Checking in on New OV Queen

No eggs yet in the OV hive.

By now the new OV queen should be laying but as you can see here, there is nary an egg in sight! The hive, while still gentle was a tad bit more rowdy and acting queenright by chaining as I pulled out a frame.

When searching for the queen I always start in the middle of the box, often times peering down between the frames as the queen's longer legs will make her walk taller than the worker bees and this makes her easier to spot. But she's quick and shy of light - I caught a glimpse of behind and as fast as I tried to get to that frame, she had moved on deeper into the hive.

I didn't want to risk harming her so I closed up the hive and turned to check on the Dmitry hive to see that she's returned to laying eggs. Will observer her progress for the next week or so.

Too Many Dead Bees!

The dark spots are the dead bees.
(Click to view larger)

Wednesday all three hives were observed bearding in the evening as our temps have been very hot. I don't remember looking at the bees Thursday evening but I usually do and it is entirely possible that, because everything looked normal, nothing registered with me.

But Friday evening it was easy to see that something was very wrong with the Dmitry hive - No bearding as with the other hives, no bees flying, no orientation flights, nothing. And then I looked down...

Thousands of dead bees lay in front of the hive filling a mulched space of three feet or so in length. My mind began a mental checklist as I searched for a possible cause. The bees were not chalky, their wings were not crinkly or 'K' shaped. It was almost as it someone came along and sprayed pesticide on them and they fell from the front of the hive. But if that were the case, why would vandals harm just the center hive of my three?

There were so few bees in the hive, I didn't bother with a veil or gloves as I opened it, expecting to find it empty. Instead, I did find healthy looking bees but zero brood. The queen looked fine but she isn't laying. She had been laying well since she was installed back in April.

So, what the heck is going on with this hive? I believe I have two separate issues:

Issue One:
I had quit feeding the hive as they were growing in population and had built up a good reserve of pollen and nectar. However, we're in a full dearth now and what are the three things a hive needs to thrive?

1. Space
2. Ventilation
3. Food

There was plenty of space and ventilation thanks to modifying the inner cover. But I had neglected to ensure the hive had food! It is common knowledge that a queen will cease laying if food becomes unavailable. So I put the top feeder on and filled it with 1:1 sugar syrup. Will check back in a few days to see if the queen has resumed laying.

Issue Two:
I'm stumped what happened to the dead bees outside the hive but a likely culprit is pesticides. I live in a rather rural area with small farms, pastures, homes and gardens. It is highly likely the foraging bees found a good food source that was tainted and led many other bees to it, who in turn, brought the tainted pollen and nectar back to the hive.

I gave the hive a couple frames of brood and nurse bees from the Sasha hive, leaving the OV hive alone so as to not harm it's new queen as she matures.

OV Hive Busy Making a New Queen

Yup.

You could easily see how the hive was very different from the moment I opened the boxes. The bees were too simply too gentle, this being my rowdy Russian hive.

As I feared, I harmed my queen when harvesting honey. Inspecting the hive just one week later I found a good 10 to 12 queen cells. I'll leave them alone now to let the queen emerge on or about July 17th. The first queen will kill all the other potential queens before they mature and emerge from their cells. She'll then fly out to mate and I'll inspect for eggs about a week later.

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Honey Harvest 2012

Seems that once a year I do something really stupid with the bees and this year's honey harvest was it! I placed the queen excluders on the hives on June 10th in anticipation of a target harvest date of the 4th of July weekend. But our schedules have changed necessitating the need to harvest July 1st - exactly 21 days from the day I placed the excluders on the hive. Ideally, any brood in the honey supers should be hatched by harvest day and 21 days is long enough for the brood to hatch out.

We suited up and pulled the honey supers off the hives - two from OV hive and one from Sasha hive - and placed them on their ends. I've read that an easy way to remove the bees is to use a leaf blower. In reality, using a leaf blower removes some bees but some bees manage to hold on and other crawl/fly right back onto the frames.

So we decided to just brush off the frames, one-by-one and place them in a plastic tub with a lid to keep the bees out until we're ready to extract the honey. It was then I found the frames of brood fro the OV hive. Major crap! Shouldn't it all by hatched on day 21? It's day 21 and there's brood on my frames! Does that mean the queen was in the box? The box that I set on the ground and blew all the bees out of? I don't know because I didn't look! Double crap!!

So we left the box sitting on the grass while we finished harvesting the other frames in the hopes that, if the queen was there she'd either find her way back to the hive or back into that box. About 3 hours later I placed the box back on the hive. I'll inspect in 4 days to see if I can find her, find eggs or find a queen cell.

We harvested 24 frames (10 from Sasha and 14 from OV) and have a 5-gallon bucket full of honey which amounts to about 60 lbs. of honey!

Fingers crossed that hatching in 21 days means the brood hatched the next day and that I did't harm my queen. The OV hive has been my consistent and strong hive so I hope my stupidity doesn't cost me a good queen.

Next year when it's harvest time, I will remove one frame at a time, gently brush off the bees and then place the frame into the plastic tub.