We lost a queen.
Specifically, a queen from our hive of Italians. Truthfully we sort-of saw it coming, and one major mistake was made. In an attempt to prevent swarming, Jack removed 3 live queen cells from the hive on an inspection. Later we found literature which elaborated that these cells (which were located on the middle of a face of comb), were “supercedure cells” — as opposed to “swarm cells”, definite evidence that the hive was attempting to produce a queen to replace their current one.
Okay, mistake. Whoops.
Today we finally had some good weather and checked on the hives (this queen-cell-ectomy was last week sometime). We found zero brood (bee eggs and larvae) in the italian hive; plenty of bees, a decent amount of honey, but no brood. Luckily we don’t have a laying worker — just lots of comb partially filled with honey and pollen.
A laying worker occurs when a hive doesn’t have a queen, and one of the workers begins to lay eggs — she’s presumably hopeful to rekindle her dying colony. Unfortunately as an unfertilized female, our valiant heroine is only able to lay eggs which yield drones, and the hive is sure to collapse shortly afterwards
Our hive of Carniolans on the other hand looks fantastic! Full of brood, starting to build up honey reserves, a good amount of comb, and so on.
But of course our hive without a queen isn’t going to last long. So we decided to combine the hives.
Each hive had 1 full medium box of 10 frames (the upper of the 2 boxes): comb on every frame, good activity, enough bees to populate the whole affair. Both had begun to fill out their lower box (also medium sized).
We decided to combine the hives into a 3 box affair: mixing the populated frames from the two hives into the lowest box, then 2nd would be the Carniolans “core” hive (including the Carnie queen), and finally the devoid-of-brood Italian Core. So now we’ve got single hive of 3 fully comb’d boxes, and plenty of bees now living together.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Behaviorally, the Italians were clearly confused when we removed their hive. A large cluster of them buzzed around for a while looking for the entrance where it used to be — especially since the hives are (were) directly adjacent to each other. They figured it out quickly enough though. I have a hunch that mixing the two sets of frames together in the bottom-most box made it easier for the Italians to find something which smells like home.
Question: The comb in our hives has turned a much deeper darker color from the pure white it started out as (white from the original sugar water solution the bees were being fed but have since not been fed in several weeks). The cells which have darkened have only been used for brood thus far.
What causes the color changes?
I’ve brewed up some more 1:1 sugar water that I’ll give them before I leave for work tomorrow morning.
We’ve got a queen excluder handy but haven’t put it in the stack yet. Our reasoning is that the queen should get a chance to spread her pheromones around unencumbered, and everything I’ve read that amateurs using excluders can prompt a hive to swarm more readily.
Long story short: two hives have become one. We’ll see how this works out, but I’m pretty hopeful. Best case is that we may get a decent amount of honey by the end of the season!
Update (6/1): Got stung 3 times while setting down the bag of feed in the hive! I was being sloppy and hasty, I deserved it. This is the first I’ve gotten stung by these bees — it stings, but not nearly as much as I remember from when I was stung as an 8 year old. 🐝🐝🐝
Update (6/2): Three days later, the bees seem to be foraging happily and doing just fine (no swarms or anything). I’ll open up the hive this weekend to make sure there’s some laying going on, but things are looking good!
Viraj's Notebook 