And the hive swarms

On Thursday night Jessi and I headed out to the hive to check in and see how they were doing with the honey super we’d added 2.5 weeks before. We were assuming they were ready for another and were all set to admire any and all honey they’d already made us.

Unfortunately when we opened the hive we discovered that they’d built out none of the frames in the honey super and there were only a few bees hanging out in there. Hmmm.

After pulling off the honey super we got into the top box and found a fair amount of capped brood, newly laid eggs and larva, but not in the volume we should have found. We had a lot more empty comb, that had previously had brood on it, than we should have.

So we dug deeper, pulling that brood box and investigating the bottom box. In it there was virtually no brood, only dark empty comb and bees, but not enough bees. Not good. Then we found masses of queen cells hanging from 4 of the frames in that box – Aha!

Turns out that our hive swarmed either right before or just after we added the honey super. How might we have missed it? Well, we’re new at this you see. And the day we added the honey super it was really warm and the middle of the day when most of the worker bees would have been out foraging. Plus, with the hive in the pasture I can’t see it from the house – so unless I happened to wander out to say hello to them at exactly the right moment, I’d miss it.

So now what? Well, in theory a new queen hatched before the old one up and left with two-thirds of our hive. And the signs seem good that that actually is the case – we’ve got new eggs and larva and some capped brood and all of them would have been created after the swarm. But to be sure Jerry and I will go back into the hive on Monday night and look for our new queen.

Should be a bit like finding Waldo considering that this one won’t be marked with a white dot on her head. Plus she’ll be smaller as she’s very young. If we can’t find her, we’re supposed to verify that the queen cells on the bottom frames do not have live brood in them and that they’re being dismantled by the bees.

If we don’t have live larva and we can’t find the queen, or our queen hasn’t been properly mated, there’s a chance we’ll have to buy a new one. Before we take that step we plan to photograph every frame just in case – that way we can try to spot her on the computer screen if we can’t find her during the hive check.

I have to say that Jim at Beez Neez has been invaluable this spring. Answering all of our questions and assuring me that missing a swarm doesn’t mean that we’re bad beekeepers. As he says, it’s a fine line we walk when we keep bees. You want them to be happy and thrive so you get honey. But not too happy or too thriving or they’ll decide to leave before you know it…

The pictures are from Thursday night’s hive check. As you can see, all is not lost even though we may not get any honey for ourselves this year since the blackberries are blooming now and our hive is in the process of rebuilding itself, not storing honey. The learning curve for beekeeping is turning out to be steeper than we thought.