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Happy Chooks said:
Well, I screwed up. No time to check hives = problem on 1 hive. I knew I needed to get into them sooner.

This is my Hive #2. It's PACKED with bees, brood, honey, pollen.........absolutely packed. And this hive has built up much more than my Hive #1. When bees run out of room, they get ready to swarm (reproductive swarm to increase colonies). Well, I'm betting this hive will swarm in the next day or 2. I was going to simulate a swarm by moving the queen and some bees to a split I did a few weeks ago. (now Hive #3) Opened the top and they already made a queen. Shoot.

I have a 5 frame box baited to catch the swarm, but this swarm is going to be a large one, so they are going to need to be hived right away. I don't have a bottom board for another hive. A friend of mine does, and I offered to buy it off of her. She won't charge me though. So I have to go get it tomorrow so I'm ready to place another hive. (Hive #4)

So........this is bee math. (there are 2 boxes on this hive)
img_2734-jpg.1393351



This picture shows the making of a queen bee. You can see 3 capped queen cells at the bottom of the frame. When the current queen leaves with 1/2 of the bees, they have another queen ready to hatch, do her mating flights and come back to lay eggs for the colony.
img_2731-jpg.1393353
Click to expand...
Lots of Honey!

:wee
 
Just gotta stay ahead of them. Then a full day to harvest honey, but that is the fun part. Well, the harvest is fun. The cleanup isn't much fun.

A hive this packed is actually hard to inspect. Too many bees to be able to get in there. Plus the queen in this hive actually crawled up my hand. I quickly put her back in. My smoker was working overtime so I wouldn't squish them. The honey super is on now, so they are making me honey now.
 
Happy Chooks said:
Just gotta stay ahead of them. Then a full day to harvest honey, but that is the fun part. Well, the harvest is fun. The cleanup isn't much fun.

A hive this packed is actually hard to inspect. Too many bees to be able to get in there. Plus the queen in this hive actually crawled up my hand. I quickly put her back in. My smoker was working overtime so I wouldn't squish them. The honey super is on now, so they are making me honey now.
Click to expand...
I am looking forward to seeing the jars of honey you get this year!
 
It's great your bees are doing so well, lots of lovely honey. Every time I tried to get bees here they would stay for only a short while then swarm, never leaving behind viable queens apparently. One time my neighbor saw them swarming, a truck drove right thought the swarm on the road out front :hmm. So I am left with only buying honey, which works pretty good for me.
 
1muttsfan said:
There were each time, and queen cells too, but no queens ever replaced the old one and the colonies died over the winter. I decided it was a sign the bees did not want to live here.
Click to expand...

Depending on the time of year, there may not have been drones for her to mate with, or she didn't make it back from mating flights.

I had trouble requeening a hive last year that lost it's queen over winter. It took me 3 months, but I finally got it!
 

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