Sunday, May 3, 2009

Bees and Flowers Circadian Rythms

Here is an article in the New York Times about how bees and flowers coordinate their schedules to maximize the pollination/nectar trade.
We just went Friday to see our new hives and make sure that all is well with them. The two packages are each doing great. The Noe Valley one has eggs and the Dolores Park location hive has larvae already.
The swarm with the new queen on our friends roof is off to a very slow start -- the queen had not been released when we checked on her on Wednesday so we let her out of the cage. There were not many bees left in the hive, so we are hoping that the queen can start laying quickly.
The first hive that we had at the Dolores location is very busy. We put an empty deep full of frames on top of it to give them more room, but we might want to take a frame of brood out of it and move it to the rooftop hive.
Finally the initial hive in the first location seems quite sluggish. The colony is small and while I saw very young brood indicating that the queen was present within the past few days, I didn't see any eggs (though that might just be that I didn't look in the right cells), and the quantity of brood is very small. There is one sealed supersedure cell in the hive so it is possible the queen really was laying too slowly and was kicked out. If so well hope that the new queen hatches and is mated soon so she can start laying eggs and build up the population. Otherwise we can move a frame from the strong Dolores hive to this hive as well and see if that gives them more options for either allowing the newly hatched queen more time to start laying fertile eggs or raising another new queen if necessary.
I am concerned a little that the slow start on all the hives is going to translate into a late harvest which means that while we still have a few small jars remaining, it could be September or October before we have inventory again.


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