I started with 4 real nuc boxes for Q3 and one improvised queen castle (two compartment). All hives had a queen emerge, but today I checked for queens/bees/brood. This is my tally (July 20th, 2014): Nuc with white dots: nice queen, one of the ones that Andrew grafted from George. […]
On July 6th, 2014, I also moved Cleopatra (a black queen from a split made with Mel’s stock) to the Garst Farm. She is in a single deep. She is marked yellow, but Liz and I did not see here when we looked last night (July 18). There was a […]
To recap Q2, we missed the emerging of the q2 queens by about 1 day and they all emerged and were killing each other or all loose in the hive, or something. By the time we came to pick up the queen cells to put them in the nucs, they […]
I went into all the new hives again today to check the hatching situation and to remove some of the cages. In my queen castle, on the white side, a Lisa had hatched, judging from the beautiful flap that hung from the cell. THis hive had been given two cages, […]
Today is day 13 in the lives of our Q3 queens and I peeked in at them at 6pm, after a hot and muggy day. I opened all the cages, figuring that the bees had become acquainted with their new queen cell. Out of the 7 queen cells that I […]
Today, on day 6 (larval age), the small nurse hives have a hard time defending their hives from robbers. I have of course some strong hives in the yard that appear to be looking for an easy meal. I have severely reduced the entrance of the green nuc, so that […]
Both nurse hive had finished eating the syrup, so I gave each another pint. I decided to start feeding at twilight, as I worry a lot about robbing. I also closed Liz’s queen castle a bit more with a piece of wood so that the opening is not as big. […]
Lisa was a beautiful big orange queen that arrived in my yard in early spring of 2012 with a good size swarm. Jan was picking gooseberries and saw it go into my dark green topbarhive. I moved the comb into a deep. Hoping for success, I opened the hive 2 […]
We installed our Q3 nurse hives today: In Liz’s medium queen castle: 1 frame of 50% capped brood, 1 frame of 20% open brood, some pollen, nectar and one frame with nectar honey. Shook in extra bees from Liz’s california queen hive and at Krz’s place from the […]
From Michael Bush website http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm He states that emergency queen cells may be inferior if they are made from cells on old comb: Emergency queens: “It has been stated by a number of beekeepers who should know better (including myself) that the bees are in such a hurry to […]
