Week 11 – Well, I Guess There’s Room at the Inn Now!
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!
