I had one more bucket of honey from the summer that needed to be tapped into jars. Here is the result--20 jars of 450g. The figures are in: We had 62,2 kilo's of honey this year which yielded us 118 450 gram jars. It was a good enough harvest. Another bee thing was that I had split one colony because it was so large. The result was that one of the hives was then queenless of course. What we do about this is to then let the bees make some queen cells from the one or two day old larvae that were present when the queen and bees were removed. They will do this and after 10 days, I went into the hive and removed the cells. The hive was then not only queenless but also had no way of making more queen cells. The next step was then to place a frame from another colony with eggs and young brood on it (new blood, as it were). The bees would then make a new set of queen cells and then after 12 days one goes to the hive in the evening and listens for what they call "piping", in english I believe. My assistant demonstrates the listening with a bit of medical kit. I usually just press my face against the side of the hive and listen. It is the sound a queen makes when she has emerged from her cell. She is trying to locate other queens that are still in their cells in order to find them and sting them to death. If there are other queens that have developed and are almost ready to emerge, they will answer her in a muffled tone. The piping sound is the high-pitched "peeping" sound that you hear. Listen on this youtube link: http://youtu.be/ymg2bcA37cA Once the new queen has been heard, then you go back in and remove any queen cells that are still present. If there are viable queens inside them, then I let them crawl back into the hive. The reason that I do this in the late evening is so that one or more will not fly away, taking a portion of the colony with them. Instead, they will all fight it out overnight and in the morning the strongest will have remained...and that will be the new queen of the hive. Now then, that all settled-- I will not go back into the hive for at least one month. During this time she will have made a "bridal flight" (to mate), and begun laying eggs. I do not want to look in again until there is closed brood (1-1½ months) present. The way it went with me was that I looked in the hive, I saw her right away on the first frame that I removed. I was a bit surprised at my luck and looked away to pick up my marking tube...looked back to catch her and she was gone. I looked at every frame twice and never saw her again. After two weeks, I had another look and found her. I could have marked her right there above the hive, but I played it safe and took her into the garden house and sat down to calmly place a little blue dot on her back. You may ask why in the world I would want to place a dot on her back. Well, it is so that I can more easily see her. Blue is not the correct colour for 2014, but it is the colour that most quickly springs out and catches MY eye. You may not imagine that queens could be difficult to see, but I am here to tell you that with 30 - 60,000 bees in a colony, it can be darn hard to see her amongst all the rest. Well, I marked her....returned to the hive. Gave a little puff of smoke onto the top of the frames where I would let her loose. I let her climb out of the marking tube and she disappeared immediately down into the hive between two frames. I gave another brief puff of smoke to mask any smell that she might have gotten from the work that I had done. Normally I would have simply closed the hive up at this point and not opened it again for a fortnight; however, I wanted to take a picture of her majesty. Can you spot her? A closer look at this blond beauty. The frames had loads of pollen and honey for the coming winter, so with all the work done, they have every chance to make it through the winter now.
Wonderful work, Shjoerd! I agree that queens are hard to identify. We have stood for about 15 minutes waiting to see the vortex of bees around a queen. The workers and nurse bees surround the queen, and if you can be patient, and not get stung you can identify a queen. When we re-queen, we get a queen from a fellow beekeeper about 60 miles south of us--"new blood" as you said. I'm sure your bees will survive the winter easily, and be ready to pollinate all the surrounding gardens in the spring. By the way, that is some very handsome honey you have there! We are hoping for a fall flow of honey, but won't know for a month or more yet. Our ladies are active, and have started to fill the upper supers, but we don't want to take honey that they'll need for the winter.
Thanks for your comments, MG. Boy, it would be nice to get a fall harvest, but that is impossible here. Plus, we had a 3½ week period of rain not long ago and the bees' store was consumed by them because they couldn't fly. The hives were so light that I had to give them some supplemental feeding. It was alarming to see all the chewed-off cell tops on the ground under the hives--it looked like sawdust!
Very interesting and educational, thanks Sjoerd. Congratulations on your bountiful harvest and those honey must be yummie! Didn't know there are political struggles for the supreme position in the hives. I thought that if there were more than a Queen bee one would just leave the nest and start a new hive. Very interesting!
Why, thank you WARE-- They are fascinating beasts, aren't they. i just keep learning too. You are welcome too, KK--The honey is indeed tasty. Yes, the queen's struggle is a violent one...but then in the end there is a good chance that the survivor will have good genetic profile, at least in terms of survival and vitality.
Very interesting...you are a man of many talents. I have never heard of marking the queen but you sure did it right with your color, I found her right away....enjoy all of your honey...Your photos are great
Thanks for your kind remarks, Sherry. I am still enjoying the honey. It will be time to make some more whipped honey very soon with the remaining jars that we have.
I am well chuffed that you liked the queening thread. There wasn't an enormous amount of info there, but I tried to make what WAS there understandable for the folks who do not keep bees.
Wow Sjoerd, another great post! That blue paint really is an eye catcher! I spotted her right away! I was just viewing a couple you tubes about a new company that's creating a new way to take the honey from the hives.... http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/14127-genius-beehive-inventio.html?c=sfm I sort of liked the idea of not disturbing the hives, but then again, in the second 'opinion' youtube, I kind of agree that one would be chased by the bees with the jars uncovered and such...also the remark about the 'old fashioned' way of doing things is kind of spot on. What do you think?
