An all Bee weekend

Just doing lots of Bee stuff all weekend, started with Friday. Went up to PSJ with Eddie to take a colony out of a window behind the hurricane shutter. Big colony, a lot of honey but nearly no capped brood, and no larvae or eggs, so this was a queen-less colony and a real rescue. Saturday I spent the day with several other club members at the new Honey Bee Research Lab at UF.  Met some more odd people (they play with bees too). Toured the facility and made some friends. Excited about Bee College this October.  Last week Stuart removed two swarms from the local marina, both in relatively the same area. So we discussed the three removals, the swarms and the window bees and decided to combine both swarms, find one of their queens and re queen the window bees.  Sounded like a plan. Started in swarm 2, found the queen, caught her in a clip and tucked her away.  On to swarm 1. Did not actually see the queen but we found one side of 1 frame fully drawn and capped brood, larvae and eggs on the other side, even found eggs in some burr comb we cut off.  So the caged queen went in the window bees box and we were going to merge the two swarms through paper. Went to get yet another swarm from the marina, pretty easy, scraped them in a box, put on a queen excluder and waited a little while. The bees that we missed went in the box so we're fairly certain we got the queen. Back to the club yard to set things up. Going to merge the two swarms first. Opened the queen less box and there were no bees. Looked around, did not see a swarm. Thought they may have gone to the box with their old queen. Opened swarm 1 and found the missing bees. The box was packed full of bees, they merged themselves while we were gone, added the other box and frames to give them more room.   Always fascinated by these little bugs. Other events in the yard. Loriann got her second box started with some top bars that we hung on modified hangers. And John got a nuc split, two frames and a bunch of bees. They have the means to make a queen, just need to see what happens. I did another set of queen grafts today. While I am having a certain amount of success getting cells, my percentage of mated queens sucks. But I'm sure it will get better.  There are a lot of methods, I just need to find what works best for me.

The queen in the yellow box must go

I started to call her something that begins with a B but thought better of that. I'm sure that you can figure it out.  We typically have anywhere from 7 to 15 beehives in the club yard at any time. With recent additions I believe we are at 9 plus the twin mating nuc. We have a colony in the back of the yard in a yellow box. Been there perhaps two months. Every time I've been in that box they've been pretty nasty. Yesterday we went in and sure enough they came out pretty mean. Stuart thought perhaps they had a high mite load. I thought that's possible and made plans to do a mite wash and OAV treatment.  Yesterday evening, Eddie and I went to Titusville and removed a colony from under a storage shed. There were perhaps six frames of capped and uncapped honey in nice new almost white comb. Eddie took that home. We had to pull up the floor in two places to find the whole colony, the brood nest was fourteen combs, each five inches deep and 16-18 inches long. We cut the comb and put six pieces in an 8 frame box and two in a nuc. The rest I am rendering down. It was late when we got done so we put the vacuum box on a hive stand and the 8 frame on top, then pulled the divider. I like that aspect of the box, it just lets the bees migrate up and I can dump the trash later. The nuc I put at mom's house. I wanted to check them today and re-stack so I figured I'd do a mite wash on the yellow box while there. For those who were there yesterday, if you thought they were bad then you should have seen them today. Maybe it was because yesterday there were five of us and just me today but I was surrounded. Wore sweatpants and a sweat shirt, no stings through the clothes but at least 100 stingers in the fabric.  One got in my veil and I took a hit to the left forehead. Did an alcohol wash, shook off five frames from the second box up, mostly brood frames. I let some of the fliers go and did a pretty good look for the queen, although considering the temperament I really wasn't that concerned. Did not see her. First wash showed no mites, thats zero.  Thought no way right. So I did another. Looked specifically for drone comb, shook off three frames, with drone brood, did another wash. One mite. So much for a heavy mite load.  Took all of the bees from the wash home and counted, 496. From 496 bees I got 1 mite. This queen needs to go. As soon as I have a mated queen she has an appointment with destiny. On some positive notes. The cut out from yesterday was attaching the comb to the frames and bringing in pollen, way cool. I looked for the queen but did not see her. Stopped by mom's on the way home to check some QC's, I caged two capped cells that will come out Friday or Saturday. In a matter of contrast, In the yellow box I had a sweatshirt tucked into sweatpants as body armor. In mom's box I was wearing a T shirt and shorts, no gloves but a veil and they didn't even care that I was there.  I want more of these kind of bees.