When he heard the size of the swarm - roughly that of a large leg of Parma ham - he suggested I put them straight into a full-sized hive box filled with frames that included one frame of brood from the 'mother' yellow hive. He said the frame of brood would help anchor them to their new hive. I placed an empty super on top of theframes to act as a sort of funnel, and shook the bees in. By that evening Team Orange, as they are now known, were on a make-shift hive stand just five feet from the original Team Yellow, and with a feeder filled with sugar syrup to give them a head start on building wax comb on the new frames. Whereas most animals convert excess sugar to fat, bees convert sugar into wax. They actually 'sweat' flakes of wax which they then harvest from their own bodies, chew, and then sculpt into those perfect, intricate hexagonal cells.
That same afternoon, I don't know what made me go back and examine the yellow hive, but when I did, something caught my eye on the ground just in front of the hive. It was a blonde queen bee, climbing over and around a small cluster of bees who appeared to be ignoring her. She seemed all alone, without any entourage, and she was soliciting. She must have been newly-hatched, and I knew there were probably more of her kind around since I saw a number of queen cells when I opened the yellow hive to steal a frame of brood to put in with the swarm. Well, I had the nuc box, which was teeming with bees from the swarm - I hadn't yet shaken them into the swarm hive. So I took another frame of brood from the yellow hive, placed it in the nuc, and dumped the baby queen in. Now, some 5 days later, bees are still in the nuc box, and taking down lots of sugar syrup - they will have gone through 1/2 gallon by tomorrow.
Back to the yellow hive. The one swarm wasn't enough. On Saturday, Team Yellow threw another swarm. And again on Sunday. And they both landed five feet away, right on the face of the new orange swarm hive, and within an hour they had entered the hive. There were so many bees in this new hive that they couldn't all fit, and many were 'bearding', i.e. clustering, on the face of the hive. Yesterday evening I filled the second story box with frames and refilled the feeder. The curious thing is three swarms - and presumably 3 queens - in the same hive. Are they fighting to the death in there? I wonder which queen will prevail, because a colony with more than one queen is a very rare thing indeed. I can only imagine that the pheromones exuded by the original wicked Yellow Queen are so powerful that they drew her daughters to her, even after she'd left them and was in another hive.
After the swarm events yesterday I went to Noyac to visit Bea and her bees. Our friend Pat, who has bees in Riverhead, was also there. Bea wanted help examining her hive from last year, and they were such a delight to work with: gentle and cooperative. I was excited to find the large, dark queen, who is laying up a storm and seems to have perfect control over her orderly subjects. It made me realize just how delinquent my vicious Team Yellow really is. Well, I am determined to change all that. I will give my hives about a month to settle in and raise the next generation of workers. At that point I will reassess for temperament and any queen who is making my life miserable will not be long for this world.
To recap, from my original 3 hives, red, yellow and purple, the red seems to be behaving and is storing honey in the super I added last month. Team Yellow presumably has a new queen, who will need to go on a mating flight, come back and start laying. After about a month, there should be enough new bees for me to determine hive temperament. Team Purple also swarmed on Saturday, but they settled in an area of bramble, cat brier, and poison ivy that is completely inaccessible, so I kissed that swarm goodbye. As a result, I will now have a new queen in the purple hive too, so will have to assess temperament there as well in a month or so. Then there's Team Orange, the triple swarm hive. If the original Yellow Queen is still reigning supreme, she will have to be replaced, as she produces 'super-hot' bees. If one of her daughters has already done her in, it will be another wait-and-see scenario. Then there's that little blonde queen in the nuc box. In about a week, I can open up the box to see if she had a successful mating flight. If so, I should find eggs. If that's the case, I will see how those bees develop. Who knows, she may wind up being the replacement for a nasty queen, if she plays her cards right.
So why did my hives swarm and could I have prevented it? I reversed hive boxes and added honey supers (see last post), even though some said that would slow down the bees. That certainly wasn't the case. I did the reversal around 4/20. Did I reverse too late? Had they already made plans to swarm by then? Certainly it's possible. I also have another theory, and that is that instead of adding a honey super, I should have added a fourth hive body. I think that with large colonies, 3 medium 8-frame supers just don't give the queen enough room to maneuver. Bea has 4 hive bodies on her very successful Noyac colony. So when I came home yesterday I added a fourth box to the red hive's brood area. Now the colony is 5 boxes high - 4 brood boxes and a honey super.
After a totally engrossing but exhausting week, I took it slow this morning, working on this post and enjoying a perfect Bloody Mary - made with fresh grated horseradish right from the garden. And forget the celery garnish - instead, I used a crisp, just-picked spear of my Purple Passion asparagus. So sweet and crunchy!
CHEERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6aOLi6IwVU
ReplyDeleteI'm speechless.
DeleteGood luck with the yellow queens!
ReplyDelete