Genebee(ve), Shrek, and Foundationless Comb

Ever since I lost Myrtle, I've been thinking that the next queen I get will be named Jenny. It's a short, sweet, simple name, and it's also my late grandmother's name. Actually, her name was Genevieve, but folks just called her Jenny. One of my cousins said that Auntie Anna used to call her Genevee, so Genebee wasn't too much of a stretch.

Anyway, here she is!

I spent a good four hours in my bee yard last Sunday, making the split off of Maud, installing Jenny, and waiting for enough nurse bees to defect to the new queen. 

I had the full suit with me because I'm tired of getting stung. The skin on my leg from that big one is still discolored, and I'm not in the mood for another. As soon as I arrived, I went to rescue a struggling Ophelia from the water pan.  As I reached in to fish her out, I felt a little pinch right around the knuckle of my middle finger. At first I didn't notice, then it kept getting 'pinchier'. I turned my hand over and there was a stinger in my hand, with a bee still partially attached. Sonofab---! The poor little gal was apparently under my hand while I was fishing for Ophelia and I squished her. Well, that's out of the way.

After I suited up, and with Jenny's cage in my pocket, I started taking frames out of Maud to make the split. She and her girls were NOT happy to see me, and were pinging my suit left and right. I don't blame them though. If someone busted my house open and started stealing my food and my kids, I'd be pretty pissed too. Thank goodness for bee suits.

Let me tell you about a little feature of the bee suit. The suit itself zips up all the way to your neck, and then the veil zips around your neck and the zipper ends meet just below the end of the suit zipper. There is velcro there to seal up any gaps. I've read somewhere that bees will find any little gap and try to get up close and personal on your side of the veil. Doesn't sound like fun, but I was confident I'd gotten myself properly bundled. 

So I was elbows deep into Maud, making her girls mad, and shuffling things around. Bees were pinging the veil, but I wasn't too concerned. Frankly, the mosquitoes were louder than the bees, so I kept working. Then I felt something crawling on my cheek. Uhhh....!!!

Bee in the veil! Bee in the veil! Bee in the veil!

Ok, keep calm. Stop breathing. Don't open your mouth. Please, little bee, don't sting my lips.  

I slowly walked away from the hive, holding my breath, and pulling my lips into my mouth. I slowly unzipped the veil and slowly lifted it over my head.  As soon as there was clearance, I flicked the girl off my face and she flew away.

WHEW!!

I guess she didn't like being cooped up with a sweaty face any more than I wanted to 'bee' cooped up with a sting-y bee. I was lucky this time. I was extra careful re-fastening the velcro. 

I put the new box with the new queen on top of Maud's boxes (with a queen excluder in between to keep Maud in her own house) and had to wait at least an hour for the nurse bees to climb up to the "borrowed" brood. I de-suited, put the back seat down in my car and laid down to watch my girls fly around. When they take off, they do a spiraled climb, and then zip off in search of nectar. After my nap, I put Jenny's box on her stand and left both hives with some sugar water to help them get back to normal. 

Maud and Jenny!

Later that night, my hand started to swell...by Monday morning, I was sporting a paw that looked like Shrek's hand. I no longer had knuckles, but my skin had never been smoother! And yes, I do have an epi-pen now, just in case. Technically, this is just a localized reaction, but I've heard that you can develop a systemic reaction at any time. I'm prepared. 

I don't need no stinkin' knuckles!

I went back a few days later to let Jenny out of her cage. Before I suited up, I decided to take a quick peek under the lid, just to make sure there were still bees in the new hive. The first thing I noticed was that everybody was so calm. I was able to pull out a couple of frames without so much as a curious girl checking me out. I found the queen cage in the bottom of the hive, and Jenny was already out. Alrighty then. I checked on one of the brood frames and there she was, and, she was laying eggs! Wow, what a great queen already! Plus, it's really easy to find her with that blue dot on her back. One of these days I need to catch Maud and mark her, too.

While I was standing there, I popped the lid off of Maud. If she was pissy, I'd suit up. She too, was amazingly calm. Like, "we don't really care if you're here, primate" calm. Wow, this was new. I noticed they'd sucked down a whole quart of sugar syrup since Sunday. My poor girls were probably hungry. But now they had full bellies, and were working on building new wax to make up for the frames I took from them. I put in a couple frames of foundationless, just to experiment, and I was amazed at how much they had done in such a short time. Plus, I even found new eggs! Maud is hitting her stride, and things were running like a well-oiled machine. I'm feeling much better about their chances. I'm sure they won't have enough honey by winter, but at least they'll have comb built, and will be able to store the sugar syrup I give them.

There were eggs on this frame! Notice the girls 'daisy chaining' on the right.

I'm always amazed at the beauty of new comb.

This is only  three days' worth! 

Best of all, there were no stings! No suit, no gloves, no veil! So this is what gentle bees are like. My new Jenny must be a good influence. Either that, or the bees outsourced "irritating the primate" to the mosquitoes, who were simply horrific and left me with no fewer than 17 bites in a matter of minutes.

Barefoot Beekeeping

The weather's going to get cold and rainy in the next few days, so I did a full inspection this evening while it was still warm. It's the best way I can think of to spend a Friday evening.

The previous water supply was a big plastic planter filled with water, but instead of being a bee pool, it quickly became a mosquito nursery. Whoops. I dumped it out last week and today I replaced it with a pie tin filled with marbles and a couple of rocks. Sure enough, within an hour, one of the girls tried to drown herself. I fished her out with a stick and added some more marbles for landing pads. Silly bee.

I have these gray plaid rain boots I've been wearing to the hive, but the problem with them is that the right boot is way too tight, and I can't really wear them for very long before my foot starts to ache. I haven't had a problem the last couple of visits, but this time, I got all the way back to the hive and remembered that I forgot the hive tool. Back I went, and by the time I got back from the car, my feet had had enough. I took them off and promised to be careful where I stepped.  The girls were in a great mood today so I didn't have to worry. I didn't even wear gloves or a veil. There were a few curious girls buzzing my hair, but nobody head butted me, let alone came after me.

I was SO proud of Maud today. Not only did I find more eggs, I saw last week's eggs in various stages of hatched, some capped brood, some pollen, and even a little honey. All of this is food for the brood, so it looks like they're getting ready for the big hatch just in time for the main honey flow around the solstice. I brought a hive inspection sheet with me this time and wrote down what was on each frame, and whether there were eggs and brood. Now I have something to show my bee teacher when I ask her what to do with my ladies.

After two weeks of drama, the girls seem to be settling in quite nicely. I'll leave them bee for a while and let them do their thing.

Maud is happy! 

Oh, and here's a bonus! This lovely creature snuck up on me while I was packing up.

God Save the Queen!

Sweet relief! Good Queen Maud has been found.

I combined what was left of queenless Myrtle with Maud last week. I put a sheet of newspaper on top of Maud and put Myrtle's box on top and shut the lid. They'll sort it out from the inside, and sure enough, they did. There was a big hole chewed through the middle of the paper to get up into the piddly comb that Myrtle has. Still nothing on any of the outer frames, but the bees are alive and are now part of the bigger colony.

Good. Step one. 

I didn't want to do a full inspection, so I just looked at the frames in the middle box, Maud's second box. All I really wanted to see was evidence of a queen so I can rest easier and not have to worry about them all the time. I pulled one frame and didn't see anything except pollen and some nectar. Same old story as last time.  The next frame had a lot of unattended cells, but as I looked closely, with my glasses on, I saw tiny little grains of rice standing on end.  Eggs! Woo hoo! Evidence of a queen! I didn't see anything capped, but at least I saw eggs. That means the queen was there at least in the last three days. Better get the frame back in so they don't get cold...

Step two. Check.

I pulled the next frame, just to see if there were any more eggs, and there, up in the corner, she jumped right out at me. MAUD! Holy crap, there she is!  She's big and fat and gorgeous, and she's laying eggs. Hallelujah, I have a queenright hive. 

Jackpot.

I buttoned everything up and called it a day. No sense disrupting the rest of the boxes. I saw what I needed to see.

Now my challenge is to leave them alone for a couple of weeks so they can do what bees do. Wish me luck. ;)

Trust me, she's there. Top left corner-ish. Surrounded by her attendants.

Giving my girls a big hug.