New Queens In The House.

[jdmidwest]

Really, they are sitting in the back room tonight in a little ice cream pail. What you see here is the equivalent of a 100 dollar bill, $25 bucks a pop. Inside of each of the little cages is a ripe new laying queen. They are surrounded by the attendant bees which are passing food to the queens inside the cage. It is amazing how they stick to the queen cages, you can open the bucket and none of the bees try to fly or get out.

In the morning, I will split my 3 hive into 6. 2 of the queen cages will replace the queens in 2 of my original hive and one generation from now I will have gentler bees in those. Part of the frames of bees in those hives will go into another 2 hives and a queen cage will be placed with them to make 2 new hives. The third original hive will be split in 2, and the bees will make their own queen in one of those hives.

Looks like a fun day for me tomorrow. The cages keep the queen protected until the bees accept her in about 4 days. I will then go back in and pull the cork out of the end of the cage and release her to start laying. The new bees born will have her characteristics and the old mean bees will die out in several weeks. The 2 existing queens in the old hives will be caught and I will return them back to the fellow I purchased the queens from, he wants them.

The hives I purchased this spring have been a stinging little bunch. Suckers nail me ever time I open them up. I want gentle bees, not a bunch of stingers.

[Mitch f]

From the title I thought you were commenting on the current administrations stance on traditional marriage.

[jdmidwest]

Like all of the current Admin stances, I tend to be against all of the. They tend to be what is worst for the country in general.

[jdmidwest]

That went about like I planned. I could not find the queens in the two hives. I split one hive into 3, and the other into 2 and used my 4 queens on the new splits. I now have 7 hives and plenty of bees and equipment to spare.

Nothing like roasting in the heat of the day working a bunch of bees. At times they were attacking the veil to where it sounded like hail bouncing off of me. I tried nitrile gloves today and did not get stung once. It took about 2 hours to complete my job but my armor worked today.

[Ham]

That's great. I appreciate what you're doing. I'll never partake, but I find it very interesting.

[Quillback]

So the two "mean" queens are still on the loose?

I'm also curious how much honey you get?

[jdmidwest]

The mean breed of queens are still in the 2 original hives from this spring, somewhere. I hope I did not get one in the nucs as they will sting the store bought queen thru the cage and kill her. I actually worked them for the first time yesterday without a sting. Maybe I am getting better at handling them.

No honey this year, I am making bees instead. I did have about 6 deep frames of honey drawn out and filled on the one hive. I dispersed it amongst the 4 new nucs to feed them.

I have $360 in bees alone this year between the 2 nucs I bought back in the spring and the 4 queens I bought this week. I should have done the splitting back in early May, but I decided to try for a little honey. The original queens in the 2 new hives swarmed and took off with about half of the work force in each hive. Now they are built back up, I decided to split into more hives and forego a honey harvest this year. With 7 solid hives going into next spring, there should be some honey next year.

I don't really have the time or facilities to mess with honey production now. I still have to build the honey house to store the extractor and equipment to bottle it. I still like to do a little fishing from time to time and the bees tend to cut into it. I have been outside all morning making some new hive equipment. Mother Nature dumped a flood on us yesterday and fishing waters were blown out.

[jdmidwest]

One week later after splitting the hives, the queens have settled in and the new hives are doing well. The parent hives are no worse for the loss of bees either, the queens are busy making the replacements.

Plenty of rain this summer, things are green and blooming. Bees should have a banner season this year unless it turns dry later.