The story of our attempt to split and install a queen from our overwintered hygienic Italians seemed to keep taking twists. For those unfamiliar with what a "split" (each niche activity has its own nomenclature; apiculture is no different) is and what is involved in a successful split, here is a bit of a run down...
The queen runs the show. She kicks off pheromones all while she is laying eggs in empty comb cells. There is only one queen in each hive, but there are thousands of workers at any given time in a strong hive. Traditional Langstroth-style hives (the variety we use) have individual frames (think folders in a filing cabinet). There are multiple boxes (as can be seen in many of our photos), each box contains (most often) ten frames. In a split, you take four frames from a strong, overwintered hive (making sure you do not have the queen), and putting them into the middle of another, bee-less box. You pad out remaining space in the box with empty frames. The frames you pulled from the strong hive should have: (a) plenty of workers, (b) plenty of capped larvae, (c) plenty of pollen, (d) plenty of capped honey. In addition to the empty/bee-less box, the strong overwintered hive, and the empty frames for padding, you will most likely need a new queen. We have been getting queens from a place in Kentucky. You can go without a fresh, new queen - you can allow the hive to develop a new queen on its own.
With that explanation, that is how it should work and usually does work. But, occasionally, things do not work out; which is what happened with the first attempt to queen the split hive.
Two weeks ago, friend Theresa, from Fifth Avenue Farm, had a bit of a panic and in a worry that one of her queens had failed, she ordered a queen from Kentucky. On closer inspection, her queen was there and doing just fine. We offered to take the new queen when it arrived as we were planning a split.
Thursday of last week rolled around and Theresa called; the queen had arrived. Back in Proctor, we made the split and installed the queen in her cage (as outlined above). We then left for Michigan and the hound fundraiser.
Once back in Minnesota, we checked the acceptance of the new queen in the split: fail.
The cage was sitting on the bottom board of the hive, no workers around it, and the queen with the handful of workers that came with her were all dead. We immediately anthropomorphized the situation: it had to be a coup d'état.
"A new queen from a foreign land comes to the kingdom expecting to rule the land for many generations only to be knifed by a close attendant. The kingdom realizes their new ruler is dead and kills the killers."
What exactly went wrong will never be known. The queen may have been weak, the cage may have simply fallen from the top and with the unusually cold temperatures and the hive entrance directly in front of where the cage was found - the queen may have simply gotten too cold. Workers can "revolt" against a weak queen; they will form a ball around her, and raise her core temperature until she is basically cooked (hell of a way to die, is it not?). This, however, usually will occur when new queen cells (called supersedure cells) are present; we did not see any in the split-hive when we pulled the dead queen out.
Another queen was ordered, a Russian this time, and she arrived and was installed on Thursday (May 19, 2011). As it is currently raining, we wait for a break in the weather to give the progress a check. Let's hope the queen install was successful this time.
We are in Troy, MI, at the moment; attending Michigan Basset Rescue's annual fundraising event. We left Minnesota at 3:30 AM CDT yesterday morning. Across northern Wisconsin and into Michigan's upper peninsula, we rolled across the Mackinac Bridge nine hours later. Upper Michigan has the same look and feel of far-northeastern Minnesota - very rural, paved roads but mostly single lanes, scenic overlooks, and poor cellphone reception. It is very pretty in that rustic, pine-bog way - comfortably familiar to those of us who grew-up and continue to live in the boreal forest region of the upper midwest (see Taiga).
Here, in lower Michigan, it is more low, rolling hills mixed with farmland and deciduous forest. Near the hotel, I spotted a black walnut tree (and empty shells). On the hotel grounds, all the flowering crab trees are in bloom - complete with their wonderful smell.
Before leaving Minnesota, much had to be done with the bees.
During the winter, when planning out this season's bees, I had planned out eight new hives. The two at the house were still doing well, and so, we were not going to have do anything new with them. One of the two at the house failed to make it through winter (as I have mentioned on this blog before). I put in a second order for a package of Italian workers with a Russian queen.
Last week, one of the newly installed packages of eight at the Ahrens' bee-yard, swarmed. This left down one package. However, the second order of a package of bees was arriving on this past Tuesday. That would suffice for the Ahrens' bee-yard, but it still left us short one hive at the house.
As it would have it, Theresa, of Fifth Avenue Farm, in Rice Lake township, in a bit of a panic, ordered a new Italian queen. She was worried that one of her new hives of Carniolans was in the process of beginning to swarm; she could not find the queen. I stopped out at the farm on Tuesday after installing the package at the Ahrens'; The queen was there (see bee photo), and the rest of the hive was working hard to bring in nectar and pollen - not getting ready to swarm.
This left Theresa's Italian queen still arriving on Thursday. We settled on the idea of making a split of the Italians that wintered over successfully and using Theresa's queen.
In between packing for the trip to Michigan, we began to get things ready for the queen's arrival. Mixed a pail of sugar syrup; loaded dog crates into the truck. Cleaned out a hive deep, selected four drawn frames of wax; loaded luggage and miscellaneous hound gear.
We had never made a hive split before. For those unfamiliar with this concept, it is basically take a number of frames with bees, comb, pollen, honey and all that from an existing, strong overwintered hive and putting them into a new hive with a new queen.
With the truck mostly packaged, and the arrival of the Italian queen in its fancy "Beeware!" box from the postoffice, it was time to get a split made and the queen installed. The donor-hive was stronger than I had thought it was be; three hive boxes full of bees, larvae, pollen, and honey. From being a struggling hive last May; needing to be requeened because of no queen and a drone-laying worker. We even combined the hive with a feral hive shortly after last season's requeen.
The split went well, and it is a just a matter of seeing if the queen and workers mesh well once the workers free the queen from her candy-cappedcage. We will have to check once we return to Minnesota.
Back here in Michigan, senior-hound, Gertrude, fell ill. She was lethargic, refused food and was running a fever. Luckily, this being a large gathering of dogs, there was a dog-doctor in the house. A visit from the doc, a few pills, some homeopathic treatment, and Miss Gertrude is doing better. Her fever broke, and she ate dinner; now she rests and sleeps.
With winter having peaked, most northern beekeepers will have wanted to check on their bees by mid-Fedbruary (we were impatient and opportunistic; we checked our hives in late January during an unusually warm two-day period). Here in northern Minnesota, we will likely have at least a month more of below freezing daytime temperatures. This means the bees in the hives will need to remain hunkered down in the hives until we get a little warm and the willows start to flower. Even with temperatures slightly more seasonable for us humans, this last stretch of winter is often the time when there a good chance of die-out in your hives.
As previously mentioned, we gathered requirements, purchased equipment, assembled equipment once it arrived, priced and sourced bees, ordered bees, and the list seems to go on from there. The bees have been ordered; six packages of Carniolans and two packages with Russian queens and Italian workers (the idea being the Italian workers will eventually be replaced with Russian workers). Brood boxes have arrived and have been assembled and stained with a nice mandarin orange color. All of these capital costs (business-speak for total cost required to bring a project into an operable and functional state) add up; as of this writing, each hive is having an average cost of about $208.00 (€ 153; £129). This amount will rise as we still need to purchase honey supers, bulk cane sugar for initial feeding, pollen patties, and as winter approaches, homasote board and insulation wrap and, possibly, more cane sugar. We are also relatively certain there will be other, small costs along the way.
After checking the hives on June 6, 2010, it was determined, with much regret, that the Minnesota Hygienic Italian queen...must die. The warrant was signed when I located a supplier of new MHI queens, placed my order, and 5 days later, a small, buzzing package was in the mailbox. The queen arrived last Thursday, and we got home from St. Paul far too late (bad weather postponed our departure from 5:00 PM until 9:00 PM) for me to depose the monarch; it would wait until the next day.
April 10, is quickly approaching. It is the day we head to Stillwater, MN to pick up the bees. Until then, we have been busily preparing things. On Friday, there were two large boxes of stuff sitting on the front porch. It was the unassembled frames, wax-coated foundations, two new bee suits/jackets, a new smoker, and several other miscellaneous things. It looked like we would be assembling frames over the weekend.
