Back to robbing again

The sugar water has attracted the neighbors again even with the entrance reducer in place.  Not a huge number of bees but many. I have read that if you trap the bees inside a strange hive for three days, they will make it their own.  So I took off the bottom board and replaced it with my catch trap.  Any home bees from the hive can get back in and any robbing bees will enter and not be able to get back out.  The nasty hive will build up by someone else's attrition and if the literature is right, then the hive can begin to prosper, albeit, not the usual way.  We'll see what happens.  Later

Activity in the nuc

Lots going on at the nuc entrance this afternoon after the thunderstorm.  Looks like the brood is beginning to hatch, as new bees were flying at the gate.  Inside the hive the bees are actively making comb where I had removed it for the nasty hive.  It too seems active, but with such a small colony its still not much.  The bar of bees I gave it seems to have perc'd them up. Gave it some sugar water to help it along and closed down the entrance even more.  Checked on brood development and it to seems to be getting stronger with brood on more than one comb now.   As the bees hatch, it to should improve as there will be more hive bees to help.  Hope to see new bees flying in a day or two.  Later

Another transfer

Today I have decided to move a frame of bees into the nasty hive to see what will transpire.  The nuc seems to be doing well now so they can spare the frame.  Later

Queens in

Checked the nuc today and the queen has been set free.  We'll have to wait and see if she is accepted tho.  Placed a mat in front of the hive to see if a dead queen shows up.

The nasty hive is slowly dwindling, not much in the way of brood cells and no honey build-up ( could the robbing had anything to do with that?).  I'm just going to let it go as I don't want to mix it with the other hives, just in case there's another problem.  The bees seem fine otherwise.  We'll see how the summer goes.  Later

New Queen

Received my new replacement queen today from Full Bloom Apiaries out of CT, right on time as promised.  Because its so hot today, I gave her (them) some water and a drop of honey.  When I opened the hive to put her in I noticed that they had begun to build down into the Octagonal hive.  I had made a transition board for that purpose last year and its working just fine.  I had opened up the hive yesterday to check on things and much to my surprise, there was brood comb on one frame on both sides.  That couldn't have been from my transplant attempts as its to soon.  There are three possibilities: 1) Maybe a laying worker, but the pattern looks to even, almost perfectly round.  2)  that I had moved the queen with the TBH frame when I transferred the frame to the nuc. If I did, the TBH will make a new one.  3) and last is that for some reason the original queen just wasn't laying, which I doubt.  I decided to put in the new queen anyway just to be sure.  If it was either old queens then the new one will take over or maybe they will leave her alone and I'll have 2 working queens.  That happened to Debra when we tried to make a nuc out of the back of her TBH.  The queen move forward and the back succumbed to beetles, she checked and they are both laying.  We'll see what happens.

On another note, my comments on white Oak Apiaries is getting noticed on the web.  It shows up right under his ad.

The robbing has ceased on the nasty hive since I shut down the opening.  Will leave it that way until they can build up their strength to protect themselves better.   


PS:  It's now 4:30 and for the first time since I installed the nuc there are guard bees defending the entrance.  I saw no hostile activity nor threat at the entrance so maybe they are finally feeling that they could be a colony, lets hope.  I thought maybe that they were fanning since its so hot, but they weren't doing that either. There are large stores of honey and my adding extra bees has kept the hive strength up even without a queen, it can only get better now.  Only have the nasty hive to work on expanding now.  Later

Robbing nasty hive

Today as I checked the arrival of the hatching of the bees in the nasty hive I saw everything going great in the morning,  many bees at the entrance awaiting their first flight. I checked again later in the day and saw much fighting at the entrance.  I had given them sugar water inside the hive to help them along and I guess now that the flowers are abating, thievery is about, so I closed down the entrance to help them defend the hive better and it seems to be working.  If its still is bad tomorrow, I'll close it down some more or maybe even shut it off completely for a few days.

Got a reply from the queen vendor and he has shipped the new queen, should be here on Weds.  Its a New World Carnolian.  Hope that will spice the nuc before its to late.  I guess I should be feeding it also.  The TBH is still going great guns, hope to harvest some of the honey the first year.  Later  

White Oak Apiaries

Just want to let anyone know that you don't get what you pay for at White Oak.  I thought I had purchased a nuc which should have had 3 frames of brood and bees and 2 frames of honey.  He said that because of the late spring the nuc would be a little light.  What I got when I opened it at home was: one half frame of brood, 2 frames of bees, one completely empty frame (no comb) and one empty frame of comb the bees would not touch.  And guess what?  no queen, which I didn't find out until my 2 week inspection where I found no brood left and no laying going on.  I left an e-mail and he doesn't seem interested in my dilemma as he refuses to return my call.
There was also an interesting article in the NY Times that stated the president of the Brooklyn Bee assoc. who purchased his bees from White Oak, had his bees chew their way out of the nuc's in the back of his car and he had to pay a fine because of the nuisance it caused.  Sounds like this guy is a piece of work.

I suspected something upon arriving at his apiary as it was in total disarray, not what you would want from a businessman you could trust.  That's my two cents worth, take it or leave it.
Update:
The queen which I purchased from him I had to actually pick up on site when I got my Nuc, as after waiting ten days he hadn't sent it.  It isn't laying a good pattern and after 4 weeks the hive has not enlarged at all.  My other hives are doing great, so its not the flow.  Later