This was a very tough week in beekeeping. We were unsure if hive 03 had a queen when the bees were removed from Tom's house about two weeks ago. So, last week, Mark and I ordered a new queen; a Russian/Italian hybrid. We had planned that in the event we were lucky enough to find a queen already a queen in hive 03, our backup was to install this new hybrid in hive 02, where our original queen was not laying.
The new queen arrived at our home in Houston on Thursday and we planned to introduce her into hive 03 on Saturday. When she arrived, she was accompanied by a few attendants, or nurse bees, and all seemed fine. However, on Friday, the day after we received the queen, we found her dead in her queen cage. All of the attendant bees were alive and appeared fine. We aren't sure why she died, but we expect that the beekeeping company where we purchased her will replace her at no charge.
We crossed our fingers that Tom's original queen was already in hive 03 and our queen problem would resolve itself. But, when we arrived at the bee yard on Saturday, we found no bees at all in hive 03. Not even dead ones. So, this must mean that they swarmed. Our problem went from potentially not having a queen to absolutely having no bees. So, once again, hive 03 is empty.
Hive 03 is without bees once again. These empty bottles were once filled
with sugar water, as were the two black frame feeders on each side of the frames.
We still had the attendant bees that accompanied the queen, and we were curious as to what would happen if we were to release them directly into hive 02. We had researched that bees in one colony would not allow bees from other colonies into their hive, as they would perceive them to be robber bees invading the honey supply. We pried open the screen and set the cage at the entrance of the hive and watched.
At the beginning of the video, the hive 02 bees are inside the deep hive. The attendant bees begin fanning their wings extremely fast. We wondered if they were releasing pheromones to announce themselves. The hive 02 bees approach the attendant bees and accepted them immediately. Hive 02 had very few bees overall, no eggs, and no queen. It would have been nice to have had the new hybrid queen for hive 02, as she would have given this colony a much better chance at survival. I will order a replacement queen this week, and we will give it one last try.
The population in hive 04 is great. We added more sugar water to the top deep hive. The bees are not yet drawing comb on the top deep hive, but we expect that they will soon.
Hive 04 is very strong.
Mark adding sugar water to hive 04.
Two bee friends in hive 04.
Once again, we have a new arrangement in the bee yard.
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