Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Bee Hiving Moon<\/p>\n
The die is cast again for this season.\u00a0 Three packages, three three pound packages with around 8,000 bees each will arrive on Saturday.\u00a0 I’m glad Kate convinced me to buy the larger package since the shipments experienced a two-week delay due to bad weather in California.\u00a0 Gotta dig out the syrup spray bottle.\u00a0 Started defrosting the pollen patties left over from last year.\u00a0 Once done a couple of times hiving bees is not a formidable process, but it does require execution of several steps.<\/p>\n
I did learn why my divide failed.\u00a0 When I requeened it in late summer after inadvertently killing the queen while checking for mites, I did what I thought was a slow release, but it turned to be a fast one.\u00a0 I stuck a marshmallow in the end of the queen cage so that she and the workers could eat their way through it and come together in happiness and fertility for all.\u00a0 In fact what I needed to do was put a piece of hard candy in the same place, something that takes four days for the workers and the queen to eat.\u00a0 Over that length of time they become familiar with each other, old buddies, willing to cohabit without any smothering going on.<\/p>\n
As you know, royalty is not beheaded or shot, unless you’re uncivilized like the 17th century English, but instead have the garrote. The same thing is true for bees.\u00a0 To kill a queen the workers form a ball around her, known as balling (a different use of this term was popular during my college days), and plug up the holes through she which she breathes.\u00a0 Not a violent, but a certain, death.<\/p>\n
The queen is dead, long live the queen.\u00a0 Yes, colonies will requeen themselves given time, but heading into the gales of November there is no time.\u00a0 So the divide died an early death.<\/p>\n
The parent colony, I think, died from American Foul Brood.\u00a0 At any rate I burned the hive boxes, frames and foundations.\u00a0 Scorched earth against this plague.<\/p>\n
That leaves my strong package colony.\u00a0 It looked good headed into winter.\u00a0 Plenty of bees, what I thought was adequate honey supply and a fertile, young queen.\u00a0 I’m not sure what happened here.\u00a0 It could have been mites.\u00a0 It could have been an inadequate honey supply.\u00a0 It could have been its fate, woven elsewhere by Artemis and her court of virgin nymphs.\u00a0 At this point I can only proceed with a completely new bee population and hope that last winter was an anomaly since it was from a weather perspective.<\/p>\n
Anyhow perseverance is the route to wisdom in beekeeping as in so many of life’s endeavors.\u00a0 So, in the immortal words of Robert Crumb, we’ll just keep on truckin’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Bee Hiving Moon The die is cast again for this season.\u00a0 Three packages, three three pound packages with around 8,000 bees each will arrive on Saturday.\u00a0 I’m glad Kate convinced me to buy the larger package since the shipments experienced a two-week delay due to bad weather in California.\u00a0 Gotta dig out the … Continue reading Bee Diary: Keep On Keepin’ On<\/span>