The Honey Factory

[duluthralphie]

That is what was going on before I put the Russian queen in there. She lasted long enough to lay for a couple of days.

I heard laying workers can be a PITA. Did you find her or did the Ruskie Queen kill her?

 

[R2elk]

I heard laying workers can be a PITA. Did you find her or did the Ruskie Queen kill her?

I did not look for her. It is too cold to really open that hive and thoroughly inspect it unless I was trying to kill off the bees.

I am contemplating building new hive boxes out of 2 by stock. Next time I go to town I will check lumber prices. The way things have been going, that is a scary proposition.

I have plenty of time to build a new hive before the ordered Russian nuc shows up in May.

 

[karenerwin]

I’m going to try bees again this Spring/Summer. Hopefully I can do a better job with mite control and small hive beetles as that is what I think led to the downfall of my hives the year before last. I let my hives sit empty for a year and am hoping that all the cold freezing temperatures we are having will have killed off all the pests.
Is it okay to use the old frames with the new bees when they get here or am I wrong in thinking all the old pests will have been killed off?

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I’m going to try bees again this Spring/Summer. Hopefully I can do a better job with mite control and small hive beetles as that is what I think led to the downfall of my hives the year before last. I let my hives sit empty for a year and am hoping that all the cold freezing temperatures we are having will have killed off all the pests.
Is it okay to use the old frames with the new bees when they get here or am I wrong in thinking all the old pests will have been killed off?

Look them over for wax moth damage, make sure they all look good before using them.
I would use them again, if they were mine.

 

[Apis mellifera]

Is it okay to use the old frames with the new bees when they get here or am I wrong in thinking all the old pests will have been killed off?

Unless they are all webbed up from wax moths, I see no reason not to use them and its highly unlikely your hive died from AFB.

 

[R2elk]

Checked on the supposedly empty hive this morning shortly after daylight. The bees are definitely living in that hive and have a big enough cluster to survive the rest of the winter.

One interesting side note is that early last summer I had a marked worker that was using the good Italian hive as her base. Later in the summer she was using the this hive as her base. Why there was a marked worker with that package of bees is beyond me unless someone was practicing marking bees.

When I checked the few dead bees at the entrance to this hive this morning, about half of them were ones produced by the Russian queen.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

Checked on the supposedly empty hive this morning shortly after daylight. The bees are definitely living in that hive and have a big enough cluster to survive the rest of the winter.

One interesting side note is that early last summer I had a marked worker that was using the good Italian hive as her base. Later in the summer she was using the this hive as her base. Why there was a marked worker with that package of bees is beyond me unless someone was practicing marking bees.

When I checked the few dead bees at the entrance to this hive this morning, about half of them were ones produced by the Russian queen.

That's interesting with the marked worker bee. It's like your own little experiment now.. or your own Where's Waldo game.

 

[duluthralphie]

Checked on the supposedly empty hive this morning shortly after daylight. The bees are definitely living in that hive and have a big enough cluster to survive the rest of the winter.

One interesting side note is that early last summer I had a marked worker that was using the good Italian hive as her base. Later in the summer she was using the this hive as her base. Why there was a marked worker with that package of bees is beyond me unless someone was practicing marking bees.

When I checked the few dead bees at the entrance to this hive this morning, about half of them were ones produced by the Russian queen.

The chances of a worker being alive a year later is slim to none in my not so knowledgeable book.

 

[R2elk]

The chances of a worker being alive a year later is slim to none in my not so knowledgeable book.

I haven't seen her since about the end of the summer.

 

[jerryse]

55 here . I see bees flying from 3 hives .