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Hive Inspections

Corona street hives were inspected. Hive (001) is very much queen right and full of eggs and capped brood. This hive will need to be moved in the near future. This hive was captured from Officer Ed’s hive body and the virgin queen was mated at Corona street.

Hive (030) had one emerged queen. This virgin queen was taken to GG and placed in the orange hive body. The other two queen cells in this hive are still fenced. We will check the next day for emerged queens.

The large mother colony was inspected. Numbers look good but not as prominent as I was expecting. The queen is laying on both boxes, primarily in the top box. The queen was found and looks perfect. One last small split was performed with 2 frames (027). These frames were both very light in brood and resources. This will be the last slip on this colony. I will take one of the emerged virgin queens from (030) and place in this queen less hive.

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Grow Gather Hive Inspections

A quick hive inspection was performed on all roof top hives. Hives, yellow, pine, blue and green all were queen right with eggs and larva.

Orange was still in the process of making a new queen. We took a virgin queen from the queen fenced hive (030), which had just emerged and moved her into the orange hive. We left the queen cells intact and we will let the bees decide which queen to go with.

The queen less Pine hive accepted the transplanted mated queen from Niagara (002). Eggs found, No larva.

The brood pattern and queen look great on the yellow hive. The queen on the blue hive certainly takes after the mother colony; very large abdomen and lays eggs to the corners.

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Moving a Hive

It would seem that moving a hive should be an easy task. However moving a hive just a few feet can completely disorient all the foraging worker bees. So if we are to move a hive the rule is that you can move a hive up to 2 feet. Anything over that distance then you must move then 2 miles away. Moving them over 2 miles away triggers them to reorient to their hive and not get lost.

In this example I moved a hive about 1 foot and turn the hive 90 degrees from the original orientation. Before I moved the hive, there was normal entrance activity with much fewer bees in the air. After I moved the hive there are hundreds of bees in the air trying to find the new entrance location to the hive. They will soon learn the new entrance location.

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Introducing a New Queen

Introducing a new queen to a hive can be an easy task but it can also go horribly wrong. First, the hive must be without a queen. Typically for about 24 hours would be best to go without a queen. Any longer and they will start making a new queen. Any less and they may not yet have a hive consensus that they are queenless.

There is a chance that the hive will reject the queen and kill her. In this example, the bees take to her very quickly and are not showing any signs of aggression to the new queen. The queen can be introduced immediately if the hive is not showing signs of aggression. However it is best to wait a 3 day period for her pheromones to saturate the hive.

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New Barnyard Bees, Queen Introduction

3 Queens were receive from Barnyard bees on May 1. These bees were kept in the cages and put into the queen-less hives. The hives were accepting of the new queen (003) except for hive, (002). We will see if anything changes in the next 48 hours.