Bee season is upon us again!! As many of you know, I got my heart broken last year when my entire colony collapsed in what I would call quite a rapid fashion. However, looking back on it after the self blame and doubt dissipated, it seems that last year was a tough year for even experienced bee keepers. So as much as I felt I had let my little friends down, I now feel that I gave it my best shot, learned a lot and am feeling refreshed and excited to get into it again.
In other news we have been remodeling the majority of our house, landscaping the front yard, sectioning off the backyard into garden space, chicken space, human space and bee space, building a chicken coop in said chicken space, and building a patio around the hot tub.....oh and I'm growing a tiny human in my body!!! So this spring has been chalk full of projects, and we figured we could use all the help we could get in regards to the bees.
SO, this year we bought a nuc, (as opposed to the colony we bought last year). This is basically five frames separated out from an already thriving colony, transported to me and ready to be transplanted into my empty and ready hive.
So we picked up the girls a couple of weeks ago and got them settled into their new home. The trick is to load the frames into the hive in the same order they were in in their nuc box. While transporting them, you should take a peak to see if there are any queen cells that are growing (these are elongated cells usually hanging off the bottom of the frames). If there are any queen cells you should kill them off so that the existing queen can carry on doing her thing. It's also a good idea to try to visualize the queen if you can, just to make sure she's still chuggin. Of course, I was so focused on smoking the bees and not making them angry enough to swarm at me, that I completely forgot to check for either queen cells or a functioning queen until I had already moved three of the five frames into their new home. So, womp womp, we will just cross our fingers and hope we have a happy healthy queen.
All of the frames we transferred were drawn out with comb and there were tons of cells with fresh brood, so these gals certainly have a good start. I mixed up some sugar water and put it in the feeder at the hive entrance and laid a couple of pollen patty slabs on top of the frames. And left them to their devices.
But now, a couple of weeks later, I'm seeing some things that I don't love. First off, one of the frames in the nuc was broken and didn't sit quite right in the box. But when I transplanted them there wasn't much I could do about that because they were still very actively using that frame, so I put it in anyway, and it just sat a little lower in the box than the rest of the frames. So, now that they have begun building comb (woohoo!!) they are building it on TOP of that frame because there is extra space (booo). Bees will build comb anywhere there is more than 3/8" of space...crazy right? But so they were building in the wrong place and they still hadn't drawn out any comb on my frames that I added to the nuc.
So, I got my bee veil, my gloves, my hive tool, my smoker and a little shim to help correct that frame, and I headed out to the hive. I smoked the bees, at the hive entrance, through the inner lid and once the inner lid was removed, and I squatted down to see just how I was going to get the gall to proceed. I didn't have much time to gather my courage because smoking the bees only calms them for so long. So I put my hive tool between the end frame and the second frame and pried them apart. I was careful not to crush any bees and just pushed a few out of the way to be able to remove the end frame. When I did, I found that they WERE actually building comb on it!!! Yayyy! My heart delighted. So I rested that frame on the ground, upright against the hive to bother the ladies as little as possible. Then I pried the next frame apart and removed and inspected it. I saw some old capped cells, lots of open cells, some with either water or nectar in them, but no fresh brood. It was hard to see through all of the bees but I could tell that most of the cells were empty. Slightly concerning. So I put that frame to the edge of the box and pried the next frame, this was the broken one. I lifted it up to examine, and what do you know....fresh brood!!! Little white grain-of-rice sized larvae hanging out at the base of many cells. So cool!! So my queen is present and healthy! This was about the time that I could tell the bees were about done with my shenanigans...also about the time I realized I was wearing flip flops and had some angry bees on my foot. But, sweet and forgiving as they are, I brushed them off and they let me be. I just needed to get rid of all this extra comb they had built in the wrong place and then I would be done. How sad to see how angry they get (and rightfully so!) when you undo so much of their hard work! I hated to do it, but I scraped the comb off the tops of the frames and off the underside of the lid. I also tried to separate all the frames and break up the comb they had built between the frames, but that was a bit harder to do.
Anyway, I have healthy bees that are building and laying, eating and drinking! So now I will leave them alone completely for a couple of weeks. I hear that every time you tinker with their hive it takes them two full days to truly recover from the disruption. So I will let them get to it!
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