Friday 7 May 2010

Bad beekeeping

I am so upset. I'm sitting here in a really black mood. It was stupid of me really.

I cooked up a plan on what to do with my queen cells. Re-checking of "Guide to Bees and Honey (Hooper), "Bees at the Bottom of the Garden" (Campion), BBKA's "advice to beekeepers, and a number of web resources http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/artswarm.html I decided on a slight twist on the typical - see the bottom of that Dave Cushman link where it says "my particular favourite method". I even lined up my mother-in-law (who lives 15 miles away) to agree to take a hive in here garden. All ready, I headed on site with new floor, a couple of supers, roof, etc - I won't bore you with the details. Anyway, the procedure, much like any artificial swarm, relies on finding the queen. For 40 minutes I checked and checked. I deeply regretted not re-marking her during an earlier inspection earlier in the year when she was easier to find - I could find her nowhere. Had she already swarmed? I could still see tiny larvae in the hive (bah - I should have searched more carefully for eggs, which I know I had seen yesterday). The 3 queen cells were still in place. I then made the sensible decision to abort and shut up the hive and de-kitted.

Then it struck me - the idea of an idiot. I had the little polystyrene mating hive with me - why not go back in and take one of the queen cells out, a few bees and get cracking trying to set up a new colony that way? After all, that's why I had bought it. So, knife in hand I began: opening up the hive and cutting. I ruined the first queen cell. I still could have stopped at this point, but went for the next. This was cleaner, and I got it into the little mating hive with some bees I quickly brushed off the comb (ha - would it not be ironic if I had got the old queen in this process - this does not bear thinking about) and I shut it up. I got the hive home and it's now sitting in my garden, having had the little feeder filled up with thick sugar solution. The bees are out (and in I hope) and perhaps it will work, perhaps it would not.

So, why so stupid? Well, what if the old queen HAS swarmed? This was not obvious from the number of bees in the hive, but it's a big, vigorous colony so it's possible. I've just removed 2 out of 3 queen cells, arguably leaving the smallest, and if there's no incumbent queen this is just not an acceptable risk for my favourite colony. Again, this process was really only sensible if either I had knowledge the old queen was still in residence or if I had removed the first queen cell cleanly.

Of course if the old queen has NOT swarmed, then I'm not well set up either, since there's still a queen cell in the hive. It's just not ideal - and all because I could not find the queen - and all because I had not adequately marked her or rather not remarked her since her spot had worn off.

I'm dreading my next inspection in a week's time. Fingers crossed that by then I'll find something to smile about.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, hey! Don't feel so bad. I had four swarm cells in mine and was told to move them to a new hive along with frames of capped brood, some eggs and larvae, and some pollen frames. I did it. Then I got to thinking -- what if I moved the queen too? After all, I haven't seen her since last October. Oh she's there, she is laying tons of eggs -- but what if I moved her too. So I waited four days to re-examine the mother hive -- and there were band new eggs! WHEW! Now my delimma is that the new hive with the four queen cells is down to two, that's because the bees tore two of them down themselves. Now I am down to two cells and one of those is empty. So tomorrow I plan to move more eggs over to give them a chance to create a new queen cell, and if I don't see anything then, I have a queen on order that will be available in a week or so. What a mess. While its been un-nerving, I am taking it as lessons being learned. Hang in there!

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  2. Thanks for the comforting words. Fingers crossed things will work out ok, and I'm learning lots. The saga goes on...was with the bees today meddling in their affairs. I'll post accordingly.

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