Unrest In The Kitty Hive
Five days ago we checked the hives to see if they were ready for some expansion. Olga was very ready and we added a third brood box. Kitty was about three frames behind, so we decided to expand Olga and give Kitty a few more days to build up comb.
We took a look at Kitty today, and I noticed all but one of the frames had comb drawn out. We took out a center frame to check the status of the brood and found something most troubling. Can you see it in the above photo? It's down at the bottom, towards the right...kind of looks like a peanut shell...here's a close up:
The bees have formed queen cells. Now, I'm perplexed as to what is going on. There were about six queen cells formed throughout the hive and most were formed on the bottom of the frame--off of a column of drone cells. Now, here is the deal, queen cells are formed for two reasons--swarming (when the bees run out of room, they raise a queen, divide up and swarm) or supercedure (which means the current queen is failing, injured, or dead and the workers are trying to raise a new queen to replace her).
Now, according to bee literature, swarming queen cells are on the bottom of the frames. Supercedure queen cells are formed on the center of a frame...Most of the queen cells in the Kitty hive were on the bottom, but I did find two that were on the frame towards the center. I could find no eggs, but if the hive is about to go into swarm mode, the queen would have stopped laying eggs. However, it's been weeks since I've seen the Kitty queen. Is she dead? did she get injured or killed when we checked the box five days ago? Now, what do I do? Should I buy a new queen to introduce to the hive?
Check out this frame laden with capped over honey and a small patch of brood. From reading about queen cells in books and bee forums, the only thing that is certain with bee keeping appears to be that there are some guidelines, but really nothing is hard and fast. Sure swarming cells are usually at the bottom of a frame, but according to bee literature and bee forums--anything is possible. All of this may just be the Kitty girls feel crowded and are ready for a third brood box. I started thinking back: We checked the hive five days ago, and all seemed normal--eggs in cells and no queen cells. Today--there are about a half dozen queen cells. It takes fertilized eggs three days from when they were laid to be larvae and queen cells get capped at about seven days after being laid--these can't be more than four days old. The queens don't emerge until nine days after they have been capped. I decided to remove all the queen cells I could find and to add the third brood box and check again in a week. If there are no eggs after a week, then I'll order a new queen.
Ack, this is nerve wracking.
I ended up removing quite a few of the drone cells as I removed the queens. I felt terrible about it, but the hive needs workers to build and gather food,not males to eat honey while they bide their time to fly out looking for queens. As I removed wax, cells got exposed and you can see the larvae oozing out. I really felt bad killing the, but it needed to be done. On the upside, none of the larvae and pupae I exposed had any varroa mites--which means the overall health of the colony is good. After I scraped this chunk off, some of the drones started to emerge (above photo). I'm sure it was panic at feeling the cells being moved. As with any type of farming, you will have to kill some of your stock, but I found myself feeling more guilty about it than I had anticipated. If I'm like this with drones, I don't want to even think about my state at the end of summer in 2008 when I have to let my older colonies die off.
If anyone has advice or insights to my queen situation, please feel free to comment.
In other news, I have three new monarch chrysalises around the apartment. Two were formed about three days ago and appear to be parasite free. Whew!
We took a look at Kitty today, and I noticed all but one of the frames had comb drawn out. We took out a center frame to check the status of the brood and found something most troubling. Can you see it in the above photo? It's down at the bottom, towards the right...kind of looks like a peanut shell...here's a close up:
The bees have formed queen cells. Now, I'm perplexed as to what is going on. There were about six queen cells formed throughout the hive and most were formed on the bottom of the frame--off of a column of drone cells. Now, here is the deal, queen cells are formed for two reasons--swarming (when the bees run out of room, they raise a queen, divide up and swarm) or supercedure (which means the current queen is failing, injured, or dead and the workers are trying to raise a new queen to replace her).
Now, according to bee literature, swarming queen cells are on the bottom of the frames. Supercedure queen cells are formed on the center of a frame...Most of the queen cells in the Kitty hive were on the bottom, but I did find two that were on the frame towards the center. I could find no eggs, but if the hive is about to go into swarm mode, the queen would have stopped laying eggs. However, it's been weeks since I've seen the Kitty queen. Is she dead? did she get injured or killed when we checked the box five days ago? Now, what do I do? Should I buy a new queen to introduce to the hive?
Check out this frame laden with capped over honey and a small patch of brood. From reading about queen cells in books and bee forums, the only thing that is certain with bee keeping appears to be that there are some guidelines, but really nothing is hard and fast. Sure swarming cells are usually at the bottom of a frame, but according to bee literature and bee forums--anything is possible. All of this may just be the Kitty girls feel crowded and are ready for a third brood box. I started thinking back: We checked the hive five days ago, and all seemed normal--eggs in cells and no queen cells. Today--there are about a half dozen queen cells. It takes fertilized eggs three days from when they were laid to be larvae and queen cells get capped at about seven days after being laid--these can't be more than four days old. The queens don't emerge until nine days after they have been capped. I decided to remove all the queen cells I could find and to add the third brood box and check again in a week. If there are no eggs after a week, then I'll order a new queen.Ack, this is nerve wracking.
I ended up removing quite a few of the drone cells as I removed the queens. I felt terrible about it, but the hive needs workers to build and gather food,not males to eat honey while they bide their time to fly out looking for queens. As I removed wax, cells got exposed and you can see the larvae oozing out. I really felt bad killing the, but it needed to be done. On the upside, none of the larvae and pupae I exposed had any varroa mites--which means the overall health of the colony is good. After I scraped this chunk off, some of the drones started to emerge (above photo). I'm sure it was panic at feeling the cells being moved. As with any type of farming, you will have to kill some of your stock, but I found myself feeling more guilty about it than I had anticipated. If I'm like this with drones, I don't want to even think about my state at the end of summer in 2008 when I have to let my older colonies die off.If anyone has advice or insights to my queen situation, please feel free to comment.
In other news, I have three new monarch chrysalises around the apartment. Two were formed about three days ago and appear to be parasite free. Whew!Labels: beekeeping, bees, monarch ranching
posted by birdchick at 10:40 PM
7 Comments:
Please keep us updated on the bees. We do love seeing the pictures and learning more about them.
Good luck on the bee situation but you do know super markets sell honey in bear shape containers.(-:
MH
Probably a very silly question, but...
I'm used to thinking of honey bees as the gambolling, fuzzy kind. Yours seem very sleek and not so fuzzy. Do all kinds of bees make honey? What kind do you have?
Every time I check the hives, I do an update. It serves as a good notebook for me to remember what I did last tie I was out and will be a record book for the future. I'm amazed at how popular the bee entries are, was not anticipating that.
I must say that I'm having a tough time not cracking open Kitty to see what's happening, but I need to give them time to work the new frames we put in to expand the hive.
dea,
Not a silly question at all. Honey bees are in the order hymoneptra and there are over 17,000 species in North America (and that doesn't include the false bees). The bees you are describing sound like bumble bees. The honeybees (like the ones I keep) produce the most honey and there are several types, I have an Italian race, but there others including Russian, African, and German. European honeybees produce the most honey and were introduced to North America. Bumblebees are native to North America and produce honey, but not very much. You can buy special housing for them, and many people encourage them for pollination--we need all we can get.
I remember hearing on the radio just a few days ago, that the U.S. is now outsourcing honey to China. Apparently, we don't have enough honey producing bees here in the U.S., and there are a lot more bee hives in China to supply us with honey. So keep those hives going, Sharon!
Denise
Thanks for answering, Sharon. I think I have an affection for the delightful little bumblebees (very aptly named, no?) but I'm glad to hear there are thousands of honey-producing species in N.America. Keep up the good work, and the posts about being an apiarist, please!
Italians, eh? Very passionate, from what I hear. Perhaps that accounts for the unorthodox frame development.
I am a first year beekeeper in central Ohio and I am experiencing the exact same thing that you are. I am scraping the queen cells away and hoping that they don't swarm. My queen cells are at the bottom of frmes which means that they are wanting to swarm. I had a super on for about a week after first discovering the cells. Our state bee inspector came by to inspect and found more cells and suggested that I split the hive. I decide not to. He told me to begin to feed them again since it is so dry here and the nctar is drying up. I did that and removed the super. I will be looking in the hive tomorrow and see what is going on now. I also posted on our central ohio beekeepers site asking for advice. Let me know how you are making out. my email is pife101@yahoo.com. the hive is very healthy and the frames in the deep hive bodies are probably 60-70% full. I am moving frames from the outboard areas into the inboard to give them more room. I suspect that honey is out of the question for this year. the inspector said that there are onlya couple weeks of nectar left and they have to get ready for winter soon. Keep me posted.
Greg
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