In Search of the Queen...

So tomorrow will mark the three week mark for Hive # 2 (you can read about the latest adventure with Hive #1 HERE!) and according to our favorite resources thus far this day should be a milestone of sorts. By this time we should see some evidence of a laying queen as well as see enough comb within the hive to believe the bees are settling in to their new digs. Courtney's phrase to me as we stood over the hive was "I've been thinking about this all day!" and I will admit I've been pretty excited about it myself! Prior to today, we've essentially left the hive alone except for a quick (and I mean quick!) opening of the hive one afternoon to remove the empty queen cage. That particular day was in the midst of what felt like the second coming of the flood and I had put it off for as long as I felt I could but I didn't linger in the hive due to the damp, coolness of the day.

So needless to say, I've looked forward to today...it is my first thorough inspection of our hive and I couldn't wait to take a peek!

Books, beekeepers and experts will tell you it's best to start a new package of bees with frames of old (but healthy) honey comb. There are several reasons for this. One is that bees like the stinky smell of old honey comb and have an easier time accepting their new home (kinda like us bringing mementos to unfamiliar places.) Another is simply a time issue. If a package of bees already has a place to begin laying eggs and storing food, then they can take advantage of the spring nectar flow much quicker and will ultimately allow for the possibility of getting a little bit of honey during the first year. But since we are brand new beekeepers we did not have the luxury of providing our bees with established frames of comb with which to get started. We had to start off with brand new frames and brand new wax foundation. What this means for us is that the process of brood building is going to be slower in the beginning. But considering this, I was still pleased with how things are progressing-take a look!

 

This is what we saw when we first opened the hive. Notice that the bulk of the bees are to one side. This tells me the queen is likely in this area.

 

 

We removed the frames in order and this was the third frame. Notice how the bees are building comb. They must do this before anything else can happen. You can see pollen in some of the cells. This pollen will be used to feed the baby bee larva.

 

 

 

When foraging bees bring the pollen back to the hive they scrape it off their legs and place it into an empty cell within the honeycomb (you can see the pollen on a foraging bees legs in the picture above.) Another bee will come by and pack down the pollen where it will begin to breakdown. Nurse bees will use this "bee bread" to convert it to royal jelly and feed it to the young larva for three days.

 

 

Look in the middle of this photo. Do you see the TINY, TINY rice like dot in the middle of a cell? That is a newly laid bee egg! These eggs are between 1 and 3 days old. Seeing this tells me there has been a queen laying eggs here within the last 36 hours...a great sign!

 

 

If you look inside these cells you can see the next stage of a bees development, called a larva. These bees are between 4-9 days old. Interesting fact: these bees will shed their skin five different times between hatching and emerging!

 

After the ninth day, these cells will be covered over with what will look like cardboard (it's actually wax and pollen) and the bees will go through the third stage of development, called a pupa. We saw no evidence of this stage inside the hive so this tells me the queen has been laying for less than nine days. This information is important to a beekeeper because it offers clues to the overall state of the hive.

 

 

I wanted to include this photo because the other pictures were close up shots of the activity within the hive. This is what one single frame looks like. There are ten of these inside the hive. Right now, the bees are working both sides of four of them. You can see the comb taking shape towards the bottom of the frame.

 

During our inspection today, we did not physically see the queen but we saw lots of evidence of her activity. For right now, this is enough. To our inexperienced eye, it is still difficult to spot her...so the search will continue!  We'll check the bees in a few days to see if we have bees in the pupal stage and to see if we see further evidence of the queen (and hopefully find the queen!) Until then, we'll simply keep feeding them a 1:1 sugar syrup mixture and give them some peace and quiet!

 

 

Our First Challenge

When Courtney and I began connecting with other beekeepers I kept hearing stories of "...we lost 4 hives last year to mites" or "...all but one hive absconded" or "...bears got them all" yet I never really considered the possibility of such disappointments happening to us. I had this vision of us doing our research, spending the money on all the right equipment and then our bees settling in and making their home in our backyard. Simple. Straightforward. And....wrong.

We installed our bees on a Saturday. The installation went great and without incident. It was a great learning experience for me and for Courtney and I was thrilled to finally have our bees here. To me, the journey could finally, truly begin! During the first week or so, any book or experienced beekeeper will tell you to leave the hive alone and let the bees become accustomed to their new home and to become acquainted with their new queen. So that's what we intended to do. While we did leave them alone, I will admit I found myself routinely being drawn down to the hives to just watch and observe.  It was almost hypnotic in a way. Seeing the methodical way of the bees coming and going to and from the hive was exciting and kept me wondering about the drama may or may not be taking place inside each hive. Almost immediately after the installation I noticed that one hive behaved differently than the other (reason #692 that all beginning beekeepers should begin with at least two hives!) Hive #1 seemed kinda laid back, relaxed and relatively calm while Hive #2 seemed much more active and busy...almost rushed. Being a new beekeeper I wasn't sure what to make of the difference but I knew that in a week I'd get to peek inside the hive to really inspect the two hives and admire their handiwork.

Fast forward to Wednesday (four days after installation) when I just happened to step outside and discover this:

This is what I not so lovingly described as a "change in plans for the day." The bees from Hive #1 (the calmer hive) had absconded their box and were on a branch about 8 feet up in our live oak tree. The term absconded in the world of beekeeping means that all of the bees leave the hive in search of a new home. Hmph....An inspection of the inside of the hive box revealed this:

The frames were all empty, the queen had been released and some burr comb had been built around the queen cage. Here's a closer look at the queen cage (after I removed it):

 

 

 

The bees had been originally installed into a 10 frame box with wax foundation, an entrance reducer and a screened bottom board. The frames revealed the bees had begun drawing out comb on two of the frames and the queen had actually started laying a few eggs as you can see in this next photo (look for the small dot like grains of rice in the middle of each cell):

 



Thinking that the bees may have been unhappy with their new home for some reason, I opted to get the swarm and place it in what is called a "nuke" or a nucleus hive box. A nuke is just a smaller box that will only hold 5 frames (versus the 10 I had.) The idea behind a nuke is that the bees can stay warmer and don't feel quite as overwhelmed with the huge amount of space of a larger 8 or ten frame box.

So...we caught the bees, put them in the nuke and stood anxiously while we waited to see if they would give us some indication the queen was still present. After about 10 minutes, we saw this:

 

If you look closely you can see several of the bees standing at the entrance of the nuke with their rear ends "up in the air"...this action tells the other bees "This is home. The queen is here. Come on in!" Since I saw this, I was fairly encouraged. I felt like we had caught the bees attempting to abscond their hive and moved them to a smaller, cozier hive in time...but I was wrong.

 

By Thursday afternoon, the bees had absconded again and this time they were long gone. We had lost a hive. $80 just flew away after five short, honey less days. Hmph. I consider this my official initiation into the wonderful world of beekeeping.

 

So, after standing outside feeling totally discouraged and wondering why in the world I had talked myself into this expensive hobby I pulled my boot straps up (so to speak) and went inside to research what may have happened. Here's what I've learned:

 

Newly packaged bees abscond for many different reasons. Sometimes it's a lack of food, sometimes it's overheating and sometimes it's because of frequent disturbance. Other times they just don't like their new home for some reason. Our hive boxes were brand new and since we are new beekeepers we had to use new wax foundation so there was no real reason for our bees to "know" this was home.

 

When bees abscond, they will likely swarm together while scouts are sent out to search for a new home for the colony. Information I've gathered advises that perhaps we should have physically moved the nuke to a different location from where our original hive was so that when the scouts came back to tell the colony where their new home was, the bees would have been gone.

 

Other sources have suggested that it would have been a good idea to recage the queen or to have used a queen includer in the bottom of the box itself so that it would have been impossible for the queen to leave the hive. This would have given the bees a greater chance to build comb, for the queen to lay eggs and for everyone to have some time to make things feel like home.

 

Either way, this has been a great (although costly!) lesson in beekeeping. I am super thankful however for this lesson. It has given me the chance to learn more about bee behavior, to connect with other beekeepers and to understand a little more about what a new package of bees requires.

 

Ultimately, Courtney and I plan to keep bees for the long haul and so even though this was a painful loss so soon into our journey we are not deterred! We've learned our lessons and are moving on to the next adventure...