Farming is a weather dependent industry, so my work for the day is often determined by the absence or presence of rain.
This week, I had scheduled a bee day, including a queen-rearing workshop, but with the rain, I just ran errands and drove back home.
This is from the second of three rounds of rain.
When I got home and opened the door, I found two boxes full of unassembled beekeeping equipment, so what great timing! I needed to place supers once the weather turned dry, and put my time into putting it all together.
I thought I had plenty of equipment for three hives when I started the season, but with a split and two colonies from fallen tree limbs, my resources were depleted. Five supers and fifty frames was the order.
When the skies dried up the next day, I checked on my observation hive. Without an outer cover, I like to check it for water after rainfalls and dry the glass if needed.
I found mushrooms and a droopy daylilly on the way there. I guess mushrooms happens with rain.
Such an adventurous long walk from my back door to the hive. Not.
After I dried off the glass, I inspected the frames and found a new queen! She was running everywhere. Very quickly. She must have been very new — she appeared to have no attendants.
Out of 13 tries, this is the best photo I got. She kept diving under cover.
One week ago, the observation hive had many queen cells in various stages.
This day, I had many empty queen cells.
One cell had a dead queen inside. The rest of the cells were empty.
Afterward, I placed supers on the appropriate hives then visited my newest hive. This hive was populated from a swarm that had taken up residence a tree branch. Last week’s big storm knocked it down and I got to save its bees. Since there was so little comb in the branch, I think it may have been just a week old. I gave it a frame of brood from a nearby hive that needed some decongestion, waited a week, and — I found the queen!
I had hoped I got the queen when the tree limb fell, but you never know. I think the frame of brood gave this colony a jump start.
Opening bee hives and seeing progress makes me feel like I just got a birthday gift.
The Iola was also looking good. A frame of comb has now been filled with nectar:
The frame as of 6/12/14 on the left, 6/27/14 on the right
I’m hoping for a new week of good weather!