I said that the next post would be about the extraction, but I have reneged. I haven’t had the opportunity to do so. I have been busy with more pressing matters. One of them being getting an observation hive ready to show.

I have had the same bees in the hive for over 6 weeks now. the two frames that was in it became two frames of brood and no place for honey. When the top frame was removed, I accidentally broke the glass and I had to place all the bees in a nuc box while I got another glass panel cut to fit. I took the original bottom frame and placed it back in the bottom section of the observation hive and picked up another frame of partially pulled comb and put it in the top section.  I looked for the original marked queen and concluded that she probably got killed when the glass broke.

I used the observation hive without the queen for 3 more days. I decided that the bees would take to another laying queen real quick and found one in one of the swarm hives that I had stashed in my back yard. She had 4 frames of brood and eggs, so I figured that there were enough new larva that the bees in the swarm nuc could make another queen.

I picked the queen up to mark her and just as I got the paint stick close to her thorax, my thumb holding her twitched and flipped her into some high grass and weeds. I just plain lost the queen and had to show the observation hive once more without a queen. That was Saturday. Now in the morning I will look for another queen in another nuc and try to introduce her into the observation hive one more time. If I succeed, then all will be well. If I don’t then I will have to put the two frames in a nuc and get a frame of brood and larva to place in the nuc to maybe entice the bees to make a new queen.

This is what you will probably face in the future if you work with the bees long enough.  I also have to try to extract tomorrow and if that goes as planned, then I will post the results hopefully in the next post.

Keep on reading books, watching bee videos, and cleaning equipment. Until the next post, just enjoy your bees and honey.