Bee Insomnia

The bees have certainly been keeping me on my toes. After making the “queen cell” split and having a swarm, things got confusing and stressful. Many wee-hour wakings, thinking of what I should have done with this, that and the other thing. I had worries that there were no queens, or at least no well-mated queens in the three new hives. So I did some bee juggling to keep them contented, and eventually recombined two hives into one. I envisioned recombining the potentially queenless or dud queen hives with Boudicca’s and Ekaterina’s, and winding up with bee high rises that would require aviation warning lights.

This last weekend I gave up on the home-grown queens, and ordered a couple of new ones for the two “queenless” hives. On Monday I did an inspection with the fellow from whom I bought the Russians. Sure enough, Garrett found the “swarm queen” all plump & ready to lay eggs. Then we found eggs and larvae in the other hive (Boudicca’s original residence, from which all this fun started). Garrett says that sometimes queens can take longer to mate & lay eggs than the textbooks say. Another example of how bees never read the manual

Garrett recommended hanging onto the new bought queens until I can evaluate how well the home-grown girls will do. If they do well, I have two takers for the spare queens. So I scrambled to finish setting up a couple of “nucleus” hives, which are half the size of a regular deep hive box. They are used for a variety of uses, including temporary housing for new queens. I had to set up the “nucs” with frames of brood, food and bees from other hives. Fortunately Boudicca & Ekaterina’s hives are doing well, and had supplies to spare.

Karin had a small fit when she thought there would be five hives in the garden, and didn’t give me a chance to finish telling about my plans. Just because I’m mean, I haven’t completed the whole story. But she seems to have accepted the possibility that bees are taking over the world, and hasn’t stamped her not-so-little feet any more.

The new queens arrived last night, and I installed them in their little cottages. For a few days they’ll remain in their “queen cages” so the workers can get used to each queen and accept her as their fearless leader. On Saturday I’ll probably release them. Hopefully I’ll remember to get a photo of them in the queen cage before then. It’s so hard to remember to take photos when one is elbow-deep in bees.

I’ve been getting stung a bit lately – always some dumb little thing that puts the squeeze on a poor little bee. I suppose it depends on where I get stung, because legs and arms puff up something awful, and hands do so just a bit. I’m waiting for the immunity to kick in. …Any day now… In the meantime, I’ve been researching bee sting cures, and plan to try some with the next stings. Karin stepped on one last night, and I ran for the toothpaste (cure No. 1). This morning she said it was a bit sore, but not too bad. Hmmm. Next will be clay and lavender oil. After that, tobacco paste. So far my luck with plantain has been mixed.

During all this bee juggling, I removed a frame which had one side filled with honey. I figured we could have a sample, so cut off the cappings and turned the frame on one side over a baking dish. Honey doesn’t easily drip out of the opened comb. After a few days and getting only a small puddle, I dug out comb and honey together. After about five minutes in the microwave on the defrost setting, the wax had melted and separated from the honey. From one side of a frame, I got a half-pint jar of honey. Yummy stuff.

During the inspection with Garrett, we found some frames loaded with “bee bread”. This is pollen mixed with honey. The bees store it for food later on. Garrett dug out a couple of chunks, and we had a snack. It tasted rather like dried apricots and raspberries – more yumminess. Much better than pollen balls off the bottom board.