and the man sitting opposite me says “that’s a first” and I say “
for me too”
I am not sure that my adventures so far are what I expected
from bee keeping but I have to say it is a lot of fun.
So regular readers will know that we have 2 hives, one of
which has been quite challenging. We had
an issue with the feeder when they were initially put in the hive, the feeder
was leaking which meant that the bees were not being fed well and some of them
drowned due to the leaking. Although we were able to get them more stabilised
and we had a couple of sightings of the queen as well as seeing our first bees
emerging from the larva in this hive, but they did not grow at the same speed
as the other hive and we probably added the second super too soon.
We did an inspection June 13th and there were
eggs and larva, but when we looked again on the 25th there were no
eggs, we had added a third super on the previous inspection which had no activity
at all, and it seemed clear to us that we no longer had a queen.
We decided to buy a new queen.
So we bought one. I was away that weekend and Lynn
picked her up from Union Square and took her home. The installation is another
lesson in beekeeping but suffice it to say that after some stings and stories
the new queen was installed on the bottom board.
The following Thursday we were both very excited to see what
was happening in the hive. We had to work our way down to the bottom and in the
first super we saw what we thought was a hatched queen cell. There were a few
eggs visible and some larva too, did we have a new queen that the hive produced
or was the queen we bought active?
The second super also had a hatched queen cell, but there
was no activity at all in these frames. Removing this super we saw the queen
cage still on the bottom board surrounded by bees. Removing the box we saw the queen among the
bees, far easier to spot than our previous queen as she was a marked queen. It was not clear if she had just been released
or if she was being kept away from the rest of the hive by the bees surrounding
her. Regardless of why, she was not going to be able to do her job from the
bottom board.
What to do next………………
My first instinct, which I wish I had stayed with, was to
put the hive back together and let the bees work it out. The next thought was
to put her in one of the supers. Lynn was more concerned than I was that she
was still on the bottom board, and offering the queen the hive tool she hopped
on and I lifted her up to put her in one of the supers, and she flew away.
This was my worst moment in bee keeping so far, I deeply
regretted not going with my first instinct, but it was done and we needed a new
queen, or did we?
We had seen 2 hatched queen cells, perhaps we had a queen,
albeit a home grown one and in a fairly weak hive, was this good idea?
We decided to buy a new queen.
I picked her up from Union Square on Saturday morning, the
attendants were dead, so I was a little concerned, and my fears were realised
as by the time we got to Jersey City she was dead.
Trust me, I have never had this many problems with queens
before, but back to the bees.
We were offered a replacement queen, and then an exciting opportunity
presented itself, we were offered a feral colony that had been retrieved from a
branch. They had a queen and were producing comb which had existing brood, we
could combine this with the rapidly diminishing colony we currently had. It
seemed the perfect solution, a new queen, more bees and a potentially stronger
hive.
After some negotiation and the repackaging the bees in a
small cardboard box with a screen I went to pick them up.
This in itself was an adventure, I had to locate a parked
truck in Manhattan, remove the orange cone on top and there were the bees. There
were a few bees on top of the box, interested in what was going on, but after
some encouragement to leave I attached the box to the top of my wheelie case
and off we went. We hailed a cab, which
was happy to take us, secured the bees in the back and set off for the PATH.
Once on the PATH train the box attracted some attention.
There was one guy who was very interested and asked several questions. A couple
of people took a look and then took a second look just to check what they saw. One
woman asked if I had a tarantula and as we were about to get off the man
sitting opposite me says “that’s a first” and I say “for me too”
So having successfully transported the bees to Jersey City
we had to add them to the hive. We used the newspaper method, putting 2 layers
of newspaper on the top of the super and then adding a new super, we put some
slits in the newspaper, which was recommended in some places and not in others.
However, the advice I liked best was the
one that said the slits were for the beekeeper and that the bees don’t care either
way.
Once we took the tape
off the box and removed the screen I took out the comb and placed it in the
super, tipped over the box to drop in the “newbees” and everyone tumbled into
their new home. We shook the screen to get the last of the bees in the super,
added the base of one of the feeders so that they had some water and the job
was done. The bees were very calm, so I hope that is a good sign and that in
the next few days they work their way through the newspaper and form one big
happy colony.
