Post by lew92 on Jul 2, 2012 9:07:32 GMT -5
On Sunday evening, I visited the bee yard to water the hanging plant and make sure the bee “pond” was full. I noticed the bees were really loud and that there were a lot of them on the outside of the hive…then I noticed that there were hundreds of them flying around.
I watched where the cloud of bees were concentrated and finally saw a football sized cluster in a small tree. Oh, no!
I walked up to the garage to get Frank to come see them. We walked down to the side of the yard where the swarm tree was. I then called and left a message at the Kane’s, then called Michele. About five minutes into the conversation, I walked closer to the tree to see how big the swarm really was – and there were just a hundred or so bees still in the tree. The swarm had already fled for it’s new home.
I decided to wait until Monday morning to check inside the hive, as the temperature was still well over 90 degrees. Suited up and smoker at the ready, I could see quite a few bees hanging on the front of the hive. When I went into the top box (#4), I could see that the bees had started building comb on the center two frames that had foundation on them. No visible work had been done on the empty frames to either side. No brood in this box, because I had the queen excluder on.
Box number 3 showed me why the queen left. The first frame had brood on it, including two queen cells. Whew! I should be able to continue without having to re-queen the hive. Frame #9 on the other end of the box also had brood on it – the center 7 frames were full of capped honey!
I decided to harvest them and replaced them with empty, foundationless frames, leaving the two outer frames where they were with their brood comb in them. Going farther down into the hive, boxes one and two were full of brood and capped honey and box #2 had at least 5 queen cells, two of them already capped. The queen simply had nowhere to lay eggs anymore.
So they are back to three boxes and no queen excluder. I can tell the difference between frames with honey and those that have brood, so I’m just going to wing it.
I'm going to the paint store to pick up a strainer that will fit over a five gallon bucket and plan on crushing the comb to get the honey out. I've already tasted it and it is awesome!
I watched where the cloud of bees were concentrated and finally saw a football sized cluster in a small tree. Oh, no!
I walked up to the garage to get Frank to come see them. We walked down to the side of the yard where the swarm tree was. I then called and left a message at the Kane’s, then called Michele. About five minutes into the conversation, I walked closer to the tree to see how big the swarm really was – and there were just a hundred or so bees still in the tree. The swarm had already fled for it’s new home.
I decided to wait until Monday morning to check inside the hive, as the temperature was still well over 90 degrees. Suited up and smoker at the ready, I could see quite a few bees hanging on the front of the hive. When I went into the top box (#4), I could see that the bees had started building comb on the center two frames that had foundation on them. No visible work had been done on the empty frames to either side. No brood in this box, because I had the queen excluder on.
Box number 3 showed me why the queen left. The first frame had brood on it, including two queen cells. Whew! I should be able to continue without having to re-queen the hive. Frame #9 on the other end of the box also had brood on it – the center 7 frames were full of capped honey!
I decided to harvest them and replaced them with empty, foundationless frames, leaving the two outer frames where they were with their brood comb in them. Going farther down into the hive, boxes one and two were full of brood and capped honey and box #2 had at least 5 queen cells, two of them already capped. The queen simply had nowhere to lay eggs anymore.
So they are back to three boxes and no queen excluder. I can tell the difference between frames with honey and those that have brood, so I’m just going to wing it.
I'm going to the paint store to pick up a strainer that will fit over a five gallon bucket and plan on crushing the comb to get the honey out. I've already tasted it and it is awesome!
