The mean hive (#3) has settled down a bit, despite being queenless now. I think they were planning to swarm imminently when we inspected on Sunday and were very irked at being interrupted.
Our goals at this point are to
- Avoid propagating Hive #3’s genetics.
- Prevent #3 from swarming
- Requeen #3
- Take advantage of #3’s booming population (essentially three storeys of bees)
- Requeen #2
On Saturday we found a couple of swarm cups with young larvae in #1. So we pulled out a nuc including those frames. Today I peeked in to see the first queen cell in the process of being capped. If a queen successfully hatches and mates we will combine this nuc with hive #2 to re-queen.
On Sunday we found #3 ready to swarm and removed the queen with three frames of brood, one of stores, and one empty into a second nuc. Given their lack of honey productivity and their aggressive behavior, we decided she needed to go.
Today I destroyed about 20 queen cells in #3. The plan is to check one more time this weekend and destroy any new or remaining queen cells. At this point all larvae in the hive will be too old to become queens, and we will swap in a frame or two of eggs/open brood from #5 (the Old Sol bees). If all goes well #3 will then be re-queened with “survivor” genetics, and the new queen should start to lay around May 4, in time to raise a new generation of foragers for the main honey flow (hopefully).
I also killed the queen from #3. Killing queens is hard, especially big healthy queens that fill a hive with 11 solid frames of brood in March. But the combination of meanness, swarminess, and packing a super full of pollen instead of honey was a deal-breaker. I swapped the three frames of brood from her nuc for three frames of brood/pollen from #6, with the goal of propagating that hive’s genetics. Then I swapped the two mostly-empty frames into #5, opening the brood nest there and pulling out two solid frames of honey/pollen. (Hive #5 has the most honey left from winter stores.) Then I shook in more nurse bees from #3. So now we have a chimera nuc with brood from #6, stores from #5, and bees from #3. If they aren’t too confused, they should start queen cells in a few days. If successful, this nuc will be an extra queen on hand in case either of our other new queens fail to mate.
If all of this works, we will be propagating from our three best hives (#1, #5, #6), requeening our problem children (#2, #3), and creating a surplus nuc that we can sell if we don’t need it. Of course things seldom go entirely to plan in beekeeping, particularly with new keepers navigating spring management for the first time. Stay tuned…
It looks like we will be getting some maple/early spring honey from #1 and #3. The weather looks to be turning rainy and cooler starting tomorrow though, and if stays that way too long they might have to eat up their new stores.