The last time I was here it seemed the nuc was ready to swarm so I split it. I took the queen and some capped brood and moved them to a new spot on the stand.

I left 2 frames of young brood and the queen cells with a frame of stores and an empty frame in the same location so they would collect some of the returning foragers.

The main colony looked pretty good.

Today, the old queen was gone, the brood was hatched. There are no signs of laying workers. In the 4 frame split, I was unable to find a queen or eggs but again no sign of a laying worker.

The main colony is a sad story. When I opened the lid, this is what I saw:

This is the bottom board:

An when I tried to smoke them off the frames:

All very sad. The fields around them were sprayed with 2,4-d and paraquat 3 weeks ago. I don’t think that was the problem as I closed the bees during the spraying. I’m packaging a sample to send to the Beltsville Bee lab to see if they might be able to tell what happened.

Very sad.

The remnants of the Cleopatra colony are doing okay. About 6 frames of brood, nice solid pattern.

The small pink colony is still functional. The queen is alive but her brood pattern is not so great. I won’t mind requeening her.

The laying workers still don’t have any signs of a queen. I couldn’t find the virgin I put in there. On the other hand, I also didn’t see signs of a laying worker. Most of the previous drone brood had hatched and I didn’t see new areas of brood. Maybe the virgin is doing her thing? I guess I’ll wait. (I know I said I’d wait a month last time and it’s only been 9 days. Patience is not my best virtue!)

When I got home with the queen, which had been nicely packaged in a queen cage with 2 attendants, it was thunderstorming. Rain! Wind! Lightning! Under those circumstances I figured it was just best to lay the cage on top of the frames and get out of Dodge.

I went back this evening and she was still alive. The colony workers pretty much seemed uninterested. They would crawl across the cage but they weren’t obsessed with her destruction. The original plan was to shake out the bees and then release the queen. I shook one frame and got stung. That was enough for me and I decided to release her immediately. First I gave her a red mark and then let her walk into the frames.

As far as I could tell, the bees seemed to accept her — at least not kill her immediately. So time will tell. I’ll try to leave these bees alone for about a month.

The remnants of the Cleopatra colony that provided 3 boxes of honey last year are still uncertain. I had checked it on 4/19 and there was young brood but none capped. That brood is still not capped but looks as though it will be both worker and drone. I haven’t seen a queen. I saw a few well-centered, single eggs in cells but the area covered in brood is about 3 sides of a frame the size of the palm of my hand. Not much.

The single box pink colony received a population boost from Todd’s after swarm. There is a queen and I marked her red.

The laying worker colony/swarm experiment seems to be a fail. No bees in the top two boxes. I’m a little concerned that mood of the laying workers may be changing. Grant was head butted while trying to mow the lawn about 30 feet behind and away from the colony. Might shake out and give up on them soon.

I have a laying worker hive. At least 4 frames of brood. The population in the colony is at least 80% drone. They haven’t gotten mean…yet. I’m hoping to avoid that. So…

I put two screen inner covers on top of the laying worker colony and then placed two boxes for the swarm on top of the inner covers. The bottom swarm box has stores; the top swarm box is checker-boarded drawn comb and foundationless frames. I have a solid inner cover with a top entrance for the swarm.

They seemed to take to it pretty nicely.

The interesting thing is that next to this colony is a very weak colony that I think has a queen but only about a palm size patch of brood.  Some bees on this colony began nasonoving and I think about 25% of the swarm went in here!

So I’ll leave the laying worker/swarm colony alone for about a month and see what happens.  I’m hoping that the queen will mate and lay enough frames of brood to overcome the laying workers.  In the meanwhile I’m hoping the queen pheromone will keep the laying workers calm and I won’t end up with a yard of evil bees again this year!

I’ll check the weak colony in the next few days to see if I can detect if the population went up.

It’s always a learning journey!

UPDATE:  April 24th

First, I’m impatient! A day, a month, what’s the difference?!

Anyway, I wasn’t seeing too much action at the top entrance so I decided to check it out.  Not a bee in the top two boxes.  Not one.

So on the waiting 1 month theory, I will remove the top two boxes and screen and wait a while and see if any of them (the queen in particular) made it into the bottom laying worker colony. Doubtful but possible.

On a positive note, I checked the weak pink colony. The bee count is definitely up.  There is a queen.  I marked her red.

Seems I was right.

As I opened the colony:

Not many live bees and dead bees filling the ends of the frames in the front and back. When I got to the bottom board:

Clearly I had a pretty good population going at one point.

I’m pretty sure the culprit was parasitic mite syndrome.  You can see in this next picture that two of the bees have mites attached and many of the cells have the telltale white crystalline remains of varroa poop.

This is about half of what remained of the cluster.  No brood, no eggs.  No queen to be seen.

Unless you look over here!

After several futile attempts to put her in a nuc,  I kind of gave up.  I think I was able to get 7 bees into the nuc with her.  I seriously doubt they’re going to make it. But I seriously doubt they were making it when I disturbed them either!

On November 7th, we had the candy party (details and pictures to come in a post from someone else — hint, hint Todd).  I used about 100 lbs of sugar to make candy for 4 full colonies, 1  2-medium-box colony and 1 nuc.  I filled 1/2 of a hive top feeder for each colony in full size boxes and filled both sides of the hive top feeder for the nuc.

Today I checked the food status of each colony:

Orange – full size – bees were covering the candy, had consumed about 20-25%.

Muddy Pink – full size – The bees have consumed all but about a fist sized chunk!

Yellow-Green – full size – No bees on candy.  Candy virtually untouched.  I looked between the top two boxes and there are definitely bees there, they just aren’t yet interested in the candy.

Green – full size – Bees on the candy, have consumed about 75%.

Pink – at the Farm, 2-medium boxes – Nearly all the candy consumed.

Nuc – at the Farm – Nearly all the candy consumed.

As 4 of the six colonies have consumed nearly all their candy, I’m planning on making more candy (potentially on Dec 19).  The bees are really going through the candy with all this warm weather.  Hopefully the cold will set in a some point!

At the farm the bees were bringing in a lot of pollen — pale yellow (almost tan), golden orange and red.

8/11 made a nuc from the orange hive to mate queen from Q7. To Mel’s to pick up queen — she’s dead.

Dead Queen from Q7 (Cleo)

8/13
Observation hive – Small hive beetle! Argh! Probable wax moth larva recorded tunneling in the wax.

Larvae in wax (white below 2nd cell from the left on the top) and bee corralling SHB 3rd cell from the left on the bottom

8/15
The farm – top box has mostly nectar. The center two frames are about 15% capped. Found young brood and eggs in the next box down. Ended the inspection there.

8/23
Fed pink and green colonies and orange nuc. All are looking good. Queen cells are being torn down in the nuc but I didn’t see the queen. I’ll give them two weeks and see how it’s going. Lots of bees and capped brood.

8/25
Remove feeders and treated pink and green hives with 1/2 tx of MAQS. Treated orange, muddy pink and yellow green with full tx of MAQS.

Treated the farm hive with a full MAQS tx too but I actually believe the colony has either swarmed or they absconded. Very few bees visible. As I was treating I was unable to inspect first. We’ll see on the weekend how things are.

The queen in the observation hive and her retinue

On August 23, I fed and inspected the nuc.  There were lots of bees and capped brood.  There were also 5 queen cells that the bees were in the process of tearing down.  I did not see a queen.

On September 6, I inspected the nuc and found all 4 frames full of either young uncapped larvae or eggs. I didn’t see the queen but left with confidence that she was there and doing well.  I made a plan to move the bees to a double deep 5 frame medium nuc set up to attempt to overwinter them in that configuration.

Today, September 8, I put my plan in action.  I preloaded the new set up with 3 frames of stores and 3 frames of open brood comb and headed down to the nuc.  Imagine my surprise when I found the queen walking anxiously back and forth across the screened inner cover with her retinue below, following her every move and feeding her!  I quickly captured and marked her.  She’s a beautiful striped queen.  I moved the bees to their new quarters and watched the queen run between the frames.  Within 10 minutes everything seemed settled for the evening.  What a close call!

Pink – 5 frames drawn; 3 frames brood; queen with red mark seen

Green – 7 frames drawn; 5 frames brood; queen with red mark seen

Orange – 27 frames drawn; top box empty – removed; middle box 3 frames stores 5 frames brood and eggs; bottom box mostly empty some pollen and nectar; did not find queen but saw eggs

7/18
Muddy Pink – removed 3 boxes of comb placed on for cleaning after extraction. Bees had begun to store nectar in comb.

Super about 50% full of nectar. Top brood box full of honey. Middle brood box – no brood only spotty capped drone brood. Ended inspection before seeing final box to avoid robbing. Plan to inspect Cleopatra then move a frame of open brood from there if necessary and possible. Back up take brood from green.

Muddy Pink bearding while queenless

Observation hive – heard queen piping.

7/19

Yellow Green Cleopatra – removed 3 boxes of comb placed on for cleaning after extraction.

Last super is about 20% full of nectar, little capped honey. Plenty of brood in top box under the queen excluder. Moved one frame of eggs and young brood to Muddy Pink. Replaced with empty drawn comb.

Thyme for Bees!

Muddy Pink – added frame of young brood and eggs from Yellow Green. Hopefully they will requeen. Plan to check for queen cells next weekend.

Used tea towels to cover open boxes. Worked very well.

7/20

Observation hive – queens piping madly. Have heard 3 distinct simultaneous voices in the morning. Around 5:00 pm bees have balled and killed 1 queen and many bees are collecting as if to swarm.

7/22

2:30 observation hive swarmed. Swarm flew off in a northerly direction.

7:45 three queens running in the hive. A deep gold one that moves slowly, kinda chill; a striped one that moves quickly and pauses to pipe frequently; and a light one the moves rapidly and erratically.

Virgin just hanging out!

8:35 the bees are carrying the light one around, dead. Stripes still piping, chill still chilling!

7/23

Observation Hive – striped queen is dead at bottom of hive this am. No more piping. Haven’t seen a queen today. Fed one bottle 1:1 syrup.

Dead Striped Queen

7/25

Bottled honey. 51 lbs from the farm. 143 lb from the house. A total of 176 1 lb bottles available for sale. Yay!

Summer 2015 Honey Ready for Sale

Saw a varroa mite on a bee in the observation hive.

Varroa!! Argh!

7/29

Went to the farm with Kristien.  Set up 2 sections of the queen castle with brood and bees from my colony on the farm.  Brought it home and placed it on top of Muddy Pink.

7/31

Going on vacation for a week.  Preparing the colonies to survive the week of dearth.

Pink – fed 2 gallons 1:1 syrup

Green – fed 2 gallons 1:1 syrup

Orange – seem to have adequate stores; no additional feeding

Muddy Pink – still seem to be queenless but have more than adequate stores

Queen Castle – set up 3 section with brood from Green.  Fed each section 1 quart 1:1 syrup.

Yellow Green – seem to have adequate stores; no additional feeding

Observation Hive – seems to be on the verge of starving.  No stores, the queen is not laying.  Fed a honey jar of 1:1 syrup.  Hope that helps.

She survived but isn’t laying.