Sunday, May 22, 2016

Queen Check

Five days after install it was time to check and see if the queens had been released from their cages in each hive. I'm not sure exactly what I was going to find, but I didn't expect what I did find.

We decided to start with the Genovese Hive. I had practice lit the smoker several times so I was able to get it lit but keeping it lit was another story. When we took of the syrup the bucket still felt very heavy. I was told that a new hive could suck down a gallon of syrup in a week or barely touch it, mine were definitely on that end of the spectrum. They were obviously finding enough forage somewhere which they would rather have. So much for the "bee tea" syrup I had made the day before.

We lifted the inner lid and quickly found our first problem. When I lifted the lid the first thing that happened was that a clump of bees fell out of the hive and directly onto my foot. I was wearing Mary Janes with no socks so I definitely felt them crawling around. I quickly saw the reason, the bees were building comb attached to the lid where I had left out frames after install (I know this was a mistake on my part but I really didn't imagine they would have already built that much comb, lesson learned.)  I knew from the blogs I have read that I needed to scrape the comb off otherwise it would get worse and I wouldn't be able to open the lid with out ripping comb in half. I set the lid down and turned my attention back to my foot, I stooped because I was going to try ans scoop them into the hive but I noticed they were already moving in an orderly fashion back to the hive. I still had a few on my for but for the most part they were crawling along the ground and up the side of the hive. The smoker had gone out so we had to re-light that before tackling the comb problem. Jack stepped in with his fire building skills and got it roaring.

With the thick smoke (but cool) billowing out of the smoker my mom lifted the lid again. I directed the smoke at the bees on the top bars of the frame hoping to move them out of the way but they stubbornly didn't move. The volume on their buzzing increased and they sounded clearly annoyed but they never acted aggressively at all. I then tried to smoke the bees of the stray comb but again they buzzed annoyed, refusing to move. I took the brush and tried to brush them off but they again stubbornly refused to move. They seemed stuck together and I worried that the feeder had been leaking on them. I had seen some clear jelly clumps and crystals in the hive which reinforced this concern. I kept brushing and the bees seemed glued to each and glued to the comb and top. I was freaking out about being too rough with the bees and surprised that they were refusing to move when brushed. In the videos they seem to move out of the way easier. I grabbed the queen cage, she had been released thank goodness but I was stressing out that the bees would not move off the comb so I could remove it.

I knew I need time to collect myself and regroup so I decided to inspect the Gambino Hive and mull over what to do with the Genovese. When I opened the Gambino Hive I didn't see any comb built on the lid but there were some bees clustering on the lid over the empty spots. I breathed a sigh of relief. I tried brushing the one on the lid off off because I was worried about them getting squished when I put the frames in and put the lid back on but they also seemed stick together and difficult to move. When I brushed them I saw a string of tan goo between to bees and I became more convinced the feeders were leaking and the bees were sticking together with sugar syrup. I manages to clear the lid somewhat and also realized that they would just get out of the way if we set the lid down slowly enough. The queen cage was retrieved and she had also been released I quickly put in the 3 missing frames and closed it up. They were well on their way with wax building. 
Encouraged by how well the Gambinos were doing, I know it was time to collect myself and get serious about that wax so I opened up the Genovese hive and gently but forcefully cleaned off the comb. I used my hive tool to scrape it off. 
In this picture you can see one of the weird jelly clumps I was talking about.
Not wanting to waste the bees work we attempted to attach the big comb to a frame, there was also stored pollen and possibly uncapped nectar so we knew it was important to save. The small chunk was less than the size of my palm (small hands) so we couldn't reattach that. Jack tried to heat the top edge to get it to stick to the top bar on the frame but couldn't quite get it to stay. I then remembered reading something about using rubber bands so we secured it with a rubber band, replaced all the frames and closed it all up. I replaced the mostly full feed buckets on both hives. I was worried about the inspection being overly stressful for the Genovese and was worried about manhandling the queen when I was brushing off the bees. I managed to convince myself that she wasn't on that comb. 
Jack snapped a quick pic before trying to attach the comb to the top 


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