lorrick
House Bee
- Joined
- May 5, 2013
- Messages
- 165
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Near Halesworth Suffolk
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 6
Well here you go, today after a threat of a swarm yesterday when the sky over the garden went black with my Bee’s, the wife ran in as putting washing out and locked all the windows! they all came back and settled back into the hive, while they were swarming everywhere I had taken the hive apart to get rid of some Queen Cells as I had found Queen Cells x 8 in the brood chamber two nights before did not know what to do as a newbie, when told to cut them out except one but could not get to it Saturday as working, so I cut them all out except the biggest one, just encase the Queen had swarmed and I hadn’t noticed. I put the old queen cells in a cardboard box to take to my Bee Keeping course, along with the drones with deformed wings and some dead pupa, it’s all happening ( yes treating for verroa) (yes I am that new to it 4 weeks) and then a couple of hours purely by luck later promptly found a Virgin Queen walking out of the box!! So put her back in the hive. So in the hive I might have had the old Queen, a new Queen and a Queen cell. The Theory being if the old queen had flown I had a new Queen, If the old queen had flown and the hive killed off the re introduced Queen I still had a chance with the one Q/C (with me so far it gets better) Then looked at the cluster of Q/C’s I took out and one had already hatched Oh Dear I thought!! Went off last night and bought a Nuke box and a readymade National with frames in case the whole lot decided to swarm today. A very good reason for supporting your local Bee Keeping supply shop rather than the internet! Yesterday evening found a queen and promptly marked it and stuck its wings together (I thought oh Flip) luckily she is OK today and has a nice yellow dot where it should be and her wings are working fine (Thank Heaven) and laying ! (I’ve no idea either) Waited around today, Wife not happy as we were supposed to be going away this weekend, Dogs in kennels and all that (Bee Keeping is a bad hobby for a wife) and no she won’t join in!. so today had a look at the Super and brood box as things have calmed down a lot, as yesterday as a bit (lot) of panic crept in just looked at Brood box, and promptly found 3 Queen cells in the Super plus brood and lava!!! amongst the honey. I have absolutely no idea how that had happened as I have had a Queen Excluder above the brood since I have had it, the only thing I can think of is somehow something had got into the super when I have been inspecting the hive. So I have put the marked Queen in the new Hive along with 5 frames of brood, food and pollen. I have put the super back on top of the old Brood box as there must be something in there. And shaken some bees into the new hive and put it at the other end on the garden. I have looked and the new hive have done there orientation and are flying pollen into the new hive. The old one is doing as it always has done. So I might have cocked the whole lot up but hopefully by reading different things and advice from all you out there (Thank you all) I might be a 2 hive operator. I think the swarm flight might have been the new Queen going out on a mating flight and coming back? or a play flight or anything else as nothing so far in the past 4 weeks has made any sense to me at all except got my heart rate up a lot.
but instead I took up beekeeping!!
