Stone Hill Ridge

Bee Keeping – What have I done?

It appears I am learning something about bee keeping, like it or not. After using all my will power and staying out of the hives for two weeks (before now I was in them at least once a week) I went into the hives this weekend only to determine I had lost the queen in one of the two hives. It appears it has been a while as I could not find ANY capped brood cells. I did find the start of a couple of queen cells and so I panicked and grabbed a frame of capped brood from the stronger hive thinking they would need something to put in those queen cells and closed it all back up.

After a little (actually very little) internet searching, I realized what I needed was eggs and not capped brood. 🙁 So instead of opening the hives again and causing more stress I went online and ordered a new queen. Hopefully it is not to late in the season to save this hive. Stay tuned for an update when the new queen arrives.

On a positive note, both hives started building nice straight comb on the foundationless frames I gave them two weeks ago. So I swapped out two more frames on the stronger hive. That might be all I do this year to give them time to make a strong run at the fall/winter.

Exit mobile version