Queenless in Westmoreland

A very busy month at work has meant not enough time in the apiary.
Unfortunately at just the wrong time.

After adding our Russian queen in late August, all seemed to be going well. The 1st time I opened Hive 1, there were eggs and new brood. I thought had balanced the hive, again. Wrong-o, Johnny! A week later, I opened the hive just before heading to Germany. No eggs, 4-5 day old larvae and absolutely no sign of the Russian matriarch. Possibly my bees thought their ancestors were from the other Georgia and off-ed her. None-the-less, she was gone and I headed to a plane.

Ten days later I return home hoping to open the hives and see that they're making cells to replace the queens. I looked at every frame in Hive 1 and found no queen cells but instead 20 frames almost completely filled with mostly capped honey. Remember the medium I had on the bottom that had been partially filled with honey. It had been suggested by a beek on Beesource to put it on the bottom and let the bees bring the honey up into the deeps. Sure enough, absolutely cleaned out and empty. Nice call... As all the frames in the deeps are packed with honey, I moved the medium to the top and hoped that would stimulate them to make queen cells. Mouse guards were added to both hives to help keep critters from finding a winter home.

Hive 2 as you may recall swarmed 2x in 3 days in early September (see pic 1 for 2nd swarm). Many of the bees left and the numbers in this hive make me think that it's toast unless I combine it with Hive 1. Upon opening it, I found a couple of poorly formed queen cells but they didn't look like the bees were serious about raising a queen. I started feeding them 2:1 syrup and a patty.

After seeing the lack luster efforts by the bees, I decided to try and find a queen. I finally purchased a nuc (pic 2) from Black Cat Honey in Winchester, NH and was assured by Rich that the queen was prolific and laying like crazy. I was concerned that putting 5 frames of Buckfast bees (pic 3) and a queen in the middle of the Italians would start a war. Rich assured me it wouldn't as long as the 5 frames were together. So off I went to install the nuc.

I removed the 5 best frames of honey from the upper deep of Hive 1 to make room for the new bees and queen(pic 4). Upon looking at the nuc, I found very little brood, some larvae and a few eggs. The rest of the frames were sporadically empty or had some honey. Two of the frames had supercedure cells ready to hatch. Gayla thought we should put one of the frames with a queen cell into Hive 2 and see if we could save the hive. After brushing the bees off of the frame, I did replace a frame of honey with the new frame, added a patty and closed it up, hoping the cell would hatch and just maybe we could get a queen fertilized prior to winter. Let's just say the odds are rather long...

After spraying a sugar and Honey Bee Healthy (HBH) mix all over the remaining frames in Hive 1, I placed the remaining 4 frames into the deep. I never saw a queen, though I did look hard. The bees seemed OK with each other so I fed them a pollen patty, sprayed some more HBH on the bees and dumped the rest of the bees from the nuc into the hive. it was after closing the hive that I noticed the fun going on at the main entrance of the hive. Numerous battles were ongoing between the old and new bees trying to get in the entrance. So much for détente! I sprayed them down with HBH, which helped, but battles went on for a while. As it was getting dark I'm hoping they all finally gathered around the queen singing "Give Peace a Chance" and that the queen was not a casualty...