Introducing more color into my apiary with a purple hive!

As proud as I was of my temporary hive (which I made from two honey supers and two bottom boards), I knew it was time to put my swarm in a permanent home. They had been in the temporary digs since Saturday, April 7th, so they were due for some real estate they could call their own. So after my weekend trip to Triad Bee Supply, and two healthy coats of paint, it was time to install the new hive.

Check out the new hive set-up! Yep, purple! As you've probably noticed by now, all of my hives have a different color, and while I was at the paint store, I saw this pleasing shade of purple. Okay, maybe it is really more of a shade of lavender. But I really like it. I saw a really hot shade of red I liked, but I didn't choose it because I hear the bees only see it as black. So I'm sticking with lighter colors. And I have another hive that needs painting, and I already have the paint. In honor of the ladies, my next colony will reside in a pink hive. My apiary is definitely becoming a splash of color!

In the time that this colony has been re-hived, you can see that the queen has been one busy lady. She hasn't missed a lot of time in laying eggs as long as she has a place, and this frame came from another colony the same day I caught them (as you know, you always put a frame of brood with swarm catches so they will stay put). This is all new capped brood. And the other side of the frame was just as covered. So for an old queen, she's still got it!

And not only capped brood, but take a look at all the c-shaped larvae! As you can see (as with all my pictures, click for a larger view), all the larvae are pearly white and glistening which is an indicator of a healthy colony. This colony is well on its way to doing extremely well. In addition to the great looking larvae, most of the drawn frames were filled with a mixture of eggs, larvae, capped brood and the essentials to make honey (nectar and pollen). And nine out of the ten frames were fully drawn, so I added a second deep hive body and ten new frames. Of course I spritzed them with sugar syrup to attract the bees. By the time I was closing up shop, they were already working their way up.

By the way, I did a quick check of the blue hive and things looked great there too. I found new eggs and larvae, so I know the colony is queenright. That wasn't the case for the last few weeks. I'm beginning to think that this may have been the hive that swarmed instead of the yellow one. Why? Because the same day the swarm happened, I found eggs and brood in every hive but the blue one. I know that queens will stop laying before a swarm in preparations to leave, so I'm inclined to think that maybe it was the blue one after all. For every week I checked after the swarm, I could not find eggs or a queen. I was even beginning to worry that it may develop a laying worker. Now all of a sudden, I have eggs and brood. So maybe I have a new queen in residence and she's back after her mating flight and already working? Could be. The bees were extremely calm and things were running as usual, so I think things are fine there. My only concern is a few small hive beetles I've seen there so I'm going to start a treatment soon.

Looks like I have one happy (and colorful) apiary!

Two weeks later: Eggs in my swarm hive!

Saturday (April 21st) was the fourteenth day that my swarm colony has been in their new hive. If you remember, this swarm was from one of my own hives, and they landed 20 feet from their former home. Saturday was the second time I had checked this colony since I caught them. I also checked them at the one week mark, and while they were drawing comb, I could not find any new eggs on the three frames I moved from the other well established hive.  

Here is a frame where I found the new eggs. As you can see, there is some capped brood from this frame that I moved, but I also found brand new eggs scattered around it too. The frame was so full of bees, I had to gently blow on them to move them around. But at just the right angle with the sun behind me, I finally saw the tiny white eggs at the bottom of the cells. And with the worker bees building new comb on the other frames, the queen will soon be able to lay more eggs to keep this colony thriving.

As you can see, I seriously need to get some deep hive bodies. I'm still using two honey supers stacked on top of one another to act as a hive. My trip to Dadant in Chatham, Virginia, was sidetracked this past week because of work. But I'll have to make time soon because the bees in my swarm hive are building a lot of comb to fill in the extra space. I was tempted to go ahead and scrape all the excess comb off, but decided to just leave it so the bees will stop working to replace it and concentrate on finishing the task of drawing out the empty frames. The excess comb won't go to waste. I'll melt it down and use the wax on the frames in the hives. I'm getting ready to experiment with foundationless frames in my honey supers, so the wax will come in handy.

So overall, I believe this colony is doing well and I'll continue to check them in weekly increments. I'll have to in order to fight the burr comb until I can get them moved into a proper hive.

On a side note, I received a local swarm call on Saturday afternoon. A woman contacted my father and said she had a swarm of bees at her house. When I called her, she told me that the bees were in her fireplace chimney and somehow getting inside the house. A deputy Sheriff was at her home (they called the Sheriff's Office and asked for help) and he's the one that told her to call me, a local beekeeper. Based on her description, the bees were located deep in the chimney, so I knew there was little I could do for her. She said bees were flying in her house and crawling on the carpet, so I told her that the first priority was to plug the hole where they were coming through so no one would get stung. Then I told her that she would probably have to get an exterminator to kill them. It broke my heart to tell her that. If the bees had been in an outer wall or more accessible, maybe I could have done more. But with them being deep in a chimney and getting inside the house, there isn't much I or anyone else could do. But above all, the family's safety comes first. I thanked her for calling a beekeeper and I also appreciate the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office for thinking of me when it comes to saving the bees. 

My first swarm catch of 2012? MY VERY OWN BEES!

Saturday started out really great. I already had my day planned; Mow the yard, reverse the hive chambers on all four honey bee colonies, get a haircut and follow up on my taxes. Well I made it through the yard mowing without a hitch, then went inside to make some sugar syrup for my hand sprayer. As soon as I finished, I went back outside and as I approached the building that houses my beekeeping supplies, I hear this really intense high-pitched buzzing. And when I looked up, the air was full of bees. You guessed it, one of my hives was in full swarm mode! It was the yellow hive which holds an Italian colony I bought in 2011.

Afraid to take my eyes off of them for fear I would lose their flight path, I just stood there and was prepared to say goodbye forever. I stood behind the yellow hive amongst the cloud of bees in a tee-shirt and track pants and carefully watched. And while bees were flying virtually everywhere, I noticed a lot of them flying towards the fence at my neighbors house. Continuing to watch them, I noticed that once they hovered in, they would fly to the middle of a wild crabapple bush at the corner of the fence. So I walked over to investigate, and sure enough, there they were.

20 feet from their former home, my traveling swarm landed on a couple of limbs in my next door neighbor's wild crabapple bush. How much luckier could I get? The only issue for me would be to make sure I could retrieve them since wild crabapple bushes are full of nasty thorns. So while it was a fine respite for them, it might be a pain for me. But thankful they were so close, I started gathering up my tools to get them back including the bottle of syrup, a cardboard nuc, a small step ladder and my bee brush.

While I was gathering my tools, the swarm settled down significantly into the customary ball. I then told my neighbor what was going on (her first words.."poor Mark"). Getting back to the swarm, it was easily three pounds of bees and they were on a prominent limb in the bush. The only real issue was trimming the smaller limbs away so I could get the box under the swarm ball and not get stuck by the thorns. After about 10 minutes of trimming, I could easily get the cardboard nuc under the swarm.

After giving them a healthy spraying of sugar syrup, and holding a tight grip on the box, I grabbed the limb and gave it a hefty downward jolt. Plop! The bees fell right into the box as planned. While quite a few went airborne, the majority were inside the box, so I felt like it was a success. But as I looked on the ground below the bush, there were quite a few there too. My fear was that the queen may be among the ones on the ground, so I immediately placed the nuc on the ground and placed the lid back on top. 

As soon as I placed the nuc near the bees on the ground, the parade began. I've always been in awe of watching swarms as they crawl their way into a hive, and I wasn't disappointed this time. Slowly and surely, the bees made their way to the small hole in the cardboard box. I was also hoping that if the queen did happen to miss the box, she would crawl with her daughters into the temporary mobile home. And after about an hour, most of the bees were inside the box with the exception of the ones fanning their wings outside to tell the rest of the crew, "Hey girls..we're over here!"

The next dilemma was..what was I going to put them in? All I had left was new shallow honey supers and no complete deep hive set ups. So knowing that two shallow supers was about the same size as a deep, I put two of them together. I did have two solid bottom boards, so after putting one on the bottom, I realized I didn't have a top. So I improvised by putting an inner cover over the two supers, then I made a temporary top with another bottom board turned upside down. To block up the top entrance, I put an entrance reducer there.

As you can see, it all fit together perfectly. With three frames of brood that I took from my other hives (to hopefully keep the swarm from absconding), and filling up the hive with plastic frames, I closed it all together and put three landscaping bricks on top to keep the lid from blowing off. I am especially curious about how this situation is going to work out. The swarm is only a few feet from where they left just hours before, so I was curious if the bees would travel back to the old hive to visit. I guess we'll see for sure, but I can tell you that 24-hours later, all is fine and the bees have been busy all day flying in and out just like normal. So I take that as a good sign that things will be okay.

I've been waiting to see if I would get a swarm call this year. And I really think it's funny that my first swarm for the year was for my very own bees. So now it looks like I'll be making the trip to nearby Dadant & Sons in Chatham, Virginia, to pick up some new hive set ups. After all, swarm season is very much underway, and I've learned an important lesson; Its better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. 

We have BROOD! All four colonies get two thumbs up!

I'm proud to say that I have four thriving colonies in my humble backyard apiary.  Months ago, I somehow got the idea that this may be a "run of the mill" season as far as my beekeeping goes.  But that all quickly changed with the April addition of the colony I bought from Dadant, then the swarm that I was lucky enough to catch in Danville.  

Since it had been a few weeks since I hived my swarm colony, I figured it was a great time to do a first inspection and check all the hives for brood production while I was at it.

First up, in the blue hive, the Danville swarm. This is one gentle hive of bees which I believe are Italian.  In eighteen days, the bees had already drawn several frames (with a sprinkling of some bur comb too).  As you can see, on this frame, they mixed new capped brood in with honey at the top.  On the other side it was mostly brood.  This has been one busy colony in the time they've been here, and I think I should be able to add a second deep box and frames pretty soon. 

Next up, the colony from Dadant inhabits the yellow hive.  I did add a second deep to this since they had drawn around seven frames of comb.  As you can see, these caps are a little older and the hive is full of it, plus they're storing honey at the top of some of them.  The queen in this colony is really good, Italian stock, and she went to work as soon as she was released and had a place to lay.  This colony is increasing in numbers thanks to her majesty's hard work.  They're a very gentle colony too.

Here is the green hive, one of the existing Carniolan colonies which was a split from last year.  A couple of inspections back, in April, this hive was full of swarm cells and no eggs - which can indicate the preparations for swarming.  Then a few weeks ago during a brief inspection, there were no eggs in either deep, but the swarm cells were disappearing and I could not find the marked queen.  I also noticed it seemed the population was less than before, so that led me to believe this hive had already swarmed.  But here's what I found on Friday.  This hive is full of eggs, larvae and capped brood, so now I believe that a new queen is ruling this colony.  This colony hardly required smoking so they're very gentle.  I can't wait to see what these bees look like once they start hatching.

Last but not least, here is the orange hive which is another of Carniolan stock.  As you can see, here is another fine example of a lot of brood.  Back in April when I did a deep inspection of this hive, I could not find the marked queen, and that was after three intense inspections of all twenty frames. This colony had swarm and supersedure cells all over, a few of them opened at the bottoms, and I found a couple of new queens walking the frames.  After giving it a couple of weeks, I opened this hive and found new eggs everywhere, so I knew one of the new queens had successfully returned from her mating flights.  This Friday's inspection also indicated that most of the swarm cells had been torn down from the sides.  I'm led to believe that this colony superseded the queen since the population doesn't seem to be much different than it was when the marked queen was here.  I'm also interested to see what these bees will look like.  And this colony was a gentle as lambs too.

After inspecting everything, I added a hive-top feeder to the blue hive, a second deep chamber and syrup for the yellow hive, then closed it all up.  The orange hive will have a super of honey ready soon, and that may be all I get this year.  While I haven't gotten a lot of honey from my bees, the peace I get from working with them is my satisfaction.  Plus hearing the remarks from my neighbors that their gardens are doing the best ever since I brought bees here (and them giving me some of their surplus too) is a big payoff.  In their own way, the bees are helping the neighbors and me too.  I'm happy with that!

Until next time, fellow beekeepers!       

Busy bees and getting ready for spring!

With the weather 76 degrees on Sunday, I knew it was time to do an in-depth inspection of my two surviving colonies, the first real inspection of 2011. When I opened the orange hive, I noticed what looked like a tower of bees over the frames in the top chamber. The bees, in their quest to go higher, had started building comb up to fill the space where the shallow super sets and where the bee candy was located. That was my cue to reverse the hive boxes to put the brood nest together and move some frames around to give the queen room to lay.

As I got down into the frames, here's what I found. As you can see, the queen is already busy laying. I found capped brood and larvae all through the frames scattered around the hive, so she's been all over the place. I decided to move the brood frames together in the bottom chamber, while moving the honey frames to the top chamber. This should remedy the urge for them to build up and over the top frames. I didn't see eggs this trip, but I'm very confident the queen is in residence.

Take a look at this frame from the orange hive. You can see that the queen is laying all through the frames, even those that have honey at the top. As I mentioned earlier, I took all of the frames that held brood and combined them in the bottom chamber, then moved the honey frames together at the top. While March weather can be fickle, the long term forecast for my area doesn't show any really severe winter weather, so I think they should be okay. By the way, the orange hive is full of bees. With the warm snap, I figured they will get the urge to build swarm cells soon. Now I'll have to keep an eye on this colony and do a split when I can get my hands on a new queen.

Here is a frame from the green hive. I only found two frames with a small brood pattern, so its obvious that this queen is behind her sister queen in the orange hive. This queen, while robust when she first arrived, has been much slower than the other two colonies. But I have to give her credit that she's kep this colony going although the numbers are much lower than the other hives. I am considering replacing her with a Minnesota Hygienic and using this queen for a nuc. I honestly believe that she can't produce enough to keep the colony going full force, and if I don't replace her, the bees will.

Deciding that I need to "beef up" the green colony, I took one of the many frames of brood from the orange hive, and put it in the green one. I thoroughly shook every bee from the frame and then moved it over to the neighboring hive. The bees in the green hive were still in the bottom chamber with the brood, and there was plenty of honey at the top. Unlike the orange hive, I did not alternate the boxes in the green hive. Instead, I moved all the brood frames together in the lower deep -- adding the frame from the orange hive as a supplement. Now this should help the numbers in the green hive, and I can move more frames from the orange hive as needed.

Once I moved the brood frames together in the bottom deep, you can see that the bees congregated there. And I replaced some of the frames that were above them and unfinished with drawn comb from the yellow dead-out hive. And I have drawn frames that I'll use for my package coming from Dadant this April. It will just be less work for them when they get here and make their home in the yellow hive.


After putting both hives back together, I slid the orange hive over to where the yellow one sat. The returning foragers did a fine job of finding their way home. That's because the bees stood at the entrance and fanned their scent outward to their returning sisters. When I checked a little later, not one single bee was on the concrete blocks wondering where their home went. Overall it was a successful inspection, and I'll keep a check over the next month to watch for swarming indicators. Hopefully I'll be able to make a split before the ladies hit the road on their own!

Bee safe!

One new queen is well on her way. The other could be in trouble!

Saturday was inspection day for my three hives. While I had been inside the yellow, mother hive already this week to pull the green drone frame and replace it, all of the hives needed a really decent look-see. And while the temperature was at 94 degrees and the relative humidity was 48% -- I braved the elements to get it done (and hopefully I lost a few pounds too). It was like being in a sauna. 

Here's the work of the new Carniolan queen in the orange hive. I have to admit that is one fine looking frame of brood. This was the hive I was most worried about because the workers were so slow to leave the hive. The queen was introduced on June 2nd and she was out by June 8th. She was readily accepted, but I couldn't figure out why the workers were dragging their feet on foraging. I still don't know. But no worries now, they're out of the hive daily and now I can see that the queen is doing her job. I also found eggs and larvae so I have some of all stages of the bee birthing process going on here. The orange hive is well on its way to success.

While the orange hive seems to be fine, the lime green hive (a frame from it pictured right) still has troubles it seems. This is the hive that went from swarm cells to supersedure cells -- then those disappeared and it developed a laying worker. So after shaking all the bees way away from the hive, I introduced a new Carniolan queen at the same time I put one in the  orange hive. They both came from the same apiary. This queen was accepted as well...but look at this pattern. Spotty at best and there were lots of raised drone caps all throughout this hive. If there were new eggs, I didn't see them, but I did find larvae, so she has been laying. And I found the queen too, she was on the last frame (like all of them always are) so she's most definitely alive.

Here is the other side of the frame from the green hive. As you can see, while there are drone caps here, she has laid a decent pattern of flat, worker brood here too. And in the ones not capped, you can see glistening white larvae nestled in the cells. This capped brood is new. The only capped brood in the hive on June 2nd was from the mother hive (the big yellow hive). The capped brood in the hive on that date has already hatched. So it is my assumption that the workers have capped all of the cells you see here since June 2nd...just like the bees did in the orange hive that's thriving.

If I'm doing the math correctly, it is distinctly possible that a lot of the drone cells in this hive were from the laying worker I hopefully shook away earlier this month. Here's my thoughts: It takes 21 days for a bee to go from an egg to an adult. I shook this hive on June 2nd and the frames held typical laying worker eggs -- two and three per cell. So even though I introduced a new queen to this hive that day, I believe it is possible that the worker bees went about their daily routine and fed and capped the eggs and brood as they should. And my calculations say that brood should emerge sometime this coming week. After all, from June 2nd until June 19th -- that's only seventeen days, so its possible this mess isn't related to the new queen at all, but a hold-over from the dreaded laying worker. Least that's my thinking. Of course I'm open for theories here so throw them out at will.

While I plan to talk to the beekeeper at the apiary where I bought her and I've left some messages for some experiences beeks, I am now thinking that I should give her a few more days and watch for new eggs before I replace her. After all, she walked into a mess from the laying worker, so she hasn't had it easy. 

Of course I'll keep everybody updated on what is going on, but if you have some ideas, I am more than willing to know what they are.

ADDENDUM: On Sunday, I decided to swap some frames from the yellow hive over to the green hive. The yellow hive has plenty of full frames of worker brood, and since the green hive has mixed frames of worker and drone brood, I decided to swap some frames. After shaking every bee off the frames, I swapped them -- thus giving the green hive more workers that will hatch soon -- and the big yellow mother hive can handle a few more drones. Hopefully this will work out and keep the green hive on even keel until I can figure out what is going on. Wish us luck! 

UPDATE: The new queens are out and things look good so far...

"And...they're off!" That's what comes to mind after inspecting my two new colonies on Saturday and finding what you see to the left...empty queen cages. I admit that I was prepared for them to be out of the cages and inside the hives. But would they be accepted by the bees in those colonies? That seemed to be the issue for me.

Why? As I discussed in my previous posts, the green hive had gone from swarm cells to supersedure cells -- then those disappeared and suddenly I had a laying worker on my hands. So while technically queenless, my concern was that acceptance would be a huge issue since one of the worker bees was now laying eggs and trying to save the hive. But after doing a "shake" and removing every bee from every frame and then introducing a new mated queen, I think I took care of that issue. She's out and doing fine.

The orange hive, the newest, wasn't much of a real concern since they were queenless for 24-hours before I put the queen cage in. I moved bees and brood over from the mother hive, then waited till the next day to put her and her attendants in. So I wasn't all that concerned that acceptance would be much of an issue for this hive.

As you can see, that's one of the newest monarchs introduced to my apiary. She's Carniolan, so she's darker than her adopted daughters from the other hive which are Italian. And she was born this year and this is a blue year for queen markings. This is the queen in the orange hive and believe it or not, she's already laying. I found new eggs in the cells and she has a consistent pattern so I think she will do fine. The queen in the green hive isn't laying yet, least I don't think do. A few of the frames in that hive had been used by the laying worker, so she doen't have a lot of empty space there now. But she was out and crawling across the frame and looked great.


Since the frames in the lower deeps are already drawn out, I decided now is the time to give these girls some room to expand. So to match the yellow hive, I added a second deep with nine frames and one drone frame, and on top of those I added feeders with 1:1 syrup to help them draw comb. Considering that both of the new hives have plenty of workers, that should give them something to do and keep them occupied.

I admit I am a little concerned about the orange hive though. It doesn't seem to have the coming and going traffic like the other two hives, and I've noticed ants crawling up the sides and occasionally in the entrance. But its only been a week for them now. The good thing I did notice was that one of the guards chased some of the ants out, so maybe they're settling in to make this their home. I also noticed an nasty earwig (which I smushed) in the corner of one of the frames, and I believe that's became the hive is sitting on cinderblocks. I'll eventually move it over to a steel stand like the others sit on, but I have to wait for the city to finish some clean-up work on the creek behind the house. Then I plan to relocate the hives to a more level location just a few feet away.

So that's my update. Things seem to be okay so far, and I'll check them again this coming weekend to see if they're on track.

Bee cool!

Two new queens and one old queen are in residence...

As you can see my own little back yard apiary is expanding. It hasn't been easy, but with baby steps, we've done pretty darn good. And I do have to admit I'm proud.  

It was this time last year I started my beekeeping voyage with one package of bees from Georgia, most of them dead and the rest struggling for life. But with some quick thinking, a new queen, two frames of brood from another apiary and lots of TLC, it became the thriving colony it is today.

As I mentioned awhile back, I found all kinds of swarm cells in the yellow hive, so I moved those over to a new hive (green) with brood and bees to start a new colony. My inspection about a week later indicated that the swarm cells were gone and a lot of supersedure cells had popped up -- a situation that perplexed me and more experienced beekeepers too. But I decided to wait it out because I wanted to see if a virgin queen might be there...and see if she may fly away to mate, come back, then come home to begin her own family.

That never happened it seems. Apparently the queen (if there was one) never returned and so my worst fears came true. When I opened the green hive, I found eggs alright. Two or three eggs per cell. Some had one, but many of them had two and three eggs -- meaning that I now had evidence of a laying worker. Since that means the colony is headed for disaster, I had to act quickly -- so I took the hive to the other side of the yard, almost a couple hundred feet away -- and I shook every single bee off every frame. And when I got back to the hive stand where the green hive rests, a swarm of the bees from the hive had covered the entire inner cover which I propped up. And as I sat the hive back up where it belongs, the bees started marching back into their home. It was a great sight to see. I'm just hoping the young laying worker wasn't able to find her way back to the hive.

I ordered two new queens from an apiary in Winston Salem, North Carolina, called Tate's Apiaries (on Union Cross Road, 336-788-4554). Larry and Janice Tate raise Carniolan and Italian queens, and since my good friend Jared Watkins had such great success with his, I decided to get two Carniolan queens. There they are on the right, and although they're hard to see, if you click the picture to enlarge it you can almost see the blue marks on their backs. 

The colony in the green hive had been queenless for weeks, so I went ahead and introduced one of the new queens that same day. But since I was doing a second split (making it my third hive) -- I decided to move frames of brood and pollen and nectar into the newer orange hive, wait for 24-hours for them to realize they're queenless, then introduce the new caged queen and let them slowly get used to her. As you can see, there are quite a few bees from the mother hive in the new orange hive. And after making a small hole in the candy with a nail, I tightly wedged the cage between the frames so the workers can take care of the new queen and her attendants.

Take a good look at one of the brood frames I moved into the new orange hive. Nice, huh? This is from the mother hive or the yellow hive. As you can see, the queen is a laying machine, so I had enough frames to move into the green hive and the orange hive. And guess what? While I was busy looking to make sure I wouldn't move the queen from the mother hive, through the corner of my eye, I happened to see something green lumbering across the frame. It was the original queen I introduced in 2009! For the first time since last October, there she was moving ever so graciously through her daughters on the frame. Her green dot (indicating she was a 2009 queen) was worn but still there. Am I planning to replace her this year? No way. If she continues to do this well, she's got a home for as long as she wants. I was very careful to make sure she stayed in the yellow hive because I separated the frame she was on from the colony...and was careful to put it back when I was done.  

As soon as I put the cage with the new queen in the orange hive, the bees went to work checking her out. No aggression or anything to indicate they wanted to harm her. They just appeared to be curious and even started working on the candy stopper. I'm hoping that she'll be released in the next few days, and as it stands, I'll give them the standard five days to see if she's out and hopefully laying eggs. I'm hoping I'll find pleasant surprises in both hives in the next few days.

As you can see...this is a happy update and I'm excited. My mother hive is ruled by an Italian queen, and the two new hives will be dominated by Carniolan queens. I am looking forward to working with this race of bee since I've heard good things about them. I hear they're hard workers, gentle, and adapt to local conditions better than Italians. And besides, if it doesn't work out with them, Larry and Janice Tate sell Italian queens too.

So it looks like my apiary is moving right along and now I'm thinking about at least one more hive behind the house. If I decide to expand beyond the four, I think I'll have to find another location. My neighbors seems to be very cool with my backyard apiary so far -- and I just want to keep them that way.

Expect an update soon with the details of how my new colonies are faring.

Forget catching swarms! I found FOUR swarm cells in my own hive!

Today was just plain muggy. The temperature made it up to 92 degrees here, and the relative humidity held out at 47% -- meaning it was sticky hot. As I mentioned before, we've gone from a hard winter to summer, then back to spring -- and now back to summer. Since the weather was hot, I decided to go ahead and do an inspection since it had been a couple of weeks. Good thing I did because I found some interesting developments since my last peek under the cover.

Even the beginning beekeeper should recognize this -- a swarm cell.  Not one cell, but at least four of them. Two of the cells were on one frame, and the other two cells were on individual frames. Was I surprised? No. This colony has been absolutely booming after making it through the winter, so I knew that the congestion would eventually lead to swarming. I was hoping that they would hold out until I could do a split with a bred queen from the apiary in Chapel Hill, but as you can see, the bees had a different idea.

A few of the frames I pulled out had burr comb beneath them, some attached the frame in the middle chamber to the frames on the bottom chamber. I did the best job I could of not pulling the comb open and exposing the larvae and pupa, but it wasn't meant to be in some cases. No matter how hard I've worked to keep the burr comb to a minimum, just letting them go a couple of weeks can leave a mess for you to clean up. But as you can see in the picture to the right, this burr comb is intact including the obvious swarm cell. The pupa I did expose was collected and dumped into the creek behind the house. The creek is full of small fish so they had a nice Sunday snack.

Here's one of those frames I mentioned above with the exposed pupa. But you can see yet another swarm cell on the front, and when I looked up into it (it wasn't capped) there was a very lively larvae inside. So making sure as best I could that the queen wasn't on this frame, I moved it over to the empty hive next door. I did that with all the frames holding swarm cells. Doing the best I could to make sure that the reigning queen wasn't anywhere on them, I placed them in the empty hive along with the bees on those frames. I'm just hoping that her highness is still in the mother hive and didn't get moved over. I'll have to check in a few days to see if there are new eggs in the mother live.


A mixture of cells, what I believe to be drone cells and swarm cells too. The one on the bottom had a larvae inside and was almost completely capped. Some of the cells above that are drone cells. But to the other side of the frame, it appears that the oblong shaped cells were swarm cells as well. So now we're up to at least four swarm cells on the bottom of the frames, all of them in the middle chamber of this hive. The box I placed above it weeks ago, including frames with Plasticell foundation -- the bees had already started drawing out with comb. Two of the frames were drawn on one side and they had started on a third. And that's without me feeding them syrup.

So what did I do? As I mentioned above, on the advice of beekeeping guru, Richard Underhill of the Peace Bee Farm, he said that if I found swarm cells, I needed to move them to a new hive and do a split. Some other beekeepers told me that a split should also include capped brood and eggs too. So acting on the information I had absorbed from everyone, I moved the frames with the swarm cells to the new hive, and I added some capped brood and egg frames. Some of the capped brood frames had larvae too which was even better. I also found a nice frame of newly laid eggs, so I put it there too. And to top it off, I added some pollen frames and one full frame of honey for them to use.

I would be lying if I said that I'm completely comfortable with everything I did. I just pray that I did everything right. Even if the queens don't emerge or they don't make it, maybe they'll still have enough in this new hive to make a new queen. Although I included pollen and honey frames, I decided to go ahead and add sugar syrup to give them more food since the nurse bees have never left the hive. Then when I check it again in a week or so and things hopefully look okay, I'll possibly add another chamber with empty frames so they can start drawing comb. I placed the empty frames that are partially drawn back on the yellow hive which is the mother hive, so that should possibly keep them busy now that the swarm urge has hopefully dissippated with the disappearance of the swarm cells.

I am open for critiques here. Let me know if you think I handled this okay. With great advice from longtime beekeepers like Richard Underhill and others, I feel like I did the right thing. I'm just hoping that the bees have the same idea. So let me know what you think.

I'll BEE waiting to hear from you!

Has Mother Nature decided for me? Okay, beeks, I need your help!

Today (Sunday) was such a beautiful day that decided to get out and do a quick inspection. I've been keeping my fingers crossed that my colony would do well and thrive for the next few weeks, but not get the itch to swarm. But I've had a deep feeling that since this colony is a booming colony, their natural urge to swarm would kick in before I could make a manual split. They still have lots of room in both chambers, but I noticed that they're loading up the upper chamber with pollen and the queen was laying really well in the bottom brood box. Matter of fact, when I examined the top deep first, I could tell the queen had laid here and there, and I was feeling a little disappointed that she may be giving out by the spotty laying pattern. But when I got to the bottom brood chamber, she was laying like a champ and in a tight, consistent pattern on most of the frames. Capped brood was everywhere as well as larvae. 

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me show you what else I found. Look closely at the photo and just above my website brand. I think that's a queen cell they're making in the upper deep. My photography isn't the best here as I was by myself, but if you could have seen this from my angle...the cell had a downward, protruding shape. And as you can see, there is a larvae inside and several nurse bees were busy attending to it. I didn't find any other possible queen cells, just this one, but I did find bunches of drone cells on several frames. And one of the drones was making a fierce racket while I was checking out the frames. Overall they were in a decent mood, a little testy, but I've seen worse.

Of course you can click on any of the pictures to get a better view. And while you're at it, take a look at this picture on the left. That's a little better view of what I believe is a queen cell. And you can see the bees checking on it. While my first instinct was to take my hive took and tear it off, I decided that might not be the wise thing to do. Beekeepers with a lot more experience than me say that it is never wise to rip the queen cells off because if the old queen has already left with a handful of her daughters or is dead or whatnot, then the hive could be queenless and doomed if you do that. So I decided to leave the cell alone and check it again in a few days to see if they finish the job and cap it and see it takes on the unmistakable appearance of a classic queen cell.

While it may be too late to keep this colony from swarming, I've decided that I may be able to buy some time by adding empty frames to keep them occupied for awhile. I added another deep with new frames (plastic foundation) so they can have a head start in case I do get to make a manual split. And if they do swarm on their own, at least I'll have some already drawn frames for when I find another swarm or get more bees. Oh, and I added the empty hive to the left of my current one. I've read that in quite a few instances, bees that swarm will go to nearby empty hives and settle in as opposed to traveling far away. So maybe if they decide to hit the road, they'll find that there's an empty house next door and ready for occupancy.

Okay, gang, I need your help!

Take a good look at the two pictures that shows the "suspicious" cell at the bottom of the frame. Does this look like a queen cell to you? And how would you handle this situation if you were me? Would you have cut the cell out? Or would you leave it alone?

I'm open for all ideas and suggestions. So lay it on me! All ideas welcome!