The last 2 weeks have been a nailbiter for Steve and me.
The white hive was in deep trouble. It became extremely clear to us two weeks ago (April 29th) that our white hive queen was quite dead, and probably had died soon after we installed her on April 16th. What gave it away? Well, many signs - mostly in comparison to the blue hive. The first hint was that the activity level outside the white hive was much lower than the blue - a lot fewer bees coming in and out.
Second, opening up the hive, the frames were hardly built out into comb, whereas the blue hive was zipping away at creating beautiful comb and filling it up with pollen, nectar and larva. The third and biggest sign? There were multiple eggs in the comb. Multiple eggs in a cell means that the WORKERS are laying!
The science:
We learned that a healthy queen in a hive releases strong pheromones that suppress the sex glands of the workers (females). When the queen is not there, the worker's sex glands grow, and they can start laying sterile (unfertilized) eggs, which can only become drones (males). In addition to laying multiple eggs in a cell, you can also tell that workers are laying because the eggs are on the cell walls, not on the bottom. Since the worker's abdomen's are not as long as a queen's, there eggs are not often laid on the bottom of the cell, and stick to the sides. The four photos below (taken through a magnifying glass!) shows the worker eggs very clearly:
What were we to do?! If we just left the white hive alone, then eventually the workers would die out as they only have a life span of a few weeks to a couple of months. Then we would just have useless drones (which could leave the hive and carry on the genetic material of the colony, but that's no good to us...). We decided we need to find a new queen to save the hive.
Steve emailed a bunch of beekeeper suppliers and a very generous soul took pity upon us and gave us a queen for free. The following Saturday (May, we drove over to Bellevue to collect the new queen and her "attendants" in a plastic clamshell container.
We wondered if the new attendants would be immediately killed by the white hive members- we learned later they likely were. Gain some, you lose some...Corky said we likely could have saved them by spritzing both the new attendants and the old attendants with some pro health or lemongrass oil/water mixter. Then the old bees wouldn't be able to tell! Genius.
We installed the new queen on the inner frame, making sure to have her screen face to the side so the workers could reach her and feed her through the cage. We used a couple of thumb tacks to get her in place on the frame.
Exhausted, after much sitting in the sun in heavy suits, poking around, discussing and taking notes, Steve and I left the garden to get some lunch. Steve did some voracious speed reading of bee blogs as we sat outside having a nice lunch in downtown Edmonds. After 1.5 hours of discussion, we decided to head back to the garden and try out some experiments:
The white hive was in deep trouble. It became extremely clear to us two weeks ago (April 29th) that our white hive queen was quite dead, and probably had died soon after we installed her on April 16th. What gave it away? Well, many signs - mostly in comparison to the blue hive. The first hint was that the activity level outside the white hive was much lower than the blue - a lot fewer bees coming in and out.
Second, opening up the hive, the frames were hardly built out into comb, whereas the blue hive was zipping away at creating beautiful comb and filling it up with pollen, nectar and larva. The third and biggest sign? There were multiple eggs in the comb. Multiple eggs in a cell means that the WORKERS are laying!
The science:
We learned that a healthy queen in a hive releases strong pheromones that suppress the sex glands of the workers (females). When the queen is not there, the worker's sex glands grow, and they can start laying sterile (unfertilized) eggs, which can only become drones (males). In addition to laying multiple eggs in a cell, you can also tell that workers are laying because the eggs are on the cell walls, not on the bottom. Since the worker's abdomen's are not as long as a queen's, there eggs are not often laid on the bottom of the cell, and stick to the sides. The four photos below (taken through a magnifying glass!) shows the worker eggs very clearly:
What were we to do?! If we just left the white hive alone, then eventually the workers would die out as they only have a life span of a few weeks to a couple of months. Then we would just have useless drones (which could leave the hive and carry on the genetic material of the colony, but that's no good to us...). We decided we need to find a new queen to save the hive.
Steve emailed a bunch of beekeeper suppliers and a very generous soul took pity upon us and gave us a queen for free. The following Saturday (May, we drove over to Bellevue to collect the new queen and her "attendants" in a plastic clamshell container.
We wondered if the new attendants would be immediately killed by the white hive members- we learned later they likely were. Gain some, you lose some...Corky said we likely could have saved them by spritzing both the new attendants and the old attendants with some pro health or lemongrass oil/water mixter. Then the old bees wouldn't be able to tell! Genius.
We installed the new queen on the inner frame, making sure to have her screen face to the side so the workers could reach her and feed her through the cage. We used a couple of thumb tacks to get her in place on the frame.
Exhausted, after much sitting in the sun in heavy suits, poking around, discussing and taking notes, Steve and I left the garden to get some lunch. Steve did some voracious speed reading of bee blogs as we sat outside having a nice lunch in downtown Edmonds. After 1.5 hours of discussion, we decided to head back to the garden and try out some experiments:
- Steve learned that worker brood also emit a pheromone that suppresses worker sex glands. We decided to try to sacrifice a few health frames of uncapped worker brood from the blue hive for the sake of an experiment. We transferred a few frames from blue to white, and took out some of the empty blue frames.
- In order to reduce the amount of energy/work/resources the workers would put into rearing the drone eggs, we simply removed one box of frames from the white hive and move it to the fire pit on the other side of the yard. We assumed that the worker bees would likely be able to find their way back to the main hive, and if they didn't...they would die when the temperature dropped at night or it started raining...(sad trombone). Here is Steve moving the hive box in the long shadows of the late afternoon:
Almost late to dinner with friends, we ran away with our fingers crossed.
We returned the following Saturday (May 13th) with my parents in tow to see the bees for the first time. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the commotion, so my words will have to capture our happiness. The queen had been accepted! How could we tell? The workers had built out some comb at a faster rate than the previous weeks, and there were now cells with just single eggs laid at the bottom. Even better proof? We found the queen! Her highness was looking good.
We can't wait to see what the white hive looks like next Saturday!
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