To our delight and hope, the Carniolans have accepted their queen! The next real big step is whether or not she'll start laying eggs and if there are enough workers to raise them to full maturity. The workers in there have done well with the drones; we saw several large larvae and capped cells--and no new eggs, so we've dealt with the drone laying worker. Drones take about 24 days to go from egg to maturity and workers take about 21. When the new worker emerges, she explores a bit and then starts taking care of the brood (brood means any developing bee from egg to its emergence from a capped cell), thus taking on the title of nursery worker. If the workers do successfully raise up the eggs the queens lay, we still aren't entirely out of the woods. The hive population is incredibly small and might not build up enough to overwinter. Only time will tell here.
One of the neat things here is that the new queen is marked. By being able to see her, I'm hoping that my eyes will be trained to see the queens in the other hives (who are unmarked). The queen is a bit longer in the body and more slender than a worker, but that is hard to see when surrounded by hundreds of busy bees.
An interesting mystery came from the spot where I emptied the Carniolan hive last week. The day after I emptied the hive, it rained a lot and rained some more the next day. Exposed bees would not be able to survive those conditions and John said that most of them had died. He was going to clean up the carcasses of the Carns (as a writer, I find that little phrase a title possibility...carcasses of the Carns...hmmm....) two days ago, but not a single bee body was to be found. When I examined the "crime scene" I found a couple of chunks of comb I had discarded there and two squished Carns from rapping the frames on the ground, but nothing else. Since dead bees don't fly and his kids likely didn't clean them up, that leaves really only one solution: something ate 'em. My guess is a skunk came across the area and said, "SCORE!" Unfortunately, this is only a guess as the ground was not conducive to leaving tracks or the rain obliterated them. However they disappeared, John was saved from a grave duty.
The 1st Italians continue to do very well. Nearly every frame in the upper hive body has comb and we've decided to add honey supers at the next inspection. So I'm going shopping today before school!
The title of today's blog comes from the 2nd Italians, whom we've nicknamed the Sicilians. Initially, the Sicilians started out pretty calm, making me think that we should call them the Jekell & Hyde hive - one week they're calm, the next they're aggressive. Yesterday, they fit that title in one inspection. They are laying eggs, building comb and storing honey, though none in the upper body yet. We removed one of the brood frames and put it in the upper body to encourage them to start working there. This worked well for the 1st Italians.
About halfway through the inspection, they got really aggressive again. Even with the veils and gloves, it gets disconcerting to have a half dozen bees banging against the mesh of your veil. I could almost hear them yelling, "You wanna piece o' me? You wanna piece o' me? I don't think so!" That's when lucky number 13 came in. I wear a thick cotton henley and jeans for inspections. The henley wasn't thick enough and I got stung in the arm. At this point the pain isn't that bad - it feels like a small, hot splinter getting shoved in really quick. But after getting stung 12 times two weeks ago, I decided to exit the area for a minute to avoid having a repeat. This morning I have a goose egg around the sting site and it itches a bit, but is otherwise fine. The one thing I am annoyed about is that I'm sneezing my head off this morning. Drat! My hypothesis about apitherapy (being stung to treat ailments such as arthritis) seems to be disproven as it relates to allergies. Double drat!
Through the experience today, John came up with a brillian idea: for the next inspection, we'll start with the Sicilians first, inspect the 2nds (if needed) next, and then check the Carns. The thought is that by the time we get to the Sicilians we are covered in alarm pheremones and they react pretty quickly to that. You live and learn, eh?
Posted by Bob Nelson
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