The Multi Queen Swarm

It's warm, flowers are blooming, and nectar/pollen can be found in abundance which leads hives start their natural reproduction cycle called swarming.  When things are this nice it is highly likely that strong hives will issue not only a primary swarm but also secondary swarms.  The primary swarm is generally headed by the existing queen and any after-swarms will be headed by newly emerged virgin queens.

I recently picked up a 6ish pound swarm (18K bees) that was half on the side of a raised bed and half on the ground inconveniently located under a bush.  My guess is it started out on a branch that drooped down to the grass.  When they are on the ground you mostly have to scoop up bees until you get enough of them in the box to attract the rest, or the queen goes into the box.

So away I work and as I'm scooping I noticed several bees clustering around one spot in the grass.  Thinking the queen might have been there or still be there I gently moved the bees around and my heart sank at what I saw.  There in the middle was a dying queen.  I carefully helped her into a queen cage and added a few attendants and put her in the hive box hoping the scent of her dying body would be enough to get the workers into the hive.  

Wondering what happened I kept scooping up bees and then again at that spot were I found the dying queen a new small cluster of bees was forming.  I brushed the bees around once more and to my surprise found another weak queen but maybe not dying.  Not having a second queen cage on me just put her in the box.  Then shortly after that everyone else started going into the box and no new clusters formed.  

I didn't find a single dead bee on the ground besides that one dying queen so it wasn't an accident she was dying.  I suspect what happened is a secondary swarm issued from a hive and in the departure the new virgin queens became confused who was actually leading the swarm and all left together as one group.  Typically I hear about several small swarms on nearby branches that each have a queen, and sometimes they all end up in one mass and eventually work it out.  What surprises me is that the queens would fight inside the swarm like this. 

I suspect there were at least three queens in the cluster and hopefully the final victorious queen will be able to mate this week.  It'll be another week or so before I can start looking for eggs.

Sadly the photo's I would like to have posted aren't great since some rude bee was always flying in front of the lens, but not to leave you with nothing here's some related bee photos.

This was left over from someone's swarm and didn't have a queen, but is what I would expect to see if there were multiple queens leaving in little swarms.

Here's a photo of new comb that my overwintered hive is making.  The swarm will be making several frames of new comb like this while we wait for the queen to mate.

Back to the bees,

- Jeff

Late Summer Blooms

Here in the Northwest it's that time of year when the summer sun has pretty much dried everything up and there aren't many flowers blooming unless you are at a higher mountain elevation.  Besides Asters and fall blooming Heathers this is an opportunity for some exotics to really take the spotlight.  Knotweed is the most abundant exotic bloomer this time of year, but there are some other great plants that are getting the girls attention that I'll be writing about later this month. 

Heptacodium miconioides is a tough one to find, and is a beautiful small tree of delicate white flowers with a light citrus scent that will be in full bloom until October. 

Future bee vacation spot in the Cascade Mountains?

I also heard at the local club meeting to try grease patties to help with varroa "because it makes the bee's slick".  I know how they work for Tracheal mites, but have never heard this before and checked online and found some research by WVU that seemed to confirm that this does work under some conditions (low brood and strong hives).  I added them to a few hives and if nothing else it's a little bit of sugar to keep them busy.

Yellow jackets have also been lurking around all the hives looking for anything to munch on or a weak hive to attack.  I stumbled across one of the local nests in the front yard while cleaning up a flower bed and got a couple stings before I knew they were there.  Not being a fan of them at that location or wanting to risk letting them take out one of the weak queen castles 15 feet away I removed them with a bucket of soapy water poured into the ground nest.  Soapy water is effective without adding the toxic pesticides to the environment that are bad for pretty much everything (be sure to pick a biodegradable soap if you opt for a home solution).

Geranium blooms.

Black Eyed Susan's still going strong.

Asters are loaded with blooms and bees.

Speckled Toad Lilies are blooming.

On the sad note the Librarian hive has lost their queen.  By the signs of the emergency queen cells everywhere I would guess she slowed down egg laying about 15 days ago and then died suddenly and they made their best attempts to build emergency queen cells with what was left, which there weren't many.  I found 6 frames with emergency cells, but two frames with uncapped cells that didn't look very promising.  I pulled two frames and put them into the queen castle to improve my odds of getting a mated queen.  

Looking back in my notes it was almost a year ago to the day that I looked into this hive to discover the same type of issue except in that case it was caused by their relativity large brood nest getting split into two parts by a honey wall in the middle.  At the time the bees on one side of the wall made emergency cells everywhere while the girls on the other side were just going along fine.  I pulled the queen last year (Geek queen) and put her in a nuc and let them raise the Librarian queen.  So I'll keep my fingers crossed that this hive can pull off another late season queen. 

Hive checks (9/2/2012)

Queen Castle 1

Slot 3

Brooding up and added some feed to empty comb.

Icons

Added grease patty.

Engineers Queen Nuc

Added more syrup & a grease patty.

Nuc 3

Added more syrup.

Geeks

Added grease patty.

Librarians

Added grease patty.  Found 6 frames with emergency queen cells.. some capped and some almost capped. No sign of queen.  Feels a little like deja-vu in this hive.

Hive checks (9/5/2012)

Nuc 2

The hive seems to be stabilized at it's current size and they have brought in a frame of dark honey.  

Librarians

Pulled 4 frames to make up two queen castle slots to increase my odds of getting a queen out of their latest adventure.

Hive checks (9/9/2012)

Queen Castle 2

Slot 1

Saw the newly emerged queen when I was adding syrup.

Newly emerged queen.

Slot 3

Looks to have been a bad queen cell.  Combined with Slot 1.

Engineers Hive

Saw the queen and she's a little bigger now and looking more the part.  Will continue to keep my fingers crossed she mated well and starts laying soon.

Icon daughter queen in old Engineer hive looking a little better than last week.

Nuc 3

Added more syrup.

Engineer Nuc

They have slowed down their syrup intake.  

Back to the bees.

- Jeff