New Queen and New Markers

It's been a stressful month around here. My last update was about Kosnica's swarm. Since then I have been watching for the new queen in Kosnica to hatch and return from mating!

While I was patient (read NOT) I decided to work on some markers for the hives. Each hive has a rock on top to keep the lid on snug. I want to paint the hives but really have not had the spare time to committ. (I think that is more of a winter project.) So in the meantime my daughter and I had some fun painting rocks....

 

Rock painting is actually quite fun and my daughter has already asked to do it again. We used acrylic paint and sprayed it with varnish once dry. They turned out really nice. It will be interesting to see how they stand up to the extreme changes in weather on the top of the hives.

Ok, back to the queen! Kosnica was quite agitated during its weekly inspections. They were clearly not happy with their situation.  The last couple weeks were the hardest since there is such a large variance (2 weeks!!) when you can see evidence of the queen (eggs). I was pretty anxious and prepared for the worst.

Here is a general timeline for a new queen:

For those of you trying to do the math here is my best guess on where Kosnica was in the timeline: 

• June 21st, the hive swarmed. Typically they swarm before the queen cell is capped, which they did. 
• June 28th, when I inspected the queen cell was capped. (I do not know how long before or after my inspection it was capped- so you see the problem). Being on the conservative side, I should have started to see eggs between July 11th and the 25th.
• July 21st inspection I did not see any eggs, however honestly, I did not thoroughly go through both brood boxes. I was overheated and the bees were crabby. I should have taken more time.
• My last inspection, July 29th, I was planning to go frame by frame to make sure the queen was not there. This is where I pick up the story...

Since I did not see eggs on my last visit to Kosnica, I had feared the worst. What was I going to do? Try to find a queen this late in the summer? Then I realized- I had a queen. Alveare is still a very weak colony but has a queen. So I began to make plans on merging Kosnica with Alveare. In preparation, I spent several days researching how to merge two hives. I had it all planned out for the next day if I did not find any eggs.

I needed to go very slowly and spend my time looking carefully. I removed three honey supers and a deep box filled with honey and went into the top brood box first. Imagine my relief when the second frame into the brood box I found eggs!! I cheered (maybe actually squealed) with delight. I quickly closed up the hive so she could continue with her job of building up the colony. 

For now I am going to focus on what I can do to help out Alveare. We will see what honey I end up with from the other two hives. Until next time, that's the buzz!

Blessings!

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.