Month: June 2019

The two queen colonies are rapidly running out of space in their small frame Nucs/mating boxes. I decided to re-cage the 2 remaining queens into one box for banking. Hopefully the quenless colonies will begin to create new queens.

I was called out to the campus to inspect the Wild17 swarm colony. The colony has been bearding on the front entrance for days. The weather has been warmer, but nothing above 85F. The crowding and the temperatures inside must be intolerable for so many bees to be bearding on the front. I decided to simply drop the bee beard into a Nuc box with one frame of resources and one frame of nurse bees with brood and give them a banked queen. The queen was from the WildCA18A queen mother.

New swarm colony, WildCA19B was opened and inspected 12 days after install. The colony is extremely calm and focused. No smoke or bee suit was used. Not a single bee was flying during the inspection. Queen was found and is laying. Capped brood was found. Capped honey was found. Almost all 5 frames have been built out with newly drawn comb. Extremely well behaved colony.

All hives on campus berm have normal entrance activity. Wild17 swarm which was re-queened on June 2nd was opened. The queen cage was empty and removed. No further inspection performed. Next inspection we will look for a laying queen.

Bee swarm caught on May 30 was opened. The queen was still caged and ready to be released. The queen was released this morning after 4 days of being sequestered. The colony has drawn out comb and should now be anchored.

Woody’s pond hive was opened and is queen right. Three frames which have poorly drawn comb were fixed. Several frames have excellent brood patterns. The colony looks in excellent health.

The final remaining swarm catcher located at the Smith building on campus was seen with bees circling and entrance activity. Upon further inspection, there is only a handful of bees in the catcher and no queen. Not certain if these are bees stranded from a swarm or if these are scout bees.

Queens which were raised from the WildCA18A colony genetics were banked and one was removed to be placed into the Wild17 colony split. The Wild17 colony has been re-queened and the queen should be released from the queen cage in next 36 hours. The mother of Wild17 was kept with the other banked queens.

One of the starter colonies is still not yet laying eggs. That colony was left alone until signs of mated queen are found. The laying queen from another colony was banked and left queen-less. This colony will be used to raise more queens.

All berm hives at the campus were inspected. All hives were queen right and beginning to store excess amounts of nectar. Hives installed on April 28 are growing fast and moving into the supers.

Queen was removed from the Wild17 colony split. Queen in Wild17 split is known to have more aggressive genetics than others. This combined with the spotty brood pattern and the presence of several supercedure cells indicated a replacement was long over due.

Officer Ed’s colony was also inspected. Normal entrance activity and a normal amount of bees were observed. The queen had been freed and the cage was removed.