All hail the queen! My new monarch is in residence!

I've been meaning to update everyone on introducing a new queen to my failing hive, but the last few days have been really hectic. Then when I got a post from my long distance beekeeping friend Mil over at Urban Farm and Beehives, I knew I couldn't keep everyone in suspense any longer and had to relay the good news!

I decided to check my orange hive on Thursday, May 29th. The new caged queen from Triad Bee Supply had been in the hive since Saturday, so most likely had already been released. While I felt confident she would most likely be okay, I was still a little apprehensive. Even though the process of introducing a caged queen is pretty textbook, I don't think you can always be 100% certain that everything will always work out. But when I opened the hive and took the cage out, it was empty. The good news was that she and her attendants were free of the cage. Now it would be the task of finding her to make sure she was okay. The apprehension was up a little once again!

Starting with the wall frame, I checked. No queen. I made my way from left to right, picking up each frame and checked them left to right and up and down. No queen. When I made it to frame #9 which was next to the last frame, I picked it up and there she was. There was no denying it was my new monarch. Between her young, bright yellow abdomen, and the new paint dot on her back, I knew it was my new queen. She casually made her way across the frame and didn't try to dodge the light as many queens do. So I gently put the frame back to make sure she wouldn't get hurt and so she could go back to work. She had apparently already started. I found new eggs on a couple of the frames, so I knew she had already been to work. By the way, that's her on the right. Isn't she a beauty? 

I also found a closed swarm cell on the bottom of one of the frames. Not wanting to risk it hatching and upsetting the new set-up, I cut it off and decided to open it. Inside was a developing pupa, but it appeared to be dehydrated. I am now wondering if the queen-to-be may have been killed by the old queen, a competing virgin queen, or possibly killed by my new queen. Or maybe she died of natural causes. I guess we'll never know.

And the frames of eggs and brood that I moved to the orange hive before I introduced the new queen are doing fine. When I examined things, I could see small, curvy larvae developing in the bottom of the cells. Apparently the bees that were left in the hive have been tending to things pretty well overall. So I added the second deep body and ten new frames and closed everything back up. I also added a feeder so the girls can draw comb. I'll check it again in a week to see how the progress is going.

I am very confident the new queen will save this colony. To be honest, I probably could have moved eggs over and hoped the bees would take the initiative to raise their own queen. But it seemed a little "iffy" since things had changed dramatically in a month's time. With the population low and no brood, I just didn't want to chance it. And with the new queen being raised locally, I'm sure she'll do just fine here.

More updates coming!    

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!       

Can swarm cells turn into supersedure cells? (Cue "Twilight Zone" music)

So it had been a week since I moved the four swarm cells from my first colony to an empty hive. As you recall, I found them during a routine inspection, scattered on the bottoms of four different frames in the upper deep. Following the advice of several longtime beekeepeers, I moved the cells with some capped brood, eggs and larvae and pollen and nectar to an empty hive, along with a generous sprinking of bees, and closed everything up. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday was extremely quiet and very little coming and going was happening at the new hive -- so little that I became concerned that something was very wrong.

But when Thursday rolled around, I found a lot of flying in and out and I could see some orientation flights underway too. This made me feel better but I knew that I wouldn't truly feel better until I took a good look under the lid to see what was going on inside.

Without using smoke, I opened the hive and as I was doing an inspection, I found two of the four swarm cells almost gone. I had the frames with the swarm cells placed where I could easily find them, and the precious cells were practically gone. Truthfully I thought I picked the wrong frames out, but then on closer examination, I realized I had the right ones after all. It was obvious that the bees had torn the cells down, I knew it wasn't me because I'd been extremely careful about moving the frames as to not tear the cells. And a third swarm cell was completely empty. I didn't even look at the fourth, because after all of that disappointment, I closed up the hive. When I got in the house, I started calling around to try to find a queen without delay. The queen I have on order in Chapel Hill is still a week or more away and no one else I called in the immediate area had any ready to sell. One had them but the waiting list was at least three weeks. With all these disappointments, I knew I was headed for trouble. I kept thinking that if I don't do something soon, I am going to find myself with a laying worker and then everything will be a total mess. Needless to say, I called everywhere and no luck was in the cards. 

Looking to buy some time, I spoke to a local beekeeper who told me to take more eggs from the mother hive and put them in the new hive and the bees should take them and start making new queen cells again. And since the queen I have is a laying machine, I knew I should be able to find more donor eggs. So the plan of action for Sunday would be to move some eggs over and keep my fingers crossed.

So Sunday rolled around and I opened the mother hive to look for eggs. Taking my time, I found a frame with some eggs scattered around, but since this is honey flow time here, I also noticed that the hive was scattered with lots of nectar and pollen and becoming honey-bound. So I grabbed up a shallow super to put on top of the hive so they can move the honey up and give the queen room to lay. And then I opened the new hive to find a frame to swap out -- but I found something that perplexed me totally. It was something new, something I never saw before in the past week, and something that has me totally confused. I found two new queen cells -- two supersedure cells.

The supersedure cells were in the middle of two different frames situated next to one another. In all my examinations of these frames, I never, ever saw these supersedure cells...and I honestly believe they are new and created in the last week. No eggs were in the new hive, so there should be no other queens there, at least not a mated queen anyway. And since I found eggs in the mother hive, it is obvious that a queen is there and working. So I don't quite understand why the bees in the new hive tore down the swarm cells and moved up the frame and made supersedure cells instead.

Is it because they realized that they had no reigning queen and created emergency cells? Is it because they have changed plans to swarm (since they're not in a crowded hive box anymore) and decided to create a different queen instead? And why did I not see these cells when I've examined the frames on two occasions in the past week?

I carefully closed up the new hive and took great care to not bump or rub the supersedure cells. And after adding a honey super to the mother hive, I closed it up as well and don't plan to disturb them again for a week or two. They've been stressed enough this past week so now I'm going to give them time to get back to being bees.

Without a doubt, I plan to keep an eye on the new hive to see what is going on there. If all goes to plan (at least the bees plan anyway) -- a new queen should emerge soon. But I'm not so sure that I should leave an emergency queen there or go ahead and replace her. I have read that emergency queens (by supesedure) are sometimes inferior to mated queens from a dealer. Maybe these are just the stories that some dealers tell just so beekeepers will buy their products, or maybe there is some ring of truth to it. I plan to mull it over in the meantime and do some research.

Anyone with experience with this kind of situation or your ideas on what you think is happening are more than welcome to offer comments. I would love to hear what you think is going on.

ADDENDUM: Beekeeping expert, Richard Underhill at the Peace Bee Farm, just sent me a note about my swarm cells turning into supersedure cells: "The swarm cells being replaced by supersedure cells is an interesting occurrence, but I think there is a simple explanation. You moved in a frame with swarm cells. The first one to emerge killed the others inside their cells, and the workers chewed out the sides of those cells. Now you find supersedure cells on the sides of frames. These may have been started as emergency queen cells by the workers when you started this new hive. The first day the new hive would have detected that it was queen-less. If there were eggs on one of the frames that you brought in, the bees would build emergency queen cells by extending worker cells and turning them downward. You did not see them on your previous inspection, because it only takes four days for them to build and cap a queen cell."

As always, thanks Richard! So if I understand this, there exists the possibility that my new hive could be queenright after all. Richard's scenario is that one of the queens in the swarm cells may have hatched and killed her sisters. The frames that now hold supersedure cells were a result of the bees realizing they were queenless and so they panicked and started building. Makes sense. I've always read that a queen-less colony is hard to work with, moody and irritable. But I've noticed that in the times I've been in this hive this past week, I never used smoke and they were really gentle -- so maybe the colony really is queenright. Now the search begins pretty soon to see if I can find a queen or eggs in the the new hive. 

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!