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!.

The package I bought had a Georgian queen I’ll call Georgia and was installed into hive 2. Georgia swarmed, was caught, and has made her way into hive 5 as back-up. Hive 2, therefore, made a new daughter queen, Georgia 2. This hive is doing well, but I might still want to requeen before winter. Hive 4 was the swarm, but after swapping queens, now has another Sally 2c.

Hive 1: Sally 2a
Hive 2: Georgia 2a
Hive 3: Sally 2b
Hive 4: Sally 2c
Hive 5: Georgia (backup queen currently in a cardboard NUC box)

[See image gallery at www.littleluceyfarm.com]

This weekend, we also set up the NUCs for Q3. There were grafted last Sunday (one week ago), and will likely emerge this Wed or Thu. Today we harvested the queen cells (from George and Lisa). I ended up with two George 2 queens. I set up the NUCs next to each other, but did not completely block the entrance to the empty NUC. It was being robbed  badly by this evening when I went to install the George 2 cells. I decided to move the NUC being robbed about 80 feet away (back to the original location) in hopes that the robbers would just stay or relocate, but not continue to rob. I also installed the frame of brood from Mel with some bees into this NUC. I hope the two groups of bees can get along. I now have Hives 6 and 7 raising the new George queens.

Hive 6: George 2a
Hive 7: George 2b (in Area 2)

Kristien put in quite a day helping both Todd and me to locate appropriate brood within our hives and get the nucs set up.  Ah, the optimism!

These are the somewhat shortened queen cells from Round 2. Note the lack of royal jelly remaining in the grafting cup. We noted movement of the queens within the cells at this time.

At 6:00 pm on the 19th we met to take the cells to their awaiting nucs.

All cells have been opened. Some show signs of destruction from the side, others appear to have hatched from the bottom.

Too late!  All the cells have either hatched or been destroyed!

Lessons from this round:

1.  Hindsight is great!  If we see the queens moving in the cells, we should immediately prepare nucs and place the protected cell into the nuc.

2.  Youthful vision wins the grafting game!  Andrew had a 75% success rate.  The actual success rate for the rest of us wasn’t much worth calculating!

3.  The nurse colony should be moved a significant distance from the colony where the nurse bees originated.  It seems that by placing the queenless colony right next to the colony from which the bees were taken a significant proportion of our potential nurse bees returned to the queenright hive.

4.  The way we have been counting days in the cycle may not be allowing for variability in the age of the larvae that the bees choose to propagate into queens.  We have been assuming that bees will only choose day 3 larvae to rear into a queen.  Taking into account Todd’s research, there is the possibility that bees will raise an older larvae into a queen.  Maybe our day count should err more on the side of moving the cells to the mating nucs earlier.

Now to return the queenless nuc brood to the colony from which it was taken and on to round 3.

Did not look inside.

Kristien

[See image gallery at www.littleluceyfarm.com]

Bees from 3 frames of capped brood shaken into a deep. Transported to Mel and Dawn’s yard. Additional nurse bees added by shaking all the bees from my Q1 queen hive (deep, 10 frames) into the new nurse hive. Q1 queen was marked and easily found. She stayed in the Q1 hive, held onto a frame with a 3-legged screen. Added 1 frame of brood (without young larva), one frame of pollen and one frame with honey. Some mixed frames and some empty frames. 9 in total. Space for the special frame that holds the queen cup. Nurse hive closed all but a halve inch.  Set up side by side with Q1 hive. This was a mistake. Many bees flew back to the Q1 hive.

[See image gallery at www.littleluceyfarm.com] June 8, 2014: 2 days later: young larva grafted into the cups (about 30). Source: frame of brood from split from Mel’s hive with dark queen and a frame of brood from one of Mel’s full size hives (2nd from the house, this one had a new queen, which we marked yellow).

Weather since: hot and humid. Nectar flow going well with clover and persimmon in the neighbors yard.