Queen is Released

I was able to work with another very experienced beekeeper today, Kurt Bower. Kurt was one of the instructors I had when I took my first beekeeping class in 2008. We checked 25 of his hives. I gained a wealth of experience and knowledge and 3 stings. It is true that you need to smoke the sting site as another bee got me in the same spot right after being stung the first time. Needless to say I put my gloves on for the rest of the day.

I had been under the impression that one should not go into the hives on a cool day like today. Kurt has a different take on this he goes right to a center frame in the top hive body and checks for brood. If he sees some then he will put the frame back in and remove the upper box. Then looks for brood in the next box if he finds some then he will repeat this process for as many boxes are on a hive. If the bottom box, if installed, is empty the he will place this one on the top, a process called reversering. On cool day like today when the temps are in the 55-60 degree range the goal is to get this done as fast as possible to keep the bees from getting chilled. When we found a queenless hive we would combine it with another strong hive. This is done by placing a sheet of newspaper on the box with a queen. Next step is to place the weak or queenless hive on top of this hive. The last step is to cut some slits in the newspaper and close it up.

After working his field hives Kurt and I returned to his house where he taught me how to split a hive. He made it very simple to understand when to do this in the spring. When you find a hive with lots of queen cells you know they are getting ready to swarm. The only way to stop this process is to separate the queen from her field bees. Without a queen field workers will not leave the hive and visa versa. First step is to find the queen. Once you find her then you need to place the frame with queen cells in a new brood box and add some frames of bees without brood to this new hive. Be sure to scrap away any remaining frames left with the old queen. Close it up and check back in 10 days.

After working Kurt’s bees decide to check on mine. The queen had been released. I did not look for her. I removed the queen cage and put the frame back into the hive. Will check back in 10 days to see if she is laying. Also placed a pollen patty in the hive which should speed up the process of building up this hive.