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While at Keown Orchards last week, I spoke to Ken Warchol about my predicament – and interestingly, another first year beekeeper there was querying him on the exact same problem! We both had lost our queen, introduced another, and then ended up with a laying worker hive.
I had been interested in his thoughts on whether I should let the hive run it’s course, or be pro-active, and take steps to shut down the hive, and store it for the winter. He said that I could just let the bees die-out, and then pull the hive, and store it.
I was prepared to do that, but kept worrying about whether I could be asking for problems, as wax moths could find their way to the hive, and do some serious damage to the very valuable drawn out frames. In a normal hive, the moths aren’t an issue, as the bees can take care of themselves, but with so few workers, my hive is not ready to defend itself against any threat.
On Thursday, we attended the Big E – the New England States Fair – and one of the stops included the Hampden County Beekeepers table, where one of Margaret’s friend’s husband was working – he had answered some initial questions I had about the loss of my queen.
He and the other gentleman there were not in favor of letting the hive run it’s course, as there really was no upside – only downside if I lost the hive to wax moths, so today I decided I’d take the hive in for the winter.
Basically, I needed to move the frames away from the hive, shake the bees off the frames, and then clean up the hive bodies and frames, and get them ready for storage. Likely the field bees will immediately go back to the hive location, and some will just hang out wondering how they woke up in some strange bed.
I’m glad I decided to do the ’shake out’, as when I opened up the lower hive body, I saw lots of wax pieces on the bottom board, which meant that the bees already had a winter friend in the hive.
 Mouse Droppings? Yes, those wax pieces were from two frames of un-drawn foundation that the mouse ate through to set up shop. Very glad that he picked the only two undrawn frames to build his nest, so I didn’t really lose much – just need to replace the foundation in those frames.
 If you give a mouse a beehive... Again, during the shake-out, the bees were happily showing off their Nassanoff glands in action – some of the bees that were just on the hive body itself were actively letting their sisters and brothers know where they were!
 1, 2, 3, 4, get your butts up off the floor! After I had shaken all the bees off the frames of both hive bodies, I went to check on the bee ‘pile’ that I had created – most of the bees were back at the hive, but there was a small swarm like collection of bees left at ground zero. Could this be a group that was surrounding my laying worker?
 A huge swarm of perhaps 50-100 bees After going back to the hive location, and seeing how many bees were there, it was pretty obvious that my 10,000 bees that I started with in April had dwindled to less than 1000. I’d guess that at a peak I had 40,000 or so, when things were humming along well – then we hit the wall.
However, we’re in good shape for next spring, as we’ve got 16 out of 20 frames already drawn out, so the new bees won’t have to waste time building out comb – instead they can get busy with nectar and pollen collection, and making us some honey!
 The last of the mohicans
Alexa’s 3rd grade class was doing a science segment on pollination, and they were using bees-on-a-stick to pollinate the plants. Alexa mentioned that we had bees, and her teacher, Mrs. Lavallee asked if I would come in and talk to the class about beekeeping.
I brought in all of the tools, as well as a couple of drawn frames that the kids could look at, and brought my honey supers in, and made a mock hive for them so see. I put together a presentation that covered the history of bees, and the inner workings of the hive – it had lots of great pictures, but the kids liked the video of the bee installation the best.
The kids were great – they had lots of good questions, and were very interested in beekeeping. The boys cheered loudly when I explained that they got to hang out in the hive while the girls did all the work. Then the girls cheered, and the boys groaned when I explained come fall, the girls were going to kick them out of the hive.
The best question was “How do the bees watch football in the hive?”. In my presentation, I had stated that the drones don’t do much in the hive besides hang out and watch football. So much for humor! I answered that they had “little tiny TVs”.
One of the most interesting answers was to the question “How many people would be willing to be stung to get some honey?” The question stemmed from discussion of the Egyptians and how they were very active beekeepers, as honey was their only sweetener, and they had to destroy hives (and likely get stung a lot) just to harvest the honey.
The answer? About 90 percent of the kids (and both teachers) were willing to take a shot for a batch of honey! I would’ve thought the answer was about 2 of the 50 or so kids in the class!
Today I opened up the hive in preparation for tomorrow’s class with Alexa. I took a couple of drawn frames out of the hive, and shook one off, hoping to get a few drones for show-and-tell.
While collecting the drones, and putting them in a glass jar, I had visions of some youngster taking the jar, and opening it – and even though the bees inside couldn’t sting, I couldn’t imagine that we’d be able to settle the class down, if they did manage to escape, so I released my male friends.
I was able to get some neat pictures of some of the workers making good use of their nassanoff glands, however. The guard bees basically stick their rear ends in the air, and use their scent glands to guide other bees back to the hive – however, I had never gotten a picture of them in action.
However, when I shook out the frame on the picnic table, there were many doing this at once. Here’s one shot of them in action.
 The Nassanoff gland in action
Today we went to the Worcester County Beekeepers Association meeting – it was an ‘open hive’ meeting at Keown Orchards in Sutton. Ken Warchol, the Worcester County Apiarist, led the talk on final winter preparations, discussing medication, feeding and over-wintering the hives.
Keown Orchards has twelve hives on their property, and while the meeting was well attended, and very interesting, for some reason the kids enjoyed the wagon ride to pick apples and the apple crisp better than the bees!
I’ve been keeping an eye on the hive without opening it up, and the number of bees coming and going has been pretty minimal, as expected.
When looking at the hive entrance, it’s obvious that there’s not much traffic, as typically when you look in the front door, you see a line of bees getting ready to go, or checking on the bees coming in to make sure they are welcome in the hive. Another hint that all was still not well was evident by watching the incoming bees, which are very dark, compared to the much lighter tints of the younger bees – so my workers are a bit long in the tooth!
Anyway, I wanted to open up the hive to check on the bees, and upon opening the hive was pretty surprised to see so many bees. In addition, the bees were a little ‘crazier’ than usual – flying all over the place, and very loud – yet another clue, as the drones are a bit louder than the worker bees.
I took a few frames out and inspected them, and, while there is still nectar and pollen, I’d guess we’re about 90% drones to 10% workers right now – not a great mix if you’re bee keeper – though perhaps attractive if you’re a queen looking for a date!
I’m going to query the pros to see what the best course of action is, as while the laying worker is still laying eggs (unfertilized drones), the lack of worker bees to take care of the drone young will lead to malnourished larvae and young, and might get a bit ugly towards the end.
 ManTown One of the cool things about the drones is that they don’t sting. Thus, you can have some fun with them – holding them, showing them off, putting them in your mouth – you know, the usual stuff. Here’s one of our male friends, with no abililty to put a good hurtin’ on anyone.
 Mr. Drone
Last we left it, we had installed the new queen, and I had seen the queen released, and – oddly enough – a few full frames of capped brood. That was about 2 weeks ago.
So, what does that mean? At some point I had a good laying queen. Was it my new one, or one that the bees themselves came up with? On top of that, there were no eggs nor larvae in the hive. Thus, while I had a queen, it was pretty obvious that I no longer had a queen, or if I did, she was on vacation or just tired of laying eggs for the hive.
So, I wasn’t too optimistic when I opened up the hive this past weekend. Indeed, I had quite a few bees, but with only really spotty larvae and capped brood left in the hive, my lack of optimism was shown to be correct. Likely the spotty brood/larvae, etc. is due to a worker bee taking over the egg laying duties for the hive.
This is bad news with a capital B. A laying worker has not mated, and thus lays eggs that are not fertilized. That means drones. And, if you’re familiar with drones, they do nothing for the hive, as they lay around eating, and looking for a virgin queen to mate with – that’s about the extent of their life – thus there are no bees coming along that will do the foraging, nursing, and maintenance on the hive.
My next duty is to try and get some insight into whether it’s too late to try and right this ship. Hopefully I can get some expert advice to augment my lack of knowledge on the proper course. Maybe I should’ve taken up knitting?
I checked on the hive today, and the new queen had been released from her cage. As I checked over the hive, and didn’t see the new queen, but did see evidence of another queen in the hive.
This ‘other’ queen was being subjected to a serious amount of attention, and I wanted to know if it was the new queen (noted by the green dot marking her as a 2009 queen) or a supercedure queen (which would have been created by the workers themselves).
When I shook the frame off, so some of the bees were removed, it was obvious that it was not the new queen I introduced, but another queen. So, the plot thickens…
This picture was taken after I shook the frame off, but some of the bees were quick to jump back on or near the queen.
 The Center of Attention There is a phenomenon with bees where the ‘ball’ the queen, creating a tight cluster around the queen and kill her by overheating or suffocating her. So, were my bees in the process of killing off this queen since my v.2.0 queen had been released?
Or were they balling her to protect her from being killed by Queen 2.0? I’ll tell ya what – I know what pi is to 8 decimal places, and can tell you the value of Avagadro’s Constant, but I’ll be darned if I know what the heck is going on with my bees right now!
See – here’s the problem: I’m guessing that my hive has been queenless for at about 2 weeks. It takes about 21 days from the egg being laid until the worker bee emerges from her cell. And, since the average life span of a bee during the summer is only about 4-6 weeks, we’re going to see a serious crash in the bee population at the White House Apiary.
Hopefully, the next time I open the hive, it’ll be loaded with eggs and larvae though – then I’ll pretend I knew what I was doing all along. If not, well, I guess there’s always next year!
A quick trip up to Autumn Morning Farm in Barre, MA after work last night will hopefully right this ship! I picked up a new queen (with a matching green crown like her predecessor), and installed her in the hive today.
 Queen 2009 v. 2.0 There’s still quite a bit of action in the hive, and hopefully they’re happy to see their new boss! Incidentally, you’ll notice there’s no shortage of Japenese Knotweed around the hive – anyone want some cheap??
I love learning about bees. And I get to use all kinds of cool bee-terms like ’spotting’ and ‘queenright’. Your hive is deemed ‘queenright’ if you have a good laying queen. Since I’m operating under the suspicion that I have no queen, I checked in with one of the gurus.
I have been in a holding pattern since the weekend, as I spoke with the Worcester County Apiary Inspector, and he thought I might have ’supercedure’ queen that just hasn’t either A) mated or B) started laying yet..
I was hopeful that the State Apiarist was going to come out to visit my hive, but due to weather and/or schedules, that didn’t happen, so I opened the hive late Wednesday afternoon, and confirmed that there was still no evidence of a laying queen.
Thus operation “Get a Queen Tomorrow” was put into action…
We’re at the start of week 12, and despite a fantastic beginning of our beekeeping career, we’ve hit the wall – big time. Last week was pretty lousy here weather-wise, and I didn’t inspect the hive, as it was rainy, and we had family in for the weekend.
However, upon inspecting the hive today, it was obvious that all was not well in Camelot. I pulled out the first few frames of the first floor, and marveled at how there were no eggs, no larvae, no capped brood. And this was the chamber that was chock full of capped brood two weekends ago!
More frame pulling, more ‘Vacancy’ signs. Ahhh…sure…the queen moved upstairs after I swapped brood chambers. That’s the ticket! So, I moved on to inspecting the 2nd brood chamber. More of the same. You want to see sad? I’ll show you sad…
 All those cells just waiting for new bees... So…now I need to track down a new queen, and pronto. The number of bees in the hive will continue to drop until a new queen can get up to speed and lay her share of eggs to start moving the population in the right direction again.
This new wrinkle probably doesn’t bode well for any hopes of a honey harvest this fall! Now the frantic search for a new queen begins!
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