Weather: Overcast, some showers, mid 60′s, hardly any wind
Let me start by saying we finally have a name for Hive B and it’s now going to be called Nasty Hive. Yesterday Jim and I decided to check on the top feeders on the new hive because last week they seemed to be getting cloudy. We decided since we were only going to check the feeder that we didn’t need to suit up. WRONG!!! We were 2 minutes into the process when a bee landed on my t-shirt. Jim told me not to move and saw that it was trying to sting me but the way the shirt was folded it wasn’t getting me. Jim grabbed it and threw it away. It was a that point that the bee came back with a vengeance and was going for any part of Jim that it could. Jim quickly ran out towards the open field however this bee followed and stung Jim on the shoulder. Although Jim and I have been stung quite a bit, you never really get used to it. A throbbing lump quickly started to swell on his shoulder. Hence the name NASTY HIVE. We called it a day at this point.
On Saturday we suited up properly and decided to finish checking on the hives. We first changed Hive C and all went well. We removed the feeder and replaced it with a clean one we had in the barn, quickly filled it up and sealed it up….nothing worth mentioning occurred. We then moved onto Hive B which did have cloudy water but we didn’t have another clean one to put on so we decided to leave it for one more week. When we lifted up the feeder, the bees had begun to seal a frame to the underside of the feeder. We’re trying to figure out why and came to the conclusion that because we had accidentally left out a frame a few weeks ago, the bees had built comb similar to comb in a Top Bar hive…. in the empty space. Jim removed the frame and seeing they were all agitated at our intrusion, we put the feeder back on with cover and sealed it up again…but not until I got stung in the ankle.
We walked away but they wouldn’t let up. We walked a good 500 feet away and 5 minutes later they were still aggressive. We then moved onto Alpha Hive when things calmed down. Since this hive didn’t have a feeder and we put on a honey super the week before, we decided to check on those frames first. There was comb building on most of the center frames at the top, there was glistening nectar being deposited which made us feel great that these girls were doing the right thing. Jim had read some articles where some people had difficulties getting their honey supers going…not these girls.
Next we wanted to inspect each frame in the brood supers to see if anymore swarm cells were present. We also wanted to see how things were going since we had reversed the brood supers a few weeks ago. The top brood super had plenty of swarm cells and supersedure cells. I removed each of the swarm cells and we counted about 8 of them. Most of the frames had something going on…some capped honey, some brood but there were also some empty frames at the ends and also some wavy looking comb. We ended up leaving 2 supersedure cells on a frame until we understood exactly what our next step would be. More on that later. Overall the hive was extremely busy and I’d say crowded which makes sense why the swarm cells were being created. We haven’t seen the queen in quite a while. Also worth mentioning is that the bees in this hive have a great temperament. We closed the hive and left since we pretty much pulled their hive apart and they were all milling about outside waiting for us to leave.
We checked on the hives later in the afternoon and that’s when one of the bees from the NASTY HIVE decided to sting me on the cheek. I’m hoping the swelling goes down by the time I go into work tomorrow. I look like the Godfather on one side of my face with a puffy jowl. Jim’s a trooper and not complaining about his shoulder.
Last night Jim found some good articles on both swarm cells and the supercedure cells. We decided to let nature take its own course and let the supercedure cells hatch. Not having found the old queen, it’s possible that she’s aged and not giving off enough pheremone to keep the hive happy. We’re expecting them to hatch by next weekend.
Here’s one of our honeybees on our apple tree blossom
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