NOTE: Welcome to my all new blog! FYI, I am in the process of moving from www.cometosilver.com to www.kristinbelle.com. The old site will be phased out soon. I have a lot more work to do on this one, but the bee blog was a priority because I have news to share. So you’re the first to visit my new site. I’m so glad you’re here!

It’s been almost exactly one month since I split my hive to make two. And a lot has happened since then. For the humans, the coronavirus outbreak. Social distancing. Toilet paper shortages. And working from home. I haven’t left my house in two weeks. For the girls… they’ve had their own drama. Of course they have because they’re bees and this is my life now. I haven’t blogged about the bees because frankly, I didn’t feel like it. There is too much other stuff to think about. But today’s the day. Here’s the news from the hives.

When I split my hive, Charmaine was still living happily and making babies. The hive was strong, really strong. FULL of bees. I 100% did not expect to find what i found 2 weeks later. Charmaine, our lovely queen, is gone. I have no solid explanation, other than bees will do what bees will do and they will frequently replace their queen come springtime. And apparently they did that. So yeah, Charmie has passed and I was sad.

RIP Charmaine. Our queen from Nov ‘19 - March ‘20. You will be missed.

Back when I split the hive into two, I put a lot of brood in the new hive, including eggs. The hope was that the new colony would choose some day-old eggs and get to work making a queen. Waiting for a hive to make a queen is pretty much just a whole bunch of waiting and worrying. The egg takes roughly 2 weeks to grow and emerge as a queen. Then that queen has to leave the hive, go mate, and make it back to the hive without becoming a birds lunch. Then she has to get to work laying eggs. From egg, to laying eggs, it takes about 4 weeks. As of today, it’s been 5 weeks since I split the hives.

During the week I will frequently go out and sit on the bench by the hives to relax and get away from the news. It’s a very, very peaceful time for me. I just sit and watch the bugs coming and going, listening to them, the birds, sounds of children playing, dogs barking. It’s so wonderful and peaceful. And this past week, while watching the hives, I noticed something. This little sign right here set off a bell in my head, that they probably have a laying queen!

POLLEN. They are bringing in pollen. Yeah? So? That’s what bees do, right!? Yes. BUT. Pollen is primarily food for the brood. The larvae. A hive with no brood will generally not waste a whole lot of effort collecting pollen. I noticed that there are a lot of bees bringing in pollen on hive #2. But not on hive #1.

Me: BELLS RINGING.. WAITAMINUTE!! WAIT! A! MINUTE! Pollen! That must mean. Hive #2 HAS A QUEEN!

I eagerly opened the hives today to see for myself. I did not find her, as expected, but indeed, yes, there is a lot of brood and day old eggs. CONFIRMED! My split hive successfully made a queen all by themselves!! Beekeeper achievement unlocked!!

So yay! Yay yay yay!!! But, uh. Not hive 1. In fact, hive 1 looks TERRIBLE. The population is really, really reduced. To be honest, I am mostly positive that they have swarmed. So they too successfully made a queen (double the achievement), but then decided they wanted to go to a land far far away. I’m pretty sure “have a colony swarm” is an achievement too, but one of those crappier achievements that you don’t really want. Gah. Ok. It’s what bees live to do, but I feel like I failed them. They were my babies. And they have left the nest. Figuratively and literally.

This is what 5 frames look like, and these are the densely populated frames. Really sparse. They did not look like this last weekend. The rest of the frames are mostly devoid of bees. They do have a lot of honey though.

So at this point I’m bummed. And the ironic part is that I just received an order for a swarm trap, but the swarm lure is on backorder because springtime is swarmtime and everyone is preparing to catch swarms. So I missed it by that much. Ok, they swarmed and I don’t know where to and I have no way of getting them back. Well crap. Crap crap crap. I can only hope that a beekeeper finds them, or whoever finds them calls a beekeeper, and they’re not found by some uneducated dude with a can of pesticide or a flame thrower. I’m trying to be positive.

Ok, so that happened. The plus side is that they made a queen and they were a strong colony. Weak and/or queenless colonies do not swarm. So there’s that. But now what’s left of hive #1 is looking terrible. But it’s not all bad. I have another hive. A queen-right hive. With brood and eggs. Y’all, this is why having TWO hives is awesome. If you’re considering getting bees, double up. Start with two hives. Just do it.

So I did what any beekeeper would do. I took a frame of eggs, brood, and honey from the queen-right hive, shook off all the bees, and put it in the queenless hive. It also has a couple capped queen cells. It’s like ready-made and perfect for a queenless hive. So they will likely have a queen soon, if they don’t already, and now they have some brood to boost their numbers in the meantime.

I laid this frame down for like 8 seconds, just enough time to snap a picture. When I picked it back up, bees were already all over the other side, rejoicing over their newly donated brood.

So it’ll be another 2-3 weeks of waiting to see if I find new eggs in hive #1. I think they’ll be ok. I am finally starting to feel like I know what I’m doing, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

While all this drama is going on, I have removed the honey super, and am treating for mites again. ‘Cause they got em. Again. Mites are a never-ending battle for the beekeeper, and we treat hives several times a year. But not when collecting honey for consumption. So now’s the time.

Guys, I’m not going to be collecting honey any time soon. Maybe not this year at all. But that’s fine. I’m not in this for the honey, I’m in it for the pure unadulterated love of the honey bee. 🐝

Two hives: two different kinds of drama.