As you readers already know, I had to get a new queen for my Hive #2. The first one disappeared and the hive had stopped thriving. Two weeks ago, I added the queen to the hive. After 3 or 4 days, I checked on her, to see if she'd eaten her way out (eating the candy plug) yet. I also worried that I placed her between frames but didn't expose the screened side to the colony...and worried I might have suffocated my queen.
So when moving the queen cage, trying to fix her to expose the screen to the colony, it fell to the bottom of the hive. By then, bees were attacking me, trying to get through my beekeeper's suit (thankfully I bought that protection!). When I saw that the cage landed with the screen up, and the queen was still moving around, I left well enough alone and closed up the hive.
Yesterday, now 10 days later, I decided to see if I still had a queen or if she got out of her cage.
I opened the hive and saw a mound of bees around the cage at the bottom of the hive. This time, I reached down to get the cage in hand. And there was my queen, feisty and seemingly in good health! But she didn't seem to want to come out of the cage, even though the candy was gone and she could. So I removed the screen from the cage, giving her more space to exit, and then shook it over the hive and then I removed the cage from the hive.
I then closed up the hive.
However today I need to help her out and take some brood from Hive #1 and add a few frames of bees and brood from #1 to #2. If I don't do that, she won't have enough workers in the hive because the ones I bought in April are now dying away. Hive #1 is packed with bees so they could lose a few to Hive #2 and, so I read, this will strengthen #2 and give them time build their numbers before cold weather comes. They need each other to make it through the winter.
While I'm in Hive #2 today, I will move the full super to the top of the hive so that, when I'm ready to extract, it'll be easier to put on the triangle board. This hive is very aggressive right now with all that honey in there. I should extract soon...I may decide to put the triangle board on so that tomorrow I could get that super inside and extract the honey. It's pretty heavy for me. I took two frames out a few weeks ago just to lighten it up.
I find lifting these hives can be difficult for a woman...at least for this woman! Over time, I hope to migrate from the deeps to mediums so that each section of the hive is lighter. Either that or I build more muscle.
All this activity reminds me that I'm no expert here. I am learning new things every step of the way. This procedure of building one hive using the brood of another makes sense to me. We'll see how it goes.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
June 20 - a week of bee beards, stings and a new queen
It's been an interesting week with the bees.
Hive #2 gets a new queen
Last week, I finally came to the conclusion that I was without a queen in the new hive (#2). So thanks to Charles Andros in Alstead, NH, I was able to pick up a queen from him, and put it in the hive. While doing that, I decided to remove the super I had added because we are just not ready for that yet. They need to lay some brood and perhaps no super will be needed all summer because they also need to draw out comb on new frames. Currently there's a mix of old/new frames in that hive. So they have a lot of work to do before making honey for my use. They do seem to be making honey for their own use though.
The queen came in its cage with the candy plus but also a piece of tape covering the candy. I left that on until today, making 4 days with the queen in the hive in the cage. I did this to give the bees a bit more time to get used to the queen's pheronomes...so they don't kill her when she emerges. The tape prevented the bees from getting to the candy, and hence, the queen.
I just went to the hive to check and,thankfully the queen was still alive in the hive because I had the screened portion of the cage facing an empty frame. NEVER DO THAT. I was lucky she didn't die.
When I tried to pick up the cage to turn it, it fell to the bottom board toward the back. Rather than try to reach my hand down there to move it, I left it there. I will now wait until at least a few more days to see the outcome and hope she gets out and the hive becomes productive.
If it doesn't, I'm giving up on a second hive....at least for this year.
Hive #1 attacks me
It's probably not a good idea to deal with removing any frames from a super during a work day. I take shortcuts then. And shortcuts can get you lost...or stung, in the case of bees.
I hadn't been stung much this year which added to my cockiness in thinking I didn't need to take all the precautions. In honey season, when I go to the hive, I always wear my full suit and bee gloves for protection. And Hive #1 is in honey season.
I generally wear my winter boots under the suit because, although hot, are really thick and no bee can sting through them. Then the suit legs fit over the boot and I secure it with a strong elastic. That is the right way to do it.
Well I didn't do that. I took that shortcut and didn't get out the winter boots. Instead I just covered my suit legs with a pair of socks and wore my gardening shoes.
The result was multiple sticks around my ankles and a few on my wrist but mostly the ankles. I was feeling pretty resentful
Hive #1 had beards all over the front
When bees get too hot in the hive, they hangout outside along the front and maybe sides of the hive. That's what I was seeing last week.
I knew my first super was full and I thought it was preventing any air flow in the hive so I wanted to remove at least a few frames of honey to give them some circulation in there. I did that but it did cost me a bunch of stings.
Again, I took a shortcut. I didn't use my smoker and just grabbed my bee brush to brush off any bees and hundreds of bees were flying around me. Angry. I can't really blame them.
I plopped the two honey laden frames into the bin, covered it, and headed to the basement. Then because I have no energy left, and no time, I put them into the freezer until I'm ready to extract more.
I think that I may try to extract in about a week.
Hive #2 gets a new queen
Last week, I finally came to the conclusion that I was without a queen in the new hive (#2). So thanks to Charles Andros in Alstead, NH, I was able to pick up a queen from him, and put it in the hive. While doing that, I decided to remove the super I had added because we are just not ready for that yet. They need to lay some brood and perhaps no super will be needed all summer because they also need to draw out comb on new frames. Currently there's a mix of old/new frames in that hive. So they have a lot of work to do before making honey for my use. They do seem to be making honey for their own use though.
The queen came in its cage with the candy plus but also a piece of tape covering the candy. I left that on until today, making 4 days with the queen in the hive in the cage. I did this to give the bees a bit more time to get used to the queen's pheronomes...so they don't kill her when she emerges. The tape prevented the bees from getting to the candy, and hence, the queen.
I just went to the hive to check and,thankfully the queen was still alive in the hive because I had the screened portion of the cage facing an empty frame. NEVER DO THAT. I was lucky she didn't die.
When I tried to pick up the cage to turn it, it fell to the bottom board toward the back. Rather than try to reach my hand down there to move it, I left it there. I will now wait until at least a few more days to see the outcome and hope she gets out and the hive becomes productive.
If it doesn't, I'm giving up on a second hive....at least for this year.
Hive #1 attacks me
It's probably not a good idea to deal with removing any frames from a super during a work day. I take shortcuts then. And shortcuts can get you lost...or stung, in the case of bees.
I hadn't been stung much this year which added to my cockiness in thinking I didn't need to take all the precautions. In honey season, when I go to the hive, I always wear my full suit and bee gloves for protection. And Hive #1 is in honey season.
I generally wear my winter boots under the suit because, although hot, are really thick and no bee can sting through them. Then the suit legs fit over the boot and I secure it with a strong elastic. That is the right way to do it.
Well I didn't do that. I took that shortcut and didn't get out the winter boots. Instead I just covered my suit legs with a pair of socks and wore my gardening shoes.
The result was multiple sticks around my ankles and a few on my wrist but mostly the ankles. I was feeling pretty resentful
Hive #1 had beards all over the front
When bees get too hot in the hive, they hangout outside along the front and maybe sides of the hive. That's what I was seeing last week.
I knew my first super was full and I thought it was preventing any air flow in the hive so I wanted to remove at least a few frames of honey to give them some circulation in there. I did that but it did cost me a bunch of stings.
Again, I took a shortcut. I didn't use my smoker and just grabbed my bee brush to brush off any bees and hundreds of bees were flying around me. Angry. I can't really blame them.
I plopped the two honey laden frames into the bin, covered it, and headed to the basement. Then because I have no energy left, and no time, I put them into the freezer until I'm ready to extract more.
I think that I may try to extract in about a week.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Full super
June 7th, 2015
I went into the hives to especially see how the new one (Hive 2) was doing because I was concerned about the activity. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Remember that I bought a package of bees rather than a Nuc. I think it was my first package and perhaps that is my confusion. Growth seems to be very slow.
I have two deeps on the hive, and added a super as well, but the real activity is still in the lowest deep where, when I finally got to it, had a small number of larvae which told me the queen must still be there. However there was also a lot of uncapped honey and very little pollen.
I know there's a lot of pollen outside because Hive 1 is brimming with pollen and honey and I watch the bees going into the hive loaded with pollen. Yet in Hive 2, I see a loaded bee come in but not nearly as often. Is that because I just don't have that many bees yet? Or something else?
In Hive 2, bees also had to make honeycomb since I didn't have enough frames with comb, so I think that might have held them up a little. Are they trying to build comb instead of foraging for pollen?
I was happy to see some larvae in the lower deep, but I'm still a little concerned about this hive. I'll keep watching.
Perhaps my queen is on her way out?
Hive 1 is a totally different story!
When I opened up this hive to see how things were going, I saw that the first super was totally full of honey. I really could have pulled off the entire super and extracted honey! So early! But I wasn't prepared to do it that day so instead, I added on another empty super and let them go to work on that. However, I'll need to set aside a day soon and extract the honey from the first super.
I didn't look into the two deeps because I couldn't lift the super. I'll need to empty it of most of the honey in order to see anything below. It's just too heavy and I'm afraid I'd drop it. That wouldn't be a pretty picture. Ouch.
I went into the hives to especially see how the new one (Hive 2) was doing because I was concerned about the activity. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Remember that I bought a package of bees rather than a Nuc. I think it was my first package and perhaps that is my confusion. Growth seems to be very slow.
I have two deeps on the hive, and added a super as well, but the real activity is still in the lowest deep where, when I finally got to it, had a small number of larvae which told me the queen must still be there. However there was also a lot of uncapped honey and very little pollen.
I know there's a lot of pollen outside because Hive 1 is brimming with pollen and honey and I watch the bees going into the hive loaded with pollen. Yet in Hive 2, I see a loaded bee come in but not nearly as often. Is that because I just don't have that many bees yet? Or something else?
In Hive 2, bees also had to make honeycomb since I didn't have enough frames with comb, so I think that might have held them up a little. Are they trying to build comb instead of foraging for pollen?
I was happy to see some larvae in the lower deep, but I'm still a little concerned about this hive. I'll keep watching.
Perhaps my queen is on her way out?
Hive 1 is a totally different story!
When I opened up this hive to see how things were going, I saw that the first super was totally full of honey. I really could have pulled off the entire super and extracted honey! So early! But I wasn't prepared to do it that day so instead, I added on another empty super and let them go to work on that. However, I'll need to set aside a day soon and extract the honey from the first super.
I didn't look into the two deeps because I couldn't lift the super. I'll need to empty it of most of the honey in order to see anything below. It's just too heavy and I'm afraid I'd drop it. That wouldn't be a pretty picture. Ouch.
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