Bee update.

After waiting and pacing around for most of the morning, I watched the mailman's back as he moved off our porch and on with his route on Saturday.

No queenbee in sight.

Two hours later, a breathless postman pounded on the door. Tucked under his jacket was a box from ZiaQueen. He said his boss drove the package out to him. Together, we opened the package to find a beautiful queen and five attendants.

She was shipped in a priority mail box. Yellow queen cage was set next to the blue sponge so that they could get some water. This is brilliant packing. She and her attendants were happy, unstressed and ready to go.

Here's a photo of her shadow. It's hard to see her through the yellow cage. You can see that she's longer than the other bees. Because she's not very old, she is also not very fat. She will fatten up as soon as she gets in the hive and starts laying.

In the second picture you can see her red dot. Queens are marked by their born year - this year is red.

What did I do with her?

Last week, I put a queen excluder between two hive "deeps" this force the nurse bees to rise to care for brood while keeping the queen on the bottom of the hive. I took the top box - with only nurse bees, brood and food - and created a new hive. Once they were situated in a new location, the worker bees will fly back to the original location leaving the nurse bees and baby bees.

Lost yet?

Basically, I took the top half of a hive and moved it to a new location. This creates a new hive.

Then I put this queen in the hive. There is a candy plug on the end of the bee cage. The nurse bees will eat their way though the candy plug (my fingers are holding it in the first picture) to release the queen. When I left her, the nurse bees were already feeding the queen.

(Bees are like that. If they see another hungry bee, they will feed and care for it - as long as it's not a threat to their physical location.)

The queen cage keeps the queen safe until the nurse bees get used to her smell. They will readily accept her in about 3 days - the length of time it takes to eat through the sugar plug. I'll check on her on Wednesday to see if she's been adopted.

Today, I fed the original hive with sugar water (5 pounds of sugar to 1 gallon of water) to replace the food I took. I put the syrup into a gallon ziplock bag then lay the bag in the hive. I made a light slit so the bees can get the syrup. I have a bunch of fancy equipment that does this but ziplock works the best. (Go figure.)

I also go stung. What stupid thing was I doing?? I wore my yoga pants instead of my jeans. The first bee sting of the year always has a little fanfare.? Later on, it's like "whatever".

I should get another queen later this week. She'll go in the "little" hive, which has managed to hang in there.

Thanks for your interest and support. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

Comments

[Claudia]

wow...and hurray!! you've got your queen bee!! So, now you'll have three hives after all of this??

[Vixen]

I am so glad that you got one of your queens! this was a fascinating bit of bee information. I had no idea and love learning about it through you. That way you get stung instead of me. Or my kids who are allergic.

Great pictures and really, really cool information.

[Michael C]

I find this all so cool. Please keep the updates coming!

Have you seen the Hagen Daz adds and website about bees and how they are dying? Pretty good stuff!

[Open Grove Claudia]

Claudia - I'll know on Wednesday, but yes, now I have 3. I'll requeen the other two - I think. I haven't decided what's the best way to move. My supplier has me down for two "late" queens so I might create my own queens for the summer then requeen in the fall. All of this is experimenting around CCD.

Vixen - Well, I appreciate your tolerance of my bee-geekery. I find bees very very interesting. Simple things like, if a bee from another hive enters a hive to rob then is trapped there by dark, that bee becomes a part of the hive. Period.

Michael C - I'll check out the Hagen Daz but I know the bees are dying - that's happening in my backyard! :)

[tommie]

Yeah, I am so glad things are moving in the right direction!

If I had gotten stung, it would require an epi pen and most likely an ER visit! so I will look lovingly at your blog.

[CEO]

See, a miserable day can end fabulously well! I'm rooting for the bees! Go hive go!

[TWM]

Damn the internet! Stole my first response. It's all good though.

Wonderful news here, sounds like a very proactive response to the world wide bee pandemic.

Thank You OG for working so hard to help these very important members of the ecology. You help us all by doing this sometimes very frustrating work.

Sounds good to me though, I am not very knowledgeable about a beekeepers craft but you sound as if you are, and that is a good thing.

The sting, ha ha ha...like you I am not allergic but from here it is to me better you take the needle than me.

Accomplished Peace

mark

[Ivanhoe]

Wow - queen is in the house! How do all the bees know she's a queen? Just because of her size?

[Open Grove Claudia]

Tommie - D is allergic too. He wears bee suits and we have epi pens, benedryl. He's been in the hospital a couple times for bee stings when we were in LA. Our bees are so calm they rarely sting - just when I do something dumb.

CEO - Yes, root for the bees!

TWM - We are at a point where all the knowledge has to be thrown out. Beekeeping is starting from scratch again to try to figure out what to do next. I've been reading books from the 1800s which are remarkably helpful. Go figure.

Ivanhoe - A couple ways. Bees greet each other face first. They recognize each other by site (and humans the same way). The queen also emits a pheromone - an odor - that designates her as queen. When she's released, she will lay 1500 eggs a day. So there's that too! ;)

[HRH]

I love learning about this. There is an apple orchard near our house that has beehives. One of them is behind glass so we can get up close. The whole thing is just cool.

I find it so strange that they know a new queen. And that this doesn't seem to disrupt their current life.

[lone grey squirrel]

Sounds complicated. Hope the queen will be accepted. Take care of yourself though and avoid the stings if you can.

[BroLo]

You should invite Fr. Juan Largo over to bless the hives. I'm praying to the Bee gods for the hives' success.

[Christy]

I'm not allergic to bees and so when they sting me I don't react. Maybe I should have gotten into beekeeping. I'm glad the queen reached you well packed and safely. =o)

[Open Grove Claudia]

Squirrelly - Thanks for the support! I'll find out soon.

BroLo - I have a bunch of retorts to this... "oxygen sucked from beehive" stuff like that... Why don't YOU bless them when you are here next month?

Christy - There's still time! :)