The swarm hive started from the trap at Essie's house had a rough first month. There were lots of emergency queen cells in it after the first week. I added a frame of capped brood to keep the population up and a frame of eggs each week in case they still needed to make a new queen. Yesterday I opened up the hive to check on things and found fresh eggs on the two center frames of the top box. I'm very excited that they have successfully made their own queen and she is laying eggs!
I have also inspected the South package hive. This colony is fairly small compared to the North package hive. They have filled out six of the ten frames in the upper box now, whereas the North hive has completely filled 24 frames total, and I haven't seen it in a week, so I'll bet it's into the fourth box pretty good already.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Swarm Trap occupied!
I got an email from my dad on May 30th with a picture of one of my swarm traps; the one at his cousin's house.
This trap had been in the tree for a couple weeks. It was only about 6 feet off the ground and is baited with a piece of old comb from a house cutout.
Over the next couple days, I had my dad go over and take a look at the trap and see if it was actually occupied, or if he was seeing scout activity. A couple days later he confirmed they were bringing in pollen, so that confirmed there were bees living inside. How exciting!
On Monday, June 4th at dusk, I went over to Salem, screwed a board over the entrance hole, put the trap in the back of the Jeep and went back to Canton with it. I set the trap up on the hive stand where the hive would be permanently located and took the cover off the entrance.
On Wednesday the 6th, I moved them into their hive. The bees occupied about three frames and had already drawn a nice amount of comb. There were only two or three dead bees in the bottom of the box, so the move from Salem to Canton must not have been too jarring.
This is how it looked inside the swarm trap
They had built up two frames about like this.
The stragglers made it inside once the frames were transferred.
One of my favorite bee pics to date - workers fanning Nasonov pheromone inviting their sisters inside.
East Hive still queenless
Visited the East hive on June 3rd and found it to still be queenless. There is a laying worker in the hive and all the brood are drones. This hive will eventually collapse as the bees die. There are only about two frames of bees in there. Sad - my dad is bummed out about it but he will have more bees soon!
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