Sunday, June 2, 2013

Observation Hive Enters a New Season


The observation hive's 2012 season ended when the bees swarmed, hatched a replacement queen, but she failed to come back and begin laying new brood.  The contents of the observation hive were then united by the newspaper method with the swarm, which had been captured & was well established in an outdoor hive.  This provided ample food & bees for the hive to be in good shape heading into the winter.  They over-wintered well, as a traditional outdoor hive.. 
When inspecting brood this spring, it was a thrill to see the queen.  Oh wait, two queens!  The one on the left  is the dark one we have known, or appears to be, the queen who lived in the observation hive all last year.  We will assume the one on the right is a young queen hatched out of a queen cell in the hive.  Perhaps we interrupted swarm or supersedure plans.  We put the dark queen into a queen clip, and placed it in the observation hive with 4 frames of brood & honey from another hive.  We allowed several hours for acclimation, but needed to bring the hive indoors because the night was going to be cold.  So we gave everyone a squirt of sugar water, and released the queen into the hive.  Then we brought the hive indoors and connected the tubing to the outdoors.

Immediately there was a most delightful sound! It reoccurred several times, and while we had heard tales of queens piping, we had never previously heard the sound.  Our royalty was greeting her subjects.  They accepted her with no problem, and we have enjoyed the sight of her court her across the hive as she selects cells to lay her eggs into.  https://www.youtube.com/edit?ns=1&video_id=CMq0NtFZfCY  
(You can hear piping and tooting by rival queens in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKBI1q_RbvI  piping is said to be G (aka A)and occurs for about one second followed by a string of quarter-second pulses.)


The indoor hive is doing wonderfully, with brood hatching & nectar coming in.  The outdoor 'swarm hive' from last year's observation hive is also doing great.  The abundant brood the 2 queens laid is a beautiful sight, and the hive is packed full of honey, pollen & nectar.