Three days ago, I saw only some bees on the front frames of Olea's, so I decided to dismantle the hive. I started at the back of the box and found nectar in most of the combs. I took out only three, one of which had two queen cells on it. One was open at the end and the other on the side.
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| Queen cells on both sides of the comb |
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| Open end where a queen has emerged |
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| Queen cell opened on side. The pupa inside had been killed by another queen and the workers removed the corpse |
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| An empty queen cup |
I set these in a holder and went to do some other work (Next paragraph). When I went back to photograph them, there was a small cloud of bees around them. I moved the comb further from the hives until the bees had cleaned them up at the end of the day.
I hefted the top super of #1 and since it felt pretty heavy I wanted to add a fourth super. I had some unassembled frames from Bruce and Greg, but after I had nailed together a couple, I realized they were
shallows and I only have medium foundation. I got my box of medium frames and assembled them. I had some
Duragilt foundations, also from Bruce and Greg. I found the Duragilt difficult to install, and I am
not the only one. I stopped after 3 and used plastic foundation on the remaining.
I went to #1, stood on the milk crate and took off the top super. It had 6 frames of capped honey. Usually one does not
add another box until there are 8 frames full, but I went ahead. I
checkerboarded 2 frames of capped honey. I looked into the top super of #2 and saw that it was pretty much untouched, so I switched in two frames of capped honey from the lower super. Left #3 alone.
The next day, while working the roses, I was attacked without provocation and stung in the left eyebrow.
I think the bees might have been extra defensive because of possible robbing behavior triggered by the open nectar left near the hives the day before. To forestall any further robbing, I decided to completely dismantle Olea's hive. I put the removed comb with nectar at the far side of the house. There was quite a bit of wax moth damage on the distal combs.
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| The bees had removed all the nectar by the next morning |
When I reached bar #6, I found capped worker brood and larvae! There must be a laying queen in there after all. I put in a bar with fresh wax and nectar (total 7 bars), placed the following board and put on an entrance reducer. It looks like Olea's may survive.
I pinched off the capped queen cell that I had seen through window weeks ago.
With manicure scissors, I carefully cut a flap in the side.
There was the desiccated head and thorax of the pupa.
I opened the cell a bit more and could see some strands of the cocoon.
The two nucs seem to be doing fine.
