...off with her head part 2

Because Queen Cassandra wasn't laying any worker bees, the supplier suggested that I replace her. He provided a new marked queen for me to replace her with. Replacing her is the equivalent to locating her, killing her, and then putting the new queen in the hive. I was so nervous about finding Queen Cassandra again. I haven't been that great at spotting queens, but now that I have had to so many times this season, I think I have it down. I found her with very little difficulty. I can't say the same for catching her. For some reason, I was terrified to grab her. I didn't want to squish her or pull off her wing; although, I planned to chop her head off when I got her out of the hive. I followed her around the frame for 2 minutes trying to grab her. She was just too fast. So I brushed her onto the ground, and scooped her up in a cup...very novice of me. Smashing this bee seemed so counterintuitive. You spend all your time as a beekeeper trying to keep your queen alive, and I was about to kill her. It had to be done, but it was really very sad. I actually cried the whole time I smashed her and the whole time I recorded the below video. I took video because I wanted to share the pumping abdomen so that you all can visualize what happens when you get stung by a honey bee. It was amazing how long her abdomen pumped...probably 4 minutes or so. This is why it is so important to remove the stinger from a sting as soon as it happens. The quicker you remove the stinger; the less venom will be injected.

Queen Cassandra ended up being a drone laying queen. When I started to do some research on this topic, there were several articles talking about the queen being damaged and then laying only drones. I went back to some earlier photos of her and blew them up. Upon closer inspection, her right wing appears to be damaged.

I had to wait for 24 hours before I placed the new queen in the hive. This is so the bees realize they are queenless and don't try to kill the new queen through the queen cage or when she is released. When going into the hive, I heard the telltale sign that a hive is queenless; a roaring buzz. The below video is of the roaring hive when I first went in and video of me placing the new queen into the hive. When I place the queen in the hive, notice how the bees flock to her cage.

...don't rush me

First off, I am excited to announce that the other hive took to their queen. Queen Penelope is right at home and laying lots of new baby workers!

Queen Cassandra is taking her sweet time with laying eggs. Last week when inspecting her hive, I noticed the same roaring sound that I found in my second hive when the queen was gone. There were no fresh eggs and only capped drone cells. Bad news. I was crushed, and immediately began what I can only call freaking out. I called around to find a replacement queen, but everyone was sold out! What to do?!? Eventually, I was able to get the supplier on the phone. He calmly walked me through what I saw and how I was inspecting the bees. He also asked if the bees were still collecting pollen. They were. He said that the bees would have stopped collecting pollen if she were gone. To discover Cassandra's existence, I took a frame of fresh eggs out of Queen Penelope's hive and placed it in Queen Cassandra's hive. The bees will supersede the queen if she is hurt or missing with these new eggs.

Transferring that frame of eggs was so stressful. I looked and looked at that frame to ensure that Queen Penelope was not on it. She was just beginning to be successful, and I dreaded the fact that I was doing something that risked hurting or losing her. I smoked the frame and brushed the bees back into the hive to clear the frame of bees. I replaced the frame with a new one and took the frame with eggs to Queen Cassandra's hive.

I went into Queen Cassandra's hive today to check for queen cells or new eggs. I didn't see either or those things. The bees had capped some of the brood as workers, but there was no evidence of trying to replace the queen. As I continued through the hive, I didn't find any more brood, but I did find the elusive Queen Cassandra. So she is alive and well, but in no rush to make my life easier.

My next step is to check back for eggs or queen cells in the next few days. Below are some photos of Queen Penelope and Queen Cassandra.

...off with her head

About two weeks ago, I checked in on the queens to ensure they had been released. One Queen, Cassandra, had been properly released. The other queen was still in her cage and all of her workers had died. The sugar had not been eaten through and the dead worker bees were blocking the exit. I decided to directly release her into the hive. The bees were not clinging to her cage usually indicating that they have accepted her scent.

A week later, I went back into the hives to check for a laying queen in both hives. Queen Cassandra had been busy. There were eggs and larva filling a full frame. The other hive had no evidence of a laying queen. Not sure what happened to her, but it probably had to do with being directly released

On Tuesday, I visited the bee store. I bought a new queen and started the 45 minute trek home. By the time I had driven 30 minutes, I noticed that there was no movement in the queen cage. Upon closer inspection, all the workers were dead. The queen was alive, but I wasn't about to risk putting a queen with no workers into my hive. Back to the bee store I went. They were great and replaced the queen.

This queen and her workers made it home safe and sound. The really interesting thing about a queenless hive is the sound they make when you open the box. It is a loud roar for lack of a better term. When I placed the new queen into the middle frame, the bees moved quickly to cover her cage and the roar ceased. This is by far the coolest thing I have seen happen in a bee hive. It looked like a wave of bees just rushing to greet the new queen. I will be sure to video it if I ever have to replace a queen again.

I will be back in the hive next Monday to check on progress. Of course, I will let you all know. Below is a photo of the dead workers. You can see that they are all piled up at the bottom blocking the exit.

...welcome home!

The bees were welcomed into their new homes over the weekend. I was a little worried about the cold and dreary weather, but the sun came out and the temperature rose slightly so I went ahead and put the bees into the hives.

Getting started!

First, I sprayed the bees down with sugar water. Because it was so cold outside, I sprayed them pretty lightly. They needed about 4 hours to clean themselves before the temps dropped below 50 degrees.

I removed 2 frames to place the queen and dump the bees into.

Next, I removed the queen cage and placed it between the 2 middle frames. I had arranged the frames with comb from last year. I put 2 frames full of honey in the middle for the bees to eat. On either side of the honey frames, I placed 2 frames of empty comb/pollen for the queen to lay brood. Outside those frames, I placed a frame of honey and on the very outside, I placed half built comb and empty foundation. The bees produce wax after 15 days and need a place to put the wax so there needed to be empty foundation for them to build.

I tried a new technique to hold the queen cage in place.  A push-pin.  It worked great!

The queen is in a cage with several worker bees. There is a small removable cork that leads to a candy that the bees will eat through to release the queen. This serves as a time release for the bees to get acquainted to the queen's pheromones before she is released into the hive.

After placing the queen, I dumped the worker bees from their shipping container into the hive. I quickly covered them.

At this point, it is still too cold to feed the bees sugar water. They will feed off of the honey in the existing comb until it is warmer. In a couple days, I will go into the hive to ensure that the queen has been released and has started to lay eggs.

So happy to be home!

...brrrrrr, bees!

The bees are in, and it is freezing and rainy. Rachel and I have taken to google to figure out when we should install the bees. We will keep you all posted, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of the bee pick-up.

P.S. Get excited for the big reveal...the new Queens' names!

40,000 bees in the back seat with Kliness

Have you ever kept 20,000 bees in your kitchen?

Great photo of a bee cluster.  The bees are clustered around the queen's cage.  They do this to stay warm.

...here we go again!

You may have noticed that my posts dropped off last October. I am ready to tell the world the sad truth....I killed my bees. Unknowingly, of course, and indirectly, but nevertheless, dead.

I checked in on the hive the Saturday after Thanksgiving; they were alive. It was a beautifully warm day so we checked in on Rachel's too. They were also alive, and they were in a perfect bee cluster. Bees stay in a cluster in the winter that resembles a ball of bees. They do this to stay warm by sharing body heat.

Two weeks later, we had another warm day, and I decided to go knock on the hive to see if I heard buzzing bees inside. Tap tap. No buzz. Tap tap. No buzz. So I suited up and went in the hive....not a bee in sight. No dead bees and not a single live bee. They were gone. Flew the coop. So inadvertently, I must have done something to cause the bees to leave. Chances are they had varroa mites causing them to sense inevitable disaster and collapse of their colony. They had no choice but to leave and build a new home. It was so late in the fall that I doubt they were able to build a new hive with enough honey supplies to last through winter.

Two weeks later, Rachel's bees met the same fate. She went to look in on them. They were still in their bee cluster, but they were all dead. She shifted through the bees, and she wasn't able to find the queen.

Needless to say, we are starting over. We are going with two hives each this year to better our chances of survival. The bees will be delivered at the end of March. We needed new woodware in order to house 2 colonies of bees. Yesterday, we finished painting and priming all of our hives. Here are some photos. I look forward to sharing round 2 with you all.

R.I.P Priscilla and Gwenevere

...making honey

Although this post is super delayed from the actual date of extraction, here is the story about extracting honey.

A couple weeks before our actual extraction, we met with all of the mentor class to learn how to extract.  Our mentors made the process look extremely simple (we learned that this was solely due to experience...we have none).  While at the extraction class, the hive boxes were removed, tilted on their side, and blown with a leaf blower to remove the bees.  Simple right?  After the bees were removed, the box was placed under a blanket to keep the bees from returning to the frames.  The extractor was set up in a building where the frames were removed individually.  Once the frame is taken from the box, the caps are cut off and scraped with a hot knife and a cap scratcher to access the honey.  Four frames are placed in an extractor.  The extractor is a cylinder that has either a hand crank or an electric motor to spin it.  As the extractor spins, the honey is thrown out of the frames and is funneled to the bottom of the barrel and out a hole.  The honey then goes through a double strainer to remove debris (wax, bugs, dead bees) and into another bucket where it is ready to be put into jars.

This is how our extraction went...

Rachel and I are very lucky to have strong colonies.  We planned to take 16 frames off each hive.   As we approached the bee yard, Rachel's hive appeared to be missing.  As we drove closer, we realized her hive had been knocked over.  All the boxes had separated and were scattered about the yard.  There was obvious chaos as well inspected the hive.  The bees were fighting to the death to prevent honey robbing.  Because the hive was open, the honey became an easy target for the 30 hives in the bee yard.  Many of Rachel's bees were dead and some of her honey had been taken.

This shows the robbed honey from one of Rachel's frames.  The empty cells to the right of the frame have been robbed.  The cells on the left are full of honey and still capped.

After setting Rachel's hive back up, we removed 2 supers from her hive and 2 supers from my hive. As we walked over to the leaf blower, it began to rain and thunder.  We should have taken that as a sign, but we didn't.  Leaf blowing turned out to be an awful idea...the bees clung to the frames with all their might and if I was able to blow them out of the box, they quickly flew back in.  I was stung pretty immediately causing a much needed time-out.

Notice the epi-pen in front of me.  I'm allergic to everything...except bees! Better safe than sorry though.

After talking out our next move, we decided to ditch the leaf blower and do it the old-fashioned way; remove each frame, smoke it, and brush the bees off.  After 15 minutes, we had cleared all the bees from the 32 frames and were headed home.  The extracting went seamlessly, and we were soon left with about 7 gallons of honey.

Rachel diligently cleaned each piece of equipment.

Our extractor was bolted to a pallet to hold it in place.  The honey ended up in the white 5-gallon bucket.

Hot knife

After using the hot knife to remove the caps, you use a scratcher to remove any remaining low-lying caps.

This was the 2nd 5-gallon bucket.  It is about half-full.