She's Arrived ... Are we all ready?

It's Friday the 15th, and the queen has arrived via 2nd day UPS. There were 5 attendants with her - only 4 survived the trip/treatment to get here.


The weather here today is a nor'easter storm of wind and rain, with the temperature at a warmish 54. There have been a few breaks in the rain and sun rays would show up off and on for periods of time. I decided that the quicker I got the queen into the hive, the better the chances of survival for both she and the entire hive. I am following Bob's advice and removing all but one attendant and her queen in the cage. I poked a good sized hole in the candy plug, created a wire hanger for the cage so I can suspend it between some frames and plodded out to the hive.



I didn't waste any time in getting down to the bottom deep. It was good to see a fair amount of bees sitting on top of some frames. I didn't bother with a smoker today as I wanted to be in and out quickly. I noticed that as soon as I started to pull a frame, a few bees had other ideas about me being there and immediately began to buzz my face , arms, and hands. I pulled the end frame out, slid four others over a bit and made room for the queen cage. The coat hanger wire piece I fashion for the top worked perfectly as I suspend the cage in the center between frames. As soon as I moved the queen into place, it was obvious that quite a few of the bees in the area could smell the new bee (newbie?) and began to focus on her and not me. I closed up the hive, took that 10th frame with me to store inside for 3 or 4 days till the queen is hopefully freed, then after pulling the empty cage, there will be room again for it in the hive.


It's late in the year to be doing this (I believe) yet, it's about my only shot at trying to keep this hive going through the winter into spring - fingers crossed that it will work.


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Confirmation

On Monday 11 Oct, I went into the hive again, this time with Bob looking at each frame with me. We did not see the queen. Bob then uncapped one of the lone capped brood cells that were there on a frame, and it was dead. It would appear that there hasn't been a laying queen there in quite a while, and certainly not enough nurse bees to keep up. Without new bee eggs being laid daily, and without new bees being born daily, it's easy to see how the hive population can quickly dwindle down in size ... as the older bees naturally end their life cycle, there are no new ones to replace them, and the hive population shrinks.

I did have a number of full frames that had wax capped honey and liquid syrup on them (and a couple of wax moths we squished in place). We proceeded to condense the hive down to a single deep - picking the best and most developed frames that have honey on them and placed them in this one deep ... added a mite treatment (Apiguard) that Bob had some excess of for me (thanks), and reassembled in this order: bottom board, condensed deep, medication on top, 1" spacer frame, top feeder, inner cover, the other deep (giving the bees a chance to clean out cells that have honey or syrup in them), and finally the top cover.

I went online and researched several sites to see if I could acquire another queen this late in the year. I found Rossman Apiaries in GA (1-800-333-7677) who will 2nd day a queen to me. I want to try it even if there is little chance of success in getting the queen fully mated this late in the season. So delivery is slated for Friday afternoon. Of course as timings go, we are due for heavy rain on Friday; so, I will install the queen on Saturday and sit back and hope for the best.

... and I thought it was going so well. ( It all adds to the education of this newbee beekeeper.)

What happened????

I went into the hive on Saturday Oct 9 to do a status check. I have been seeing far fewer bees flying in and out of the hive and I was beginning to get worried.

My worst fears were true ... No sign of the queen, only a few capped brood (for all intents and purposes, there were no brood), no eggs, no larvae, looks like plenty of pollen being packed, lots of honey waiting to be set, lots of wax capped honey, but very few bees - at least to what I had been experiencing all year to date. I don't believe they swarmed on me, otherwise I would expect to be seeing some sort of replacement queen, eggs, larvae, and plenty of worker bees. My guess is that somehow, the queen has died (could it have been my heavy hand when doing the sugar dusting?, particularly the first time when I separated the deeps and sugar dusted each one? I don't know, doubt I ever will. The immediate problem is that I see this hive dwindling down in resources, and no queen to keep laying to build up the hive. What to do? I'll try to reach Bob, my mentor and see what he thinks ... In the meantime, I will add the top feeder back in place, and put some sugar syrup on there along with some Honey Be Healthy medication.


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