Fresh eggs!

New eggs! There is one just above the tip of the pin. Once you see it, you can see them in adjacent cells too.

Opened up the hive today for a peek--it has been two weeks since the merge, and I wanted to check on the progress of the new queen. Throughout the hive there is evidence of new comb--more upstairs than downstairs. In one of the upstairs frames, there was a wild piece of double thick burr comb that I removed with my hive tool. Upon taking it inside, I was able to look more closely and see that there were new eggs in there! There was one little egg exactly at the bottom apex of each cell (perfect formation). This is evidence that the new queen has been laying! Delight!! I hope she will not miss these few that I accidentally stole, and that I didn't disturb her while cleaning up in the hive. Downstairs there is also uncapped brood, which is great news. I didn't see eggs in the frames, but I had a tough time looking through my veil and there were huge numbers of bees roaming over the frames. Today was my steamiest inspection yet--90 degrees and sunny, wearing jeans and the bee suit, smoker in tow, and lifting out some very heavy frames loaded up with honey. Who knew that beekeeping was such a good workout?


Directions from Joe were to add a honey super once all 20 frames have been drawn out. There are still at least a half dozen frames that need more comb, so I'll give the hive two more weeks before my next inspection. Opening up the hive is disruptive to the workers, and it is best not to do it more than is necessary--imagine each room of your 20-room house being picked up into the air and inspected by a giant, one at a time. Unnerving, even without the occasional bee squish.

One week after the merge...

Boardman feeder and newspaper bits

The bees have been quite busy all week, and have been dragging out newspaper bits, just as Joe promised they would. They have been consuming a full mason jar of sugar water a day--so Ted has taken to buying sugar in bulk to keep up. The weather has also continued to be too hot (for myself and the bees), near 90 every day, so there has been a lot of bearding outside the hive.

I opened up the hive this morning to see how things were doing since the merge. Upstairs there is still plenty of capped drone brood waiting to emerge (they take 24 days to develop from an egg), and evidence of new comb. Downstairs, there was worker brood on the wooden frames from Joe, and larvae. I didn’t see any eggs, or young brood, which was a little disappointing, but Joe says to give the new queen a bit more time to get settled and to let the workers generate more good comb for her to lay in.  I will wait at least a week, or perhaps two, before the next inspection and keep my fingers crossed for new Carnolian eggs.

Carnolian worker brood and larvae on the wooden frames from Joe 

A New Beginning :)

Joe from Crystal came by the house a few weeks ago and indeed confirmed that I had no laying queen in the hive, and that there was no evidence of a virgin queen either. Though I still had plenty of bees in the hive, without a new queen, or any brood in the hive, they would slowly die off. So begins operation requeen. If there are young brood in a queenless hive, it is possible to introduce a queen in a cage (like when my first queen arrived), and let her emerge over a few days. The young gentle bees will take care of her, and she will start to lay. However, in the case of a queenless hive with no brood, like mine, introduction of a queen on her own is not likely the be successful. The old bees, who have been on their own for some time, will not take care of the queen, and may kill her. In this case, it is necessary to introduce brood and young bees at the same time as introducing a new queen. This is typically done with the addition of a nucleus, or as the beekeepers say, a nuc. A nucleus is typically 5 frames of bees, with young nurse bees, brood, and a queen. 

Joe of Crystal Bee Supply setting up the paper merge

Joe had been planning to bring over his nuc for several weeks, however the weather here has been quite hot for some time. When the weather is hot, the bees tend to hang out outside of the hive (called bearding), even over night, which makes it impossible for Joe to close up the hive and transport the bees to me. Last weekend I took my second hive body over to his shop with five empty frames, so that he could put the nuc frames into my furniture. After several reschedules due to hot weather, Joe finally was able to make it over to my house this morning to combine his nuc of Carnolian bees, to my old Italian bee hive. To ensure a friendly merge, a piece of newspaper was placed between the hive bodies--this way the bees have to eat through the paper before the hives are one. This gives a few days for the new queens pheromones to spread throughout the hive.

Drone brood--evidence of laying workers in my hive

Shaking out my bees to eliminate laying workers

Once the Carnolian bees were happily installed downstairs (we also put the hive on cinderblocks to lower the hive a bit--so that should we be so lucky enough to install honey supers later in the summer I won’t need a ladder), on went the newspaper and my hive body on top. As we started to look through my frames, it became clear that in the weeks since my original queen disappeared, some of my workers had started to lay eggs. Since these eggs are not fertilized, they can only develop into drone bees. Drone pupae are super big, and lead to bumpy capped brood. Joe was not thrilled about keeping the laying workers in the hive for the paper merge, as they apparently can cause trouble. So Joe proceeded to shake each and every single one of my frames of bees into my outer cover (there were at least 10,000 bees on those frames), and dumped the bees into a heap near the hive entrance. Joe says that all of the normal worker bees will be able to go back into the hive, but that the laying worker is so rotund and heavy from laying that she won’t be able make the journey. It is impossible for me to imagine this, but I am taking Joe’s word for it.

My bees headed back to meet the new Carnolian bees

To help the bees back into the hive, Joe suggested we use a twig next to the hive entrance. He said that bees are lazy, and take the easiest route. Within minutes, there was a bee highway into the hive. Amazing. My concerns are that the laying worker might take the highway, or that my Italians might be mean to the new queen as they enter the lower brood box, but Joe assures me that this is the best option. I also received strict orders to continue to feed the bees sugar water until all 20 frames are drawn out with comb, so I set up a Boardman feeder with a mason jar. This is much easier to monitor and refill than the frame feeder I used at the beginning of the season. Next inspection will be in one week.