Tuesday, May 3, 2011

A Third Hive and a Lost Swarm 4-30-11

Our two hives are down on the plains still and we are waiting until about May 15th to bring them back up to our altitude. We had planned to add a 3rd hive this year and had ordered a new queen and bees to start the 3rd hive. We also went to a great bee store in Denver called, TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE to buy the required additional hive supplies. I picked up a whole new hive already assembled including 2 supers, a bottom board, top board and lid. In addition, I bought 4 honey supers as I'm very optimistic about this year's honey harvest!. You can see Flat Stanley went with us because he was visiting from a friend in California.

This is all the hive parts and honey supers in the back of the car.

On Thursday, April 28, a friend called to say that she saw a swarm of bees leave our strongest hive and head in a CLOUD OF BEES to the apple tree near by. We hoped to capture them for our third hive, but they left within about 2 hours. I'm disappointed I allowed conditions to exist that led to a swarm. More to learn about how to prevent this in the future!



On Saturday morning, April 30th, Jack and I went to Boulder to pick up a new queen and bees for the 3rd hive. Highland Bees has been a great help to us in learning about the bees and it was a busy morning for them. Lots of other novice bee-keepers were picking up their new hive of bees. This wagon was loaded with new bee colonies in boxes!


Here's our new box of bees. The queen is suspended in a cage, inside this box. There is a screen around her that allows the other bees to feed and care for her, but she is trapped. All of the bees will learn her "smell" and will adopt her as their queen. The can in the center holds sugar water and is the source of feed for the bees while they are traveling.




The bottle on the right holds sugar water and will be the food-source for the hive at the beginning. The spray bottle also holds sugar water as it will allow me to spray the hive as we transport and relocate them, calming them down.



This is my bee-basket that holds gloves, tools and other supplies. You can see I've pulled some blades of grass to use to reduce the entrance to the hive, once the bees are installed. The smoker is full of small twigs so we can create smoke to keep the bees calm.







Jack is busy using the hive tool to open the box of bees.




















We removed 3 center frames from the new hive and dumped the bees inside.












We closed up the hive, added the sugar water feeder and stuff the grass in the entrance to reduce the space. The book says this helps the hive protect itself at the beginning as it is small and "raider-bees" could easily come in if the entrance is left wide-open. The box of bees is sitting outside the hive as some straggler bees need to move into the hive.
Wish me luck on #3!!!

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