the big buzz

Well hello again, It's been a while. The bee story continues. About a month again I sold some frames to a friend to expand some hives and noticed 1 hive was looking a bit weak. I moved it to a smaller box and waited a week to see what was going on. That's the small hive on the right.

After a week i opened it up and looked it over real good and could see no queen. Without a queen the hive will die, bit i did notice some larva, so i decided to wait and see if the larva were capped as brood or drones.

After another week i opened it up and saw all capped drone brood. Bummer! While i was in up to my elbows I opened up the other weak hive, no queen, BUMMER! Time to order some queens if I could find any.

The queens arrived on a Thursday afternoon so i watered them and left them on the kitchen counter for the night. The next morning I suited up and jumped in with both feet for a major queen replacement project. The small white hive went with no problems so i tackled the big hive. Second on the left with the maroon hive on top. I added a queen to that hive and moved some frames around to the small maroon hive. I added the queen in there and i was done. Now to wait.

Today I opened the hives to see what progress i was making. the small hive has accepted the queen and got her released from the shipping crate. So far so good. The maroon hive was looking good also, queen was out and everyone was happy. very good. The third hive the big one has also released there queen and all are happy. Woohoo 3 for 3, this is very good.

In case your wandering why the hives are stacked up like they are, the maroon hive was the weakest and by placing it on top of another hive, the workers will keep both hives working and healthy. So now i need to keep them all alive throw the winter so maybe i can get some honey this next spring, isn't this so much fun?