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!.

I missed the memo (as in didn’t read email before I left) that there was only space for one colony.  I set up the nucs with food but didn’t open them yet.  I wanted to see if it seemed that robbing was going to be an immediate issue.  This time the vent space that leads to the feeders is in the back of the box so maybe robbing won’t be quite the issue it was.

Then back to Thurmont to get some blocks to put the castle on.  I’m planning on setting up another pallet but it’s Sunday and I don’t have access to any today.  The one I have at home is not strong enough to hold both bees and beekeepers!

Upon my return, the nucs looked good there were a few bees flying around the vent but no activity at the entrances.

I set up the castle on blocks temporarily.  Here’s a picture of the out yard when I left:

On to the inspection:

The right side (as viewed from the rear) of the castle was sad.  The queen cell had hatched but there was no sign of the queen at all.  The population of the hive was about 75% drones, 25% workers.  They had no stores, apparently robbed out entirely.  I decided to shake the bees off the frames into the grass in front of the hive, close the side entrance and remove the divider between this compartment and the center.  Now the center has 6 frames.

The center seems to be going strong.  They have good stores and have polished out an area in anticipation of a laying queen. I was unable to check the swarm cell for hatching as I didn’t bring a smoker and they were looking pretty bothered.  I didn’t see a queen but feel the bees have confidence that one is coming soon.

The left side (as viewed from the rear) was on the sad side of things.  The population was better but not great.  The queen cell had not hatched so I removed the protector with the cell for autopsy once I returned home.  The bees have begun a queen cell.

I am very unclear where the egg for this cell came from.  Would a worker lay a single egg in a last ditch effort?  You can see that the cells surrounding the queen cell do not have eggs in them.  Hmmm.

I placed syrup on each colony, opened the entrances to the nucs and two sections of the castle that still have bees, placed bricks on the top of each and left.  Hopefully peace will prevail!

Now the autopsy:

In this picture, you can see the underdeveloped larva in the queen cell (I think this was the cell that appeared to have royal jelly left over.  It was larva.)

And here’s the most telling part of the autopsy:

VARROA!  I found this little monster running on the cell wall shortly after I opened it.  I killed it before I took the picture.

Questions:

1.  Did we keep track of which nurse colony our cells came from.  I know all 4 of mine came from the deep.  Who has cells from the medium?  Is there a survival difference between the two?

2.  Should we have been feeding honey and pollen to the nurse colonies to improve nutrition?

Lessons:

1.  Take a smoker to the out yard.  If you don’t, you may not be able to complete everything you wanted to do!

2.  Varroa are harmful to the queen rearing process.

I immediately closed off the entrances and removed the food.  I went ahead and did an inspection of both nucs. In the purple nuc, which had contained the first emerged descendent of George, I found no sign of the queen and a very small capped queen cell:

You can see that the queen cell is barely longer than the bee tending it.

In the orange nuc, more sad news.  This is the queen cell that I entirely removed the protector from.  I thought it looked like the bees were accepting the cell well.  So proof positive that bee behavior remains a mystery to me:

I apologize for the quality of the photography at this point.  The large dark area on the cell is the perfect circle the bees had chewed out to reveal the immature larva within.  The larva did not seem as developed as I would have expected.  I wonder if this was a cell that maybe didn’t receive enough royal jelly and was not going to fully develop after all.

Instead, the bees are working on this:

This appears as conjoined queen cells.  The one on the left is capped and (if you use your imagination) you can see the larva in the top of the one on the right.  (I could actually see the larva but the photography lacks!)

The plan at this point is to move the nucs (and queen castle) to the outyard.  This should relieve the pressure from the larger colonies next door and keep the bees from my prying eyes for a bit.  (I’m sure they’ll appreciate that!)

Lessons I’m learning here:

1.  I need to set up stronger nucs, particularly during nectar dearth, so they can be more resilient and able to fend for themselves.

2.  It may actually be a wise idea to double up on the queen cells in the mating nucs.  Just because the cell is capped, it does not necessarily follow that the larva will develop without incident.

George 2 out of cell and cage

George 2 on her tummy

George 2 her back

She wasn’t quite dead yet, After looking at her closely for a few seconds I saw a little movement. For some reason the bees just abandoned her. Maybe she was too weak to make it out of the cell, but then how did the tip get opened? So many questions.

Hive 7 was a little different. The cell was not opened yet, but there were three or four bees frantically running around the cell inside the cage. Being day 18 I really don’t think this queen can be viable either, but I left it where it was and closed up the hive. Assuming that the queen is not viable, I’ll have to do something with those bees soon. They are probably headed for the weakest hive – #4.

Hive 6 only had a handful of bees with another handful of capped brood cells available. I opened the cage and I expect that she will be out by tomorrow.

[See image gallery at www.littleluceyfarm.com]

Hive 7 had more bees and lots of capped brood on both sides of one frame, but neither hive had any young brood to provide some work for the nurse bees. Perhaps this is why so many bees have fled. It did appear that hive 7 was starting to store some nectar in the frame of previously empty comb.

[See image gallery at www.littleluceyfarm.com]

I will have to keep a close eye on the number of bees and probably add some to hive 6 if not both. I have not yet started to feed so I will need to do that tomorrow.

Just emerged from the cell

Her first steps on to comb

She immediately checks to see if her abdomen will fit in the cells!

The next nuc is the orange one.  This is one that Andrew grafted from George. When I separated the frames a large portion of the wax holding the protector on came off on the frame.  I decided to just remove the protector entirely.  The bees seem to accept the cell well.

An aside on this hive, when I opened the hive there was a bee trying to remove the purple thread.  As soon as I took the inner cover off she began flying while holding the string.  She continued to go in frustratingly small circles until I offered her my arm.  She laid the thread across my arm and flew away.

I opened the cell protectors on the two nucs in the queen castle without incident.  I believe the queen on the left one will emerge within hours as I can already see a circle that has been chewed around the bottom of the cell.  I am a little concerned about this colony as there are probably no more than a half cup of bees.  Is there a way I can introduce more bees without upsetting the whole operation?

The bee density was not as strong as we had hoped for.   A possible solution to this is to gather the bees for the nurse colony in one yard and maintain the colony in another.

Success!

There were 9 queen cells on the frame (one doesn’t show in this picture.  Todd, do you have any better pictures of this frame?)

Then we moved on to the medium nurse colony:

 The bee density here was better.

Side 1:

Kg Kg Kg Kg Kl Kl Kl
Kg = Kristien Grafted George
Kl = Kristien Grafted Lisa

Side 2:

Lg Lg Ml Ml Ml Ml Ag Ag
Ag Ag Ag
Lg = Liz Grafted George
Ml = Mel Grafted Lisa
Ag = Andrew Grafted George

That’s 10 queen cells on the scraped frame!

Then Kristien’s eagle eyes spotted this:

 A swarm cell!  Those crowded bees have been busy!

A grand total of 20 queen cells between the two nurse colonies!

We went into the house and had a strategy meeting to figure out how many of these cells we could possibly provide mating nucs for.  After much consideration, we came up with a plan to develop 17 mating nucs. Any cells beyond 17 will be doubled up in one of the nucs.  We’ll each go home and prepare our yards and return at 5 in the evening to put the cells into their protectors and place the queen cells in the nucs at Kristien’s. By now it was approaching 11:30.

Now the work began!

I went home and immediately set up the nurse colonies in two new medium nucs.  I closed the entrances with screen so that the bees will be confined until the queen emerges.  That was complete by about 1 pm. Then I made circular holes in the covers for the side compartments in the queen castle so that I could feed each colony.  I mixed up 1:1 syrup, enough to feed everybody in the yard, hoping to avoid any kind of robbing. I organized the frames of comb and stores that I plan to use to establish the side compartments of the queen castle.  The brood frame will come from Kristien.

With those tasks completed, I returned to Kristien’s to pick up the queen castle and the queen cells.

We lined the top of each protector with a thick bead of wax to adhere the protector to the queen cell.  Kristien removed the cells from the scraped frame and each person placed their designated queens into protectors.  I took the two successful grafts I had on the deep frame and two of Andrew’s successful grafts.  We left the swarm cell in the center compartment to mature and mate which makes for a total of 5 mating nucs I’ll be tending in my yard.

I returned to my yard at about 7:15 and got to work.  Kristien came a few minutes later to help me out.  Together we placed the protected queen cells between the frames of brood in each nuc, arranged the food and then closed them up.

Now time will tell!

We ended an incredible day of beekeeping with a delicious dinner at Simply Asia.  Yum!

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.