She Almost Got Away - ( Stopping a Swarm )
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- Опубліковано 13 чер 2018
- WoooWeeee.... This was a close one. I thought I was just going to have a peek at the Balboa Mothership to see a bunch of eggs. Unfortunately (Fortunately?) I found something else.
I had to put on my thinking cap and work this one out, but I think I made the right decisions.
Thanks for watching!
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the vino farm bee drama is my favorite show
Better then any Soap Opera!!!!
me, too. me three. me one thousand!!!
Addendum: I'm getting a lot of comments saying that Balboa could still swarm. I am aware of that risk.
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You do realize that you've TRIPLED the size of your bee yard, right?? LOL WOW!! Nice, fancy footwork! Now you can name the Balboa offspring hives Marco and Polo! :-)
not only has he tripled the size of his bee yard, he also tripled the size of his beard.
Let's wait for the queens to hatch, mate and start laying before we count hives!
Honestly I can’t get enough of your videos. You make me want to buy land and start raising bees.
County I like in only requires at least 10 feet separate the hive from your neighbors yard to reduce the likelihood of the bees getting aggressively defensive.
Thanks for the suggestions. As it stands right now my home isn’t bee friendly. I have zero plants and all grass. Not even clover. Also I’m fixing up my home to eventually sell it and then build on 5 acres. So it’s not idea to start a hive at this location. So I’ll learn what I can from vino farm and go from there.
See how it makes you look like a genius just by having some extra equipment ready for this sort of thing? If you were standing in the same yard with no extra stuff you'd be forced to destroy them nice fat queen cells. You're doing great buddy! Go with the flow. The bees always lead you in the right direction just follow their lead and hang on for the ride.
Good comment!
Thanks, Mike. It wasn't as smooth going as it looked on the video! I stood around for over an hour figuring out what to do. But, yes, I learn every day and when things do come together, I do feel like a genius!
So, today we (my husband, Mike, and I) did a thing...we bought a beehive beginner kit. Most likely too late for us to get started, but we a ready for bees. Maybe someone around Kansas City, MO, Clinton, MO, or the Lake Pomme de Terre area will want to give us a swarm. If not we will impatiently wait for next spring...
Thank you for posting these videos! You are noob inspiration. I think we can do this...
Came for the beard, stayed for the drama
I'll try to keep both going.
I remember the cold I had and the tons of honey I ate, moving me towards searching up bees and beekeeping on UA-cam. Back then it was all about this one little hive. Seeing how much everything has grown is realy amazing. I also suggested this channel to my mom and now she thinks about getting some wild bees for her garden.
Glad to have you around. Thanks for watching and sharing. Keep spreading the word!
What a great "problem" to have! Keep extra gear on hand, people. You never know what you'll fin when you open those boxes to check out what's going on under that cover.
If Queen Balboa's brood area is still fairly honey bound, she may still try to take off. Some cheap insurance would be to take most of her new honey frames, and set them out in a robbing box for a day. Then replace them and checker in 2 frames, or leave her up with the newly cleaned frames. Just to ensure her brood space is quite open.. and she knows it. They may, or may not move the honey up to the super quickly enough, or at all.
JMO, & I hope all the other splits take off! Multiplying Balboa is exactly what you wanted, even if its not quite to plan.
I think the reason he didn't do this was that the honey frames also had brood, larvae and eggs in among them, so there weren't too many just honey only frames to take out :/
I thought about putting the frames out front to be robbed, actually. I also thought about extracting a few and putting them back in! But I don't have an extractor. There were actually a good number of mostly empty frames in the lower deep box. With half her bees gone and half her resources gone, a mostly empty super and NO FEEDER on top, I hope she got the point that there was room to lay again.
Vino Farm When you do an artificial swarm, you move the old queen.
The best part about these is listening to you think! I wish I could be as mindful when I’m working my bees. I usually see an issue and stand there for a while going doh, doh, doh! Then, I close up and spend two days coming up with a solution! DOH!
Ha... These videos are edited. I remove the "standing around wondering what to do next" parts of the experience. It's not like days of thinking about things, but I do spend time hashing things out. I might take a break for an hour sometimes and get my thoughts straight.
I love how personable and fun to watch you are. :) Thank you SO much for caring for these endangered creatures! It warms my heart to see someone trying to maintain their numbers so they can survive as a species. :) Great job!
I agree with Kevin McMahon - you should have moved your queen to another hive and set her up there. The new smells of that hive would make her feel like the hive swarmed and you'd have a better chance of keeping her. The chance they will make additional queen cells and still swarm is very high. Once they swarm you may be able to "catch" the swarm and set them up in a new box, but the bees will kill your current awesome queen and make a new one (so you'll still be out an awesome queen). Also, when you move boxes around, and you don't close up the entrance (for around 3 days- then they will reorient themselves when you open it all back up), all of your forager bees will return to the original location. Only your nurse bees will stay (and then be forced to become forager bees early)- so you'll see a reduction in numbers at the new locations. And, when your queen does swarm, you'll loose 30-70% all of those foragers who went back home when the swarm actually happens.
Bro please do this type of routine inspection from a while to another its very enjoyable and educational and the way you do it is great please don't stop making videos
I am living vicariously through you. You have a problem high I have a week later. The two nucs I got 5/8 show signs of swarming. I'm splitting them tomorrow. But I don't have extra supplies so I had to run to my nearest beekeeping supply store. And make new hive stand and then got a call on a swarm. Things are going crazy in North Texas!!! And I need to sugar roll for varroa too. There is so much info coming into my brain! 😳
Yeah, I wish I had seen this video before I lived it. It wasn't so smooth in real life. I had to stop shooting to figure out what to do and build that 5 frame nuc. Every day is a puzzle to be solved.
I don’t have much experience, so take what ya will. But in my opinion, the best move would be to move the queen to a new box, imitating the swarm action, and leave the queen cells in the old box.
Good luck either way and keep posting videos. Really enjoying them.
I hope every thing is still going OK I know how busy it can be this time of year on a farm keep please keep us up to date on your ladies thank you Kathy
instagram.com/p/BkD9nIgHke1/
Your videos are always entertaining with great content. But the time and effort you put into your editing is what makes this a truly great channel. The cuts are always really well done and the way you do your on screen text looks really professional. Love it!
I appreciate you noticing! Thanks.
Woohoo! That was exciting! It seems like we are both experiencing the same types of problems this year. From what I can gather from my experience, swarming is a good problem to have, as long as you can still recover. I am sure those hives will be successful with mating the queen and now you will have more great, survivor stock for your apiary. w00t!
It’s funny I started the same year as you and Vino and am also seeing exponential growth this year.
I loved that! "New problem in 3....2....1"
I keep revisiting the classic vino farm videos!
Haha, you DID say you wanted to expand your apiary, right? Queen Balboa and her daughters were clearly listening. Great job Jim!
Now you’ve still got the 10 medium frames hive problem. To switch to 8 frame deeps at some point, just put the medium frames into deep boxes, mixed with deep frames, and they will extend the mediums to deep depth. Then later you can cut scrape the mediums back down and replace with more deeps.
Great job though, make that lemonade!
I like lemonade. Hell, I like lemons.
Oh my God your excitement and enthusiasm is absolutely delightful!! How fun. You are doing everything right, thinking things through, good job!! You remind me of my first year, you will do wonderful!!
Great job! Very exciting stuff. I'm so happy that Balboa OG is storing so much resources. Will be good when the "dearth" starts later this summer. Those are some excellent bees. Woo!
Things are looking good for the summer. And if these queens mate and start laying, it's going to be a spectacular fall!
I don’t know half of the lingo or the purpose of all of the different techniques, but darned if I don’t want to learn, now! Great channel!
i wanna know what happens next!!!! i want a 24/7 living streaming video on you bee yard! i want balboa having its own channel on cable!!! i can't stop watching and re-watching your videos!!
Spread the word!
I don’t remember the name but a someone in Texas did start streaming 24/7 from a camera outside his hive, mostly for his own benefit since his hive was an hour drive outside the city he lived in.
Surprise! Adventure awaits!
I wondered about the extra hives in your instagram photo. Looking forward to more videos. :)
This illustrates the problems that can be avoided by using only one size of box. I only use 8 frame medium boxes so that all frames are able to be used in any box. It really helps that the boxes are a LOT lighter too since I'm a "mature woman". : )
That's why I am trying to convert to deep brood frames.You can put a medium in a deep, but not the other way around! Luckily, I should have a LOT of drawn deeps before the season ends this year so I will have spares for next year. I'm always still scrambling for frames.
Good job. My super survivor hive swarmed twice in May. I grabbed the first swarm and got it back. I was at work when the second swarm flew out. I ended up doing what you did and now have 3 new hives. Looks like this is your year of expansion. And you are expanding good genes. You are going to need more equipment!! I am finding I am now racing to keep up with the 4 hives now.
Yeah, I had an order for new equipment arrive two days before all this happened. That's why that 5 frame nuc is unpainted and un treated. I put it together in the middle of shooting the video! The amount of gear is insane.
So entertaining. This goes under the “be careful what you wish for” category. My first year goals are keeping my bees in the box and alive in the spring.
Good goals! I never expected to have 9 (potential) colonies this year. That was the outside goal. I was hoping to go into winter with 6. We need to wait and see how many queens come back...
If you're in the expansion mode, nothing wrong with improvising! That keeps it fresh and fun. It also sounds like you have a plan which may be here before you know it. All we have to do is keep up with our bees. Our hope is to create a sustainable apiary. You're well on your way to that. Michael Palmer would be proud.
I was watching one of the bee discussion on UA-cam and remember a shocking statement. It was that a frame 70% full of brood both sides will be 2 frames of bees when hatched. With all the brood you have in the hive I think you are going to need another box and frames or they will be so full they will want to swarm yet again.
I will try to find the discussion and post a link for you. It was very educational to me.
Once the bees get going, it's amazing growth. And it's all very exciting until the reality of winter hits!
Nice little find there!!! You have done the right thing.....hopefully all goes well and Balboa stays put. If not you can often catch her again if she does take off!! :-)
I would hope so! Thanks for watching.
she still can leave , GOOD LUCK !! once preparation start hard to turn it around
What is it about bee keeping? I love messing with the bees so much. I have never had a hobby that has consumed so much of my time. I love watching your videos. So much fun.
Thanks! It is quite special, isn't it?
So many new hives! :D That's awesome! Crossing fingers and toes for you it all goes well.
You are doing real good! Two more splits from that hive! 👍
Getting adventurous now!
Just a thought, Balboa probably couldn't have swarmed with the queen trapped in the top boxes by the excluder...
Also, sometimes when hives decide to swarm, you may not be able to talk them out of it.
Exciting times. Hope it all works out for you.
She could have left through the top entrance. I'll be keeping an eye on her. There should be an instagram update tomorrow (6 days after the video was shot).
NIce! that is one beautiful swarm cell! Looks like they are keeping you busy. I guess it's that time of year! Seems like a good idea to me doing the walk away split with the medium frame section of Balboa.
Keep it up.
We will know soon enough!
Lookin good my man.. lookin good.👍👍
Feeling pretty good, too. Thanks.
From three to nine in a matter of months, what an excellent problem to have. I just started my beekeeping journey this April. I love the videos!
I love your music and sound effect choices! Eagerly awaiting the next episode in the split saga.
Thanks for the comment! Thanks for watching!
Brilliant Jim, yes we run mainly nuc's.
It gets busier and busier.
We are up to to 9 hives at present with another 5 potential hives to start as and when needed.
One is a 2 in 1 nuc that can be used as a 3 frame on each side to start small colonies until they move into 6 frame then 10 frame boxes.
You know I think your doing a great job.
We extracted 19lb of raw honey a few days ago from 2 nuc super boxes.
They were both 6 frame shallows.
I'm kinda divided on the more room in a super to produce more honey idea.
I might try it in one super to see the results.
I'm close to having a few more hives ready for extraction in the very near future.
The honey has gone down a storm , I can say without any conflict of other ideas about the type of forage or strain of bees.
That the buckfast bee produces a mellow sweet gorgeous honey that's translucent.
The Russian produces a darker honey regardless of the forage.
David burns did a honey tasting video a few years ago,he's a master keeper from southern Illinois.
All the honey we've tried from our bees has been exactly the same, regardless of forage.
I wanted to put that out there.
Great work Jim.
Thanks for the update, Shaun.
I love how much emotion you put into your beekeeping. Thank you for caring so much, bees are our future. For anyone that doesnt understand that I think this forum is the perfect educational format. I like watching your videos very much. This is more than just profit, although I hope you can make money there is nothing wrong with it. I do know that without bees will will all perish.
Nice one :) That queen cell was HUMUNGUS!!! Rock on Balboas :)
You are certainly going to have some fun when the mating flights start!!!!
Wait, what? I don't have to do anything, right?
you might need to catch them if she forgets where home is lol - but really the point I was trying to make is that the queens dont go alone ...you get a little mating "swarm" sometimes they come out and land nearby then go back in - usually 3 good days of mayhem , occasionally the queen doesn't make it back to the hive (I once caught a fist full of bees with a newly mated queen very late in the year - they over wintered in a poly Nuc on one frame and exploded the following spring ) Probably best to leave them to their own devices - just watch and have a laugh - but have a spare Nuc in case they are still hanging in a hedge after 7pm :)
You will need to check again very soon sometime when bees prepare to swarm can be difficult to stop them. If you fix a queen excluder for safety between the floor and brood box for the next 2 weeks to stop the queen from leaving the hive and see what they do next. Great video.
Today is 6 days since the video was made. I'll have a look this afternoon.
It seems like this year caution is definitely thrown to the wind and we are letting those bees WORK to SURVIVE!
I would have thought after all these splits that Balboa main hive would be very low on resources... well we know they have food, there's brood, hmmst.
I was here since there were only 3 and now your going to have 9. WOW! Nice job man. I hope they all work out and become powerful and healthy hivea. I love this channel 👍🙌😊
i was here when he made his first bee video
Moppen Altwire good for you m8 👍👍🙌
I was here before he made his first bee video.
Anytime,you should bee very proud of your videos,the intros,editing etc are excellent.
I think that's one of the reasons you have grown in popularity.
I always have my own view or views right or wrong.
Yourself,myself and 4d honey bee all started roughly at the same time.
I wish I had the room you have.
Your apiary is looking amazing.once you create the shelter with the trees and bushes your going to have a beautiful looking apiary.
Here in the uk at my folks place we are very limited to space, I guess it's one reason to use poly nuc's.theres tons of natural forage here with it being a natural rural area, some is farming but woodlands are close with pasture areas surrounding the village.
It might be harder in your opinion, but we use nuc's for a couple of reasons.......
A. Less space used.
B.we create a chimney effect almost like a tree with a small 6 frame hive going upwards.
C.it helps save heat and resources used to build the hives.
The bees then build upwards and it's easier to put supers on to build and extract.
We run 1-3 supers per hive depending the amount of honey in them.
I said in another post I do things my way,maybe seasoned keepers frown upon my methods.
I overwintered with 7 hives and came through into spring with 7 hives.
We run 4x 10 frame hives as well 2 are red cedar and 2 are 10 frame poly hives.
The rest are 6 frame poly hives.
That's my plan.
You call it "nectar" but in reality it's likely syrup. When I get syrup bound hives, I take the frames out and either wash them out with water or set them out for the bees to rob. That gives me drawn frames which I can insert back in, hopefully for her to lay in.
They wound up cleaning them right up after I added the supers. They opened up the laying space in a few days.
Great catch
Get yourself a few swarm traps and place them around the area. Then if any of your girls swarm, you may catch them on the way out. I have to tell ya, the activity in your yard is really exciting. I wish I had that kind of space to work with. It's like a giant lab. 😊
Team Celsius!
Nice thinking on your feet!
I am deathly allergic to anything that stings but I do love watching these.
having options is a good problem to have! :D hopefully they all turn out, but you have enough trials out there that one or more will turn into working hives with new queens! but yes, feeding probably caused that situation... good lesson to keep in mind. you could either use that in the future to try and force swarming for expansion, or be sure to avoid repeating if it is not something you want to induce... cheers!
Always taking mental notes! Always learning from mistakes.
Seems like a perfect time to finally install the flow hive.
you should have moved your queen with some brood to another box. Then they feel the hive swarmed.
I am getting this comment a lot. We will see if it all works out. If not, I learned my lesson!
It will work both ways,but what Kevin wrote is safer and better way.
Ha... Good stuff Jim. Let this bee a lesson to you beginners... This is what happens when you come out of winter with strong, healthy, and mite free hives. Bees do 2 things...make honey... And more bees. You went from 2 to (9). I went from 2, to 3, to 8. Trying to keep pace with you buddy. 👍🤪💥
Good going, man!
I absolutely love these videos!
I love these comments.
WOW!!!! That is exciting!!!
You should have been there when I was filming!
Vino Farm we need some out take videos!
It’s crazy how fast you can grow an apiary. Last year I started with 2 hives, went into the winter with 6. 4 survived the winter and now I have 12.
Good going! I did NOT expect to be at this point after starting with three in April. (Although I still need to see how many queens actually make it back!)
P.s. - I can say 8 colonies after what happened today. If you have a minute, watch us catch our first swarm. Literally....standing in the middle of the swarm filming, watching them head into the empty hive. It was incredible. Cheers buddy. Keep up your great work.✌️
That video was cool. I've still never experienced that.
I hate that yellow jackets in the spring kinda look like honey bees. I was trying to save a hive of what I thought were honey bees that turned out to be a nest of spring yellow jackets. Come summertime, hornets turn into angry drunks, eating fermented fruit fallen from trees. Right now, my dog thinks its her duty to battle them. Have you ever tried to battle a drunken hornet... with your mouth? So we called the exterminator. He removed more nests than we knew we had. *QUESTION:* Do yellow jackets kill bees?
Weellll....you DID name them after a movie with like 15 sequels, lol! You are now up to Rocky 5?
True. There is no shortage of potential names.
Good luck. I've seen it done that way and moving the queen to simulate the swarm.
Good work. Splitting hives like a pro.
I had to take a break from shooting the video to work it all out in my head, but what I did made sense at the time. Good to hear others approve. Thanks.
I have watched many of your videos. I wanted to write and say thanks! I am in my second year of beekeeping and I'm learning so quickly. I am very hands on with my bees, which it looks like you are too, it puts me in good company. Thanks For all the great videos, not only good content, but real pleasing production work.
I appreciate you saying so. Thanks for watching!
Amazing what can happen in a day or so,,, good thing you have LOTS of room... Glad you chose the NUC, but I think I would have swapped the 10 frame mediums into an 8 deep checkerboarded with the med frames, especially since you gave some of the frames to Balboa, so you can work the mediums into supers on the same hive. Because you use 8 frame, I'd put the new medium split into 8 frame mediums over an 8 frame deep, to get to your size, and later work them down into the deep... you currently have 18 mediums (I think).. if you put them into 8 frame, you would have 2 mediums to drop into the deep (and I would drop the queen cells and heaviest brood into the DEEP)... that way your queen is already down, and you can exclude her from the mediums.. as they build out the deeps, you can add the second deep, and have a rip roarin 8 frame hive..
.. and at the same time, swapping them into the 8 frame you use..
Looks like it's going to be an exciting year for you... but because of the SWARM tendency, WATCH Balboa, carefully...
GOOD LUCK
Your comment gave me math anxiety. It'll all work out... I promise! Yes, there will be a Balboa update tomorrow when I check on her. It will have been 6 days since filming. I have a feeling she's still there. Stay tuned.
Got to love bee keeping!
Congartulations! Nine. That's great. Good strategy in first part of video too. I may seem out of order here, but I'm a natural worry wart. Have you considered just how you might configure your winterizing plans? I know, it's not even mid Summer yet, and your colonies are still expanding. Do you have extra boxes for further growth and over Wintering? This would overwhelm me at this point. Thanks. I'm following closely. Best Regards.
I'm focused on the next steps... mating flights, which queens come home, what are the laying patterns like, how fast do they build up... I may not need as many hives as I think if some of these queens don't work out. One day at a time. I'll worry about winter in early August.
I believe you actually had two things going on there. The top cell was a swarm cell due to the heavy feeding. It could have been cut away and given to one of the queenless splits. The bottom cells were because there was plenty of brood in the boxes but no queen, she was above the excluder. She was far enough away that the bees felt they were queenless and produced emergency cells. If you no longer wanted to run mediums you could have just destroyed the cells and continued with the frame transfer, alternatively cut them out and used them in a queenless split. While you have "9" hives, all are very weak
I guess I just want to wait and see. THere's no way to know if they're 'weak' or not if the queens haven't even hatched yet, much less mated and started laying. If they don't work out, I try again. No one gets hurt!
Spits are, by definition, weak. I was implying that there are also other options available other than splitting that may combine resources and produce fewer but stronger colonies. We are fortunate that our season is almost the entire year, yours is very short. We can get away with pretty much anything any time of the year, those in harsher climates probably need to think ahead as to where they want to be after a number of brood cycles. Good luck with it, whichever way it works out it's all good learning for both yourself and whoever views the videos.
You handled it well!
I hope so!
I think you're hooked on splits now. Me and a few other youtubers are getting together for your intervention shortly. Lol. Splits are fun and at this point you need to realize if they don't produce a queen happiness is a frame of young larva and eggs away. Splits don't have to fail they sometimes take longer though.
reelinhuntin True. If they don't work, no one gets hurt. All you lose is time.
Your growing fast this year, hopefully a honey harvest in the near future too
It should be a great fall!
Wow your going to be a fulltime beekeeper soon.
The thing is, it's possible to be a 'full time' beekeeper but not actually make any money at it!
Vino Farm do you at least like honey? I have been playing around with trying to bait a hive, but i don't really like honey.
Lol, I wish I could see your reaction if you had as many swarms cells as I had this year. Found over a dozen in one hive. Unfortunately, I lost four swarms that I know about maybe more. Bees just do what they want. I'm trying to go reduce my hives to a single brood box with a queen excluder, because it's to hard to manage doubles and I think it will make it easier to control swarming. The bigger the hive the more places they can hid swarm cells
Good luck.
I'm having the same 'problem' of honey taking up space for the queen to lay. Bees don't like honey in the middle of the brood nest, so supering and shuffling some frames should fix that.
Bro your hives are awesome
Yea, TIME FOR THE FLOW HIVE TOP with the queen blocker under it ! go balboa !
4:26 I see someone is a fan of robust Italian women ;)
I do love robust Italian Bees!
Starting a nuc, perfect answer. And then as I am typing you found all of the stuff in the medium. Same exact answer I would have done there as well. The nectar would give the nuc something to work with and allow you to put in more empty frames for Balboa to drop the swarm Idea. Not sure how long your season is that but had there been two frames with queen cells maybe a double split from the mediums? Maybe placing the medium frames above a queen excluder after the queens hatch and maybe they clean it out for you that way, at least the brood cycles out of those frames. Of course your videos are delayed enough you may have likely already done all of this. :).
You did make me again realize I need to watch these gals more closely here with me feeding sugar water right now in all of my splits for building purposes because even though I knew they would do this, it had kinda of slipped from my forward thoughts as I am focused on getting my serious backlog of queenwrong hives remedied ASAP. :) Tunnel vision can bite you when you let it.
Definitely watch the feeding! I did not expect them to take all that syrup in 5 days and plop it all right in the brood box. I'm going to check Balboa tomorrow and hopefully find her still there. Everyone is making me stress out in the comments saying she can still swarm. Every time I open the hives, there's a puzzle to be solved.
Well yours taking all of the sugar water makes sense as part of the swarm process is the workers filling up the hive with honey and nectar so the queen has no place to lay eggs and makes her want to leave as well.
Yes she can still swarm, some people say once they get that notion they won't stop till they do it, I tend to think most will be happy with a changed environment that fixes the issues or conditions that are part of the swarm instinct. One thing is for certain, stressing about it wont do any good, won't change whether she will or not. All you can to is watch.
I can only recommend that you always have a few ready to go 10 frames and or a couple of swarm traps sitting in or near your bee yard for them to swarm too if you aren't there and then at least you up the odds of getting your swarms back before they ever leave. A frame of old comb will attract them like no other but you would have to watch for moths trying to get to that. I say this only because one common thing I have seen over and over in the yards of people with empty boxes or nucs around is that that they have very often caught swarms they didn't even know were leaving in their own boxes. They would find a hive thriving in a box that was empty days back and then on inspection find a hive that has swarmed.
That should at least give you the best chances of capture if you miss it. If nothing else if you see she is back to laying then she or they have likely decided to stay after all. If you see another capped queen cell (Lemon), Make another nuc (lemonade) :). Its kinda like these cutouts. I spent two days and many hours on each of those getting then out. It pains me that one is a hopeless laying worker colony now that I would likely never remedy and the other will be dead before I can get a queen in it. (money is too short to justify buying a queen). I am focusing on the bright side, they have been very busy and I can just dump them somewhere in the country and give their stocks to a nuc I have queened to put them ahead of the game. The plus on that is they were both mean anyways and I don't want those genetics in town in my backyard or even in the country to be honest.
I will be curious to see how your check today turns out. In the mean time I have queen cells due to emerge today that I need to check on real quick. I can no more do anything about the fact it is 95 already at 11 am than you can about that hive if it is determined to swarm in spite of your de-swarming efforts. :)
A good laugh for you. Long story short, I just found queens in both queenless hives I was going to throw out. Well, in the demon hive I know one is there because there are no in spite of their having been no brood left just over three weeks ago thousands on new demon bees to attack me so there is a queen.
In the one here locally after I stole all of their pollen to give my nucs, then tossed in some mediums just hoping they would draw up the comb, I found it all drawn out including the bottoms to the floor with open comb, 6 frames of brood and after three passes through the box found a monster queen. She has a load of large black worker bees in there that are as big as virgin and some queens in general. She is the most skittish thing there ever was and will instantly flip sides of a frame to avoid your eyes and actually jump many inches from the frame you are inspecting to disappear between other frames, I watched her do it.
I had a few queens hatch yesterday and took the frame with the others they were just tearing out to another split. Today there were 11 more hatch off of that frame, I found 5 that were yet to be killed and made that nuc into 3 very small splits to save more queens. Gotta steal brood from my bigger hives in the AM to give them. And there were 2 queens hatch in the chicken incubator and still 4 on the NICOT frame. The two hive that havent been queened not are the ones from another queen that will hatch in the next week. I now have 13 colonies and all but 3 are queened, 4 and likely 5 are laying.
How is that for fast moving LOL. From a critical 2 queens in 9 hives to extra queens all over out of 13. Man can things change too fast.
@Vino Farm - where did you your get your bee jacket and what make is it? Looks perfect for what I want
Links for everything in the description.
have to finish later at 2nd swarm cell, Make another NUC.. Great Queen.
Man! Balboa still proving she is a G!
I always knew there was something special about that queen.
Can't wait to be like you
Love to see you overcome some of the problems you are coming across!
Did this problem of being honey bound and the creation of swarm cells stem from giving them too much syrup or was it due to not having enough room?
Andrew Marley Too much syrup. I probably shouldn't have fed them last week.
If you really want to turn the 10 frame mediums into a deep hive maybe consider getting a 10 frame deep to get them onto the deep frames.
That's a good idea, but I don't have any 10 frame deeps laying around. I have tons of 8-frame equipment. I had the 8-frame box over the 10-frame medium for a month and a half and it worked out fine.
Jogger photobomb @ 11:48
Where do you get your deeps and mediums from or do you make them?
I’m completely losing tack with all the splits and walk aways...good luck.
Hi, i belive that this situation is silent switch, yours bees are feling that theirs queen is not good, so the are raising one queen cell. If swarm, there whood be more then one queen cells.Sory for bad english, love your videos.
Seems you might hit that goal of 20 hives sooner than expected!
I know. This has to slow down.
Jim? Does that mouseguard also serve as a queen excluder? She could walk out the upper entrance, walk down the box and in the bottom. Yes? … Maybe I should stop watching this series. On my third time. But I LOVE It!!
True, she could do that, but she has no interest in leaving the hive. It all worked out in the end!
Of course. Thank you.
Welcome to beekeeping - everyday a new surprise! Your're apiary is looking good!
I had this same thing happen and the virgin queens did not stay. I am a new beek, Aug will be a year for me. First thing this season the original queen swarmed and they built 15 queen cells. Wanna talk about freaked out. I made 2 splits and neither one stayed. Was very disappointing. Now the original hive is not doing so great. Chock it up to learning I guess.
Hi, It's like you became a new Dad again! Congratulations and well done. It seems that you have not been disappointed in the Bilboa Queen so I hope her genetics prove to be strong and prolific! I learned from this video that I probably need more gear to have options in all situations. I am going to stick with all deeps as this medium/deep problem keeps coming back but as far as your bees are concerned it does not seem to bother them in the least.
Did you cut out the competing queen cells or will you just leave the queen and bees to sort it out?
Yes, having equipment on hand is very important. The medium/deep problem isn't life or death, but it is a convenience if you decide and stick with one or the other. My goal is all deep brood boxes, but I will always have medium equipment for supers. I'd just like to get the brood off the mediums. I'm not cutting or destroying anything at this point. Letting nature run its course this time. In the future I might start being more selective.
Seems like you can start taking more honey from them, especially from Balboa if they continue packing in the honey!
Here's the thing, this seems to be a typical thing if your bees are healthy and doing well. So, what are you going to do if your bee yard is full and this sort of thing happens? Sell nucs? Expand the yard to have 100+ hives? This is the sort of thing to consider because, as usual, the bees do expected things. What's your plan if your population gets to be larger than you wanted?
Things will grow, but we expect winter losses. 30-50% or more may not survive. We need to go into winter with as much as possible and spend spring replenishing. Looks like we may have 9 decent colonies by winter. Which means we'll most likely come into spring with 5-6. I've said it a few times... At the moment, I can't see managing more than 20 hives. So we might be there in 2 years. By then, we'll probably have a plan in place if things start multiplying out of control.
Good luck!! Hopefully it all works out! Do you think we can name one of the new hives when it comes time?
Yup... But let's see how many actually make it and then I'm sure we'll get into naming.
When I see a single queen cell like that no matter where it is I think supercedure not swarm. When they are preparing on swarming they usually make many queen cells
Supercedure was a thought at first, but this queen is less than a year old and a very strong layer. We'll see! If it was supercedure, there will probably be another cell in the main Balboa hive this week, right? That colony had tons of eggs.