Saturday, April 23, 2011

One week later.....

This morning I opened up the hive for the first time in the daytime. It's been one week so I wanted to see how things were progressing and also look for the queen. After smoking them and taking the top off I looked at a few of the frames in the honey super. The comb is being drawn out nicely. I set the super off and took a couple of frames out of the brood super. This makes room for me to just slide over the rest of the frames as I inspect them. I saw capped brood cells and larva in different stages of development. Everything looked good except.......I also saw queen cells and I never found the queen. Now,not finding the queen isn't bad. Sometimes it takes even an experienced beekeeper a couple of times to find her but not finding her AND having queen cells being built means to me that I've lost my queen and they are in the process of replacing her. I'll ask the instructor Wednesday night about it. Have I mentioned I'm going to a beginners beekeeping class? It's being given by the University of Arkansas County Extension service. The instructor is the "head beekeeper" for the state. I started putting it all back and when I was trying to put the honey super back on I must have mashed some bees or angered them is some way because I got stung twice. I think it was my fault for getting complacent with the bees. I was handling the frames without gloves and the bees didn't seem to be bothered by it. I should have smoked the brood to drive the bees down and smoke the honey super to calm those bees.

2 comments:

  1. I *never* see my queens.

    The queen cells may mean that the bees are looking to replace the existing queen. Or, they could be like my crazy bees. They could just like building those structures. Where were they cups? The location is said to be telling. If they are in the middle of the frame, it's said to be an "emergency supercedure" cell.

    Are the cups open on the bottom, or closed up? (Did you get any drawn comb with your bees? I forget....)

    If you've got no queen at all, and she didn't lay any eggs, before you lost her, you're going to be in trouble. Give things time.

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  2. I took my brand new hive to the guy. So no, there was no drawn comb before the bees were put in their new home. The biggest queen cell is in the middle like the emergency supercedure but there is one on the bottom of a frame and another near the top of a frame but drawn out like the ES type cell. I have larva in different stages of developement and maybe some eggs. I really couldn't tell about that.


    I was hoping to spot the queen to see if she was marked or not. I plan on marking my queens. The key word is 'planning' :)

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