Today was a rough day. No stings, but I signed the death warrant for a thousand or so bees. The Carniolans, as a quick reminder, came to us queenless. We attempted to get them to raise their own queen, but nothing worked. Instead, at least one, probably several, female worker bees developed sexual organs and became drone laying workers. This is the end of a hive. If you try to introduce a queen at this point she will be killed as the workers see all the eggs and think the hive is queenright. The drones are useless to the continued existence of the hive. My thought is that the phenomenon of the drone laying worker is to attempt to keep some of the genetics of the hive in the gene pool of bees by throwing the drones to the wind in hopes that they will mate with a fertile queen somewhere else. But there is a way to use the productivity and morale of a hive that thinks it's queenright. It's just a bit tough, but it's what I did today.
We ordered another Carniolan queen that somehow managed to survive the USPS's inability to read the label "LIVE QUEEN BEES - HANDLE WITH CARE." I retrieved the queen and her four attendants from the mailbox last night and about threw a fit right after my heart detached itself from my stomach (it sank pretty badly). The box was broken open and mangled, crushed and abused. Yet the girls managed to live and enjoyed the honey I dripped onto the small plastic container they came in The queen cage is about the size of a fat, squat lighter with one end meshed to provide ventilation. The other end has a long tubesticking out that is large enough for a bee to enter, but is stuffed with a sugar candy plug to keep the girls out for a little while. The idea is the workers eat both sides of the candy plug and byt the time they get rid of it, the hive has adjusted to the new queens pheromones and accepts her as their own.
Here's the method of getting rid of the drone laying worker(s): move the hive at least 100 yards from its current location. Empty the hive of every single bee - you must get all of them out as you can't tell which one is the drone laying worker. Move the now empty hive and all its parts back to its original position and install queen cage near the center. Some of the evicted bees will find their way back, but not the drone laying worker as she has never been outside of the hive. Unfortunately, that also means that the non-offending nursery bees, who also have never been out, cannot make it back to the hive either. Thus they will either freeze or starve to death. Hence my sadness about the day and the salvation of the hive.
The procedure really was simple, but it was not easy.
First, John's yard ain't big enough. Initially, I thought the most merciful thing to do was dig a wide shallow hole, knock all the bees into it and then drown them. The idea didn't sit well on my soul nor John's. So we decided to that the best place for the operation was on the east side of the house, basically on the opposite side of our apiary. With a big house in between the bees and their hive, we felt that they couldn't find their way back going around corners and such. At least that's the hope. John was unable to help as sometimes work gets in the way of what you really want to do.
Once I cleared the area for easy emergency evac, I moved the hive over. Both hive bodies, the bottom board, the outer and inner covers, all the frames, and the bees weighed about 40 lbs. My understanding is that a honey super that is about 2/3 the size of the hive bodies, weighs up to 60 lbs. I removed the top hive body and set it several feet away and put the outer cover over it to keep any strays out and to put the bee-lees frames in. Then it was time to get the bees off. In a silly fashion, I hadn't given much thought to the disposition of the bees when I commenced with my project. Fortunately, a beekeeper at work has used the method several times and warned me to wrap up tight as, not surprisingly when one thinks of it, the bees were going to be, well, a bit upset (not her words, but this is a family friendly forum). I had my thickest gloves on, a thick cotton shirt on tucked into my pants and leather hiking boots (normally I go for comfort and wear running shoes with well-ventilated mesh uppers). I got the smoker going and went to work.
I found the best way to get the bees off each frame was to rap the frame hard on the ground. We have found that even though a bee brush is very safe to move the bees around, they HATE it. It really ticks the girls off getting the brush off. Rapping the frame on the ground removes about 90% of the bees and disorients most of them. They just crawl around on th eground wondering if they're still in Kansas or not. About 5% of them take to the air and get kinda annoyed. The other 5% need knocking off with the brush and that moves them well into the "Where's he at? Lemme at 'im!" phase. A couple tried to sting me, but couldn't get through the gloves or the shirt. Still, I did the rap, brush, skedaddle pretty quickly. Once I had most of the bees off I would step away a few feet and finish brushing off the persistent ones. My biggest problem frame had two lobes of comb built away from it, forcing me to break the lobes off to get the several dozen hiding behind them.
I found that spraying the bees still on the ground with sugar water helped to keep those distracted. Once everything was clear of bees I moved it all back about halfway to the apiary and checked the frames again. Wisely, I might add. In one of the nooks where I broke off the lobes, I found another bee.
When I got everything back, several harvesters were flying about in confusion, wondering where their hive had gone off to. I quickly put everything back in order and then covered teh cnady tube on the queen cage with duct tape and attached a long nail. The queen dealer suggested that the tube be covered to give the old hive a longer time to acclimate to the new queen. Remember that the hive thinks it's kind of queenright with the eggs constantly showing up. I set the cage in between two frames in the center of the bottom hive body and then closed it up. I placed an entrance reducer to help the already denuded population protect its even smaller population and then inspected the other hives (they're doing great - the 2nd Italians are just as easily annoyed as ever and the 1st Italians - I only peaked under the outer cover - look to be amazingly productive).
One of the treats today was removing some honey comb that the Carns had built up in the wrong place. The comb was loaded with honey. Once I had a chance to taste it, I found that the honey wsa (no surprise) very sweet and had a taste that I can best describe as citrus-y. It was delicate and mild and just darn good!
Posted by Bob Nelson
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