 |
| Capped Honey |
Well I've been a little preoccupied with a wedding. My son wed his best friend on Saturday! Congrats Steven and Emily.
The fact that I had a wedding does not mean the bees have been neglected. Kris has been a diligent bee-keeper and checks them daily. All the hives have been behaving, well, until last Thursday when this report came in from Kris:
I went down to look at the bees tonight. Lyle told me that if I saw bees crawling up the hive before taking off, they were stealing honey and preparing a swarm. They climb the box before take off to get the extra lift they need due to the extra weight of the honey. Well, I saw bees doing that on the Phoenix hive. So, I took off the lid, and holy-moly the Phoenix has risen. This hive didn't have any supers on it.
So, I suited up, grabbed a queen excluder and a super and went in. Their were queen cups on the bottom of several center frames. There were also drone cells. The second brood box was full. I scraped off the queen cups, no capped queen cells, and the drone cells. They were pretty angry and I had no smoke, so I didn't look for the queen. I also didn't look for eggs/larvae b/c it was obvious she has been laying by the amount of bees. So I just smushed what need to be smushed and put the excluder and super on.
Lyle and the Dudist looked fine. Some bees above the excluder, but still drawing out comb.
Good enough. As aptly named the Phoenix hive has risen. Yay bees.
Then today, while I was at work. This message came from Kris:
Bee emergency!!!!
Sealed queen cells in Lyle's hive. I scraped them off. Definitely swarm cells. Bees very agitated. I got stung. (I was in a t-shirt and flip flops. My own damn fault) Bees were very agitated. Not much going on above queen excluder, so I went into top deep. Bees did not want me in there. Now I know why. So, I need my bee bitches to come look. I did not see evidence of egg/larvae?? Maybe they need a new queen? Maybe I shouldn't have done that? I need to call for a meeting? I leave for a week out of town on Sunday.
Let me explain as simply as possible - THIS IS BAD!
A phone call later, the plan is to go in at 8 am tomorrow morning and hunt down our queen. At this point we don't know what is going on. We have narrowed it down to one of two things a) we have a failing queen or a dead queen or b) they just want to swarm. If we find our queen we are going to make a grab for her and clip a wing. The reason for this is to keep her from flying off with half of the hive. We also need to look at brood pattern, eggs and larva to determine if we even have a queen in the event we don't find her. This may be why we have queen cells; they are trying to make a new queen.
Gaaa. It's all so confusing!
I hope we find the queen. This would ease Kris' mind. See, she scraped off some queen cells today and is now concerned that if we don't have a queen she may have complicated things. Plus, to add insult to injury she has been stung on the thigh and has a rather large welt from our very aggressive hive. There seems to be no lack of things to concern new bee-keepers. Or maybe it's how it is with all bee-keepers? I don't know. Anyhow, here we are, as ever, confused and going to school on the bees. One hive rising from the ashes and the other trying to burn itself down.
Peace,
Karen
No comments:
Post a Comment