2017 Bee hive swarm information, history, lessons, successes, etc.

[Happy Chooks]

I'm glad it's going well with the caught swarms!

I hope to check my queenless hive today and see if they have made any queen cells.

 

[soarwitheagles]

I'm glad it's going well with the caught swarms!

I hope to check my queenless hive today and see if they have made any queen cells.

Happy,

Well, were there any new queen cells?

 

[Happy Chooks]

Happy,

Well, were there any new queen cells?

I ran out of time and didn't get into the hive. Hopefully today. I should know better than to try to do anything on a Tuesday, just too busy with kids' activities.

 

[Happy Chooks]

I managed to get into the hive today. 2 nicely capped queen cells, and one smaller queen cell that is capped also. There are a few uncapped queen cells also. So, it looks like this hive is back on it's way to being queen right.

Hive #2 is filling up the super FAST! The wonderful smell of curing honey in the air.

 

[soarwitheagles]

Nice to see you have some queen cells! The bees are doing their job! Yeah team!

I hope you have some super healthy and super productive, prolific laying queens HC. Drones are still out in force, so you should have no problem with the queens finding mates...

 

[Happy Chooks]

Yeah, we are right in our prime season up here. So it should be fine for mating. If it doesn't work out, I can get a queen from the beekeeper I got my bees from originally. This was only the 2nd frame of open brood I put in, so they are interested in making queens! Now to stay out of the hive until the end of the month.

 

[soarwitheagles]

Well, checked out two of my new nucs and it did not look so good. One nuc was down from 5 frames of bees to 1 frame. Queen looked like a total runt. Second nuc was full of bees, but I could not find and eggs, larvae, nor the queen...

Swarm update: I have not caught even one swarm in the last two weeks...the local beekeeprs moved nearly every hive...so I think that is where most of my swarms came from...

 

[Happy Chooks]

In the first nuc, was the queen a mated queen or virgin? With this rain, if she was a virgin, she may not have been able to mate? Strange on nuc #2.

 

[soarwitheagles]

In the first nuc, was the queen a mated queen or virgin? With this rain, if she was a virgin, she may not have been able to mate? Strange on nuc #2.

Happy,

Neither of these two nucs had a queen or virgin queen. We pulled these frames from a productive hive that had a bunch of swarm cells. Then we cut out 4 of the queen swarm cells and placed two cells in each nuc...

I think each nuc should have had a laying queen by now...

I hope to check again later this week if I can find some time...

 

[Happy Chooks]

Ah, I see. Hopefully you are early, and she just hasn't started laying yet.