And then there was one...

Well, we lost the weak hive. Anson noticed there were fewer and fewer bees down to a population that he did not think would survive. He could not identify the queen, though we knew that would be difficult because she was unmarked and small so would easily blend in with the worker bees. He also only saw larva, and based on this blog post charting development cycles we can conclude she was laying 6 days prior. However, this was not sign enough she was prolific. For all of these reasons Anson decided (under Poppop's mentorship) to combine it with the other stronger hive. So, now we are down to one hive which hopefully we can keep alive until next spring when the pollen and nectar will flow enough for us to get some honey out of this whole deal!

After some discussion and thought we have decided that our queen source (Bailey Bee Supply in Raleigh) is of poor quality and that we should find another supplier next year.

Regicide

We encountered a bee problem again: a weak queen. So we've ousted her and replaced her with a new, hopefully more powerful queen. The new queen is small though, so we're slightly concerned her reign may not be much better than the incumbent's. I've tried to photograph the new and the old queens for you but they're always on the move and their attendants get in the way, so I only have one decent shot to share. They come in a small box with about 4 attendants and are plugged with sugar that they eat away to slowly be released into the new hive. That allows the bees to reorient themselves with the new queen's scent so that they accept her.

Ousted queen can be spotted by her large blue marking

Most queens are marked with a dot, as explained in this previous post about queens, but this new queen is not. We are not thrilled about that because combined with her small size she will be very difficult to spot.

The original queen cost $100 and came with 3 pounds of bees. Since we already had a mostly established hive and just a weak queen we had the option to either 1) combine the failing hive with our more successful one and hope they winter over or 2) buy another queen for $30. We opted for the latter option and have our fingers crossed she begins laying a lot in the next week or so. We'll keep you posted!

We're Back!

We're back in beekeeping business, y'all! We had a bit of a hiatus while I was pregnant and then caring for a baby. We did still have bees through much of both of those life stages but it was very difficult to find the time to get out to the bee yard. Then, we did lose both hives. I felt defeated and frustrated with the hobby altogether. We were rewarded with about 20 pounds of honey, which seems like a lot, but didn't feel like a decent return on our investment. Anson still wanted to continue while I wanted to quit so he said he'd take the bulk of the responsibility. Actually, what he said to me was a play on a Captain Phillips movie quote when the pirate takes over the ship and says he's the captain now:

He does the two fingers and says the line a lot and it hasn't stopped being funny yet. He was always very supportive but now he's actually very exited about beekeeping!

So, we're back! Anson bought two packages of 3 pounds of bees each.

Each package comes with a queen in a small box that is corked and then plugged with a bit of sugar.

He needs new gloves! These have duct tape on the fingers.

You open the package, pull the cork from the queen's box, and shake the 3 pounds of bees into a hive. The bees will eat the sugar plug which allows the queen to be slowly introduced to the colony. The bees get to work busily pulling out wax comb and foraging straight away. We installed the two packages today so wish us luck!