Category: Bee Keeping Journal

All berm hives at the campus were inspected. All hives were queen right and beginning to store excess amounts of nectar. Hives installed on April 28 are growing fast and moving into the supers.

Queen was removed from the Wild17 colony split. Queen in Wild17 split is known to have more aggressive genetics than others. This combined with the spotty brood pattern and the presence of several supercedure cells indicated a replacement was long over due.

Officer Ed’s colony was also inspected. Normal entrance activity and a normal amount of bees were observed. The queen had been freed and the cage was removed.

A queen sourced form the WildCA18A mother colony has emerged, mated and is now laying eggs. The starter colony behavior changed markedly. As if a switch was flipped the colony begun to build new comb on every possible surface. More bees seemed to have joined the starter colony. Only a few days later eggs were seen in the drawn comb. This queen and her colony are now ready for a hive.

This colony will be installed at Officer Ed’s back lot, next to his garden. This hive body was left on his property many years ago and is full of relatively clean looking comb. No infestations in the comb are observed. The hive is composed of 3 shallow super boxes. I will simply drop the frames with bees into this hive. The queen was caged and closed off with marshmallow candy plug. the chance of the colony leaving this hive with fully drawn comb and 2 frames of eggs is highly unlikely.

My Warre frames are not of standard length but are of correct depth. A hanger for the Warre frames was made which spans the opening and hangs off of the adjoining langstroth frame. The remaining space was filled with 2 small pieces of flat wood.

Bees were caught in the northern most swarm catcher at the campus. This swarm catcher was located right next to the swimming pool. This swarm was the biggest of the year so far. The colony was installed into a 5 frame Nuc box with only foundation to start. The queen was caught and caged. Labeled WildCA19B.

WildCA18A was quickly opened to examine the 2 remaining queen cells. One of the queen cells has an opening at the end but has been torn down significantly. Not sure if queen emerged or queen was removed by workers. I still need to open hive and find queen. One intact queen cell remaining.

The swarm which was captured on May 24 was sequestered for 3 days with the queen caged. The queen was released and the colony was established on campus.

Two of the starter colonies which did not have viable queen cells were abandoned by the bees. The bees merged with the other colonies. I removed the dividers in the starter colonies and merged the frames with the neighboring colonies.

This leaves 4 starter colonies which have walking queens. All queens now appear to be mated. Increased activity is seen in all starter colonies and wax building has increased exponentially.

WildCA18A mother colony was inspected. I am concerned that the hive is swarming itself to death. I ran through all the frames and could not find a queen. There were no signs of eggs. No signs of larva. Only a small less than 50, amount of capped brood. A huge number of drones was seen. Colony numbers look smaller than they should. There were only 2 capped queen cells remaining in the hive. Several empty queen cells were found.

We need to verify that a queen is in the hive. Then destroy all remaining queen cells. Condense the hive boxes to a smaller more compact layout.

All campus hives were inspected. All campus hives are queen right. Woody’s pond hive needs attention. Frames do not appear to have any wax coatings and the frames are not being drawn out correctly. But Woody’s pond numbers look very good.

Berm hives are doing great. The new Caniolan colony is established with eggs and Larva.

The campus swarm catch performed on May 18 has established and was moved into a nuc hive. 8 hives total on campus.

WildCA18A once again swarmed in the backyard. I was able to catch the swarm and put them into a new hive. The queen was caged and 5 undrawn frames were added to a Nuc box. The swarm was small.

WilsCA18A was checked for queen cells. I found a newly hatched queen and pulled her from the hive. I also found some untouched capped queen cells and moved them out of the hive. That means I need another queen castle badly. I built this queen castle with 3 chambers to fit the Warre hive frames. Notice the entrances on different sides of the hive body.