# What a mess I have made!



## Terri (May 10, 2002)

A brief recap:

I am getting into beekeeping after a break of a few years. So, about a month ago I bought 2 packages and I am starting up again.

To start with, bees were coming and going from both hives in roughly equal numbers. Both hives were drinking the same amount of syrup. 

3 days ago one hive was suddenly busier than the other, MUCH busier, but I could not get into the hives right away as life happened and I was really busy. I was free this evening and so I opened things up and found a mess.

The first hive: no brood, but there was an uncapped queen cell. There were also some newly hatched, fuzzy bees. But, the number of bees was much smaller than there should have been. I chased out a couple of cockroaches and closed things up again. I also reduced the entrance as the hive was weak. They are being fed as they are a new hive. Very few stores were present.

I think that one is fairly obvious: the queen is dead and being replaced. Or they swarmed, but would they wait until the queen cell was capped before they left????? 

...........................................................................

The OTHER hive, when I opened it, was boiling with bees. I have never heard of most of the bees drifting in huge numbers from one hive to another, but I suspect these did. Because while brood was present I do not know that there was enough brood to hatch into that many bees.

Alas, I had done an outstandingly poor job of putting the frames in, and there were no spacers, and the bees had made quite a lot of bur comb in the larger gap and stuck it to the frame above it. This tore away as I handled the frames and it went SPLAT on the bottom of the hive. I scraped away some bur comb off of the frames and left the pieces in the hive for the bees to rob. I moved the frames into a new hive, right next to the old one, and I spaced the frames better. I was thinking they would rob out the bur comb in the old hive but that their sense of smell would bring them to their queen?????

I am not sure where the queen to the second hive is as I am lousy at seeing queens. I usually look for eggs, but the frames were heavily covered by very active and very angry bees at this point. Also white eggs against new white comb is hard to see. 

I did see some capped brood, both workers and drones, near the middle of the frames but the pattern is spotty and I am not impressed. This hive had done a far better job of drawing out the combs, and they are drawing out the frames from one corner to the next. They had done twice as much work drawing out combs as the first hive had, even though they were drinking about the same amount of syrup. All I can think is that their foragers were working harder.

So, I have 2 hives, one has a queen cell and I HOPE the other one has a queen, as she was probably on one of the frames. 

And, I have a hive box with bur comb full of honey on the bottom of it, and a lot of confused bees crawling around inside, which stayed behind in the hive as I moved the frames over to the empty hive next to it. 

Any advice? I suspect that I should have scooped out the bur comb that tore off of the combs and scraped it off someplace else, but that did not occur to me at the time. I was afraid of squishing the queen, if I started scooping things up and scraping things off.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

I would be worried with just one queen cell present in Hive 1. I would also be pulling frames of brood from Hive 2 and installing it in hive 1. You can always shake the workers off a frame or use a bee brush to look for brood. A friend also has a problem seeing eggs so finally broke down and bought a pair of those hobbies magnify glasses.

Another course is to leave things as they are and when Hive 1's queen cell does hatch wait to make sure she has lived thru her mating flight and is laying. then take frames from Hive 2 to help build up hive 1.


There is a third Option and that is to buy a new queen get rid of the cell and take frames from Hive 2 to try to equal out the hives population.


At this point I would not worry much about the burr comb, Maybe crush it and put the honey in a feeder just so I could remove that extra hive and bottom board.


 Al


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Will do!

My memory is fuzzy: should I shake the bees off of a frame of brood before I move it to the other hive?


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Unless you spray them with a mist of vanilla 1:1 ration yes shake the bees off the brood frames first. 

 Al


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

OK.

Most of the brood is on only 2 frames, so I will let them work for a couple of more days and then move a frame. Since the donor hive is only a month old they do not yet have many frames of brood, but since they now have so many bees I think they will have a third frame of brood REAL fast!


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

I found some small amounts of brood that I could move without cutting too severely into the next generation of bees, and so I went to brush off the bees and move it. The bees came back as fast as I could brush them off and so I just sprayed everything with 1:1 vanilla, both the bees being moved and the hive they were being moved to, and it is done. 

Alleyooper, what are the limits of vanilla? Can a person combine 2 hives that way? In the past I have done newspaper combines, but this looks faster and I would not have scraps of newspaper to clean up. 

I was glad of my bee suit! The hive is calmer than it was, but still not as calm as the local swarm hives I used to catch when I left equipment out. And, some of the agressive bees were still young and fuzzy so they are probably a good representative of what this queen is producing. Still, sooner or later they will replace their queen, and the new queen will breed with the local boys and that has calmed hives down in the past. 

The "wild" bees in my area mostly look like purebred Italian, and while there are often wild traits like cementing their hive with too much propolis they are generally excellent bees.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

I have never fully tried a test on the limitation of the vanilla mist. Have never went over 5 frames and even them I have taken them a bit away from the hive once I make sure the queen is not on the frame to brush it off.

 Al


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## Iddee (Sep 25, 2005)

It is so much easier to just exchange places with the hives and let the foragers go to the other hive. It beefs up the weak hive and only removes the older bees from the strong one.


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## k9 (Feb 6, 2008)

Is the vanilla mist masking the scent of the bees so that they are accepted in the new hive without problems?


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

k9 said:


> Is the vanilla mist masking the scent of the bees so that they are accepted in the new hive without problems?


It has rained cats and dogs for the last 2 days: I will check when the rain stops!


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

I use it as a masking scent only.

 Al


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

It appears to have worked: all is quiet in the hive with the queen cell. The foragers are not working hard at all but they have sugar syrup so they do not really have to go out to work. 

I THINK the queen should hatch sometime next weekend: hopefully then the hive will brighten up and the foragers will go back to work.

If it looks like the new queen has failed then I will do a newspaper combine of the 2 hives. I did a couple of those many years ago, and it has worked out well for me.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Maybe there were some eggs in the brood frames you gave them and they will make a couple more queen cells too.

Yes doing a combine is a option then maybe later make a nuc up off them that can build up before winter.

 Al


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