"John, I think we have a swarm!"

Now these are not the words I thought I would
hear today. I'm minding my own business staining the barn when I hear Gayla's alert. My first thought was it must be from someone else's hive but Hive 2 was a bit frentic early this morning. It's just that I requeened Hive 1 earlier this week and Hive 2 is making new queens. Both hives have plenty of space, are getting pollen patties and 2:1 syrup. What's up?

Sure enough, there is a swarm 25 - 30' up in a hemlock on the edge of the woods (pic 1). Not having been a very good Boy Scout, I do not own a nuc box. With the condition of both hives being marginal for honey stores, there is no way I can capture this hive and make a nuc using existing stores anyway. These bees never should have swarmed and are doomed...













After unsuccessfully emailing one beek and calling another, I decide this is a job for Super Dolt (pic 2).


Using a pole saw and a big cardboard box, I plan to cut off the limb, let it fall and then put the swarm in the box (pic 3). This all went according to plan, tho' as one is climbing a ladder to saw off a branch full of bees while dressed like a technician on an Apollo moon launch, one does
pause to wonder just when was the moment that you passed over to certifiably insane.













Once the bees were on the ground (pic 4) I found the queen and put her in a cage (pic 5). I sprayed her with syrup and added a couple of attendants while Gayla ran into the house to make a sugar plug. Once plugged, I put the cage and about 5 more attendants into a paper bag and put the bag in a warm spot inside. I then shook the bees into the box and placed the box back in front of Hive 2. The march of the bees began and in about a hour the box was empty and the bees were back in the hive. Several hundred bees remained on the ground where the branch fell. I think these may be nurse bees who have never been out of the hive and can't find their way
home. I put the now empty box upside down over the mass of bees. I think they will move into the top of the box and I will be able to shake them in front of the hive tomorrow.

Now what to do with the queen...

Приветствуйте российскую Королеву

or
Welcome the Russian Queen!

Keeping the string alive of never meeting a beekeeper I didn't like, on Wednesday I visited Warm Colors Apiary (see website list) and met a wonderful beekeeper, Dan Conlon. Dan has been keeping bees for 40 years and, with his wife, Bonita, has a very nice apiary and store at their home in South Deerfield, MA. I emailed Dan about purchasing a queen to replace the one I just lost in Hive 1. Even tho' he did not have any raised queens for sale, he offered to sell me a queen out of one of his nucs since I was in a jam. Getting a new queen was worth the ride but the best part was the education I received while speaking with Dan. Our conversation covered everything from Russian vs Italian bees, treating the 2 strains of nosema, the efficacy of sugaring bees to prevent mites (do it only on days over 90º), the importance of knowing the environment in which you are raising your bees, how to place the new queen in the hive and, well, you get my drift. I was very grateful for the queen but the conversation will be what I remember–which is one of the things I like best about beekeeping. The experienced beeks never hesitate to help the newbies. It's a great community...

The new queen is a locally raised Russian. The Russian strain tends to winter better, build up faster in the spring, be more tolerant of verroa but will be less docile than the Italians and will tend to swarm. Nowhere in nature does a community (like a beehive) that is so related have such a dramatic change in genetics as when a new queen is introduced to an existing hive. Often, the bees that are getting the queen will reject her and attack her in her cage, especially if there are attendant bees in the cage with her. To help prevent this, Dan caught the queen, marked her and put her in a single hole cage with a sugar plug (pic 1). To keep her happy, he put her in a paper bag and added a few bees to attend to her until I put her in her new home.

Prior to introducing her, I did a final check for eggs. Though I didn't see any, I did see they had started several supersedure cells and had actually capped one already. This really makes me wonder if the queen had become trapped in the queen excluder prior to Sunday and maybe I didn't accidentally kill her but simply found her. Who knows...In order to help her be accepted by my bees, I placed her cage in the top deep between 2 frames of capped brood. The nurse bees are young and tend to be more willing to accept the queen more than the older field bees. It was amazing to watch! As soon as I put her in position bees immediately came to her–not aggressively–but in a care taking fashion (pic 2-3).
After placing a pollen patty, I closed up the hive. I'll open it on Saturday to see if the bees have released her. If they have, I'll leave everything alone for a couple of weeks and then check for eggs and capped brood. If that's what I see, the hive is happy. If not, I'll have to combine the hives...

Queens...kill all you want, we'll make more

What a weekend! I inspected Hive 1 on Friday. It looked pretty good with 2 almost complete frames of capped honey, some stored pollen, various stages of capped brood, larvae and eggs in the upper deep, no eggs but more pollen and honey in the lower (pics 1-3). Seemed like the queen wasn't laying enough for the time of year, tho'. Every frame in the medium super was half built out and filled with uncapped honey. Ive been feeding 1:1 syrup trying to get them to build more comb and I'm sure most of the honey was from the syrup. I ended up reversing the order of the deeps to try to get some more brood started. I put the hive back together, forgot to sugar the deeps, did sugar the super and called it a day.

Saturday was just as beautiful as Friday so I decided to check on the supersedure cells in Hive 2 and, since the hive had become so mellow, fully expected to find a new queen happily filling cells. Wrong! There were 15 supersedure cells, 6 of which were already capped and 2 possible swarm cells (I'll post again soon on the difference)! Yikes! Absolutely no eggs, some mid-stage larvae and a fair amount of honey in the super but hardly any in the deeps. After closing everything back up, I decided I needed to take off the medium super, start feeding 2:1 syrup (helps make the bees want to build comb and store honey) and feed them a pollen patty to build up stores. When a hive goes queenless it tends to keep the brood nest open so the new queen will have a lot of available room to lay her eggs. In this case, that means no bees and no food in the deeps. With winter coming soon this hive is in serious trouble.

To confirm I had a solid plan, I emailed the good folks at Beesource.com and my fellow beek, Keith, and asked them what they thought of my plan. They approved it with one gent suggesting I put the super on the bottom of the stack and let the bees bring the honey up into the deeps. My plan included moving the frames of honey to the other side of the yard and let the bees go there to get it. This would also keep other bees and insects away from the hive rather than just leaving the frames adjacent to to it as an attractant. This became my mission for Sunday...

Continuing the phenomenal late August weather, Sunday dawned with gorgeous blue skies and a high of 81. The ladies in both hives were back to normal after my excursions through their homes the previous 2 days. The first setback was finding my pollen patties infested with moths. An entire case of Global patties looked like the hallowed breeding grounds of several hundred pantry moths. Back to Beesource to see if I could still use them if I trimmed off the damaged area and froze the patties before using them. As I figured, no...(tho' Global later told me yes) so I made 3 gallons of 2:1 syrup (20 pounds granulated sugar in 10 pints of boiling water) added 1 tsp Honey-B-Healthy per quart of syrup to the mix (lemon grass oil and spearmint oil to help calm the bees and induce them to build comb) and out to the hives I went.

Hive 2 went very well. I smoked the entrance and under the inner cover, popped off the super, moved the 2 deeps off of the screened bottom board, put the super in place , pu the deeps n top of the super, removed the queen excluder, added a feeder and closed them up. Totally time was 10-15 minutes. The bees were not too pleased to be bothered 2 days in a row but no apitherapy injections so I was pleased. The joy was with Hive 1...

After waiting about 10 minutes for Hive 2 to settle down, I repeated the process. Let me state that picking up 2 hive bodies open at the bottom and top with 30,000-40,000 bees in them did make me wonder just what the heck I was doing. Bees were everywhere!

Everything started smoothly. I put the deeps on top of the super and smoked the top of the queen excluder to drive the bees down into the hive. Needing to be careful that I didn't drop the queen during all of the moving, I was extremely cognizant of my movements and making sure she didn't get left behind. After smoking the excluder I used a bee brush to gently remove a couple of bees still on the top of the excluder and removed it. Naturally there were 100 or so bees on the brood side so I brushed them off into the hive, laid it on the stand and replaced the inner cover and hive top. That's when I noticed a rather large bee stuck in the excluder. Sure enough, closer inspection showed me I had just wiped out the queen! Just lovely...

Not having 28 days for them to raise a queen, have her harden, mate and return to the hive, I ordered a locally raised queen from Warm Color Apiaries in South Deerfield, MA. Dan was very kind to promise me one of his Italian hybrid queens that I'll pick up on Wednesday and install in the hive. I still can't believe it. The queen should have run from the light and the smoke. I certainly didn't see her when I brushed off the other bees. Maybe she was already stuck in the excluder but I think I'm the assassin.

Hive notes:
Hive 1 will have just a slight setback until the new queen is released. I didn't think the hive had enough stores for winter which is why I reversed the super on this hive, too. In hind site, I'd still reverse the super. The number of bees seems good in this hive, no signs of verroa, good activity and it seems like they are putting away a good amount of pollen. I do not plan on any chemical intervention with either hive and think this hive has a good chance this winter. I will start feeding 2:1 this week and will add HBH to the mix.

Hive 2 should have a mated queen in residence within the next 14-18 days. I'm going to keep my grocer happy and keep feeding 2:1, as well as put a patty between the 2 deeps. Each hive needs about 80 pounds of honey to make it through the winter. This hive has to hurry. It may be I have to combine the 2 but I'm going to give this a shot. And try not to kill any more queens...

Back to normal?

Eleven days ago I opened Hive 2 to try and see what was going on. More and more bees were bearding and the hive just appeared to be "off" when compared to the look and activity of Hive 1. Lots of activity but the bees were really hanging around the outside of the hive. What I found made me think it was a queenless hive. The drone comb that had been completely untouched about 3 weeks prior was now almost completely drawn out and lots of eggs were on it. There was still some capped brood in the rest of the hive but not what I would expect and there were not any other eggs. The supersedure cells I found last time were not there and 2 others were in their place. With the rain, I kept feeding them.

I came home Wednesday from a quick trip and what a difference in the hive! No bearding, tons of activity, lots of bees loaded with pollen coming home and a very peaceful sounding buzz coming from the hives. The apiary even smells great! Me thinks the ladies have a new leader of whom they are quite fond. I wish we did!