Lament

Today was a day to see the hives. It started well, but unfortunately ended badly. I don't mind documenting my failures. This was one.

The hive at Clarence Brown's was crowded and had a swarm cell two weeks ago Sunday when we looked at it. My goal today was to verify that the swarm cell had a queen larva and get ready to split the hive tomorrow if that was the case.


Doug Shaw and I opened the hive as we had been instructed by lifting up the super from the back to view the swarm cell. Unfortunately, the bees had put so much wax between the brood box and the super, that when we lifted the super, we ripped the swarm cell apart. I was doing the lifting, Doug was doing the looking and he could immediately see that the new queen had been dislodged. You can see how much burr comb there was in the photo above.


The new queen would not survive. Sudden, irreversible. A catastrophe. The only solution would have been to not have inspected and to have let the hive swarm. But, that isn't a preferred option and not one we could have reasonably anticipated. I saw that there was a lot of burr comb when we examined two weeks ago, but I didn't put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Now I am just sad. It is like having a death in the family.

Perhaps they will start another swarm cell. The hive is still crowded, but there is a queen excluder between the two supers. If they stay together, I expect a lot of hone from that hive.

The other hives are fine. There is evidently a queen laying in the blue hive, but she is producing a lot of drones.


I am not sure what she is up to. I hope she can actually lay fertilized eggs. There is a lot of honey and pollen in the brood frames, so I hope she actually has room to lay eggs as well. Time will tell. For now, they are a happy hive, even if they are slightly odd.

I added a super and more syrup to the yellow hive. The queen in that hive is laying nicely, but it is the weakest hive right now.


I am still just very sad to have lost the baby queen.