Today, August 16, 2015, I went into the 3 nucs that I have at Mel’s to mark my Pauws. They are feisty. I almost messed up. I rapidly found Pauw1 and enclosed her in the new marking gadget (http://www.mannlakeltd.com/beekeeping-supplies/product/HD-101.html) but while I bend down to pick up the marker, I must have opened the trap, because she was gone! I searched through the hive 2 times, not finding her. She was pretty large and orange. As I could not find her in the hive, even after a few minutes, I started looking on the ground. And then I spotted her on the frame that I have removed from the hive to make space. Pf…………..(insert emodicon here). She must still be able to fly at this age. Recaptured her and marked her blue.

On to the next hive. Looked at all the frames twice, could not find a queen. The bees were quite and happy looking though, so I am hopeful. Same for the third. No sighting. On to Mel’s hive. Also happy bees, brood, but no queen. Also no queen cell, so I am sure there is a Pauw in there too. Or she was out mating. I decided to have one more go at the hive near the current bushes and indeed found another big orange Pauw. Also make blue. It is a bit strange, but I remember that the last time I looked at the just emerged queens, they were banded. Dark band behind the head, lighter further down. This coloring must change over time as the queens grow and mature. So that was 2 our of 4.

At Todd’s place the situation was not cheerful: while he had set up a beautiful nuc with 2 frames of brood, the box had been abandoned. An equivalent of a full side of a medium with capped brood was cold and dead.  There was still honey in the combs, which makes it such a mystery. Robbing would have been my first idea, with a small population becoming overwhelmed with fighting intruders. But why would they not take the honey? Todd was disappointed and thinks that maybe there were mostly foragers when he set it up, causing those bees to fly back.

It is too late for another round, but of all the beekeeping tasks, I like queen rearing the best.

Of the Cleopatras in my yard, the Q4, a direct daughter of Mel’s Cleo, is doing splendid. Better dan a grand-daughter from Q4 that I also have. Another grand daughter from Q6 is doing ok. I think that the spendid features of Cleo are diluting out in successive generations. It makes me wonder how that works for breeders.  I hope we can judge Pauw and the Pauw daughters along a similar line. I am reading up on breeding but there is not a lot of literature.

I set it up in the morning and the same afternoon grafted 18 larva from my new Pennsylvania overwinter Queen from the breeder in PA (I call her Pauw). I had dipped the plastic cups in wax and moulded extra was around the cups. The cloak slider was on until tuesday evening, so just 48h. The bees were taking a quart of food and it was pretty busy in the hive, though not as full as with Q6.

On tuesday, 7 cells were started and were a good length. On one of the brood frames, the bees found eggs and larva on the bottom rows that were young enough to make more queen cells: 7 more, not very big, but ah…

I kept feeding the hive every day for the first week. The cells were capped on july 29th, with the exception of a few of the natural cells.

In Q5 we had seen that queens in natural cells can emerge before the grafted ones. Maybe better thermoregulation? To avoid these queens from getting to the grafted once, I borrowed a queen excluder from Liz and installed that frames with one other brood frame in yet a third deep. Feeder op top.

I reduced the feeding to every other day, occasionally checking the cells. They were all intact!

Today, august 5th, day 10 after grafting, I harvested the cells. No queens had emerged, all cells were still intact.

I had set up 2 nucs with frames of brood from one of my Q5. I counted on being able to use the frame with natural cells and one more for 2 more nucs. That worked for me. The first Pauw cell that I tried to take of the bar got crushed. I decided not to use it anymore and took the opportunity to open it to check the state of the queens. This one was no longer white, with purple eyes, but not yet moving. Liz and I saw the same in Q5 when we opened cells. Those queens hatched fine later. I installed 3 Pauw queen cells in my nucs. Of of these nucs must have had a small opening, as it was being robbed. Mel did not have his nucs ready, and it was to crazy in his yard with bees and trenches to attempt to do that in the middle of the day (way to hot, and I fell in the trench once).

I used nail scissors and cut out two natural Cleo’s, thinking to used these for Liz. That was not easy. I messed one up. The next, I cut around more generously. Stuck the piece of comb with the queen cell in a halve drawn frame, using a tooth pick. Installed the rest with the whole frame in one of my nucs.

Off to Todd’s, who had prepared a really nice nuc with two frames of brood and stored. Classic, beautiful. We installed a Pauw cell in his hive. He took some pictures which I hope he will add.

Next, Liz’s yard. Liz had set up 3 compartments in her queen castle, on top of one of her hives. In two, we had installed a frame with a modest amount of capped brood and bees last sunday. Those compartments were empty. Emerging bees were abandoned.

Liz had set up a third compartment that looked much happier: bees, stores, but the bees were not very docile. I installed a Pauw cell, took some photo’s and closed it up. I did not fill the feeder; there was enough honey and nectar on the frame.

At that point I was still left with the two carved out cells and a Pauw cell, so I drove back to the farm and re-united these with the nurse hive: Pauw in the second story, Cleo cells in the third, each separated from Cleo mother and each other  with queen excluders.

After that, I decided that I needed more nuc boxes to be able to have double story nuc hives, so I drove to Mr Martin. He had a few. I also bought some in hive frame feeders.

Just got back. Ate dinner, drinking a (alcohol free) beer.

Good day for me. Have not yet figured out how to get the photo’s from my phone to the computer.

The artificial royal jelly was completely rejected by the bees, but the really like all off Liz’s larva and halve of mine. By removing the slider, we hope that they will continue to feed these cells well and make them into large queen cells. They started to look really good already with what appears to be a good supply of food. What is different about the supersedure impulse if you compare that with our other rounds of queen rearing: the nurse hive stays queen right. We could take all the queen cells out this sunday and introduce another batch in a few days. Most likely, if there are queen cells left on sunday, I will make some nucs from the hive regardless, but the losses are less than by first creating a very full queen less hive.

Who else wants a queen cell? The lineage is from Mel, related to Cleopatra. Very dark queen, good brood pattern. I don’t know from Mell if this hive resulted in a box of honey, but it sure wintered well. The bees are calm.

The bees were sure crowding into the upper box, which was not without bees to begin with. There are a couple of frames with emerging brood. Mel has offered a frame of eggs on Sunday, so we will graft about 20 cups and stick them into the upper box. There is syrup and a protein patty on the hive, just to keep everyone well supplied. For the cups, I, for the first time, dipped the cups into molten wax up to the lip and then pushed them into the bar. I will also give a few some royal jelly substitute, which I understand to be 1:1 plain yogurt and water. We have some new and some previously used cups, let’s see if that makes a difference.

Big day is tomorrow.

Tuesday afternoon, Liz will remove the cloak slider and then the bees will be re-united with the queen pheromone. Theoretically, that should put them from a swarming impulse to a supersedure impulse. And should get the bees to keep feeding the limited number of cells with copious amounts of royal jelly. Remember, they have very little other open brood to care for by that time, as most is capped over by then. They also should make nice long queen cells, utilizing the extra wax that they were supplied with. Let’s hope they all read that book too.

Best case: many big, well fed queen cells

Worst case: many big well fed queen cells torn down after removal of the cloak board.

If anyone is available to help Liz on Tuesday, that would be nice. If you lift the feeder and peek into the hive to check the queen cell bar, we at least know what we had, even if we have nothing left later. I am hoping on Todd for this. The task is simple: lift feeder off, lift  queen cup frame out, take picture, put back together gently. NO SMOKE. Smoke would be too disruptive.

Next sunday, it is time to harvest.

Mel had a Q3 nuc with George offspring that made it well through the winter. Mel put the 5 frames in a full size hive this spring. George did not like that, began to fail and Mel saw a supercedure cell. I took that hive to the farm last Tuesday and started feeding it. I gave it a frame of honey, some syrup and a megabee patty. Today, I also added to frames of capped brood with bees. I saw that the supercedure cell was open. I did not see a virgin or brood, but the hive was active and even bringing in pollen. I exchanged the frames with plastic foundation for frames with comb because the hive’s population is too small to draw out combs right now. I will keep feeding this hive until they stop taking the food and in 4 weeks check for brood. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Today it was sunny (as opposed to the prediction for Thursday and Friday) so I started step 1: find the queen and confine her in the lower box. The queen in the hive is Cleopathra, from Mel’s lineage. She wintered fine, with fall feeding, has not been treated and has a 2 deep hive going strongly with brood. There are drones present and queen cups. No queen cells. Last year, she had a yellow mark. When I found her today, that mark was barely visible, so I gave her a bright green dot over top. She is now in the lower of the two deeps, with the queen excluder/cloakboard above her. She has a mix of open brood, capped brood and 2 completely empty combs in her box. This hive is being fed syrup and megabee patty, already for 2 weeks. The Cloakboard slider is out at this point, the hive is still one unit. In the upper box are young open brood, capped brood, 2 frames almost full of pollen, some capped honey from last year and an empty comb.
On top of that, the patty, and the feeder. The young brood in this box will be more than 3 days old by the time I will add grafted cells, this Sunday.
This is the plan (and I will need some helpers with this if you are interested):
Today is day -4: set up
Saturday: -1: insert the cloak slider and rotate the hive, open the cloak board entrance and close the original entrance (bring entrance reducer)
(AM)
Sunday (midday) Day 0: graft cell and bring to the hive. Insert bar with cells
Tuesday or Wednes day: Day 2 or 3: pull out cloak board slider to reunite the boxes
Add extra syrup and protein patty.
Monday (day 8): harvest cells into nucs?

What I have not decided is where to get the young larva from for grafting. What you you think. We do not have a lot of lineages left at this point. Mel’s line is very good I think, so we could graft from the lower box, from Cleopatra. Or the hive in my yard, also originally from Mel, but much bigger.

And I did not mention yet: the Q4 hive is at the Garst Farm, on Staufer road.

I should probably concentrate on fewer hives for feeding in the fall. I really only syrup fed the hives on the farm. It is clear that the candy is not sufficient if it is too cold. Bees need honey!

1.Allen’s nuc: died (I think this queen was not very suited for this area, there was never a good buildup of brood and the nectar collections was not robust)

2. Split from Mel, created before we started any of our queen rearing: doing well. Living in a deep.

3. Hive with Lisa, used for queen rearing round 3, wintered with Bill last year. Doing well. Feels heavy. 3 mediums.

4. Topbar hive, dark green: alive, but very light (swarm from Allen).

5. Topbar hive, light green: alive, but very light (swarm from Allen).

6. George hive, from split from uniontown. doing well, good stores. 3 mediums.

7. Q3 George: 2 deep 5 frame nuc boxes stacked. Very active, not a lot of stores.

8. Q3 George: 2 deep 5 frame nuc boxes stacked. Very active, not a lot of stores.

at the farm:

9 lost Q1 to a late season swarm

10. lost Q2 early december, was without any activity today.

11. Hive with Cleopathra, early spring split from Mel. Living in single deep. Active, but not a lot of honey stores.

It looks like none of us have any of the q1 or q2 queens left. Those must not have been reared well. Let’s hope for better for next year!

ps. Liz’ hive at the farm was very busy!.