Not so good

I looked at my bees today and it didn't look so good. I am going to do an in depth inspection. It definitely looks like I had my first swarm. Not what I wanted and I still can't figure out why. All the books that I have read, talked about over crowding as the main reason that bees warm. My bees had plenty of room. I did read one book and this may be the reason- It stated that bees have a natural tendency to swarm in spring and that is how they "populate". It also stated that a beekeeper should check their hives every 10 days and destroy any queen cells. So now I wonder if the other hive is going to swarm and I also wonder if the hive that did swarm how long will it take them to produce a queen. I may have to take a frame of brood from the strong hive and place it with the weak hive. Well at least I am getting some "practice" on being a beekeeper vs being a bee owner. I will try to post some pictures of this new adventure.

Queen bee or No Queen Bee - that is the question.

Maybe I should listen to my wife. She told me 2 days ago that she was in the front yard spraying off the driveway. When she was out there she heard a loud buzzing noise WHILE she was spraying off the driveway. She also said she stopped what she was doing and walked to the backyard and she heard a loud humming noise but no more bees than usual.

Well I noticed yesterday that one hive had a lot more activity going on than the other one. Today I looked at it again and there was still more activity at one hive VS the other. I decided to open up the less active hive to see what was going on. I tried to find the queen that I had marked with a big red dot but was unable to locate her. There also seemed like there was a lot less bees. I inspected the frames and I did see some brood that was not capped but I didn't see any eggs. I also didn't see any queen cells in between the frames but I may have some at the bottom of the frames??? It is my understanding if you loose a queen they will make one in the middle of a frame. But I also remember reading that before she swarm that she may lay a queen on the bottom. I may have a queen cell on the bottom frames?? I do not knoe why she would of swarmed. She had plenty of room and I think she was a first year queen?? I am going to give it a few more days and give it a good inspection. I will probably do it this Monday and see if I see a queen or new brood/eggs.

Moving my bees

This was very interesting. We are having some work done on our house and we have decided to have some yard work done. Of course it is in the same area that my bees are located. After doing some research it looks like the best way to do this is to use the BRANCH TECHNIQUE. I only have to move the bees to the other side of the house but I have to make sure the bees know where they are at. I don't want them to just fly off and return and wonder were their house is. I had my friend Mike help me carry them over to the new location in the middle of the night. This way they are all in the hive. I then put a branch in front of the hives so the bees would fly out in the morning and know that something is different. Luckily when I checked the next day a majority of the bees came back to the new hive. The only problem was that there was a couple of bees (50 or so) didn't find their new home and we noticed them dying on the ground. Big problem. Wife calls me at work and my son, daughter, and wife all got stung that day. The bees were on the ground by the pool and got stepped on and my wife got stung messing with the mulch. The bees like mulch - must be the moisture?? My wife said if it happens again she is getting out the lighter and gasoline... She is from WEST VIRGINIA so I better watch out...

Time keeps on ticking

WOW, time sure does fly. I have been very busy and so have the bees. Since it has been a while since the last posting, let me bring you up to speed. The bees have filled up the main hive body and I have added on shallow super and will be adding another one as soon as I paint it. I picked up some paint at Lowe's and Sam (my 4 yr old son) has been picking out the colors. Sam decided to paint the first super pink. He now thinks that he honey will be the same color as the super and wants to paint the other one purple. Kids and their imagination!!! I am going to try to add some pictures since they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are some of a friend of mine helping put our brood frames together and add foundation.