Gearing Up

About a month ago, we made the rounds of our hives to see how everyone had fared through the winter. At each location, interestingly enough, we found one strong hive that was already building a strong population and one hive that was nearly dead (if not completely dead). I don't believe that either of the dead hives was caused by colony collapse -- the bees did not just disappear from either one, that I can tell. Each of them had a colony that was a bit on the small side at the end of the fall, and I just don't believe they had a critical mass of population to maintain themselves through the winter.
At any rate, rather than ordering new packages for these two hives, we decided to do a split from the healthy hives at each location. We chose 5 frames from each healthy hive that were heavy with developing brood and eggs, and swapped them out with five empty frames from the empty hives. The hope was that the while the brood on these frames was hatching to maintain the population, the bees would raise one of the eggs as a new queen.
Yesterday and today, I made the rounds again and checked both locations -- in each location the strong hives were ready for their first honey super (yeay!). In fact at the Dolores Park location, it appeared that the colony was preparing swarm cells. I am pretty confident that I was able to get them a new super in time, but they were quite ready for more space.
What I really was anxious to learn though was whether the two weak hives were able to produce a new queen and whether she was successful in mating. At Dolores Park, I examined just a few frames before I found copious amounts of eggs in the cells! Some of the cells on one frame side seemed to have some strange laying patterns, such as more than one egg in a cell, or eggs attached to the side, rather than the bottom of the cell, but they overall laying pattern was good on the rest of the frames I examined, so I imagine that the one frame was just from the queen's early attempts as she first started laying.


At the other location the weak hive seemed to have a decent sized population, all things considered. However as I started examining the frames I could not find any eggs at all; frame after frame and all I found were adult bees. I was just about to close up the hive and run home to order a queen to give the hive, when I saw this!

Voilà la Reine! She appears to be plump enough that I believe she has mated already, she must not have started laying quite yet though. We'll give this hive a little more time and check again, but I think they are going to be alright.

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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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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Quick Peek

While the sun was out yesterday and it was relatively warm and free of a chance of rain we went to check the hive and see if the princesses had room to start growing their colony -- with the weather being so warm I thought the would likely already be starting to rear brood and I know they've been able to start gathering pollen and nectar.

When we got into the hive we got some mixed news.


We saw a few eggs! But at the same time the hive population is very small -- less than 1 lb of bees total from what I can estimate. And the eggs we did see were very few. Usually eggs are a good sign meaning that the queen is present and laying. With such a small population I expected we would be able to see the queen easily, though and we did not. So I have a suspicion that we have a laying worker and not a queen. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that in at least one cell there were two eggs.
We'll wait a couple of weeks and see what happens. There is every likelihood that the reason the population is small is that is is late in the Winter. The queen, if she is present may simply not have started laying yet so the bees that remain are only those that have survived since October.
Once the eggs we did see hatch and the larvae are sealed in their cells we will be able to determine if they are workers or drones. And by that time if there is a queen there should be more laying.
If, on the other hand there is not more laying then we will know it is time to order a nuc or a package and start over.
There was not evidence of too many mites on the bottom board of the hive, and no signs of disease which is something to be grateful for.

We did dust the bees for mites with powdered sugar before we left them. Here is one of them fanning to attract her sisters back to the hive.


And one trying to brush herself off.




On the way home, we saw a few bees buzzing around the fruit trees that are blooming in the neighborhood, so there is still hope.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.