Late this afternoon I happened upon the beekeeper in the meadow. Over the weekend they had introduced two new hives with new queens.
He checked the old hives which were humming with bees. Since we are concerned about possible swarming he inceased the size of each of these hives by one tray, and also included a queen excluder, so we can harvest the honey. Overcrowded hives will swarm.
He then went on to give the two new hives some of the larva from the old hives, and to our surprise we found that one of the new hives contained sealed queen cells. Luckily he found the queen, so they had not yet swarmed. The trick now was to make them think they had swarmed.
The queen goes into an empty tray.
Add a few workers, and hopefully these bees will think they have swarmed. Next a queen excluder goes on top and then the original two trays, but the sealed queens cells have been destroyed, and in about 5 days all new queens cells will again be destoyed and they they will be reunited with the queen.
You can see how tall this first hive is now. We hope we will not have any swarming bees.
No comments:
Post a Comment