Month: May 2020

Hive (027) at Corona street has a laying queen and is off and running. The Orange hive at GG has once again rejected a queen, has no brood and has enough bees that should be saved. So we moved the (027) colony into the orange hive. We separated the two sides of the box with the plastic divider and screened the new colony into their box. This prevents the new colony from leaving and the original colony from entering the wrong entrance. 2 days later the screens were removed. And 6 days later the plastic divider was removed.

Hive (003) was queen less for some reason. The emerging virgin queen was seen but never mated. So a new frame of eggs was added.

The single Warre hive that survived from the previous year was split today. The queen went with the split. The queen was found in the top box laying.

Three frames of eggs and larva were moved down into the original brood chamber (016). These will be our queen building frames. Then, three frames of solid capped brood were moved with the queen into Box (008). Also a jar of sugar water in a top feeder was added to the queen split (008).

All campus files were inspected. All campus hives were queen right. This also includes the queen at woody’s pond.

Hive (021) was looking very light on bees but full of eggs. Clearly this queen is laying more than the nurse bees can sustain. I took the Honey super off of hive (018) and swapped it with (021). (021) super was empty and (018) super had a good number of bees inside. I placed a top board between the two boxes and used a piece of tissue as a barrier. A few holes were poked in the tissue. The top for the super was a screened top and I propped up the lid for ventilation. Finally, I very vigorously smoked the top super. Hopefully they will merge and get along.

Corona street NUC hives were inspected. Hive (027) has a queen which by appearance seems to be mated but is not laying eggs yet. Hive(030) for some reason is building new queen cells and I could not find a queen.

Officer Ed Split was moved to Niagara Street and the Failed Barnyard bee queen Nuc which is making queen cells was placed at Corona street for mating.

Hive (019) was moved to the Barrett property in the usual location. This will be the 3rd year that we have located a hive here. All years have produced positive results with hives that have survived the winter. The hive was inspected before the move and was queen right with large amounts of mixed developmental stage brood. A check should be performed in the next month and more space should be added.

Hive (003) was inspected. No queen was found and several emergency queen cups were seen. This hive contained a fresh queen from Barnard bees. The only way this hive could be making emergency queen cells was if the queen was laying for a few days then failed somehow. No sure how she could be accepted and laying then disappear.

3 hives from Niagara Property were moved to the Campus Berm. 5 Frame NUC (009) was moved into 10 frame (021). 10 Frame hive (021) with barnyard queen was moved from Niagara. Double 5 frame NUC (005) was moved into the 10 frame (022), WildCA Queen.

Woody’s pond hive was inspected. Bees are present but no eggs. A rather runty looking queen was seen but not certain if this queen is viable.

2 new queens emerged from the starter colony (030). The queens were both in the fenced areas and could not kill each other. One queen was released into the (030) hive and the other was moved to the 1 day old split (027). Hives, (030) and (027) have newly emerged virgin queens on the same day.