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 […]
Today, on day 6 (larval age), the small nurse hives have a hard time defending their hives from robbers. I have of course some strong hives in the yard that appear to be looking for an easy meal. I have severely reduced the entrance of the green nuc, so that […]
We installed our Q3 nurse hives today: In Liz’s medium queen castle: 1 frame of 50% capped brood, 1 frame of 20% open brood, some pollen, nectar and one frame with nectar honey. Shook in extra bees from Liz’s california queen hive and at Krz’s place from the […]
From Michael Bush website http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm He states that emergency queen cells may be inferior if they are made from cells on old comb: Emergency queens: “It has been stated by a number of beekeepers who should know better (including myself) that the bees are in such a hurry to […]
Day two (june 21, 2014): preparing the two nurse nucs 0830 at Liz’s house (Krz need to pick up eyeglasses at 0800 first): putting medium frames and nurse bees in one nuc. Waiting closing nuc off. Going over to Krz yard. Meeting Mel and Todd, preparing another nuc with deep […]
So at about 8:30 on the morning of June 18th we checked to see how many nucs we needed to prepare for the soon-to-be emerging queens. We counted 7 capped cells. They seemed a little short and we detected movement of the queens within the cells. Off we went to prepare […]
Two days ago when I looked at my hives my main focus was on see how the two swapped queens were doing. Today I wanted to take another look at hive 3 and swap wood for cardboard in hive 5. The swap was no problem but I was reminded that […]
Today was the first day with some sun in about three days. I have been concerned about one of my new queens and I wanted to take a look. Just to review, hive 1 was the only hive to overwinter. I lost two others. We took bees from this hive […]
I had a quick look outside our nurse hive this early evening and there were bees flying in and out. There were also some bees just hanging out. They must have enough bodies to make our queen cells. Today is day 8. Our cells should be practically capped. Did not […]
June 6, 2012 Nurse hive set up: [Show slideshow] Bees from 3 frames of capped brood shaken into a deep. Transported to Mel and Dawn’s yard. Additional nurse bees added by shaking all the bees from my Q1 queen hive (deep, 10 frames) into the new nurse hive. Q1 queen […]
