7/25/09: Eighth Inspection

Conditions: Don't know, wasn't there
Present: Just Bud
Equipment: Removed bucket feeders from both hives. Removed new queen cage from the re-queened (formerly Italian) hive
Activities: Smoked hives at unknown time (I wasn't there and forgot to ask). Inspected all deep frames.
Observations: In the "Italian" hive, the queen cage was empty. Observed in the brood chamber were eggs and young larvae (5 days old?) as well as CAPPED BROOD. Really? This means the Italian queen we were concerned about must have started laying before we moved the new Russian queen in! So, essentially we re-queened even though we didn't need to. See if you can follow the timeline here: There must have been eggs present during the 7/18/09 inspection (where we found none and decided to re-queen). We know the new Russian queen was not released until 7/21/09 when I "popped" the cork on the queen cage, and this inspection was only 4 days after that. Worker brood are capped on day 9, so those eggs (which became capped brood for this inspection) were there on 7/16/09 or earlier, 5 days before the Russian queen was ever released!

So we put a second queen into a hive with another fertile, laying queen. The question is, what happened? The hive is not big enough to support two brood chambers, so we are likely down to one queen again. Either the hive rejected the new Russian queen, killed her, and disposed of the body OR the two queens had a duel. Is the reigning queen Italian or Russian? We won't know until we spot her again. So the experiment with one Italian hive and one Russian may exist yet.

I'm convinced now that bees will always keep me guessing. It's what makes this an interesting hobby. Hopefully I get better at spotting eggs, though, and don't repeat this particular mistake!

But that is good news, that there are baby bees in that hive once again. There will soon be a dip in population, but they'll rebound for a fall nectar flow and have a shot at making it through the winter. The colony will be ok.

In the other hive (the original Russian) the first super (above the bottom deep) was pretty full and even had a small brood area surrounded by honey. So the queen had taken a brief trip up there to lay, <100 eggs or so, and then returned to her deep. They are going like gangbusters.

Time to add the first honey supers. I need to nail together 20 frames and insert the wax-with-wire foundation we bought (before we knew plastic fits just fine in split-bottom frames) and Bud is picking up the retaining clips. Should super before the weekend. If they build out the comb and fill it fast enough, we'll get a small honey harvest this year.