Great Ball of Bees part 2

For the next two weeks we watch the hive very closely. Everything seems fine. The girls are busy bringing in pollen and nectar. We are supplying them with sugar syrup to help them prepare for winter and they are drinking that stuff like it is going out of style.

We bought 20 pounds of sugar at the grocery store. The checkout person said "What do you do with all that sugar?" "Feed bees" we responded. "Oh" she said and then stopped talking to us.

We impatiently wait the required two weeks and then we don our jackets and veils; gather up the smoker, hive tools, and camera and head to the hive for a close inspection. We remove the top cover and the inner lid. We remove the feeding box and get to the first deep super. Everything looks fine. They are busy building out the wax cells and filling them with syrup and nectar. All 8 frames are not full but there is no lack of work being done. This makes us happy.

Capped and uncapped brood
 

Honey, brood and a drone cell in the middle

We take off the top super and begin inspecting the bottom 8 frames. Some frames are full of honey and capped brood. Others look like they have larvae in them and maybe eggs. This is very encouraging because it means the queen settled back in and continued to do her work.

Then we see this-

 

 

 

What is that lump among the brood cells? Back to the books and the experts so we can understand what it is and what it means. This hive has more drama than a house full of teenage girls!

 

Seems the lump is a queen cup which means the bees decided to make another queen either because the present one is hurt or missing or she just isn't productive enough. We think she is still in the hive. There are eggs and larvae which shows that she's been doing something in the last 2 weeks. since it is now mid September and winter is around the corner, it is too late to add a new queen and have her be successful enough to overwinter. We are fairly sure we are going to lose our hive.

 

Now I've been around bees long enough to know that hives don't all make it through the winter. I also know that we got our hive started later than is usual and it was a risk we were willing to take but I still feel sad thinking that I had somehow let the girls down. I'm not looking forward to having to clean out a dead hive in the spring. So it looks like the ball of bees really was a bad thing.

 

 

Next post- Ball of Bees part 3