The Word of the Day is Swarm!

Today was a bit crazy in the bee yard. We thought we were going to remove the Hop Guard III strips from our two queenright hives, maybe harvest some honey from our queenless split, and maybe check to see if the nuc had a new virgin queen yet. What we ended up doing was going from three hives and a nuc to six hives and two nucs. Let me explain...

Our queenright hive with our older white queen looked pretty swarmy when we got into her to bolster the nuc and queenless hives with a frame of open brood and eggs just in case they hadn't made a new queen. So, we pulled some swarm cells and placed them in another nuc and gave her more space by adding a 4th box. (Hive 1: White Queen: D1 = White, D2 = Tan/Wood, D3 = Green, D4 = White + Nuc 1 = Green Nuc + Nuc 2 = Tan Nuc)

While we were doing that, our "queenless" split from last check swarmed. We hypothesized that they were feeling overcrowded and had swarmed with a virgin queen. Fortunately, the swarm bivouacked low on a post of the Project Grow Garden and we were able to recapture it. We even saw what appeared to be a mated queen with the swarm. So, then we had the original "queenless" split who was queenless once again, and the swarm from it. We stuffed some grass in the entrance of the swarm so that they stay in that hive and don't try to find another home. (Hive 3: Queenless Split: D1 = White, Queen Excluder, New Flow Super + Hive 4: Swarm: D1 = Green, D2 = White)

Once we rehoused the swarm, we thought the rest of the check would go smoothly, but once again, the bees had other ideas. Our younger yellow queen had also decided that she might swarm on us despite already having 4 boxes, and those bees had made a bunch of swarm cells, so we ended up splitting that hive into three hives. We moved the queen to a new location in the bee yard and gave her an extra box. Next to her, we put one of the other boxes with some open queen cells. In her old location, we left a box with some open queen cells and the Flow Super. (Hive 2: Yellow Queen: D1 = White, D2 = White + Hive 5: Queenless Yellow Queen Split: D1 = White + Hive 6: Queenless Yellow Queen Split: D1 = Green, No Queen Excluder Right Now, Old Flow Hive Super)

Needless to say, our bees were busy making more bees instead of honey, so no harvest today.

As we were leaving the bee yard, one of the teaching apiary hives swarmed, but bivouacked about 30ft up in a pine tree where we couldn't get at it. In light of so many swarms, we set up 2 swarm traps in the apiary on the off chance that they will catch any further swarms within the bee yard.

Just to make things more complicated:

Stand #1: Closest to the Project Grow Garden/Farthest West = Hive 5 + Hive 2
Stand #2: Next Metal Stand = Hive 1 + Hive 4
Stand #3: Wooden Stand = Hive 3 + Nuc 2 + Nuc 1
Stand #4: Single Metal Stand = Hive 6

Just to make things even more complicated:
White Queen and descendants = Hive 1, Hive 3, Hive 4, Nuc 1, Nuc 2
Yellow Queen and descendants = Hive 2, Hive 5, Hive 6

Our next exciting check will be Saturday, June 3rd, at 10:00am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
Hope you can bee there!

If you would like to join the A2B2 Flow Hive Team or would like to know more about the Flow Hive in general, please contact Jen Haeger at [email protected].