Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Bee Vlog - May 19, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 75 lbs (+6.6 lbs from last week)

The swarm I caught is very low on numbers. The flightless queen that got stuck outside is still alive in the bait hive, but the main hive body is queenless. So I moved the queen into the hive and will give it a frame of brood from my other hive to give it a boost in population as well as comb that is ready for the queen to start using (after the brood emerges).

There are still many unknowns here that could spell the demise of this colony:
1) Is the queen mated?
2) Will they even accept the queen back after being out of the hive for so long?
3) Will they accept and raise the brood I gave them?


Video Link

Queen Anne (from my first hive) is doing very well. The entire colony is going gangbusters. After "pyramiding up" the brood nest they are making excellent progress building up the comb in the empty frames. Queen Anne has already laid eggs in some of the new comb. We also find her in the upper chamber and get some good video of her. I pick a frame of mature worker brood from the lower chamber to move over to the Queen Beatrice (swarm) hive to give them a boost of new bees and help ease their dying population.


Video Link


Video Link

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