Two weeks ago, my package bees arrived and I installed them in Sweet Beezus. Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake with the queen's cage and forgot to remove the small cork that covers the candy plug right away. Two days later, I remembered and removed it.
A few days after that, I opened the hive and found that the workers had eaten through the candy and released the queen from her cage. I looked and looked, but couldn't see the queen anywhere...until I noticed her on the inner cover, which I'd placed on the ground nearby. Yikes! I put the inner cover back on the hive immediately, and closed things up.
Today I thought it should be time to add another brood super. However, when I opened the hive and inspected the frames, they were only full of stored sugar water. No brood in sight. So, either the queen is dead or she is not laying.
Since I don't know how long it "too long" to wait and see if the queen will start laying, I called Rossman Apiaries to ask what to do. They advised me to open the hive again and find the queen. Obviously, if there is no queen or the queen is not laying, there is no brood. And without any brood, the hive cannot survive because the workers have no larvae available from which to a new queen. This means I'll have to requeen the hive.
Requeening is a process I'm not looking forward to — it involves killing the old queen (if she's still alive) and then introducing a new queen (in her cage). But first things first. Tomorrow I'll figure out whether or not Sweet B has a queen and go from there.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
