BeeMail

Third Time the Charm?

I’m not sure if I were Roger I’d be giving me anymore queens. My record so far is not stellar. But I’m not Roger. He called from his office on Saturday to say he’d just watched a few virgin queens emerge. Good off-season use of the bird incubator he bought.

So again he came over with a queen. Unmated. Who knows if the workers will accept her. She’ll need to mate. Who knows if she’ll get eaten by a bird on her way back from mating. It’s mid August. Who knows if she’ll get established strongly enough to make it through winter. At this point it feels like I’d have better odds at the crap table.

Flight of the Honeybee

I waited 48 hours before releasing the new queen Roger gave me and what did she do? She flew away! Unbelievable. Cage off, workers who’d chewed their way in to join her stayed quietly on the comb, while the darn queen took off into the air! She didn’t get far before she nose dived into the grass beneath the hive stand so I was down on my knees searching for her under the nuc. There was a dark movement in the grass, she flew up, I grabbed her (gently of course), and she wiggled out between my cupped hands and flew off into the air! I am so mad!!!

In a Cage

So as I mentioned that Roger called yesterday to say he had another VSH Carniolan queen for me only this time she was mated and had been laying eggs in a two frame nuc. A laying queen is great, though according to Roger she was a little spazzy-sometimes laying 1 egg per cell, but other times plopping out 3, 4 or even 5 eggs per cell. I hope it’s just a matter of

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Success or Mess?

In the past I’ve tended to either micromanage my bees or ignore them. If I was in micromanage mode I’d peek, move things around, go in every other day. In short I was so intrigued by what they were doing that I didn’t let them do what they’ve been doing for millions of years. If I was in ignore mode I either was on vacation, had a ton of work to finish, or decided that it was too hot to get into my suit. Ideally

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Gone

Maybe I gave them too many bees. Maybe they didn’t like her smell. Maybe she was too old to mate. Maybe it was too hot to mate. Whatever the reason Roger’s Carniolan queen is gone and in her place are some rather pathetic supercedure cells. Three in fact. Two are so small that they barely qualified as queen cells. I cut them off. So this hive has one chance to survive. That little bump is what their future depends on. 

Gift Queen

It has been a late and peculiar beekeeping season this year. Both hives That I went into the fall with didn’t make it through the winter which translated into a sad and quiet spring. Then the Russian queens didn’t mate well down in Georgia so my southern packages didn’t show up in April, but instead arrived mid-May.

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