California bee primary in my backyard

[susan rudnicki]

I would not use festooning as a sure sign of a queen. EGGS are the sure sign of a queen that is laying. A virgin can be there, but could also be lost before being properly mated.
Regarding this—“Those bees are making it very hard to tape screen over
the opening because they fly in and out, in and out, even after sunset.”
Are you trying to use a flashlight? Use a red head lamp (cheap at Home Depot—red light does not make the bees aggressive) and use the smoker very lightly to push the bees back inside the entrance. With a old, well used smoker, just the cold fumes pushed by the bellows will often be enough to make them retreat.

[Ronni Kern]

Oh, thanks so much for the idea about the red head lamp! I will get one tomorrow. Of course my smoker is hardly old and well used, but in all honesty, it hadn’t occurred to me to use it at all in this context. So much to learn!

[ceebs bailey]

I have also had success with a very, very light misting of water on bees hanging out on the front porch. They will go inside if they think it is raining.

[Ronni Kern]

What do bees do at night?

Rob asked me to keep the forum updated on these swarms so here goes. I had planned to keep them in the backyard behind a 7’ high piece of MDO that would push them up into the air and over our heads. I had built a stand there and as I mentioned, hurriedly built a fence around the area to keep my new puppy from bothering the hives. But the neighbor closest to the hives became agitated about their nearness to her pool and grandkids so I decided to move the hives to the opposite end of my lot. This meant not only getting the swarm box out of the tree but also getting the bees reoriented to their new abodes.

I moved both hives on the night of March 30th. On the 31st, despite the grass and leaves in front of the entrances, it was clear many of the foragers were returning to the original hive sites. I put empty boxes there and that night, plus the next two, ferried bees from the old site to the new.

My esteemed mentor Susan Rudnicki came yesterday, April 1st, to help me do my first actual inspection of the hives. I had been aware from early on that the tree hive was much stronger than the hive at ground level and when we opened up the hives, we found out why The tree hive had a queen, eggs, capped and uncapped brood, pollen and nectar plus empty center cells from which a new crop of workers had already emerged. That the girls had accomplished all this in exactly three weeks was pretty astonishing to me, especially since with foundationless frames, they had to build the comb first.. Susan was impressed by the variety of sizes and colors in the bees. She told me I had a promiscuous queen, which was a good thing. Lots of genetic material floating around.

The weak hive, however, was interesting in a totally different way. There was a fraction of the amount of comb as in the strong hive, but that comb contained a minimum of five queen cells, at least one of which was capped. We saw no evidence of a queen and assumed she had died at some point after the swarm moved in. The bees themselves were also much fewer in number than in the strong hive; and the foragers from that hive seemed to return to the original site in greater numbers. Susan felt there was no certainty this hive would survive and suggested I set up a baggie feeder to at least give the bees a food source while they were devoting so much of their energy to raising queens.

This evening, around sunset, when I was returning the confused foragers to their hive, I found an enormous number of bees sitting on the baggie feeder. It seemed a little strange to me. Shouldn’t they have been busy doing something? Or did they really have nothing to do until their queen emerged? Or do bees even in a queenright hive settle down in front of the TV for the night? Every day something new to learn!

[susan rudnicki]

Well, they want to remove that honey from the bag and store it in their combs, so they will be working at that till they hopefully have a queen. Did you find Paul?

[Ronni Kern]

Paul only has deep frames of brood and I only have medium frames so “exchanging frames” wasn’t going to work. Also, his inclination was for me to just “watch and wait”. One of his own moribund hives had recently rebounded. With a capped queen cell, he felt there was a chance I would have a new — albeit virgin — queen any day now. Though of course it could also be not for a week +, with no eggs for two more weeks after that (studying my Michael Bush Bee Math!)

[susan rudnicki]

OK—but I think watching will not be a good strategy. The tiny nature of the colony right now means they do not have the resources to take care of eggs and larva once a queen does come on line. There is attrition every day—it is a struggle for them to cover the queen cells even now, much less what is to come when there are fewer and no replacements for 3 weeks hence when the new workers emerge. If I were you, I would put up a request to BUY a frame or two of brood from someone willing in the SM Venice area—PP, also. Ask Ruth at BeeCapture, who has client hives in your area. You must offer to BUY, though

[Ronni Kern]

Got it. I will call Ruth Askren now. Thanks.

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