whew! it was an "interesting" May - trying to keep my bees in the boxes! my lunch hours consisted of going home an examining the evergreen trees that surround our property....looking for a ball of bees. i ended up with 5 swarms (from 2 hives) - caught all 5 of them. i made 1 new hive, used two to COMBINE with weak hives, and two decided not to stay...hmm???
swarms and requeening really puts the hive behind schedule (if HONEY is what you're after).
i started one "high hive" (3 deeps tall). this will be an interesting experiment. i used the newspaper method to combine two swarm boxes with two hives that didn't fair well over the winter.....i didn't bother to locate the weak queen - i let nature decide.
inspection of the combined hives: both hives are apparently busy and thriving - newspaper was all chewed out and they were one big happy family. in going through one of the hives....i heard PIPING (the virgin queen's call) after pulling frame by frame - something apparently "HAPPENED". there was a really nice capped brood pattern....then it all turned to drone brood. did she loose her fertility? or was she damaged in the fight for the new hive? well - the workers knew what was going on and cooked up some SUPERSCEDURE cells (different from swarm cells).
the very next day - i received a call about a swarm. it just seemed too coincidental...i suspect this was the old queen leaving with an entourage. to that i say - GOOD bye - leave me with a fresh new queen.
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