After our trip to the apiary to check our bees a few days ago, Marie and Roger came out to inspect our hives.
We first went out to our 'demon' hive and had it re-queened. This meant being brave (thank you Roger!) and opening the hive in order to find the old queen and then replacing her with a new queen that Roger provided. It turned out to not be as bad as the past couple of visits (although Roger was stung several times and had to put on his dreaded net). We found the queen after several attempts and (sadly) had to dispose of her. We will need to check this hive in 3 weeks to assure that the hive is doing well with the new queen.
All said and done, it was not too bad of an experience. In fact, we found out that these bees do make good honey! Roger decided there was too much bur comb on one of the frames so he removed this. It was full of honey so we were able to harvest about a small pint for our troubles.
Then we went to our 'ghost' hive, and we found that the hive was diminished to nothing as suspected. It was so sad to open the box to find that we could actually count the bees! That is not normal and we knew that this meant the hive was not going to recover, especially when there was no evidence of a queen. Roger said even taking brood from another hive and re-queening the hive would not help. The hardest part for us was not knowing if we could have done something different. This most likely happened in the last 4-6 weeks because the wax moths had already setting into the comb. Roger did tell us that we probably would not have been able to save it when we noticed the problem at the earlier inspection either. It just happens and we will just have to learn to watch for signs for our other hives.
Since we were opening hives, Roger decided to check our 'friendly' hive as well. When we first opened the top we were surprised to see ants had invaded...not the case just a few days before! I think I must have turned ashen because Roger said not to get upset...it would be OK! Sure enough...upon closer inspection the ants were only at the top and had not entered the hive itself.
However, Roger did get a little concerned about the number of bees in the hive. He decided to look deep into the hive, in spite of the obvious evidence of honey stores in the top supers. That is when he discovered the tell-tale signs of swarming. Sometime in the last three weeks our hive swarmed and we lost our queen! I was so upset because we knew we needed to split this hive but put it off last year. We thought we would do it after the honey flow this summer.
Roger told us that we obviously had a strong hive because they had already re-queened and there was already new brood. That was a good thing but still disappointing to see that we could have prevented this from happening.
I still think we are so blessed to have this friendly hive. I can tell you there is a huge difference in the demeanor of these hives. The boys and I are so glad we had this friendly hive first because if we had started out with the 'demon' hive, then we might not be beekeepers today. God is good and knew our needs. We are looking forward to an amazing harvest in July!
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