bee diary: inspection 7/24/2010 · 25 July 2010, 06:58
I opened up the hive yesterday evening to see what might be going on in there.
The brood nest is full of nectar, partly from their swarming preparations, and partly because they’ve been bringing in more nectar.
I saw what looks probably like some old queen cell cups being cleaned up from the face of the last comb. I’m not certain if I have a queen right now, or not. I would think not — further up toward the front of the hive, I saw two queen cells that are capped — if there were a queen, she would have broken into those cells and killed them, unless the bees were planning on swarming again. Apparently if the bees want to swarm again, they’ll protect the remaining queen cells from being destroyed. I really hope they don’t want to swarm again.
I intended to give them a comb of drone brood that I had taken away from them, so that they could clean it out and reuse it. I had mistakenly assumed that taking the drone away from the hive would chill them enough to kill them. Not so, especially with the weather we’ve been having. When I went into the shop to retrieve the comb, there were dead and weak and newly hatching drones. I feel terrible about letting them starve like that. Poor guys. At least that tells me when their eggs were laid. Then, in the process of trying to get the few drones off the comb so I could go ahead and freeze it (to kill the remaining unhatched drones), the comb broke off. Well, I guess this will be a good opportunity to practice comb-reattaching techniques.
— Jennifer
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