De-Queening and Re-Queening one final step left

[Jen]

It's been a Murphy journey. But by golly we got it done. 70 degrees today. Tomorrow at 3:00 I will be installing my last queen, this process is the easiest part. the girls were sooo cooperative today, peaceful and busy while I worked for 4 hours scavenging for queen cells and queens. Even tho this hive swarmed today, I found 4 more loose queens in the hive, probably from using the brush.

This last hive, one deep and one medium, was packed with bees two days ago, it swarmed two times in the last two days. Turned out to be a blessing.


I pulled 29 supercedure cells out of this hive today, and about a dozen empty cells.


But This Is One Of The Real Reasons Why I Love Being A Beekeeper


P.S. And how I love using mediums now! 

[LazyBkpr]

I WISH I could raise that many cells at one time.. I usually stick to ten or twelve..   Holy cow...  I am just speechless.
   That medium is a nice looking frame!!

[Jen]

This is what we call the daughter of the mother hive, the very first swarm. As far as we know this hive hasn't swarmed. How in the dickens did it hold that many loaded queen cells and a dozen empties without swarming?

I picked this hive sooo clean! two inspections and then found more cells after the shake. Very tricky hive here. Right now I'm drinking sleepy tea with a solid shot of vodka in it. I need a good nights sleep!

PS. Thanks for the boost when I most need it ~ I was getting so frustrated.

So how goes it with the master bee program you were interested in eh?

[Ziffa]

Wow Jen, you are a trooper!  29 cells!! I literally "holy $%*@"ed out loud! 

I would say you should go into queen rearing, but who wants those genetics!  Smart move on your part for requeening.  Hope these girls are stay at home moms. 

Best of luck with them and as they say down under - Good on ya!

love,
ziffa

[blueblood]

Solid work.  That is, indeed, a ton of queen cells~ wow

[LazyBkpr]

   So I am sitting here.. drinking my coffee and staring at the rain..  Wishing the sun would come out. Going through all the things Jen has done.
   A thought occurred to me.

   In cutting the bad comb from the frames she had that were not spaced correctly..   How many cells were deformed enough that the bees would have created queen cells from them?
   Granted, it still does not explain the swarming of the swarm hive..  I believe the right decision was made to requeen, but I was just wondering if the removal of the wonky comb may have made the situation worse?
   Opinions?

[Jen]

Ziffa- ""Wow Jen, you are a trooper!  29 cells!! I literally "holy $%*@"ed out loud!""

Ziffa! You are such a treat! I laughed out loud and snorked some of my coffee on the keyboard when I read that!

Thanks for starting my day off with a laugh... and I hope your swarmy bees are settling down as well.
 

[Jen]

Scott- ""In cutting the bad comb from the frames she had that were not spaced correctly..   How many cells were deformed enough that the bees would have created queen cells from them?""

1. Bad comb meaning wonky comb I'm assuming? There is no doubt that the bees have been thru armageddon with my trimmings along the way. While trimming I would think "Geez Loueeeez! If someone did this to my house I would pack my bags and get the H E double hockey sticks OUT!"
   But, it's news to me that the bees would make queen cells out of deformed cells?

    Scott, I'm enjoying my coffee and looking out the window filled with blue sky and calm trees, warm California air. Your question    made me question where most of the queen cells were placed by the bees. Looking back... I found them all over the frames, but not so much on the bottom of the frames where I reeked havoc with a lot of heavy drone cells. But it sticks out in my mind that the little wooden inserts that were wired into the deep plastic frames seem to be a clue. The bees did seem to like hanging supercedure cells on the edges of those little inserts.
     Another clue. Yesterday I even found a supercedure cell on a frame that was towards the edge of the hive with not much wax pulled, and a little bit of nectar. It stood out like a big sore thumb, Go Figure!
     Another clue. Several of these queen cells I pulled yesterday were doubled and tripled. And some of the very small cells were tucked up into donut sized holes in the comb.

It's like they just build them whether they are needed or not. To the point where the hive is over run with them.