into hive #3 today. They were showing washboarding activity on the outside of the hive. I wanted to make sure that they were not over crowded and saw they have a lot of work to do to draw out bee comb in the upper brood box. I refilled their sugar water to give them the extra energy that they need to produce wax and build comb. Also, I gave them some shredded beeswax to help them out a little bit. A new strategy that I am trying. We will see if it works out.
I have a had lesson to learn from with my experience with losing that queen, and I will. Overall, if things don’t seem quite right, question it. Also, take time to understand the situation and observe the potential factors that caused that situation. When you choose to do that, you may have an outcome better than my queen bee flying away. Thank you for reading and Bee Kind.
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