Exploring the World of Bees…
The unhatched queen cell sourced from the WildCA18A mother and installed into a mating colony on April 28 was checked. The mating colony looks in excellent health and good condition. Worked with the mating colony without any smoke and no aggression seen. The queen cells was empty. Unfortunately the queen was found dead on the bottom of the mating colony box. This new queen failed so I will be returning the brood frames, nectar frames and bees back to the WildCA18A mother colony.
24 hours follow-up on the installed bee packages went well. Both queen had escaped the queen cages and the bees were building comb. Entrance activity was normal with pollen coming in. I was able to bring more built frames to checkerboard into both hives. Making sure to provide some capped honey and comb for immediate egg laying.
One remaining unhatched queen cell was still viable from the previous WildCA18A mother colony splits. This unhatched queen cell was cut out of the comb and added to a a new split of bees and comb from the still active WildCA18A mother. Two frames of brood and two frames of food were removed from WildCA18A mother colony and put into a starter colony box. This box was sealed and moved into a protected area for the next few days during the upcoming snow storms.
Splits were started on April 14, 14 days prior. Did a quick check looking at the queen cells to see if any queen have emerged. Queen cells were opened and some had been destroyed. Found virgin queens in both splits. Brood was sourced from WildCA18A. Hopefully calm genetics will be passed on. Mating flights will occur next week. Hopefully bad weather does not interfere. Splits are located next to drone populations with genetics from calm hives.
Temperature was in the upper 60s and the wind was light to moderate. Bees were installed in a single deep Langstroth brood chamber. Install went just fine. Bees were sourced from ApisHive.com. Used filled out frames and some undrawn frames from previous year to help start colonies.
Checking on 2 of the splits from the WildCA18A colony. All queen cells are capped but still remain unhatched.
Cut and removed one of the capped queen cells. Evenly splt 10 frames from the WildCA18B colony into 2 separate 5 frame Nuc boxes. Isolated the queen in the lower Nuc box. Placed a queen excluder between the 2 Nuc boxes. Installed the unhatched queen cell into the upper box.
Checked on WildCA18A mother colony splits. Queen cells are being formed but not yet capped. Normal entrance activity from all splits and colonies.
Splits will be made from mother colony WildCA18A. The goal is to create several new colonies from my least aggressive, most productive and most hygienic colony. Also I would like to requeen the Wild17 colony which has become far too aggressive for my tastes.
Several capped brood frames and nectar pollen frames were taken from both the WildCA18A colony and the Wild17 colony. Two frames of larva were taken from WildCA18A mother colony and put into each of the splits.
Both splits were taken to the campus approximately 12 miles away to start new colonies.
Day 6 after larva were grafted. The queen cells should be capped at this point. However the queen cell contents look desiccated and not viable. It appears that I may not have given the colony enough ventilation during the recent abnormally high temperature.
Day 4 since larva were grafted. Isolated nurse bee colony appears to be accepting a couple of the grafts. Larva sourced from WildCA18A.
I had 3 successful 2018 overwinter colonies. WildCA18A colony has shown itself to be extremely gentle, productive and the most hygienic colony I have seen to date. They appear to have a good mite resistance. I would like to carry these genetics forward. Also possible re-queening Wild17 colony.
Pulled 1 frame of larva with 1-4 days old eggs and larva from WildCA18A. I grafted using a “Chinese grafting tool”, 8 larva of the correct size and shape into plastic queen cups. These queen cups had been previously polished out by nurse bees and should be more accepted.
This single grafting frame was placed into a starter colony box. The starter colony box was prepared the day prior with 2 frames of nurse bees and 2 frames of pollen and nectar from WildCA18A colony.