Failures and Successes

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ― Winston S. Churchill

On May 10, we installed a new queen in hive 02.  On our May 17 blog entry, we (as boasting parents) posted a video of our hive 02 queen successfully laying her eggs.   I remember how proud Mark and I were that the hive was working like a machine.  On June 14, our queen was still going strong, and the hive was healthy with eggs and brood.  On July 5, for some unknown reason, the worker bees began to reject their queen, and since then, we haven’t seen any new eggs from her.  On July 19, we combined hives 01 and hive 02, and the queen in hive 02 was our only queen we had to manage the colony, as hive 01's queen was gone.  Combining the hives was our attempt to produce one stronge colony, because both colonies had very low population.  We continued to hope that the queen in hive 02 would somehow bounce back and being laying once again.  We watched and waited for something to change.  But, we last saw this queen on August 2.  She may have been in the hive, and we may have overlooked her, which as Mark and I have learned, is easy for beginner beekeepers to do.   

In the meantime, we ordered another queen for Tom’s bees that were newly installed in hive 03, because we weren’t sure if that colony had a queen.  We received the new caged queen, but she died inside of her queen cage before we had a chance to install her.   We made a trip to visit the bee yard and checked on the hives.   We found that two events had occurred in our hives; hive 03 had swarmed and we were left with an empty box, and hive 02’s queen was nowhere to be found, there were no eggs or brood for quite some time, and the colony seemed lethargic and extremely unproductive.   We decided that we would request a second replacement queen, for the queen we had just received and that died in her queen cage, and we would install the second replacement queen in hive 02.  This plan seemed logical.

Second replacement queen, came by USPS and marked “Beeware – Live Bees”

We received the second replacement queen on Wednesday last week and planned to visit the bee yard on Saturday to install her in hive 02.  Because we noticed last week that hive 02’s population was critically low and seemed doomed without some sort of “injection”, we decided to pull one frame of brood and honey from hive 04 and place it into hive 02.  We had done this earlier in the year and it was successful. 

Yesterday, when we arrived at the bee yard, we approached hive 02 expecting to see the colony in far worse shape than seven days ago.   Before we opened the hive, we noticed improved activity in the landing board.  Bees were coming and going, not a lot of them, but more than during our last visit.  I even saw one bee enter the hive with her pollen baskets full of pollen.  We listened for any activity inside before opening the hive and were a little excited that things seemed to be happening inside the hive box.  Mark smoked the hive from the bottom front and around the sides to let the bees know we were there, and then lifted the top cover and inner cover.   Very unexpectedly, my eyes immediately landed on a queen, scurrying at the top of the deep hive box.  A very large golden queen – but not our queen, she was not clipped!  She was moving very quickly and I was not ready with the camera to get a photo of her.  I couldn’t get over her size, at least double that of the queen we were there to install.  Now, each colony can only have one queen and a queen cannot survive without her colony.  So, Mark and I were forced to make a very quick decision that neither of us felt comfortable making as new beekeepers.   At that moment, we both wished we had the help from a seasoned beekeeper, as our decision was no doubt going to make or break this colony.  We closed up the hive to give our decision some thought.

We opened hive 04, with the intension of removing a full brood frame for hive 02 to rear, and then replaced it with an empty frame.  We hadn’t disturbed hive 04 in months and we were so proud that the hive was strong and healthy.  Yet, we could inadvertently change their productivity, if we were to disrupt them somehow.  We had to inspect several frames to find the perfect one to provide to hive 02.  One of the frames was full of honey and when I used the frame grip to hold it, I felt like I was holding nearly 10 pounds of honey.  The bees in hive 04 were so gentle, and almost submissive, through the entire process.  It made me feel guilty, taking away their hard work to give to another hive.  They didn’t fight back; they just crawled outside the hive, down to the back, collecting away from us.  They were not preparing to swarm, but bearding for ventilation.  We closed up hive 04, hoping that we didn’t create too much stress on them.

Hive 04 bees gathering on the outside of the deep hive, away from the smoke and disruption.

At this point, Mark and I had decided what we would do with our hive 02 queen dilemma.  We decided that Mark would open the hive and I would locate the queen and exterminate her, since we weren’t sure if she was a laying queen.  Then, we would place the new mated queen, still in her queen cage, into the hive.  Mark opened the hive and we searched for the queen, but did not locate her. 
 

Now, we had to make another quick decision; do we leave that queen in the hive and hope that she will soon begin laying, and then exterminate our caged queen?  Or, do we install the caged queen while leaving the newly discovered queen alone to let nature decide which queen will prevail?  We chose the latter.  In all honesty, we weren’t confident with our decision and it is still weighing on me.  But, we felt that our caged queen had better odds at being a successful laying queen, if she managed to survive and be accepted by the colony.

There can be a couple of different outcomes from our decision.  We expect that once the caged queen emerges, there will be a dual to the death between the queens.  I am nervous that the larger queen will prevail and we have no reason to believe that she is a mated and productive egg-laying queen.  If that is to occur, we will be back to square one.  Another outcome could be that both queens could kill each other in their battle to reign. 

But, bees are smart.  There is one other outcome, and I am crossing my fingers this is what will happen.  The colony could make the decision for the queens.  If the colony perceives a queen to be inferior, and another queen is favored, then the colony will drive out the inferior queen.  Maybe our newly installed queen will be protected in her cage for a couple of days, while the colony gains confidence in her and pushes out their old queen.

Here we are again, nervous and in a “wait and see what happens” period.

Hive 02 bees with full pollen baskets and honey stores.