Package Bees are not Loyal to Their Queen

When the package bees woke up that morning, they didn't know they were going to be shaken into a package with a bunch of strange bees, often not their sisters. Then they were hanging around in a screened cage complete with a syrup can and a queen (not THEIR mother) in a cage. Loyalty to a stranger has to be earned.

So when the beekeeper picks up a package, it's not a bonded group. It's a loosely connected bunch of unrelated bees with an unrelated and heretofore unknown queen.

I took two packages to Stonehurst Place to install the bees on March 29. The packages were about equal in size:

As in the typical package installation, I sprayed both packages with sugar water and then installed them. The hives are side by side facing a privacy fence so that in flying out, the bees have to fly up and over the fence.

Here's the first hive that I installed:

You can see at the front of the box the tape on the top of the queen cage which I jammed between two frames. Although you can see the syrup can sitting on top of the frames, after the bees settled in a little, I removed that and put on the inner cover. Then I gave them a feeder of Bee Tea on top of the inner cover hole.

As you may remember, I have been dealing with an injured shoulder (from a fall in October) that is just now getting better. When I finished the first install and turned to the second my shoulder hurt and I didn't have it in me to be quite as thorough. 

I had a terrible time with the staple holding the Hive 2 queen cage to the package and destroyed the tape in the process. I decided to put the queen cage on the floor of the hive under the frames instead of putting it between two frames. 

When I returned three days later to give them more food, there were about three times as many bees in hive 2 than the first hive. 

And today when I went over to see if they needed a new box, here's how the bees looked in hive 1:

They are in the hive and working, but not nearly like hive 2:

Hive 2 had bright white wax drawn on every frame. I gave them a new box and pulled up two filled frames as ladders to encourage the use of the new box.  

I think all of this is about lack of loyalty and strength of pheromones. The bees were looking for a place to go and probably the pheromone of the queen in hive 2 was stronger than the queen in hive 1. And with queen 2 on the bottom of the hive, it was probably easier to smell her pheromone than the queen in hive 1 who was wedged between the frames.

So the bees who had no loyalty to begin with, gravitated to the queen in hive 2 - whether because of her strong pheromone or advantageous cage placement.

How I will handle this, in the long run, is that the next time I am over at Stonehurst Place, I'll move a frame of brood and eggs from Hive 2 to Hive 1.  If I do that every time, gradually I'll help build the population of Hive 1.

Queenly is as Queenly Does

So today was the day to check on the red dot Mississippi queen in Ron's hive.  First I went to check on Sebastian's hives.  The first split hive was doing well.  The queen was laying.  I saw one frame that was almost 100% eggs!  They were also storing honey but not going gangbusters so they didn't need another box.  I gave them a powdered sugar shake and moved to the survivor hive.

The survivor hive over there was also doing really well.  They had completely filled the top box and were putting honey in odd comb formations between the boxes so even though there was one unused frame in the top box, I thought they needed a new box.

I am using the ventilated hive cover to help do powdered sugar dusting:

It's much simpler and faster than using a sifter.  I put one Sierra cup's worth of sugar on each hive on top of the frames in the brood box.  

I took a frame of brood and young larvae from Sebastian's large hive to give to the hive at Ron's.  I put it in a green pillow case to keep it relatively warm; closed up the hive; and drove to Ron's.

At Ron's my first concern was the Mississippi Queen.  Had she been released now that I removed the old queen on Monday?  I opened the hive and found her still in her queen cage.  The bees were acting eager and friendly around the cage and had eaten all but the last sugar barrier.  There were dead workers in the queen cage.  I opened the queen cage and direct released her.  She moved rapidly into the hive box and I cheered her on her journey and her life.  

I also added the frame of brood and young larvae to the same box in the position where the queen cage had been.  That should give a little boost to the hive and keep them busy.   I marked that frame as Sebastian's R's Hive so that I wouldn't give the Mississippi Queen credit where credit wasn't due and left, hoping that the next time I visit, there will be new eggs on a different frame laid by her.

Before I walked away I glanced at the hive box (no bees in it) next to the Mississippi Queen hive.  There on the side of the hive was a newly hatched luna moth.  So GORGEOUS.  She probably had her cocoon on the side of the hive just under the top cover.  They have to dry for two hours before they can fly.  Here she is in her regal glory:

A Queenly Adventure

At Ron's house we are having hive problems.  If you'll remember he got the queenless side of the Lenox Pointe split and all of Colony Square (which at the time looked queenless).....Since that time, the Lenox Pointe hive simply dwindled away.  The Colony Square hive appears to have gone through two queens.  Neither were any good.

The most recent decision I've made about that hive was to take a queen from Mississippi that I got from my friend Steve Esau and put her in her cage into the Colony Square hive.  There was no brood and hadn't been except for about three or four capped drone cells.  With no eggs and no capped brood, I assumed the queen had died.

I put the queen cage into the hive on Monday last week.  On Friday I went over and found that the hive had not released the queen.  This would imply that the hive with no brood and eggs, has a queen.

I looked through every frame and found the queen.  She was small, with a small abdomen.  I wanted to kill her but just couldn't so I tried to pick her up on my hive tool.  Instead I flipped her out of the hive.  I looked on the ground and couldn't find her, although I found several bees who were flipped out with her.

I didn't have a queen excluder with me.  Jeff suggested that I put it under the hive so she couldn't get back in and that might have worked, but I didn't have one.

What to do?  I decided to break open a honey cell in one of the honey combs and get honey on my finger.  I held it to the openings in the queen cage and let the caged queen lick it off of my finger so she wouldn't starve.  When she quit licking I put her back into the hive in her cage in case the queen I flipped was injured and the bees would want a new queen.  I went to the mountains for the weekend.

Today I went back over there and the queen had still not been released.  I took a queen clip (borrowed) with me and on my second try was able to capture the queen (along with a drone and about three bees).  I dropped the whole contraption into a pillow case, made sure the Mississippi queen in her cage was placed well and went home.

I didn't know what to do with the queen.  She obviously is a dud and I should kill her.  But remember my experience back in 2009?  I swore I wouldn't kill a queen again.

So I brought her home and made a nuc.  I took a frame of brood and eggs from my MS nuc, I took some honey out of Drone Layer, and a frame of capped brood from there as well.  I added a frame of nectar and an empty frame.  I closed the front of the nuc up with screened wire and left them.

I still had the queen in the clip in the pillow case.  I decided that I would slip her in the clip between the frames overnight for the bees to get used to her.  Well, I opened up the pillow case.  All of the bees except the drone and the queen had escaped the clip.

Remember how she is a small queen?  As I picked up the clip, the queen slipped between the slats of the clip and flew away.  Exasperated and relieved, I released the drone.  As I leaned down to pick up the pillow case, the queen landed on my hand.  She had returned to me, since she didn't have a home to go to and the pillow case was her last resting place.

Really?  She wanted to come back to me.....OK, so now I have her in my possession again.  I clipped her back in the clip and put her in the pillow case.  She'll probably get out and be running around the pillow case.

I decided that at dusk, I'll put her in the nuc to be with the bees there.  If they don't want her, they can kill her.  I've given them a frame of brand new eggs to use to make a queen of their own.  I've closed off the tiny nuc so that they won't return to their own old hives and tomorrow I'll open the entrance back up again.

Also tomorrow I'll take a frame of brood and eggs to Ron's hive, just for support for the new queen.

A Bee-zy Sting-filled Day

This morning started with the dentist - no fun ever.  I had planned to go to the Chastain Conservancy to check on the bees there after my visit to the dentist.

I arrived at Chastain to discover that in my stress over the dentist, I had left both my camera and, more importantly, my smoker at home.  I live about 20 minutes from the site so I decided to go into the bees anyway, using hive drapes and trusting in my slow movements to keep the bees calm.

First I opened the drone-laying Don Kuchenmeister hive.  They have a queen cell but no queen yet so for insurance I wanted to move another frame of brood and eggs from our nuc that lives at Chastain.  I removed a frame to make room for the brood and eggs and promptly was stung on my left hand.  I covered the hive with drapes and opened the nuc.

The nuc is full of bees.  It has rained a lot over the past few days and the bees were none too happy with my intrusion.  A bee flew under my bee jacket and stung me through my t shirt.  Then as I removed the frame, checked to make sure I wasn't taking the queen, and shook most of the bees off of the frame, I got attacked full force.  I usually wear hiking pants to inspect the hives - they are loose and I rarely get stung through them.  This morning I had on jeans and got five stings on my legs during this process.

I closed up the nuc and headed for home, put on my work clothes and headed for my office (I do have a real job!).

I had a break in the afternoon and came home to walk my dogs.  I thought I might stop by the Morningside garden to see if the pesticide kill is still ongoing.  I stopped and walked up to the hive - no protective gear - all in my work clothes.  I walked up to the hive as I often do in my street clothes and took a photo with my phone.  There are a lot of new dead bees so the kill is still happening.

One of the bees really didn't appreciate my presence.  She began head butting me on the side of my head, the back, and finally she landed on my nose right by my nostril where she planted her stinger.

I've gotten stung once before in the nose and it was the worse sting ever. This one matched it.  I began to sneeze and sneezed once per second all the way to the car.  In the car I sneezed all the way to my house where I took Benadryl and put ice on my nose!

Then, lucky, lucky me, my dear friend Julia called me to tell me that she was going to pick up a swarm at Atlantic Station.  She doesn't want/need it and wants to give it to me.  I was thrilled but I wasn't going to be home from work until around 8 PM.  Julia said she would leave the swarm in my backyard and I could install it when I got home.

 Julia sent me photos of the swarm collection.  Atlantic Station is a pedestrian mall in Atlanta near Midtown.  Here's what she found when she arrived:

                                                                                                                                                                            I'm not sure if the blockade was for the bees or for something else.

You can see the bees on the center part bench below.  The are clustered on one front leg.

Here they are up close:

Julia brushed and cajoled them into a large file box that she covered with screen.

At my house when I arrived at 8, I found the bees clustered together in the box - about the size of one cat.

I set up a two box 8 frame medium hive with the insert in the screened bottom board.  I shook the swarm into the hive:

Julia, with all the brushing, wasn't 100% sure that the queen would have escaped without injury, so she suggested that I put in a frame of brood and eggs.  I took one from the package hive in my apiary and put it into the hive box before shaking the bees.  And then I got another sting on my finger.

While I was out there, even though it was getting late, I decided to check and see if the Mississippi queen I had installed in a nuc was released.  I opened the nuc and to my dismay, my nuc making was unsuccessful.  Most of the bees had returned to their original hives (I should have closed it up for 24 hours, but I didn't) and the queen was in her cage surrounded by a handful of bees, but not released.

I pulled the cage out, jumped into the car, drove to Ron's and put the queen cage in his queenless hive that we gave brood and eggs to on Saturday.  The bees seemed eager to meet her.  Her queen cage is the plastic item at about the center of the picture with bees crawling all over it.

And I got my last sting of the day....the best news of the day was that now that I have developed a tolerance for bee stings, my nose stayed its normal size for the rest of my day in the office!

Truth be told, I get stung all the time.  Jeff says that if I would just wear gloves......, but in fact I rarely get stung more than once in a round of inspecting five or six hives.  Today was rather constant - a bee-zy, sting-filled day.

Hive Installation Glitch

Most of the time when something goes wrong in a hive, I'm quite clear that I've made an error (and anyone who has been following this blog knows that I have made many)

Every once in a while I'm not totally responsible for the bee messes that can happen in my hives.  Last Sunday and Monday I installed two packages - one in my own backyard and one at the Chastain Conservancy.  Generally the beekeeper would go back into the hive in about 3 - 5 days to see if the queen has been released from the queen cage.

However, both we've had bad weather ever since and (good news for me) my office practice has been very busy so I haven't had any free bee-ing hours during the few times when it was warm enough to open a hive.  Over the weekend our highs were in the 40s and it was pouring rain on Saturday as well as cold.  We can't get into the Chastain apiary on Sundays.

So now it's Monday - one week from installation - and I have not opened either hive to see if the queens were released.  Hopefully they each were and all is well, but you never know.  The temperature is going to be in the freezing range, really until Friday, so the chance of opening the hives is slim.

So here are the various scenarios:  The queen has been released and the hive is functioning with an empty queen cage in the hive.  That shouldn't be a problem at my home hive because I wedged the queen cage between frames:

But at Chastain, I set the queen cage on the bottom bar of a frame (one of the advantages of using foundationless frames).  There if she has been released, the queen cage is in the way and they may have built crooked comb around the cage, throwing off the symmetry of their comb building:

It won't be in the 60s until Friday and I'll be out of town, but Julia will open the Chastain hive that day and remove the queen cage and check to make sure she was released, but I won't be able to do a thing between now and then because of the weather.

Atlanta has the strangest weather.  We don't have winter until March and now it's the week after the first day of spring and we are having the coldest week since March of last year.

Morningside Garden Hives

And last, but not least, I opened up the Morningside Garden hives this afternoon - a little over a week since installation.  It's really hot up there and the sun beats down on the hives.  The former manager of the garden told me that this hillside was a civil war look out for Union soldiers because from the location of the beehives, you have a great view of downtown Atlanta from a distance.  Below the hill behind the apiary, the Union stored arms and supplies.



The bees had built wax but not as enthusiastically as the hive at Chastain or mine at home.  I do love how the bees get all possessive of their initial wax building as in this photo.



I can't seem to get through a year without making some major installation error.  This was mine so far this year - I put the queen cage between the frames and the bees made crazy comb as a result.  You can see the white tape from the queen cage extending out of the space between the frames.



I did take a rubber band and tried to coax the crooked comb back under the top bar.  Then I moved the errant comb frame next to the wall in hopes they would straighten it out.



They didn't do quite as badly in the yellow hive.  In that hive they made some comb around the queen cage but the frames remained OK.   I just cut the jutting comb off and took it home.

Julia suggested just laying the queen cage on the bottom bar of a frame - so I did that at Chastain and at all my home hives, but not at these two.

In the end I added a box of frames to each of these hives.  I left the food on the yellow hive and thought about coming back with more for the blue hive.  Not much water to be found up here and they may not be able to make wax easily.

The Miracle of Growth (Bee Growth, that is)

A week ago, I installed a package into this hive.  I put a Rapid Feeder inside an empty hive box on this hive.  So the hive began in a 10 frame (my only 10 frame hive in Atlanta).



I love looking at gorgeous newly drawn wax.  This is what the bees had drawn in the last frame next to the wall of the hive box.  The rest of the frames in the box were fully drawn and filled with either brood, pollen or nectar.



 I pulled the queen cage and obviously (since I had already seen frames with tiny eggs and c-shaped larvae) the queen had been released.


Inside the queen cage were dead worker bees.  I wondered if they simply died, since sometimes the accompanying workers do, or if the bees in the package killed the accompanying workers.



Since they had used so many frames in the bottom box, they needed another box and have grown another level!  I left the Rapid Feeder on since about 1/3 of the syrup was still there, but I'll probably think better of that since the nectar flow is on, and remove it tomorrow.  Bees much prefer nectar to woman-made sugar syrup, so they often do use the sugar syrup when nectar is available.

Queen Release at the Blue Heron

As I returned home today, I stopped at the Blue Heron to see if the new queen had been released. Remember, she had not quite been released on Tuesday. The hive seemed calm and happy. I left my smoker in the car, so it was nice to discover that the bees were calm.



In the second box, the queen had been released and the queen cage was empty. I guess it just took them longer because there was more fondant to eat through.



I didn't check to see if she were laying. I would have been so disappointed if she were not, so it was simply enough that she had been released.



The hive started with the nuc was very quiet - no bees on the landing. I decided even though they were feisty bees and I was without my smoker, I'd still give them a look. As you can see in the photo above, it's a hive in only one deep box.

I am not a foundation user, and this is the first time I've ever looked at black plastic foundation. Wow, can you see eggs and brood well. You can have the same experience looking at the photo below. There is lots of brood and c-shaped larvae on this, the only frame I looked at.

Don't worry, I'm still a foundation-less beekeeper, but I'm glad I've had the experience now of looking at eggs and larve on black plastic - no wonder people like it.  I still think the bees like having the opportunity to make their own foundation and I'm sticking to that!

I am relieved - this hive may turn out to be a good one after all.

The State of the Queen at Blue Heron

In the 91 degree heat, I stopped by Blue Heron at 2:30 today. The queen cage was put in place on Thursday night. It's Tuesday and I thought the queen should be released by now. I opened the very calm hive to find the bees walking around in the area of the queen cage.

I lifted out the cage, but the queen was still in there!



The black tube that holds the fondant was eaten almost to the end. I thought by now they would have released her, and in a different kind of queen cage, they probably would have. The typical queen cage has about 1/2 inch of fondant between the bees and the queen. This cage has about 1 inch (see the black tube) of fondant. They have almost eaten all the way through it, but not quite.

I decided given the calm demeanor of the hive and the small amount of sugar left and the fatness of the queen (she's grown since Thursday) that the bees are accepting her. I could have direct released her at this point, but decided to leave her there and let the bees let her out in their own way.



This was a rather dissatisfying trip, so I took Hannah, my dog, and explored the community garden that the Blue Heron bees are pollinating.

I saw bees on onion flowers.



The bees were all over most of the flowering plants in the garden.



I also noticed straight cucumbers (denoting good pollination - thanks, bees).



Here's a view of the pathway leading away from the garden (and Hannah, of course).



Here's a view of half of the community garden that our bees at Blue Heron are pollinating.

Two Hours from Email to Requeening

At 6:15 this evening I got an email forwarded from the president of our bee club to let me know that one of our members had a queen he did not need. I immediately called Scott, the generous beekeeper, got directions to his lovely home in Marietta, and drove up there in the less-than-lovely Atlanta traffic (a drive of 50 minutes) to get this queen.

Our Blue Heron hive has been queenless for weeks now and we needed to do something rather desperately. So far they have not developed laying workers, but I think it's just a matter of time. So Scott's gift is a real potential hive-rescue for Julia and me.

Scott's apiary is high up on a deck originally built for sunbathing at his house in a beautiful woodsy area. Here he is with his three thriving hives. He had gotten this queen to requeen a failing hive, but the hive was too weak and discouraged and didn't manage to accept this queen but instead just died and gave itself over to wax moths.



He had the queen in a quiet spot in his house ready for me to take her to the Blue Heron.



The queen cage was interestingly small and there were no attendants with her. It's an 8 frame medium hive so I slid the frames apart enough to wedge the box in.



At 8:30 (it only took me 25 minutes to drive home), a little over 2 hours since I found out about this queen, she is installed in the hive.



I'll check on Sunday to see if she has been released. I do hope this works and the bees accept her! We are in bad shape at the Blue Heron with this particular hive.