Notes on Beelandia Today

Just a few bits of news from the Beelandia Apiary:

• Yesterday I took a 24 hour mite count of the three langstroth hives. All seems reasonable. Worker Bee had the lowest count with just two mites. Lib-BEE-taria had 16 and Bee Glad... had 12. The latter two hives will be watched more closely.
• Two of the five grafts done 5 days ago "took". Thursday I will place the queen cells in a mating nuc.
• I checked the mating nucs and 5 of 7 have laying queens. Next week I will check to see each queen's laying pattern.
• I inspected Plan Bee..., one of the top bar hives, today. I have this feeling that this hive is in preparation for swarming. The bees are feeling up the brood nest with nectar and the queen seems to have slowed down in her laying. Only one queen cell in evidence, however. I  took the bottom board off this hive and uncorked another entrance.

Grafting Again

Yesterday afternoon I did some more grafting of larvae taken from Worker Bees..., the hive I started last July from a queen cell raised in one of Gary Reuter's hives. The cells were placed in a queenless box of Bee Glad...

Step Five: Setting Up Mating Nucs

On Wednesday, ten days after grafting queen cells, I created 7 mating nucs: five in cardboard 'nuc' boxes, and 2 in a "queen castle". Following the instructions found in Lawrence Connor's book, Increase Essentials, I placed one frame of capped brood (with adhering bees), one frame of honey/pollen, and two empty drawn frames in each 'nuc'. I carefully  pressed one ripe queen cell into each frame of capped brood and shook in some "extra bees" as well. I closed up each hive and will check them again in two weeks. Hopefully, each nucleus hive will have a mated queen  by then.

Of course, this process was not without disaster. In the middle of making up one nuc hive, I tipped over the box and stirred up alot of trouble. I don't dress in a full bee suit and paid the price of that decision with 15 stings, mostly to my stomach and wrists. Yes, it hurt for a bit, but I really had no swelling, or any other ill effects from the experience.

Step Four: Capped Queen Cells

It is the fifth day since I grafted larvae into plastic queen cups. This afternoon, I went out to check to see if the grafts  took and the cells were capped. As you can see in the second photo below, all but one graft was accepted by the bees.