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More about Bees~!
8 years ago
General
I'm just a bee person now. So here's an update on the hive, because i've excited about it.
So my eye is better (hurrah) the majority of the swelling was gone within 48 hours, but I still had a bit of puffiness and swelling until today (which is normal)
as for the bees, turns out the queen from the swarm was not in the hive, which is a bummer. Workers only live for about 40 days, and we'd been working on getting them in the hive and things set up for about 3 weeks. which means we needed a queen pretty quick.
So we ended up driving across the state to buy a queen on Sunday. The queen comes in a small cage with some of her workers and the cage has a small candy plug which the workers will eat through over the course of about a week. This gives the hive time to get used to the queen so by the time she's out her pheromones are around the place and the workers wont kill her.
Side note: there's a bit of a misconception about bees and the queen. This idea that the bees all live to serve the queen. It's sort of true, but it's not really like a feudal hierarchy where the queen rules all. Bees serve the hive first and foremost and the queen is part of that. She has bees that feed her and clean her because she's busy with her own job of laying all the eggs.
if she's not doing her job well, or something is wrong the hive will kill her and try to make a new queen. (I'll explain in a second why our hive didn't just make its own new queen)
Okay so, we inspected the hive and placed the cage inside. They seemed to fan her and inspect it without getting aggressive so that's a good sign.
We left the hive alone for a few days. Normally you want to wait a week because, like I said, if something goes wrong with a queen the hive will kill her, and if you introduce her to the hive, then mess with the hive, well the bees can figure out what's changed and try to get back to status quo (not so good for the new queen)
Turns out tho, our hive, before we placed the queen into the hive, had workers laying eggs. If a worker lays eggs they can only become male drones. Male bees literally do nothing but try to impregnate a queen (they wont impregnate workers and often just fly off to some mystery place they group up). Male bees are the frat boys of insects. They just hang out, party, and have sex.
In order to make a queen, a hive has to feed a newly hatched female only royal jelly. Since swarms do not carry eggs when they travel, and the queen was lost originally, there was no way for the hive to make a new queen.
Now a small problem when workers start laying eggs is they can become aggressive to new queens that are introduced and try to kill her. It's basically the hive is breaking down and lashing out. So we opened the hive early in case the queen was not being accepted we could trick the workers with some oil spray to keep them occupied long enough that she'd get time. (bees have such interesting problems and solutions lemme tell you)
Anyway they were actually quite amicable to the queen and since we needed her to start laying before we lost too many workers to the ravages of time, we pulled the candy plug ourselves and let her go. It's not easy to tell the emotional state of bees all the time. they wort of vibrate when really happy or really pissed. But in the words of my roommate "they weren't trying to kill or...or they're really bad at it"
queen was checking out the comb, the bees didn't murder her. Counting this as a win.
The hive is closed up for the next 2 weeks to give her a chance to lay and give the hive a chance to really get to work on honey and comb production.
some pics of the bee cage!
http://imgur.com/Go2KE5e
http://imgur.com/59Pcdjo
http://imgur.com/teMTBVM
the queen is the one with the yellow spot on her back, the mark is to distinguish her (they're hard to spot, only slightly larger than reggo bees) and to show the year she was born (queens live about 5 years if all goes well, though you want to get a new one after 3 years)
So my eye is better (hurrah) the majority of the swelling was gone within 48 hours, but I still had a bit of puffiness and swelling until today (which is normal)
as for the bees, turns out the queen from the swarm was not in the hive, which is a bummer. Workers only live for about 40 days, and we'd been working on getting them in the hive and things set up for about 3 weeks. which means we needed a queen pretty quick.
So we ended up driving across the state to buy a queen on Sunday. The queen comes in a small cage with some of her workers and the cage has a small candy plug which the workers will eat through over the course of about a week. This gives the hive time to get used to the queen so by the time she's out her pheromones are around the place and the workers wont kill her.
Side note: there's a bit of a misconception about bees and the queen. This idea that the bees all live to serve the queen. It's sort of true, but it's not really like a feudal hierarchy where the queen rules all. Bees serve the hive first and foremost and the queen is part of that. She has bees that feed her and clean her because she's busy with her own job of laying all the eggs.
if she's not doing her job well, or something is wrong the hive will kill her and try to make a new queen. (I'll explain in a second why our hive didn't just make its own new queen)
Okay so, we inspected the hive and placed the cage inside. They seemed to fan her and inspect it without getting aggressive so that's a good sign.
We left the hive alone for a few days. Normally you want to wait a week because, like I said, if something goes wrong with a queen the hive will kill her, and if you introduce her to the hive, then mess with the hive, well the bees can figure out what's changed and try to get back to status quo (not so good for the new queen)
Turns out tho, our hive, before we placed the queen into the hive, had workers laying eggs. If a worker lays eggs they can only become male drones. Male bees literally do nothing but try to impregnate a queen (they wont impregnate workers and often just fly off to some mystery place they group up). Male bees are the frat boys of insects. They just hang out, party, and have sex.
In order to make a queen, a hive has to feed a newly hatched female only royal jelly. Since swarms do not carry eggs when they travel, and the queen was lost originally, there was no way for the hive to make a new queen.
Now a small problem when workers start laying eggs is they can become aggressive to new queens that are introduced and try to kill her. It's basically the hive is breaking down and lashing out. So we opened the hive early in case the queen was not being accepted we could trick the workers with some oil spray to keep them occupied long enough that she'd get time. (bees have such interesting problems and solutions lemme tell you)
Anyway they were actually quite amicable to the queen and since we needed her to start laying before we lost too many workers to the ravages of time, we pulled the candy plug ourselves and let her go. It's not easy to tell the emotional state of bees all the time. they wort of vibrate when really happy or really pissed. But in the words of my roommate "they weren't trying to kill or...or they're really bad at it"
queen was checking out the comb, the bees didn't murder her. Counting this as a win.
The hive is closed up for the next 2 weeks to give her a chance to lay and give the hive a chance to really get to work on honey and comb production.
some pics of the bee cage!
http://imgur.com/Go2KE5e
http://imgur.com/59Pcdjo
http://imgur.com/teMTBVM
the queen is the one with the yellow spot on her back, the mark is to distinguish her (they're hard to spot, only slightly larger than reggo bees) and to show the year she was born (queens live about 5 years if all goes well, though you want to get a new one after 3 years)
I have enough dealing with yellow jackets, hornets, mud-daubers, wood borers, and paper wasps to go fore bees next.