I may be losing my mind – that would be a much easier explanation – or I just observed a very odd thing. I was looking into the two nucs with some bees, hives 5 and 6. Hive 5 is the cardboard box which is supposed to have my ‘banked’ […]
I was inspecting to see how much honey I might have to harvest this year, and when I looked into hive 4 and pulled the second frame in the top of three medium boxes this is what I found. This is Sally 2 from the Q1 rearing. There was so […]
I got up bright and early this morning, closed off the queen castle, packed up the nucs and castle and took off for the out yard. I got to the yard to find that Kristien had done an excellent job at leveling and making secure the two pallets I had dropped […]
Today when I went to check on the nucs, it was obvious that a massive robbing event was underway at the purple and orange nucs (primarily the purple one). There were bees everywhere in the air in front of the nuc. Way more bees than is appropriate for the number that […]
I checked my two NUCs again today which should have been day 18. In hive 6 the queen cell was open on the tip which seemed promising, but upon closer inspection, I realized that the queen was still in the cell. There were no bees in or on the open […]
June 30 When I opened the center compartment of my queen castle, I fashioned a robbing screen from 8 count screen. It was based on a simple screen I had seen online that was designed for a traditional entrance along the bottom board. Because the entrance on this compartment is […]
It’s late so I’ll be brief. I checked my two NUCs today at around 3 pm and neither queen (George 2) had yet emerged. Hive 6 only had a handful of bees with another handful of capped brood cells available. I opened the cage and I expect that she will […]
The first nuc I went into was the purple one. This is a cell that I grafted from George. Meet George’s offspring: The next nuc is the orange one. This is one that Andrew grafted from George. […]
Early on the morning of June 29th, we met at Kristien’s yard to assess the queen cells. First we checked the deep nurse colony: The bee density was not as strong as we had hoped for. A possible solution to this is to gather the bees for the nurse colony […]
I decided to name my Q1 Queen Mother, Sally. All of the grafted queen larvae produced Sally 2 queens. I’m about 80% sure Sally swarmed shortly thereafter, so hive 1 now also has a Sally 2a. I am still quite happy with Sally 2a in hive 1. I also have […]
