#bees beekeeping

QUEEN SPOTTING

Given our lurid history of queen stomping, it’s always a good day when we can see that our queens are alive, well and un-stepped-upon. So it was an exceptionally good day when we found the queens in both Top Hive (above) and in Layens Hive (below). 

DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS MAN?

On Sunday April 9, between roughly 7:00 pm and 7:45 pm security cameras video-ed this man ripping apart a styrofoam hive box that was discreetly tucked away in a corner of our driveway. It held the swarm we’d captured less than an hour earlier.

It’s surprising that this guy noticed it. But when he did, went crazy. He yanked out frames, tried to eat the honey and scattered bees and comb the full length of the driveway. Oddly enough, from what we could see on the security footage, he didn’t seem to have been stung. But perhaps the bees were still in their docile swarm state.

As his parting shot, took the strap, that been wrapped around the styrobox to wear as a belt! The police came and didn’t recognize him the pictures. But if you do, please contact the Philadelphia Police.

The whole experience is infuriating and demoralizing. It’s hard to know how much damage he’s done. But beyond that: Why would someone damage a hive? I just don’t get it.

TINNIE 

“We are tinnie,” that’s Davey reacting in his native Kiwi to our stunning discovery on the roof last night.

Let me back up and explain...  Yesterday after work, we did a mite check. (I’ll show you exactly what we did in a later post.) Why? The state bee inspector, during his visit, had stressed the importance of tracking the mite load in our hives — especially going into winter. So we dutifully checked both healthy hives (I’m calling them healthy because we know they have queens).

Then just because .. we checked the merged hive. The reason I say “just because” is that since a queen-less hive won’t survive winter there’s no real reason to inspect it. But we did anyway and were amazed at what we saw: Eggs and larvae -- it means there’s now a laying queen in the merged hive where there wasn’t a week ago! 

How is that possible? Didn’t the bees “off” the queen when we merged the hives? They did.  BUT... then they raised one of her eggs to be their new queen. The timing works. It takes 16 days for a queen to emerge. Then another 10 days or so for mating flights. Plain and simple, despite everything... we lucked out. Absolutely amazing or as Davey says, “Tinnie.”

BAD NEWS

Biting our nails (and with a houseguest in tow for moral support), we finally opened the merged hive. It had been several weeks since we’d inserted the healthy styro-hive into our queen-less horizontal hive separated by a thin, newspaper “wall”. From the moment we lifted the lid, we saw change.

The “wall” was gone — all that remained was this tiny scrap of newsprint. There was way more honey — 8 deep frames. Each frame weighs about 8 lbs (3.6 kg), so you do the math — lots! There also seemed be more bees. Another good sign.

But as we went frame-by-frame, we never saw the one bee that mattered — the queen. We searched, hoping we’d missed her in the crowd. But we also hadn’t seen eggs or larvae. When reached the last frame, we had to concede: She was gone.

What happened to the queen?

Our best guess: What we took to be a welcoming committee, eagerly shredding  the paper wall to say hello, was in fact a “hit” squad, intent on murder.

Was our wall too thin? Did we set it up incorrectly? Is merging a horizontal hive trickier than a conventional one? All possibilities. 

But for now, this is a dead hive walking. It won’t survive the winter without a queen. Can we get a new queen this late in the season? If not, what do we do with all the honey? 

MERGING THE HIVES

We'd discussed merging with state inspector. We’d read up about the process. We'd prepped both hives. But actually putting them together was a bit of a big gulp. Still, we did it.

We started early — just after dawn when the winds on the roof were relatively calm. First, Davey moved the six-frame styro-hive (with queen) closer to the queenless horizontal hive. (Less distance between the hives equals less opportunity to drop and crush another queen.) We gave the bees a little smoke. Then Davey lifted the frames, one by one, into the big horizontal hive. 

ROBBING SCREEN

A couple days ago, Davey made this homemade robbing screen for our weaker styro-nuc. He used wire cloth, tin snips and BFI (brute force and ignorance — it takes real finger strength to bend that wire!) 

The idea of the screen is that it narrows the hive entrance. so the bees have less to defend. It also, or so we believe, thwarts robber bees. (But in this, as all things bee-related, still feeling skittish following our queen-killing incident.)

MORE DROWNINGS 

We feel like the worst bee owners in the world!! Overnight, we did it again. We killed more bees in our hive-top feeder. Despite having checked that the feeder and its lid were seated securely. Despite making sure (or so we thought) that there were no gaps or places for bees to enter the feeder except through the bee-safe chutes.