Category: Bee Keeping Journal

Corona street NUC hives were inspected. Hive (027) has a queen which by appearance seems to be mated but is not laying eggs yet. Hive(030) for some reason is building new queen cells and I could not find a queen.

Officer Ed Split was moved to Niagara Street and the Failed Barnyard bee queen Nuc which is making queen cells was placed at Corona street for mating.

Hive (019) was moved to the Barrett property in the usual location. This will be the 3rd year that we have located a hive here. All years have produced positive results with hives that have survived the winter. The hive was inspected before the move and was queen right with large amounts of mixed developmental stage brood. A check should be performed in the next month and more space should be added.

Hive (003) was inspected. No queen was found and several emergency queen cups were seen. This hive contained a fresh queen from Barnard bees. The only way this hive could be making emergency queen cells was if the queen was laying for a few days then failed somehow. No sure how she could be accepted and laying then disappear.

3 hives from Niagara Property were moved to the Campus Berm. 5 Frame NUC (009) was moved into 10 frame (021). 10 Frame hive (021) with barnyard queen was moved from Niagara. Double 5 frame NUC (005) was moved into the 10 frame (022), WildCA Queen.

Woody’s pond hive was inspected. Bees are present but no eggs. A rather runty looking queen was seen but not certain if this queen is viable.

2 new queens emerged from the starter colony (030). The queens were both in the fenced areas and could not kill each other. One queen was released into the (030) hive and the other was moved to the 1 day old split (027). Hives, (030) and (027) have newly emerged virgin queens on the same day.

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.

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.

A quick check on each of the 3 hives with new introduced queens shows a successful introduction. All three queens 3 had 3 days exposure before being released.

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.

The pine hive at Grow Gather was determined to be queen less for an unknown reason. I took a queen from the active colony (002) and introduced this queen to the pine hive. Hive (002) is now queen less and ready for the queens from Barnyard bees.