Still making newbie mistakes I think.

[Yankee11]

Ok, so last weekend i find this in one of my double deeps in an out yard. No sign of any worker brood and all 10 frames in upper deep was fullly capped honey. So I shook them out and let them fly into the other hive (only 2 here for now). I believe it to be a laying worker hive.



So today I am at home yard and find the exact same thing in a fairly strong hive. So I say to myself "what the heck" I grab a weak hive that I know for sure has a queen. ( i saw her) and I move this hive to the spot where this laying worker hive is. I take hive out in front and start shaking bee off frames (double deep) then on about the 15th frame guess who I find. (yep, the stinkin queen). To late now, so I just combined them and let them sort it out.

I am beating myself up over this tonight, Maybe that other hive I did last week had a queen in it also. Maybe they have just shut down completely.

I just saw the spotty drone brood and didn't look for the multiple eggs in the cell. Didn't consider the time of year.

[LazyBkpr]

There is a reason I have this Quote from Randy Oliver as the starting line in my website;


    "Physicist Neils Bohr once quipped, An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
   This definition clearly excludes me from being any sort of expert, since I exuberantly continue to make new mistakes in my own beekeeping adventures."
   Randy Oliver


   That little quote from a renowned beekeeper makes me feel JUST a wee bit better every time I do something that turns out to be intelligence challenged..

   At this time of the year, i try to refrain from doing ANYTHING else..  I feed, medicate, prep for winter...  When Spring arrives i will see what i have left and THEN start making changes and plans.  I have a nuc I think is queenless, but they have stored honey and syrup away..  They are clustered well enough that finding a queen is not possible without completely dislodging them all..  So they will get the chance to winter as they are. if they have no queen they will not make spring, and I will use their drawn combs to start another nuc..

   I once took an upper brood box and did a newspaper combine to another hive, and shook out the bees from that hive, stacking the frames against the hive stand..   I came back thre days later to find bees STILL clustered on those frames..  I picked up the first one and shook it off, I picked up the second one and....  stared in disbelief at a BEAUTIFUL new queen nearly ALONE on the frame I held in my hand....
  Yes, I exuberantly continue to make new mistakes as well.

[riverbee]

yankee, don't beat yourself up.......you did what you thought was best..........

i tend to define 'mistakes' as 'experience'...........  
it's the only way we get there.......

[Yankee11]

Thanks,

I havn't changed seasons in my mind, til now. I went in looking for usaual summer stuff, Brood, larva etc. Not even considering time of year. Lesson learned.

Also, I now realize what a huge difference 10 miles can make. Ive been checking all my out yards which have been on soybeans cotton and golden rod.  They look completely different inside then these ones at my house which has no row crops around. Nuther lesson learned..

So your right, learning experience,

Good advice Lazy, stay out now, just feed etc.

[Perry]

Beekeeping season is pretty much over for now. Worry season is upon us and will be until sometime in March/ April. (It never changes, even for seasoned keeps).

[Yankee11]

yep, time for a break from the bees.

I have my first 2 batches of Mead started. One straight Honey and a Pear Mead.

And a new table saw to play with. So I'll have something to do.

Probably dont need to play with both of those at the same time. Huh?

[riverbee]

.............

[iddee]

If you do, don't post pics of the fingers.   :'(   

[lazy shooter]

I figure we will all stop making mistakes about the same time they are shoveling dirt over the box.  It seems like I have been drilling wells for a hundred years, when actually it's only been forty or so, but I still ask for second opinions if time permits.

Yankee, when you know everything that's when I want to keep far away from you.    Those "know it alls" are dangerous people.

[Jen]

Don't feel bad Yankee, I'm still dealing with my frankenframes 

[Yankee11]

frankenframes?

[pistolpete]

what a difference latitude makes.  My bees stopped making new drones about two months ago and evicted the old ones about a month ago.  That frame you pictured looks like it contains mostly drone sized cells and I see several 3 or 4 day old larva.  That would mean that your queen continued to lay drones at least two months after mine. 

In august I was brushing  the bees off my honey supers in front of the hive (after 24 hours over an escape board).  I noticed some drone brood on one of the frames, and took a closer look.  Gulp, there was the queen, seconds from getting dumped on the ground.

[Jen]

Phew! That was close Pete! 

[Yankee11]

So Jen,

What are you doing with those franken frames?

[Jen]

Yankee, As I replace them with wood/wax frames I dismantel them, keep the small wooden frame and throw the plastic part of the frame out.

This was my very first hive, no I wasn't the artist. I only wanted a small hive to do bee venom therapy with. The beekeeper that I bought this from said it was called a 'patio hive'. But I posted a pic of this on another forum a few years ago and they said it's actually a queen rearing hive. By the next year I realized that bees multiply big time. I was soo soo naive.  I had no way of getting components for this small hive, but needed to get into a standard size hive quickly. It was suggested to insert the small wooden frames into a standard size frame. I call these frames my surgical implants, or frankenframes = surgically altered frankenstein LOL (I think Zweefer named them Frankenframes)

Anyway, there is a lot of story that you didn't ask for 

[Yankee11]

Lol,
That was perfect.