One last look

I checked on my bees one last time before winter sets in.


The bad news, the swarm I caught and never really did anything has left. There were a few dead bees in the bottom of the hive and a few cells of larva but the wax moths had made their presents known so I removed all frames and put them in the freezer for a few days.

The good news, my other hive is thriving. I only took the top off but there were many bees. I'll feed through the winter just to be on the safe side.

Our website

I just wanted to share the web address of our beekeepers association.

www.rivervalleybeekeepers.org

Hail to the Queen

I checked in on my new bees, the swarm I caught last weekend. I found and marked the queen. Now that I've found a queen it's a little easier to find her. I say that and I may never find one again. :)

I don't know how long it takes a new swarm to start producing brood but so far there's not any in this hive.

I caught my first swarm

My first catch! It wasn't a big swarm. In fact it may not have made it on it's own but I put it in the hive that I tried to create a split. The split wasn't going very well and that was my only option for the swarm so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.

I kept seeing little bunches of bees after I would cut the branch and move them to the hive but finally I noticed that some of them were sticking their butt in the air and fanning giving the "the queen is here" signal. I closed the hive up for the night and we'll see what happens.

doing the splits part deux

Today I looked in on my bees. I first looked in on the new hive I am trying to start a new colony in. It didn't look good. Lots of honey and many bees but no brood and the new frames with new foundation hadn't been drawn out. I removed one frame of new foundation and left the hive open for the time being. I next went to my original hive. Good news here. Lots of honey in the top super, lots of honey in the middle super along with some brood. I found a frame that had eggs, yea! I carried it over to the second hive and replaced the one frame I removed with this one. Hopefully they will raise a queen from some of this brood. Back to the original hive. I looked at the other frames and found my queen, double yea! I caught her and marked her. The one thing I'm slightly concerned about is that I'm not seeing the typical bullseye pattern in the brood cells. Other than that the hive seems healthy.

Doing the splits

My bees are going strong so far. I looked in on them today and found brood up in the honey super. I didn't think they were supposed to do that but the last bunch did the same thing. I went out on a limb and took four frames that had brood from the super and started another hive. I heard one guy at the last bee keepers meeting say he had mixed results doing this but I thought I'd give it a try. All I really have to loose is a few bees and some foundation.

Stay tuned for the results.

Starting again

I got more bees yesterday. We'll see how it goes this year. I looked for the queen thinking there wouldn't be as many frame to look over. There were only two frames with brood and I still didn't see her. Oh well.