Exploring the World of Bees…
The pine hive at Grow Gather was determined to be queen less for an unknown reason. I took a queen from the active colony (002) and introduced this queen to the pine hive. Hive (002) is now queen less and ready for the queens from Barnyard bees.
A group of interested future bee keepers was introduced to the 5 hives up on the roof of GG. The experience was treated as a teaching moment and maybe we will have some long term volunteers. However we learned that the Orange hive is indeed missing its queen. The queen must have not come back from a mating flight. I assumed that while the NUC did not have eggs, that the queen was mated. That assumption was incorrect. Next time we will wait until there are eggs before moving.
The Pine hive which was the swarm catch from Officer Ed’s property also had bad news. The Queen was missing along with several worker bees. On one of the frames were a few queen cells being drawn out. So the assumption is that the queen laid a few eggs then swarmed out of the hive with half the workers. The queen may need to be anchored in place a few more days before releasing. However, this queen was in the hive laying for approximately 5 days before absconding.
Corona property hives were opened and inspected. Hive (028 – 029) continues to be a huge producer and still showing no signs of swarming. We do need to perform a more through inspection of the lower box to make sure no swarm cells are being built. A split was made with 3 frames of resources and brood, split (003). The honey super was added to give the bees something to do as nectar is now coming into the hive at a good rate and I would like to keep the brood cells open.
Note: one frame of about half eggs were moved over to GG roof into the Orange hive. We will check this hive to see if they are making queen cells (I could not find the queen in Orange Hive and was tired of looking).
Split (001) was opened and inspected. No eggs were sen yet however the queen looks good and should be laying any day now.
Campus hives were inspected. Hive (018) was opened. The colony is queenright and has good numbers. This queen was a direct queen split from Officer Ed’s colony. This queen is an established and high producing queen. I opened up the honey super for this colony, early.
Bad news on the Woody’s pond hive. This hive immediately shows lower numbers of bees than I would expect. And the queen is missing. I can see one emergency queen cell on a frame. The possibility of this colony swarming is extremely low. The most likely possibility is that the queen died in the last major frost that we had. This is extremely unfortunate as this colony was a first generation Wild CA colony. This colony was my best and high production Wild CA colony to date. Maybe the replacement queen will be as good?
Officer Ed’s hives were inspected once again. The last inspection produced 2 splits with queens. Leaving behind 2 shallow boxes full of bees and a couple of unhatched capped queen cells. It looks like a new queen has emerged and a earlier queen may have smarmed since our last inspection.
While there are still a considerable number of bees, the activity is much lesser and the Queen is clearly unmated. No other unemerged queen cells were seen. This may be the last of the swarming for now. The upper 3rd shallow brood chamber was opened to the bees. This hive does not have a queen excluder.
The 4 split colonies from Corona property were moved to GG. Also the one swarm capture from Officer Ed’s property was moved to GG. One Gallon of sugar water was put in feeder for new colonies.
NUC (001) – GG Yellow
NUC (003) – GG Orange
EDswarm – GG Pine
NUC (030) – GG Blue
NUC(026) – GG Green
Hive at Officer Ed’s property cast a swarm which returned immediately to the hive body. I am not certain if this was a mating flight or if this was simply a swarm. This cluster of bees and queen was captured and put into a the Pine hive body at GG. Subsequently we were able to identify by the Bee’s behavior that this queen was mated and producing pheromones.
Upon opening the main hive body, approximately 4 other unhatched queens were found and an unmated queen was also found. The unmated queen was moved along with a few frames of bees to the Corona property for mating. These bees were put into a 5 frame NUC (001).
Nectar is the second resource which bees require for survival. Nectar is the essential carbohydrate source which bees use to fuel all their activity and reproduction. Nectar which is later transformed into honey is what the bees use to survive the long winter months and periods of dearth.
In early spring the bee colonies are coming out of a period of dormancy and are looking for new sources of pollen and nectar. Early spring is a risky time for bee colonies as they are increasing their daily caloric requirements but do not yet have a nectar flow to harvest. Dandelions are the first sign of a nectar flow in the Denver area and bees are quick to harvest the resource.
Maybe we should think twice before removing this valuable source of nectar. We should most certainly stop using herbicides to destroy these nectar sources.
Corona property mother colony (028-029) was opened and inspected. The queen was found and caged. The colony is doing extremely well but no swarm cells were seen. A 2 frame split was performed and put in 5 frame NUC, (030).
A single frame of all capped brood was moved without bees into the smaller adjoining hive (025). This colony has a viable queen but the numbers are still lagging behind. This frame of brood should increase the numbers substantially.
The 4 splits made at the Corona property should be mated. Some should be laying. A quick inspection revealed that all 4 boxes contain queens and 3 of the boxes have eggs. These hives will be moved the GG rooftop tomorrow.
Split (027) from Officer Ed’s property had failed. The bees did not have enough food resources to survive. The bees starved in the last run of below freezing weather.
