I wasn't aware virgins were around so late either, but it makes a sort of
sense as conventional beeks requeen round now. Maybe the bees use a similar
logic, trading in one mother for a younger, blonder version.
Paul
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020, 12:15 Gilliane Sills, <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
This makes fascinating reading Paul - many thanks. I didn't know that
there might be virgin queens around at this time of the year - but it does
give a point to the drones in my hive...
Gilliane
On 17/09/2020 11:58, Helen Nunn wrote:
Hi Paul
Reading this was so interesting. Here's me looking forward to next year
and harvesting a boxful from a Warre instead of a TBH!
Can I ask a question: would your clearer box have been useful, after you
got the young queen back to the main hive?
Helen
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020 at 11:39, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A couple of days ago I harvested a box of honey from my big Warre colony.
I had just checked some details of the procedure with Gareth as it's a
year since I did this. One thing he stressed was, get all bees out. I
didn't foresee a problem with this as the only time I ever did, was the
time I did not check carefully enough for brood first. (Nurse bees won't
readily abandon brood.)
So, I looked through windows. Loads of honey in top 2 boxes, great. Not
many bees in top box, great, unlikely to be brood there.
Lifted top box and checked bottom of centre combs. No brood. Good. (And
indeed there were no brood in it, that is not what went awry in this story,
but I am describing the process to help other Warre users visualise the
steps.)
So I smoked the remaining bees out and into the parent hive. This was a
bit tricky due to the box weight, layout of the garden and height of the 5
box stack, but Gareth had emphasised young bees can't fly, and will get
lost in grass, it is essential to get them back in or on the hive. At the
time I thought I got 90% out this way.
I then took the box to a table 2m away with the intention of smoking the
last few out onto a large sheet of cardboard for ferrying back to the hive,
and it was here the fun began. Because there were still a surprising number
of bees in there. This box had been on the hive 2-3 years and the combs,
though straight, were welded to the sides by rock hard comb and it was not
feasible to cut them out and brush them off, I would have killed many bees
and attracted robbers to spilled honey. So smoke and a long poky feather
were the tools of choice.
Oh hang on. What's this, after 10 minutes of a seemingly endless supply
of bees coming out in drips and drabs? Oh my. A young queen popped out, and
straight back in again.
Let's just review that for a moment. My bees are like dark buckfasts in
colouring and the queens start out as yellow-orange virgins, before
eventually darkening to near black and becoming invisible in the crowds. So
young queens stand out like someone wearing a day-glo jacket, and are huge
compared to workers. It was definitely a queen.
Look back at hive. Contented - not queenless. Mother of this queen (or a
rival young one) presumably still in there.
Another fact: queens don't cross honey (no point, they don't lay brood in
honey). This is why I originally checked the second box for honey - it had
a band of capped honey at the top so the queen would be below there. So
this young queen was "breaking the rules", presumably not in lay yet and
maybe hiding from another queen? Maybe the workers had corralled her up
there away from their first choice as insurance in case her sister didn't
mate successfully? Anyway the point is - once again the bees weren't
reading the books.
Be that as it may, it was essential to get this queen back in the hive.
She *might* be their only queen, or she *might* be being prepped to
succeed her mother before winter. If the colony have kept her alive, they
have a reason.
Well, it took another 20-30 minutes to get her out because queens are
nervous of light and if trouble begins, their job is to run for cover while
workers fight it off. But eventually I got her in a queen clip and released
her at the hive entrance. There was a bit of a scrum of guard bees round
her and she disappeared inside.
This still left bees in the box. I have not seen this before. It was just
honey, but some wouldn't leave, perhaps because of that queen's smell. I
could look right through the box, there were gaps between combs but you
could see a few hiding behind brace comb etc. Eventually I had to cut the
comb out, and I decided to do this outside rather than fill the kitchen
with bees. This attracted clouds of robbers and it was quite tricky and,
I'm ashamed to say, some bees died. So what have I learned?
- Young queens can hide in areas you don't expect.
- It is a heck of a lot easier to harvest a TBH where you can take
one comb out at a time and brush bees back into the hive.
- I need to improve the way I get bees out of such Warre boxes.
- You can pack an amazing number of bees into an "almost empty" box
of comb.
- I am unaccountably sticky again.
Paul
