6/6/2024
The beginning
On July 14th of last year, we transferred the second swarm from Howard County to the Gnome Home hive box. The night before the bees had fought us every step of the way as we moved the swarm box to the car. Both Linda and I was stung multiple times.
After the transfer, this colony quickly became our strongest. I’m fairly certain they helped persuade the other two colony to abscond. Nevertheless, they stayed with us through the winter.
Their only problem was the lack of resources for them to build up the needed honey supply for the winter. I did feed them in September and early October and this helped them to get through the winter.
We saw signs of activity off and on much of the winter. As it started to warm up in later winter, I pulled back the divider board enough to look at the closest honey frame. From what I could tell, it was about empty.
I started feeding them in March. At first they emptied the feeder very quickly, but then they started to leave it alone. This generally means that the bees are bringing in enough to live on.
The bad news
Then we got a cold spell the last part of March. I looked in the hive and found a lot of dead bees. I pulled enough frames back to find a small, but active colony.
The problem was that there where several frames the bees weren’t using. I removed two or three, but should have taken five or six. The frames not in use became a breeding ground for small hive beetles.
Once I became aware of the infestation, all frames not in use were removed. I cut out the affected comb and burned it. However, it was too little too late, the remaining bees absconded.
Next steps
All the frames were removed from the box and any suspect comb was cut out and burned. The bottom of the box has several beetle larvae as well as other unknown stuff. As much as possible, this residue was removed and burned. There was a bunch of burning going on.
I bought a propane torch from Westlake Hardware and toasted the inside of the box the best I could. After a lot of work, we decided the box was ready for new bees.
The good news
On May 26th, we had checked on the swarm trap in Howard County and found it full of bees. We hadn’t checked the box in six weeks, so we at least had an idea of how long the bees had been in the swarm trap.
There was a lot of activity.
The original idea was to build a new hive box to put the bees in. But, in light of what happened to the Gnome Home, it was decided to place the bees there.
On June 2nd, after a bonfire at church, we picked up the swarm box. In light of what happened the last time, we were ready for a fight. Didn’t happen, the bees were pretty docile.
The next morning, we moved the bees to the Gnome Home.
The first frame always gives me a hard time.
The next few frames
All of the frames really looked good. I’m hoping this year with the rain we’ve had the bees will have sufficient resources to make it through next winter.
There are always bees left in the swarm box. In this case, very few.
They only took a few minutes to find there way into the hive.
We took advantage of how little time it took to move the bees and took a look at the other hives
They all looked good. I did remove a couple of unused frames, but that’s it.
I hate that we lost the colony but at the same time excited that a great replacement was found.
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