Reversal of Fortune

These two beehives are the smallest in the beeyard this year.   They each have an interesting story.

The pink hive is a split from a larger hive [the blue and orange one in the back] that was bearding heavily and just decided to start building comb under the hive boxes.   Bearding is when you get a collection of bees hanging from the front entrance or sides during hot, humid days.  It's normal.

Bearding all night long, and then for days, and then weeks and building comb UNDER the boxes is not normal.   It meant a lot of pissy bees outside and a lot of extra pings for the beekeeper this season.

Eric and I decided enough was enough and we spent a miserable couple of hours removing the bees and their comb from under that hive and putting them in their own box to make themselves a new queen and new colony.    They did not come gently.

Every week for 4 weeks, I put a new comb of brood and eggs from another colony in there for them to make a new queen from.   They finally did.   And then that blasted queen refused to mate.   I checked on them week after week and finally 2 weeks ago decided to just write them off.   I couldn't find the new queen and was tired of stealing brood for them.

The green hive is a swarm we caught this year from our own hives.   It was small.   We put them in the box and they started doing what they do.  The queen was doing great, laying fine, drawing comb, etc.  Only thing was - they weren't storing any honey.   I figured they'd get the hang of it since they were increasing in size.  We are still in a flow.  There's time.

And then I walked out last week in time to see another swarm 30 feet up in a tree, very much out of reach.   Eric and I threw together a swarm trap and waiting.  The next day they came down to the trap but wouldn't go in.   They flew off again.   Then they flew back to it again.   I'd had enough watching and just put them in there.

They didn't act happy.   So I put in a frame of brood from another hive to anchor them until they got happy and then I noticed that that little green hive was awfully quiet.    Sure enough, this new swarm was that old swarm, which had absconded leaving three perfectly good frames of brood.

This is not good.   So I fed them a lot of sugar syrup and waited to see what they'd do.

Reversal of fortune.  I checked both hives today and wouldn't you know they've done a complete reversal.

The pink hive has a laying queen!   She's fat and beautiful and doing a great job.  Multiple frames of brood. They're storing plenty of honey and pollen.  This queen came from my favorite hive.  I'm hoping to see her build up and make it through the winter.

The green hive is languishing.   The queen is there, but laying multiple eggs in a cell, which the bees will take care of, but it's weird.   I put their old comb back in the hive so the could focus on laying and raising brood instead of building comb.   I'm still feeding them a lot of syrup.   I don't expect them to make it to fall, much less through the winter.

It's funny how things change.   In spite of my predictions, the bees will do what they will do.  They don't read the books or pay attention to the experts, or me.   They'll likely surprise me.

Swarm!

Late this morning, I walked outside and heard what I thought was a large engine coming from the neighbors place.   I went back in and then right back out for something and realized the sound was an awful lot like bees, so I headed out to the hives.  

In time to see the biggest orientation flight I'd ever seen outside the Sweetie hive.   Awesome!   I love watching those.  

But it was noisier than usual and then....then...just up a little higher and over about 20 feet, just above a stand of sumac I saw a lot more bee action.

The bees are not supposed to be over there.   And they never are over there in those numbers.

Which meant, of course, something unusual was going on.   Like a swarm.   I looked for a swarm cluster and didn't see one.    Because they had just barely left the mother hive.   As I watched, they started to cluster on two branches of one of the sumacs, about 10 feet high.  

I happened to have walked out at exactly the right moment to catch what was going on.

So, I called Eric, who luckily was between jobs and headed home fast.   In the meantime, I suited up. I noticed that there were two clusters so I prepped boxes for two new hives. [It's common for multiple queens to be in a swarm - the old queen and any extra virgin queens.]  I got the dropcloths, and two buckets and the loppers, thanking heaven the whole time that the clusters were so low.

By the time Eric got home, I was ready.   He suited up and got the ladder and when we got to the clusters, we found that they had joined - and on the lower branch, so that was lucky.

Eric got the ladder ready but because the cluster was over a lot of brush and brambles, we couldn't use the dropcloth, so I put the bucket on my shoulder and stood underneath while Eric cut.   The cluster was so low in the first place that the bottom of it already hung in the bucket.   All he had to do was drop it.   The smell was very strong - a swarming hive smells like lemon grass oil in a big way.   LGO is often used as a swarm lure.   Now I know why.

[New readers may be wondering if I was freaked out having 30,000 stinging pets flying around and all over my head.  Swarms are notoriously noisy but not aggressive.  They're not defending, so they only sting if you grab one wrong.  Mostly they crash into you - and crashing is not the same as stinging or attacking.   Plus, I have a great suit.  It's not totally sting proof, but it helps keep me calm and if the beekeeper is calm, the bees will be calmer.   So, no, I wasn't bothered.  This was not my first bee rodeo. See this post for my first cut out.  After that, nothing fazes me.]

Anyway, Eric dropped the branch in the bucket on my shoulder and I walked it over to the hives, slowly so the flying bees would follow.



I decided to use two boxes because most of the frames already have some comb in them. They won't be slowed down by starting from scratch.   Plus, this queen builds up super fast and I knew they'd be bursting at the seams soon.  I took some frames out of the top box and we gently took the branch out.   This was a 2 person job, so no pics.  

After the branch was in, I shook it off and dropped the bees in the boxes.   They went straight in - a very good sign.  Then we turned the bucket upside down and knocked the rest of the bees out of it into the box.  

Then we put the bucket in front of the hive where the stragglers immediately found the bottom entrance of their new home and went in.   This is very good as it means the queen was in the box and the girls were communicating well.  I replaced the frames and closed it up.

The whole swarm catch took maybe 15 minutes once Eric got home.   Fastest catch in the history of swarms.


This brings us up to 4 hives this year.  

Swarm Capture

It's swarm season.   As soon as we start seeing drones, we know that the hives are working full tilt to expand for the season.  The hive assesses things and decides it's time to split.  They make new queen cells and raise new queens and when the first ones start to come out, the old queen gathers half the hive and they swarm.

This swarm came from a friend of ours who had a hive in a tree in her backyard.   Happy, calm bees.  They swarmed and she called us and by the time we could gather stuff and get there, they had clustered nicely in a branch just a few feet away.  




Eric cut the ends off the branches and then put the whole cluster in a bucket.  I stood below to catch and Lily took the pics.

When the first part of the cluster hit the bucket, Eric got pinged a few times.   Serious ouch.

This is me looking through the cluster for the queen.   Never found her, but the bees were fanning, so we figured she was in there.

Notice the frame of drawn comb with a bit of honey in the bucket.   I hoped that would make them feel at home.

Then I trimmed the branch down as far as I could so we could cover the bucket with a canvas.  

We bungeed the canvas down and then strapped the bucket in the back of the truck for the long ride home.

It wasn't as dark out as these pics make it look.   We took the cluster out of the bucket and put it into the hive with that frame of comb and several honey balls.

Bees love honey balls.

We put empty supers on this hive so there would be plenty of room for the branch.

Then we closed her up.

The first day they seemed to like the box, but two days later they absconded. 

Since they came from a tree, I figure the queen wanted another one.  Since we have an abundance of hollow trees out here, I figure they found a tree they like better than our boxes.  

You win some, you lose some.