Swarm 6/20/14

[Jacobs]

I had a small swarm show up over my bees late Friday afternoon. To call it baseball sized would be a little generous. I don't know if it issued from one of my hives or was attracted to my back yard because of my bees. There is a queen. I put her in a queen catcher clip in the swarm nuc box over night and released her Saturday morning. I did not take further steps to anchor the swarm. If they stay, fine. If they go, fine. If the queen starts laying, I will give her a frame of brood and nursebees from another hive. This will help me evaluate her laying capacity.

[Jacobs]

I am wondering if this little swarm came out of my observation hive. I noticed a significant reduction in crowding/population in the observation hive when I took it to a bee presentation Sunday afternoon. The one thing that does not add up is that the observation hive still has the original marked queen. The swarm has a queen that just started laying. Could my observation hive have made a queen, got her mated, and kept the 2 apart in preparation for a swarm?

[Jacobs]

I finally got around to putting 2 frames of capped brood and nurse bees in with this queen, her brood, and her remaining "cluster" of about 50 bees. She and this small group survived last week's massive robbing episode. They did not defend, but they did not die. She never has had enough workers to show whether she is any good, and since Wally suggested I look for a replacement queen for the observation hive, I thought I would go ahead and test her laying ability.

[Jacobs]

I checked on this hive today and with the additional help, this queen has ramped up laying. In about 10 days, I'll be in a position to verify that the brood is worker brood. I'm planning on putting a very small pollen patty in the top of the nuc tomorrow. There are few foragers, they have honey, but will need pollen to feed the new larvae.

I have one strong hive that may be queenless. If this is the case, and this queen continues doing as well as she appears to be doing, she may be the new queen for the strong hive and my observation hive will just have to limp along with the current queen.

[Jacobs]

This swarm continues to be fun. The hive I suspected of being queenless has a queen, so this swarm and queen remain in a nuc. The queen was laying better with additional help, but when I went in the hive on September 14th, in addition to the queen, there was a single queen cell with royal jelly and a larva. It was far enough along that a queen should have emerged by now. I'm planning on seeing what is going on during this weekend break from clouds and drizzle.

[Jacobs]

After a robbing in the air kind of day, Stadiem and I went into this nuc as the light started to fade. We saw an unmarked queen examining cells, but we did not see her laying. There were young larvae and I think I saw an egg. We did not examine every frame, but we did not see the old, marked queen in the brood frame area. I may give it another week, and weather premitting, give it a more thorough examination.

[Jacobs]

I think I saw the unmarked queen entering the hive with mating signs about 10 minutes ago. I am not positive, but I will keep an eye on the nuc and see if pollen intake increases in the next week. If so, I will probably go looking for eggs shortly after that.

[Jacobs]

I went through this nuc completely this morning. The old marked queen is gone and the new unmarked queen is laying. There are eggs and some very young larvae. The next step will be to check back and see if the new brood is worker, drone or a mix.