Episode-203- Where are the bees in colony C – Part 2 – Down On Their Luck

Episode-203- Where are the bees in colony C – Part 2 – Down On Their Luck. The saga begins in earnest with this episode as the one month old colony is inspected and no eggs, larvae or queen are found. This is very disconcerting and I am not sure what could have happened to a brand new queen. If I did something to bring about her demise I will try to learn from the lesson.

The inspection started off fine but as soon as I noticed that things were about the same as they were on May 12 I fretted a bit over what to do. To make matters worse I had moved a foundationless frame of honey too much and most of it fell off into the hive making a mess of things. It’s bad enough no evidence of a queen was noted but now the bees had a big mess to clean up and most had evacuated the hive. The look on my face at the beginning of the video says it all. Stupid human erro combined with some act of nature make for this a hardship colony.

I close up the hive and watch in distress as the bees try to organize themselves around the job at hand. It took a couple of days for things to return to their sense of normal. I discussed the situation with a friend and decided to leave them alone to try to supersedure the queen. There were several supersedure cells on one of the frames and I felt that this was an appropriate course of action for the bees to take. Stay tuned as the drama continues…

Resources

Song of the Day –  John Scofield Uberjam Band – Video

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