Checking on New Queens in Hive #4 & Nuc - (July 1)

Sunny - 101 degrees.

Today I checked on the 2 new queens and their hives (Hive #4 and the Nuc). 

Hive #4:
The frames in the bottom box on the #4 hive were heavily covered with capped brood.  I also saw uncapped larvae and eggs.  This queen looks to be a really good layer.  The bees have started to draw comb on the top brood box as well.  Within the next two weeks the hive population will probably double.

Nuc:
The Nuc also has capped brood but not in the numbers as the #4 hive.  This may be because there is less space to lay in as I noticed plenty of capped honey, uncapped nectar and pollen in all 5 frames.  The brood pattern was tight and in the middle of each frame.  I’m just thinking she does not just have the open space to lay huge numbers of eggs right now.

Hive Setup / Configuration - (June 21)

Here is a picture that shows the hives and how they are setup.  The markings on the hive are so the bees know which hive to return to.

Hive 1

·         Chris’s original hive from a 2011 spring Nuc. 

·         Currently 2011 Buckfast Queen that was purchased in 2011 (soon to be re-queened with her naturally raised offspring queen that is temporarily in a Nuc).

·         9 frames per honey super.

·         2012 - Harvested 89 pounds of honey from 23 frames.

Hive 2

·         Christin’s original hive from a 2011 spring Nuc. 

·         Currently 2012 Minnesota Hygienic Queen (purchased).

·         2012 - Had swarming issues in the spring from the 2011 queen (pinched her). 

·         Captured the swarm to make Hive 3 (self-raised queen).

·         2012 - Had a drone laying queen from a naturally developed queen (pinched her). 

Hive 3

·         2012 - Created from a Hive 2 swarm in March 2012.

·         2012 Minnesota Hygienic Queen (Naturally raised.  Her offspring will be ½ Minnesota Hygienic crossed with several different species of Drone bees).

Hive 4

·         2012 Created from Hive 1 split in May 2012. 

·         2012 Buckfast Queen (Naturally raised.  Her offspring will be ½ Buckfast crossed with several different species of Drone bees).

5 Frame Nuc

·         Using this to raise a queen to re-queen Hive 1.  This Queen was an offspring of the 2011 Buckfast Queen in Hive 1.

Hive 4 Queen is Laying / Marking the Queen - (June 18)

Today I checked on Hive #4.  This is the hive I created from a split from hive #1.  The new queen has a large abdomen and is actively laying.  I saw a nice pattern of freshly laid eggs.  I spotted the queen laying many eggs in the short time I was inspecting.  She would first stick her head in a cell to check it out, then put her abdomen in and lay one egg, then move to the next cell and repeat.

I decided to go ahead and mark this queen even though I’m not sure if the eggs she is laying are fertilized.  Since these eggs are only 1 day old, it will take a total of 9 days to cap a worker bee and 10 days to cap if it’s a drone.  So I plan to check on this hive again on June 27 for capped larvae.

Here is a picture of the queen cage I used to trap the queen and mark her with a yellow dot on her back.  The queen is circled in red under the cage.  I also filled up the bucket feeder with 1:1 sugar water to give them food for the new larvae.

The Marked Queen.  Yellow = 2012.

 

I also checked on the Nuc I am creating to re-queen hive #1.  This queen also has a large abdomen but has laid no eggs at this point.  She should start laying in the next day or so.  I added more 1:1 sugar water to the entrance feeder.

Hive Inspection (New Queen / Feeding) - (June 13)

I checked the #4 hive (newly created from a split of #1) and found the queen on the #1 frame.  Her abdomen looked larger than the last time I saw her a few days ago and was very active.  She was almost running around the frame.  There were no signs of eggs.  It’s still a little early as she may have just mated this week so I’m not worried just yet.  I will wait another 7 – 10 days until I check again.  By then I will know if she is laying or not.

I also checked the super in #2.   They have eaten all stored food except for the 2 frames on each side of the super.  Since I’m not feeding this hive, this looks to be a sign we are in a dearth.

I checked the #1 hive since this hive had a few Queen cells last time I checked.  I checked the top brood box and found plenty of eggs and larvae in a good pattern.  One frame had a high number of drone brood.  I spotted 2 more cells they have started to build into queen cups.  I went ahead and removed those as I will be re-queening from the Nuc soon.
The 4 honey supers I have on this hive are also being eaten on.  Once again confirming the nectar flow has drastically slowed.

The #3 hive was empty of food so I added more 1:1 sugar/water in the bucket feeder.  I checked a few frames and found plenty of brood.  All looks good.

I did not open the Nuc as the queen just hatched a few days ago.  I put an entrance feeder on to make it easier them to get food and to hopefully have a stronger queen.

Queen Hatched in Nuc - (June 10)

I checked on the 5 frame Nuc today and found a hatched queen.  She had already ripped through 2 other queen cells killing the queen that was inside.  I found one more queen cell on the #1 frame that will soon be destroyed by the newly hatched queen.

This Nuc is going to be combined with hive #1 as soon as she is laying well so I am not too concerned that the Nuc is really small in population numbers at this point.  It looks like most bees went back to their original hive when I made this Nuc.  I put 2 frames of capped honey / pollen in this nuc and the other 3 frames have capped brood, so should do well for another 2 weeks.
The main goal is to get her laying and then combine her back to the larger #1 hive.

I also checked on hive #3.  They have a honey super on and I’m still feeding.  The honey super is almost filled so this will be their food for the winter.

Queen Hatched Hive #4 / Creating New Queen in the Nuc to requeen Hive #1 - (June 7)

I checked on Hive #4 today to see if a queen had hatched.  I found the queen cell on frame #3 had hatched.  I also found another frame with a queen cell that had a hole chewed in it.  On frame #6, I found two more queen cells that were still capped.  This means the newly hatched queen has not killed the other queen cells.

Since I need to re-queen hive #1, I decided to make 5 frame Nuc hive with the frame that still has queen cells on it with bees from the #1 hive.  Once I opened the #1 hive I also found queen cells.  This means one of two things. 

1 - Either the hive is too crowded and they plan to swarm.

OR

2 - The original queen is now failing and they are trying to replace her. 

I don’t want them to swarm but do plan to re-queen as soon as I can get the bees to develop a queen and she is well mated.  To prepare for this I took the frames from hive #1 with the queen cells and put it in the nuc as well.

I am feeding the Nuc with a front entrance feeder.

I will check on the hives maybe on Saturday June 9th to see if the Nuc queen has hatched.  If so I will leave them alone until they are laying eggs in a good pattern.

Queens Developing in Hive #4 - (May 31)

I checked on the #4 hive today to see if any of the young nurse bees have started to make a new Queen bee.  There was only 1 capped queen cell (on frame 3) and 1 queen cup (on frame 5) with a larvae swimming in royal jelly. 

According to the calendar, the queen in the capped cell should hatch on Wednesday, June 6.  By this date, the second queen in development will have been capped and the new queen that hatched first will kill it.  There can only be one queen per hive.

The other 3 hives looked good and it seems like the nectar flow is over for now as they are eating their honey stores.

Splitting Hive 1 To Make The Hive 4 - (May 25)

Today I split Hive 1 (Chris's hive).  These bees are hard workers, did not try to swarm in the spring and the queen is a really good layer.  They also produced a good amount of honey in short amount of time in 2012.  This is the Buckfast queen I purchased in 2011.  I want to carry on these characteristics so will split the hive.

I found 5 frames of young eggs, 3 frames of food / pollen / capped brood and 2 frames of capped honey.  I removed all bees from these frames and put the frames in the 4^th hive body and put empty frames in the #1 hive.  I placed a queen excluder on top of the #1 hive and the #4 hive on top of the queen excluder.  The idea is that all of the nurse bees will return to the frames they were originally on within an hour or so.  This also ensures the Queen bee will stay in hive #1.

After an hour and a half I removed the Hive 4 (now full of nurse bees) and put it on the other hive stand with a bucket feeder and closed everything up.

The nurse bees will quickly figure out they are now queenless and will start to make a new queen, hence carrying on the genes to the new colony.  If things go well, I look for a new Buckfast queen to emerge in 12 days.  This will be around June 6, 2012.  From there she will go on a mating flight in 18 days and will hopefully be laying in 28 days.  This will be around June 11-12, 2012.  She should be laying around June 24, 2012.

FINGERS CROSSED!!!  If this works, we will have hive #4 which I will heavily feed the rest of the year to prepare them for winter.

Here is the Queen calendar based on when I made this split:

Day #	DOW	Date	Task/Status
1	Tuesday	22-May	The egg is laid by the queen mother.
2	Wednesday	23-May
3	Thursday	24-May
4	Friday	25-May	Insert into a queenless cell builder colony.
5	Saturday	26-May
6	Sunday	27-May	Check your Hive.  The bees should have started to to draw out the cells and feed the larvae with royal jelly. If not, re-graft.
7	Monday	28-May
8	Tuesday	29-May
9	Wednesday	30-May	Queen cells are capped
10	Thursday	31-May	Sensitive developmental phase - do not move cells and be very gentle when opening the hive.
11	Friday	1-Jun
12	Saturday	2-Jun
13	Sunday	3-Jun
14	Monday	4-Jun
15	Tuesday	5-Jun
16	Wednesday	6-Jun	Queens hatch
17	Thursday	7-Jun
18	Friday	8-Jun	Discard any unhatched cells
19	Saturday	9-Jun
20	Sunday	10-Jun
21	Monday	11-Jun	Mating Flights
22	Tuesday	12-Jun
23	Wednesday	13-Jun
24	Thursday	14-Jun
25	Friday	15-Jun
26	Saturday	16-Jun
27	Sunday	17-Jun
28	Monday	18-Jun
29	Tuesday	19-Jun
30	Wednesday	20-Jun
31	Thursday	21-Jun
32	Friday	22-Jun
33	Saturday	23-Jun
34	Sunday	24-Jun	Check Hive for eggs.
35	Monday	25-Jun
36	Tuesday	26-Jun
37	Wednesday	27-Jun
38	Thursday	28-Jun
39	Friday	29-Jun	Check Hive for larvae.
40	Saturday	30-Jun	Larvae found?  If so, the queen is ready!
41	Sunday	1-Jul	Re-queen if no eggs are present.

Honey Extraction - (May 18)

We have 2 Medium supers (9 frames per super) and an additional 5 medium frames from a 3rd super that we extracted today.  We got a total of 89 pounds of honey from 23 medium frames.  That's approx. 4 pounds of honey per frame.

We were only able to extract from my hive as Christin's hive is still not as populated and working in numbers as we would like since it got off to a late start due to the queen issues we faced in early spring. 


Here are some pictures from the extraction process.

The 2 Medium supers full of capped honey!!  The weight of the top super was 56 pounds and the bottom super weighed 60 pounds.

The 9 frame extractor with a 400 micron strainer over the 5 gallon bucket. We strained the honey to catch any bits of wax  We will only extract 6 frames at a time.

We used a heat gun to uncap (melt) the white wax that covers the honey.  As I work my way down the frame, you can see the honey is now exposed from the heat melting the thin layer of wax.  The typical method is to use a knife to cut the caps off causing a huge mess and about 5%-10% loss of honey.  There was no mess using this method.

6 frames placed in the extractor ready to spin for at least 8 minutes.  The honey will be forced out of the comb, hit the wall of the extractor and fall to the bottom where it pours out.

Christin spinning the frames.  We spun them for about 8 minutes and then reversed the rotation for a few  more minutes.

Pure honey pouring out of the extractor.

An empty frame after extracting.

The comb from one frame fell apart during the extraction so we got to enjoy chewing on some comb.

The finished product!!!