combining hives

The weaker hive was again producing excess drones, suggesting the 2nd introduced queen also did not survive. Newspaper with a few small holes was placed in between the supers of the old and new hive. This should give the added bees time to adjust to the scent of the queen in the new hive. The camera was on the wrong setting so pictures of drones hatching are low quality.

Also, the lab work is not going well, I did not freeze a sample of the original fungi isolated from comb surrouding larvae and subcultures lost some desireable activity.

The sun is out, the bees are friendly and the strong hive is full of honey, Hilary removed about two quarts from the strong hive. The weak hive is looks active and no new drone cells are noted. Hilary will get an epi pen tomorrow. The swelling from the stings of bees in a neighboring hive a few weeks ago warranted keeping one nearby. Tiny frogs/toads are abundant near the hive and pond. The honey is delicious, I broke my rule and ate some from this batch before I tested. Testing will be done this week end if we have time. Lab work is getting backed up.

Rained all day but we needed to check the queen. Her cage was full of bees but we did not see her, although the large bee in the center of this picture may have been a queen. The hard rain made this difficult and the bees were not happy. But, they s look active, healthy and very few bullet cells, so all may be well and this was the queen. We will check again when the sun is out. If this queen does not survive, this hive will have to be combined with the strong hive.

more lab work ...

The queen placed in the weak hive last week was apparently not accepted by the hive and not fed. One of the several reasons for her non acceptance by the hive could be that the queen has depleted her sperm stores but remains in the hive producing haploid larvae that will be drones. This dead queen was replaced with another queen.