Sunny Days

A bee in flight while the sun beams down.

There has been a lot of sun, and a lot of moisture up to this point, for the year. So how many wildflowers are needed for an apiary to be successful? There is an overabundance of wildflowers and flowering landscaping around our queens. Bees forage for miles. Within a couple miles there is residential neighborhoods with elaborate floral gardens. The local HOA's gratuitously plant plots of flowers in common areas. Many common garden flowers are good for honey bees, like the butterfly bushes and the marigolds. There are miles upon miles of rural county roads that are lined with sunflowers, goldenrod, thistle, and dozens of other flowering weeds. 

Right here in the bee yard, the monkshood and the vetches are dying back like many of the other little white and purple flowers that have been blanketing the field. 

These flowers are just making way for the fall blooms to come in just like the dandelions and clover did a few months ago.

These tiny yellow flowers coming in now are too small to be obvious from the road as you drive by. There are millions of them across the field just like the vetches were in June. We definitely have plenty of flowers to support many colonies in this area.

Last weekend, I checked the queen-less hive to check the progress of the queen cells. They were all destroyed. I checked very carefully to find out if a new queen had taken over. I found brand new eggs. I found Larvae in all stages. And I found Doris.

Back from vacation and ready to go back to work, she is laying again and making her presence known. I saw her again today when I was checking up. I am not quite sure what made her take a hiatus.  

So ten days is not enough time for a new queen to take over operations. Further research revealed it should take approximately 23 days. Although, a new queen can emerge in about thirteen days. That is about how long it has been since I started over in the nucleus hive to create queens.

Allow me to introduce the un-mated daughter of Ethyl. Name to be determined once she is laying eggs. She was moved to a shallow hive box with some extra bees to take care of her until she mates naturally.

She is now occupying the apartment just above Doris, since Doris isn't using it. Doris is laying eggs and the workers are foraging but she is simply not productive. Lucy is filling her super with honey. She has not laid any eggs in the upper frames yet so she is still without a queen excluder. And Ethyl, well, she is doing what any beekeeper would expect.

Doris, although one of our first queens, is not considered to be productive. There is plenty of forage, although, she does not seem to build enough numbers at the right time of year to produce the surplus we are all looking for. Additionally, her bees tend to be a great deal more aggressive than the newer colonies in the yard. Doris' hive may need to be re-queened. It may be a little late in the season for this, but I am still learning about queen rearing and what makes a good queen. Perhaps we will look into it for next season if I can breed them. It is apparent that it takes a good queen to be successful.

Shuffling all the bees around today created quite a stir. The air was full of lost bees figuring out where they are supposed to go now.

By the end of it all, everyone is settled back in to their jobs, working in the bright sunshine.