The Bee Report: A bit late in coming, but such an eventful Sunday! I looked into the little nuc box that wasnt thriving. The queen was there, but not laying well for me. Went into the 8 frame hive with a shallow super, expecting to see a honey making hive, but No! The 2nd & 3rd frames were joined together and contained at least 7 full enclosed queen chambers. One frame from that super had a true Swarm Cell!! fully enclosed 9 which means that the queen is almost ready to emerge.) Without going any further into the super, I had a look into the deep. First frame in, there was a supercedure cell on the second frame. SO... I put all the frames with queen chambers into a 5 frame Nuc Box and called for backup! First suggestion - find the queen. If found, put her in the nuc box. So, I started looking for the queen. Twice! Could not find here. Called Kim, my neighbor keeper and an excellent queen spotter. We both looked again, No Queen. So, we noticed a big ball of bees under the hive. Now that the hive body was empty, we turned the box over and saw the queen there with her small swarm. What to do next? Catch the queen. Using a big clip style queen catcher ( on hand ) we caught here and some attendants and put her in an empty plastic Nuc box. As expected, her swarm followed her into the temporary home. This left me a Nuc box of bees that was not thriving on drawn out comb, a Nuc box of queen cells and a plastic with a great queen - wings clipped so she didnt swarm far - but no comb. Solution: I emptied the Nuc with the slow queen into another hive body, put on lid. Then, shook all the bees from the plastic box into the Nuc with the drawn out comb. Put the queen in ... added the last frame of wax, put top on, added sugar water with Amino B & Honey B Healthy on top as a feed and called that finished. I put the hive with the slow queen in the plastic Nuc box and gave that to Kim for all her help. Perhaps the Queen just wanted a new bee yard... and she is over at Kims house, doing well. I put the hive of queen chambers with bees on the side of the house facing the chimney ( to disorient them so they didnt fly back to the 8 frame with shallow super /home) for 36 hours. They are not back in the bee yard with their entrance facing the opposite direction from all other hives. I put the Nuc with the old queen ( actually she is one year old, well mated, and lays like crazy!!) in the middle of side of the back yard! They are flying when the weather is nice. So! What does all this mean? It means beekeeping can be exciting. The bee friends are blessings!! and that I could soon have a new 8 frame hive if my swarm queen will build up first...... and a Nuc box of VSH queens for sale.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:12:36 +0000
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