I’m The Boxing Beekeeper, of Portland, Maine. Boy, I came out to the yard today with a laundry list of things I wanted to do and rather than a long video of you guys watching me watching frames I figured I’d give you the rundown , starting to my right.
Tops on my list today was to make sure, many of you will remember that on May 13th Maurissa, Danielle, and I came out and pulled a nuc (a split) off of this hive. This is our winter survivors, over to my right. They were going like gangbusters and we wanted to make sure they didn’t swarm. We pulled five frames out of here and made sure that the queen was on them, and installed those back in Portland. And just as hoped, they have re-queened themselves. I was hoping to get in there and lay eyes on her and mark her today, that didn’t happen and YEAH my smokers going. Yeah, that didn’t happen but I did see eggs and brood, so she’s been in there a little bit. She’s been laying for longer than 3 days, that much I know for sure.
Over the other end, all the way to my left…That hive I didn’t have equipment for last time I was out here and I was afraid, because I was traveling last week, that if I didn’t get some equipment on there that they were going to swarm …and they did. ::thumbs down!:: There are fully formed queen cells in there but no eggs or larva, just capped brood, so I’m gonna let that play out ::shrug:: and I’ve added some more equipment now that I have it so when that queen is ready she’ll have room…it’ll be good to go. There’s a good chance the bees that are in there now will start filling that extra space with nectar, which will make them all the more ready to make some honey in the surplus boxes that I put on there when I put them on there.
Now back here, I don’t exactly know what’s going on. They are just kinda tripping over themselves. They’re not filling space…they’re just kinda floundering. I don’t exactly know why…I found the beginning of a queen cell, but did not find the queen herself. Given the right conditions right now, my thought is that if everything looks good in here (Hive II) I will grab myself a frame of brood from these bees. I’ll shake off their fliers …and I’m going to take the capped brood I pull from here and put it in the other hive, and that will give them a little boost, a little shot in the arm as far as population. Pro-vi-ded that everything in here looks good.
We’re looking to make sure there’s a healthy laying queen. Which I, actually the last time I was out here with the state for an apiary inspection, I added some space on here at that time because, like the other hive, I was getting nervous this hive was going to swarm as well.
Because this equipment up here is so new, I’m not expecting there to be capped brood, so I’m going to quickly move down to the bottom here. You’ll notice I’ve got a deep/medium/deep set up. I’ll fix that as the season goes and eventually move the medium up to where I want it to be, but for the moment it’s not terribly important. So this burr comb, what some beeks call “crazy comb” is left over from before I added the extra deep. They were just running out of room here so I added the deep to give them a little extra space which they obviously needed because they’re building comb where they don’t need the comb, where we don’t want the comb…and we’re gonna see some of that, I can already feel it.
This part of why we don’t want this comb there, as I’m moving boxes this is just a big trap for them, just catching bees and crushing them. I am pulling TONS of wax today! Which is not a bad thing now that we are cleaning and rendering wax. Let’s get the bees off the top so I can really clean this up …and again, all I really want is to find one really good frame of capped brood so I can transfer it to the hive behind me which is really stalling out. In the near future we’re going to re-queen all of these hives, except for the hive immediately behind me (Hive I) which we’ve just let re-queen itself, because due to some issues with the packages that we did end up getting all came with Italian queens. Italian queens are great! I think it’s so funny, I’ve heard beekeepers say that the stereotype of Italians translates to the queen and the bees…The table is always set, and it’s always full 🤣 Who doesn’t love that?!? But the problem is that they are not particularly winter hearty. So here in Southern Maine…that just won’t do. So I am going to make sure…oh, this is a good one. This is a good one! This one is a solid capped brood. I’m trying to make sure the queen isn’t on here before I give it a couple shakes. And I don’t see her, so we’re just going to::shakes frame::
Now you can see all that capped brood. And I’m just gonna step back here and put it into a place where I’ve pulled an empty frame…then, I’m going to replace that frame with an empty one in Hive II. And that’s as simple as that!
I am hoping that by the time I come back out here that brood will have hatched, creating more nurse bees. More nurse bees means the queen can lay more eggs and there will be nurse bees to care for and feed them, clean the cells after them.
And this hive (Hive II) looks really healthy, I’m really excited about this one. When that start filling just a little more space here I’ll add on another box so they can start making some excess honey.
I’ll keep you updated on this one (Hive IV) and join us next time when we’ll be re-queening 3 hives with pure bred Russian queens who are much more winter hearty, who are much more responsive to weather, and are even more resistant to some of the pests….GAH! I wonder if they’re more resistant to ticks. More resistant to pests that bees face.
I would still love to hear your questions. Let me know what you’d like to learn about bees and beekeeping. It makes me better when I answer your questions.