Sideling View Apiary

Inspection 6/22/20

Since hive #2 had some queen cells recently, we were not worried too much about them, and since I had noticed that hive #1 had traffic congestion, I decided to take the entrance reducer off.

We opened up #2, and we were excited to see that a queen cell was capped. They seemed to be doing fine and were repairing the beetle larvae-chewed comb.

In hive #1, the bees had drawn out more comb and had been very busy filling the frames with brood and pollen.

They had also propolized between the frames of the top box which drove me crazy because my fingers kept sticking to everything.

We did not find the queen this inspection. It does not worry me, however, because I was able to see eggs.

Yay for bees! They know what to do more than we ignorant beekeepers do. Last week hive #2 was a mess. But when we went in this week, everything was back on the right track. The bees had constructed several emergency queen cells and were tending them religiously.

They had emptied the last baggie of sugar, and since they had capped honey, we decided to stop feeding them. There were only a handful of small hive beetle larvae to count on the bottom board and none on the comb. I think the emerging bees must have kept the numbers down. I am so glad for their success.

We had added another deep to hive #1 last week. I had used foundationless frames, so I was interested in what it would look like.

The top box had several of the frames drawn out, and in the the bottom box, the queen was on a foundationless frame half-drawn out . There were several frames with eggs, and the hive was generally strong.

A close up of a cleaning bee. Do you see its tongue?

Inspection 6/7/20

It was time. We had decided if there was no improvement in the queen, we would have to pinch her. We opened up hive #2 and found a mess. The small hive beetle larvae had slimed the bottom board!

It was a good thing we had another bottom board! But the queen had made no improvement. We had brought out a jar of alcohol to put her in to make swarm trap lure, and in she went.

Hive #1 was doing a lot better. We even found an empty queen cup! We took a frame that had eggs and young brood to put in hive #2 and added another box. I hope to build some nucleus boxes soon in case we need to split.

Inspection 6/1/20

When we inspected hive #2, we hoped it would have cleared up its problems, but it did not. It had more problems! The queen had still not laid anything other than drone brood. They also had a few small hive beetle larvae in one of the outer frames.

We decided to put another frame from hive #1 in that had eggs and young larvae, so we pulled out another frame of foundation.

When we opened up the other hive, it was doing well. We did not see the queen but knew she was there because we saw eggs. We took a frame with some eggs and enough young larvae so that the weaker hive could make a queen cell.