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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Jane Saiers <jane.saiers AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Bee Advice Requested
  • Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 14:43:35 -0400

Jane,

It sounds like Hive #1 may benefit from having an experienced beekeeper take a look. Where do you live? There is probably somebody not too far away. It is hard to diagnose accurately from your descriptions without seeing what you are seeing (your descriptions are good, but visual interpretation is even better). There is a good chance you may be okay. Or not. But for now we can think positive. Bees are very robust creatures. Lorenzo Langstroth wrote, "Sometimes the worst thing you can do is 'something'."

It sounds like Hive #2 is in trouble. From your description, you don't have a queen. You have at least 3 choices.
1) If you've got a good number of bees in #2, you can take a frame containing eggs from #1 and put it in #2. They should immediately start making queen cells. If #1 is actually okay (queen is actually laying worker eggs) then you'll have a new queen in #2 in no more than 16 days and she'll be laying in about a week after that. You'll also want to move some sealed worker brood from #1 to supplement the population of #2.
2)  Buy or beg a new queen and introduce it to the colony.
3)  Combine #2 with #1. You can split it back later if it ends up as a strong hive.

Let us know what happens!

Randall Austin


On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Jane Saiers <jane.saiers AT gmail.com> wrote:
Hi OC Beekeepers,
Hive 1: In the Benton box that we received with the package, we could clearly identify the queen. As far as we know, package installation went fine. When checking the frames on 30 April, we saw eggs laid singly in cells and some larvae. We also saw what we thought might be a supercedure cell or an emergency cell. It was a large cell (that had been opened) that was in the midst of the other cells (not on the bottom like a swarm cell). We identified the queen in one of the middle frames. Even to us as newbies, the queen was clearly identifiable.
 
The next time we checked the frames was this morning, 9 May. When checking the frames this morning, we saw (1) eggs, most of which were laidly singly in cells (but a couple of cells had more than one egg); (2) larvae (here and there, but not groups of larvae in contiguous cells as we see in pictures in the bee books); and (3) what we think are capped drone brood as well as some drone brood that had been opened. The capped and opened drone brood were not on the perimeter of the brood area, though --- they were interspersed throughout the egg-laying/larvae area. Also, the capped and opened drone brood were not in clusters but were as single cells here and there. ***As far as we can see, there was NO capped worker brood.*** (Could these cells be emergency cells and not drone worker brood?)  We could not find the queen this morning although it is certainly possible that she was there and too surrounded by other bees for us to identify her.
 
Hive 2: In the Benton box that we received with the package, we could not clearly identify a queen, so we were a little concerned from the start. As far as we know, package installation, including release of the bee(s) from the Benton box, went fine. However, this hive has never "taken off." We have at most two frames with bees. Through today (9 May), we have not found a queen and have no brood. Just capped honey and nectar/uncapped honey.
 
Any advice that you can offer will be much appreciated! We are really growing to love these little bees and want them to be okay!
 
Jane Saiers

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