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.

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!

I put it together using old equipment and excess lumber and coroplast laying around the house. I was lucky enough to find a piece of molding exactly the width I needed to use for the inner covers.

There are only three compartments to account for the smaller frames.

I have two questions before it goes into use:

1. Is a 5/8″ circular hole adequate for the entrance? Or should I drill a couple in a row as had already been done on the front of the box?

2. Should I make 1″ screened holes along the top on the front and the back for ventilation? I’m sweating just thinking how hot it could get in that closed box.

UPDATE:

I modified the solid bottom board to make three screened channels, one for each compartment.  I feel much better about the ventilation within the castle at this point.

6/21/14  On 6/19 we populated two compartments of the castle in preparation for the cells from Round 2.  Round 2 failed.  This morning I checked to see how many bees remained in the castle.  In the compartment on the left there were very few bees, maybe 100.  They were clustered just in the space between 2 frames in an area about the size of my palm.  In the compartment on the right, there were about twice as many bees.  They covered the same area but in the two spaces between three frames, maybe 200 bees.  I’m not at all certain that this would have been enough bees to support the queen in her transition had we been successful with the cell rearing.