Connie, my part Russian hive, has been fading for about a month. I decided last week to re-queen her.<\/p>\n
The symptoms are that she has no activity at the front of the hive. There were 2\u00a0 or 3 bees hanging out, but no foraging. This is a sign that the hive is in trouble. I thought she had suddenly died, but when I opened here up, there were lots of bees, just hanging out, and there was lots of honey in the main hive. I took the supers off because they were empty. Clearly, Connie had not been foraging when the other hives are packing away honey.<\/p>\n
Last night I drove down to Summit NJ where a beekeeper named Ivan has a lots of bees and always has a few queens. I got a very lively and fat queen from him. There was a language issue, so I guess I got an Italian queen. He said had Carnies and I asked for one, but this looks more like an Italian than a Carnie. I will know when the new bees come out in three weeks.<\/p>\n
I put the cage in the hive last night and when I came home from work tonight, it looked like they were not treating her aggressively. I released her and she ran right into the hive. It was very cool to watch. She acted like she wanted to get down to business.<\/p>\n
Even beforeI released her, the hive was showing much more activity. Suddenly there are dozens of bees running off and returning with pollen. I think she was accepted and is now dominating the hive.\u00a0 It looks like a different hive.<\/p>\n
I will know for sure 18-22 days from now when the new brood emerges. I should see new bees, somewhat smaller than the older bees, flying around the entrance.<\/p>\n
It is only a month and a half before the first frost. I am hoping for a long warm autumn so that Connie can build up some population. Connie can lay thousands of eggs a day, and from the looks of this queen, she might just do that.\u00a0 She already has a good stash of honey in the hive boxes. With a little luck, Connie will come out next Spring healthy and happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Connie, my part Russian hive, has been fading for about a month. I decided last week to re-queen her. The symptoms are that she has no activity at the front of the hive. There were 2\u00a0 or 3 bees hanging out, but no foraging. This is a sign that the hive is in trouble. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.westnyackhoney.com\/bees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}