[Timothy Inglish]

Hey Susan.

Thanks for all of your information and helping me to diagnose whats going on with the hive. What do you suppose could happen moving forward? Should I attempt to re-queen, or just wait and see? Thanks.
Tim

[Timothy Inglish]

Opened the hive today. Worked it from end to entrance. I have about 18 bars of honey, a mix of capped and uncapped. There is absolutely no brood and no queen or eggs. There is 1 capped queen cell, and the beginnings of an emergency queen cell.
This means that ten days ago when I opened the hive the last time, I removed the only comb which contained brood, and assumably the queen was either dead or I may have killed her, or, they may have swarmed shortly thereafter. I’ll wait and see what happens to the 1 queen cell. As usual the bees were very easy going to work with, and there did not seem to be any less bees than normal. I assume the bees are bearding because they don’t have a queen to tell them what to do with all of their free time.

Thanks.

[Timothy Inglish]

Thanks Susan, I do understand maintaining the overall reputation of beekeepers as a whole, and appreciate all that honey love.org has done for the beekeeping community.

[Timothy Inglish]

Hi Susan, I have not paid any contribution dues to Honeylove. Nor have I attended any meetings, nor do I have a mentor. I have been to a county of LA beekeepers meeting, but otherwise I am a rogue beekeeper learning on my own, mainly through internet research and Les Crowder’s video/book. The bees have approximately 10 built out top bars. I have not been harvesting honey regularly, in fact, I have not harvested any honey other than accidentally it is a large, 27 top bar hive that measures approximately 4 feet long and stands at chest height.
My “evidence for a swarm” is that the bees have been bearding every day since my last inspection, with today being the largest beard, and different behavior/sound coming from the hive.
I did not have a chance to look into the hive today. I plan on doing so tomorrow. I was a bit hesitant with so many bees bearding near the entrance. I definitely DO NOT plan on cutting the cross-combed top bars (The first 3 closest to the entrance are slightly cross combed) and attempting to clear all of that up tomorrow. I figure I will just do a regular inspection, look for eggs in the brood comb, look for queen cells and make sure there aren’t any other issues.
Thanks for all of your help this far. I’ll post after I have done my inspection.

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