One MIA, Other Ruling with an Iron Stinger

Well yesterday after work I was able to finally get over to my bee yard and check to see if the queens made it out of their cages.  I installed two packages on April 17th but left the queens "corked" up to give them that extra bit of time to get familiar with the hive.  On Wednesday the 21st I uncorked the queens and pierced the candy to help the workers release their new queen.  Before uncorking each I looked to see how the bees on each cage were acting to make sure they weren't being aggressive towards the queens.  Now thinking back, the one does make me think they were a little more aggressive the the other.

Well if you have guessed it yet, the queen for the hive I call Betz, named after my youngest daughter and her husband, has been accepted and they are building comb.  The other packaged I installed and call Levi after our grandson, is queen less.  It appears I have a laying worker.  When I couldn't find the queen I realized that they had started to build 3 queen cups.  On closer inspection I noticed eggs in some cells but they were off to the sides and even doubled up in others.

My hive I call D-Street, it is the swarm I caught on D street on March 31st, is doing great.  I didn't get a chance to take pictures but they have what I believe is a perfect brood pattern.  That is at least from what I have concluded from looking at other patterns posted in the internet.

This picture is from April 17th when I moved them from their Nuc into a standard 10 frame deep hive body.  The reason you see a honey super frame is it was the only frame with drawn out comb I had when I caught the swarm.  I put it in the nuc to help make sure they would stay in there.  the other 4 frames were standard deep with foundation.

So now I need to find me a queen.  Not sure if I should re-queen Levi with an Italian or try a Russian. I am open to any ones suggestion on which one to try and maybe some other methods for introducing the new queen to the workers of Levi.

First blog post to say Hello

Well here it is.  I am finally taking to time to create this blog to document my adventure into beekeeping.  I plan to use this blog to journal the events of me keeping honeybees and as a means to keep records on how each hive is doing.

I started by attending a 6 week beekeeping introduction course put on by one of the local beekeeping clubs, Pickens County Beekeeping Association.  This was a great class!  Each session was 2 hours long and I couldn't wait for the next class.  The class ended on the second week of March.  I felt so prepared after this class that when I got a call about a swarm in my neighborhood that I didn't really hesitate to go get it.

Now one thing I haven't mention yet is up to this point I had not handled or been around bees, other than passing by them on flowers in my yard.  So my first true experience was going to collect this swarm, alone, on March 31, 2010.  I'll post up detail later about this adventure.

Feel free to comment on my blog, especially as I learn how to format this page and post up pictures.

Thanks, Bear Bear the new beekeeper.