New Bee Hatching!

Today I checked on the bees and they are putting honey in the supers which is awesome! We weren't expecting much honey if any this year.  I didn't go too deep into the brood chambers so as not to disturb the queen, but went just far in enough on the top box to catch a video of a baby bee hatching! Super cool! My GoPro appears to be crapping out on me, so I took off a glove and used my iphone for this one. Enjoy!

Queen Acceptance! Eggs, Larvae & Capped Brood

Last Friday I checked the bees and found some capped brood in the top box! I didn't have a lot of time that day and that was really all I needed to see, so I closed 'er up! Woohoo...this means the new queen has been accepted and is laying!!! Best news ever! Unfortunately my GoPro crapped out on me so I didn't get any of the video I thought I got.

Today my dad came up and we checked some more. We found more eggs, larvae and capped brood in the top and middle box. So, not sure which box the queen is in. We didn't see any in the bottom, so we swapped the top and bottom box. Since the queen tends to move up, this will give her space to lay more eggs in the top. We also swapped out a couple frames of funky comb with some empty frames with drawn comb.  While the colony was queenless, they spent their time packing more honey and pollen into the cells and building weird comb. This of course didn't leave much empty comb for the queen to lay in. So, today we saw some weird frames with little patches here and there of eggs & brood. Hopefully she'll work her way up to the empty frames and fill in a nice pattern of brood! We should have some new workers hatching real soon too, which will help increase numbers, and provide more bees to build more comb for her to lay in. Here's a video from today:

We are so behind now, when we should have tons of bees, because we had to re-queen the hive. Since they were queenless for so long, their numbers dwindled instead of multiplying. So, it's pretty unlikely that we'll get much honey this year, if any at all. This year will likely just be a "keep the bees alive" season as we work to build the colony back up, and hope to get them through winter for another chance next year.

Unfortunately due to the "catastrophic event" that happened with the guy we pre-ordered a nuc from, we are not going to get any bees into our second hive either. However, I did sign myself up with the MN hobby beekeepers' directory of beekeepers willing to capture a swarm. SO, if some poor soul finds a swarm of bees has landed in their backyard on the west side of the cities, we may just get lucky and have a chance to try capturing some "freebees!!" Now THAT would make for a great vide! Fingers crossed! Till next time, here are a couple shots from my iphone today!

taking a drink of sugar syrup!

hangin' at the entrance

Removing the tape!

Today I made a quick stop to remove the duct tape from the end of the new queen's cage! She has been in there for two days now so the bees are hopefully getting used to her scent. I could definitely tell a difference in the mood of the bees this time...they sounded pretty angry the last couple times, but a lot more mellow today. I'm gonna tell myself it's because they are so happy to have a new queen in the hive! Haha!

From what I've read, if the queen cage is being mobbed by bees and they won't go away when you brush them off, the likelihood they will cluster around her and kill her when she's released is high, and you should keep her in there longer. But, they seemed fine with me brushing them off today and didn't come back, so I think they are getting accustomed to her.

I put the sugar syrup back on in case they need more now for building comb and caring for future brood...we'll see if they take any this week.

Here's a video of what I did today!

May 16 - Installing a New Queen!

Today the odds were in my favor as our bee supplier in Stillwater just got a shipment of mated queens in, right at the moment I needed to go get one in order to still get her installed and make it home by the time the school bus arrived! I drove out to Stillwater (a little over an hour), purchased a queen and some more smoker fuel & pellets, and then turned around and drove back!

I then got my stuff together and headed over to the hive to put her in. It was recommended to put tape over the candy plug for the first couple days, and then go back to remove it. This will give the bees more time to adjust and get used to her, and increase the likelihood of them accepting her.  Since pulling a piece of tape off a roll with sticky, bulky gloves doesn't work well I pre-tore some duct tape in half and folded over the ends, so they'd be super easy to grab and tear off when I got there.

Jim (our bee supplier) said to just put her wherever most of the bees are, and not to make things harder for us by putting her in the bottom box where we have to take everything apart. So, I put her right in the center box.

I  will go back in a couple days to remove the tape. Then it should take them a couple more days to free her by eating the candy plug! We'll then go back at some point and..fingers crossed...will hope to see some eggs!

Here's a quick video of me installing the queen!

Checking the Bees...The Queen is Gone! :-(

Today we checked in on the bees and confirmed our suspicions...our queen is gone! There were no new eggs and no brood. :-( It seems this year instead of doing my first split, I'll have my first re-queening experience! Aaah, well, either way it's a new lesson in beekeeping! So, the next order of business is to find a new one asap! In the meantime, since the bees are bringing in honey and haven't touched the feeder pail, we took that off and put on a wet honey super. My guess is they may need it back once there's a new queen laying again, and they want to start building more comb and caring for brood, but we'll see... Hopefully soon I'll get my hands on a new queen, and then will post a video of her arrival! The latest on the nuc is that it won't be available until late May now. Stay tuned!


Here's a still shot from the inside of the hive with some frames removed, looking out toward the entrance!

Checking the Bees: April 30 & May 3, 2018

We've had just a couple quick visits with the bees since my last post so I decided to lump them together in this post!

On April 30th the Mite Away Quick Strips had been on for 1 week so it was time to take them off. So, I went out and removed those, replaced the sugar syrup pail, and that was it! It was super windy and I had a hard time even lighting my smoker, let alone keeping any smoke where I puffed it, so I didn't want to get any deeper into the hive and upset the bees. Dad was planning to come a few days later so we looked more then!

On May 3rd we both went out and checked on the bees...not so windy so we were able to look more. We found that the eggs we saw in the last post were now capped brood, however, we did not see any new eggs.

The eggs we saw last time are capped brood now

By now we expected to have seen a lot more eggs, and brood in the various stages of development...larvae, etc. However, it appears the queen stopped laying between our last visit when we saw these eggs and now. This could mean that we've possibly lost our queen, which of course would be a big bummer...now to do a little research and decide if we may want to let the bees re-queen themselves or purchase a new queen. But for now we'll give them a little more time before we do anything. We are hoping to have a NUC soon to install in the other hive, so for now will let them "bee" until that arrives, and will check in on them when we go back to install the NUC.  Other than that, we did a reversal...swapping the middle and top boxes. Here's a video from both days!

So, that's it for now...as long as the NUC comes in some time soon, the next post you'll see will be installing new bees!! :-D

We Spotted Eggs, did some cleaning & MAQS!

Today was the first nice day since...well...ever! (this season!) Last week's blizzard gave us FEET of snow but it's mostly gone now and it was in the mid 60's! This gave us a chance to open up the hive, look through all of the frames, and clean all the winter "crud" out of the bottom board. We opened up all the entrances and Dad put in a couple Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS). So, we had to take off the feeder pail for this week...they weren't taking much from it anyway. They have been loving the pollen patties though and are bringing in pollen from somewhere! Our friend who's land the bees are on says there have been tons of bees on their compost pile...interesting! They must be finding something tasty there!

We scraped off some goofy comb which you can see in the video in hopes they will follow the pattern in the foundation when they rebuild, except for one frame that had eggs in the goofy comb. So, good news, we know the queen is the top box and she's doing her thing. No capped brood yet though so we are early on in spring's baby bees! Next week we plan to take off the MAQS's, do a reversal (put the top box on bottom, and bottom on top) and put the feeder pail back on. Once we get more frames of eggs, larvae and capped brood, we may be able to do a divide! (turn the one hive into two) We also expect to have a NUC in the next week or two, to put in the other empty stack. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here's a video of what we did today!!