In beekeeping, I am learning that one needs to be patient. Earlier this spring, I tried to create a new hive by taking 5 frames (loaded with bees, pollen and honey) and creating a Nuc. Since then, I have talked about how this failed for many reasons. The main reason is that I tried to rush things. It was too early in the spring to do this. We had had some very warm weather early in the spring and I thought it would stay that way. How many years have I lived in New England? Most of my life and I'm no spring chicken. How is it that I can still be fooled by some warm days in early May? Well, I was fooled and I believe the bees in the newly created Nuc all died or went to find someplace warmer, except for the few who were in the Nuc when I picked it up to bring it home.
I tried to get ahead of myself and the outcome was that I got nowhere. Because the hive...last year's hive...was impacted as a result of taking 5 frames from it. In retrospect, I think I may have put the queen in the Nuc because the next thing to happen is that last year's hive (#1) did not thrive after that. It got so dismal that I wanted to go buy a new queen and tried.
But a Charles Andros up in Walpole, NH, who I contacted to buy a queen, called me to find out what was going on with my hives...I had a new Nuc I bought that was thriving, and my #1 hive that was not. His suggestion was to combine the hives. He said he didn't want to sell me a queen because that probably wouldn't have fixed the problem with hive #1. I probably didn't have enough brood there for the hive to survive and of course, it had no queen either. Doomed. I loved it that he wasn't trying to sell me something. He was trying to help. And his suggestion appears to have worked. Here's what I did, from the bottom:
Bottom board
deep hive (from #1)
deep hive (mostly #2)
queen excluder (so queen stays below making babies)
Super (for honey production)
Top Hive feeder (which I should not have put on there so I must take it off today...apparently shouldn't use feeder if there is a super on the hive)
Top Cover
I've been watching the hive and it seems back to normal, with bees loaded with pollen coming into the hive regularly. Later this summer, hopefully, I will try splitting my hive again so that I can have two hives... early enough for them to move from a Nuc to a hive before the cold weather arrives. If that doesn't work, I will wait until next spring or early summer to make a Nuc...I will be patient; I will be patient; I will be patient......maybe next time I'll remember how the weather is in New England.
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