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!

Red devils looking for a free snack! And they found it..

So things around the hive have been rather slow lately. Not much to tell really. The girls seem to be doing rather well, busy flying in and out all day long and enjoying the sunflowers I planted behind them. And with the crepe myrtles being in full bloom here, they have have lots to keep them busy. I'm glad its a popular tree here in the south.

The screened bottom board I added a few weeks ago was a big help with the ventilation issue. The bearding has almost completely stopped, and I think the second brood box was a big help too. They now have more room to work with and won't be so darn crowded.

I did mow around the hive yesterday and since it has been ungodly hot and humid here (the high temperature yesterday was 97 and the humidity was really high) and I figured they would be a little testy. Nope. Even with the push lawnmower all around the hive, and me riding the lawn tractor up and down in front, they didn't give me a second glance...unlike a few weeks ago when a few of them followed me and the lawnmower all the way to the house.

We did have a really nasty storm brew up here yesterday afternoon, and just to make sure that the "honey bee condo" (stacked three high) didn't blow over, I put a cinder block on top of the landscaping paver that was already there. Some of the trees were blowing sideways because of the intense wind, and around the corner, a pretty big portion of a tree broke off in front of an office building. But we all survived. I'm going to leave the cinderblock on since the weather service says we can expect strong thunderstorms for the next few days.

While I was replenishing the sugar syrup yesterday, I did notice that some fire ants found their way into the hive-top feeder, especially when I found one crawling up my arm. Not many ants, maybe ten or so, but enough for me to be concerned that I may be fighting an invasion. While fire ants are pretty common to North Carolina, I haven't seen too many of them in my yard...that is until now. I have a feeling that they're getting in through the top of the hive. To aid in hive-top ventilation I have some popcicle sticks glued to the inner cover, so I think they're sneaking in through the tiny space between the box and the cover. I knocked off as many of them as I could and this weekend, when I do an inspection, I'll sprinkle come cinnamon around the top of the inner cover and around the edges of the feeder. I did that before with the tiny black ants that found my hive and the bees didn't seem to mind it at all.

I also put out some Terro outdoor ant baits. To make sure my curious bees wouldn't get into it, I put it under the hive stand and to the back...where I believe the ants are entering the hive. And the good thing about the ant baits, the hole is small enough that the ants can get in, but the bees can't. The package indicates that the ants are attracted to it, take the liquid bait back to the nest, and that kills them. We'll see if it works. I'd much rather try this than some of the other remedies that I read about, including using Sevin dust -- things that would kill the ants -- and could possibly kill my colony if they got into it and took it back to the nest. If you've never been bitten by a fire ant, they're horrible and relentless. I've got my fingers crossed that this will work out. Wish me luck.

This weekend, I'm also planning to spray around my hive with a homemade weed killer formula -- kills the weeds but won't harm the bees. All natural, all of the ingredients come from the food pantry. More on that later!

Thanks for reading and a big thanks to those who post comments on my blog. I truly appreciate it. You guys (and that includes you gals too) ROCK!