discouraged, but a light might be at the end of the tunnel

What a time my girls have been through.....
Since my last post I have enjoyed one single stint of good times and that is it. I was having queen issues when it became 100% apparent that I did not have a queen and the new hatchlings were not laying. I called a semi-local queen rearer and he advised that I give them two weeks to see if the hatched queens will mate and to put some brood in there if at all possible. I gave them three weeks and two full frames of brood. At three weeks I ordered the queen, went to install her and boom, I had capped brood........ I sold the queen to a buddy and was happy to have growing bees again(that one single stint of good times). Then a few weeks later, more queen cups. I thought it was an individual thing so I cut the first one out. Then I found bunches(left them). About 4-5 if I recall. So I let them requeen at will. I also decided to add a second deep for brood since they were nearly complete with the bottom deep and were laying brood. Since May 5th 2008 they still have yet to fill out that bottom box. :? I gave them a few weeks in the second deep with ZERO comb production so I decided to remove it to "force the last few frames into production. My bee population was small enough so as not to crowd them. I had also found several full sized queen cells.


So I take the deep off, set it on the ground, and see tons of bees refusing to leave the super. So I smoke them. A lot. A whole lot. I get em good and riled up and realize Im not doing any good so I leave em to their own devices. 30 minutes later I look out and see a swarm. I give them time and start prepping a catch bucket. As they simmer down I find them on a lower branch of a gum tree and bump them in the bucket. Like a fool, I open the hive, and dump em right in. World War 3 will look a little like what I saw that day. Bad move.

Apparently I had a hatched queen hiding in the super I took off. I took her way from the hive body, I smoked her out in the open, and I restricted the space inside the main hive making the workers buzz about in the air exposed to this new homeless queen. then to add insult to injury I tried putting the swarm back in the hive. So I had a supercedure queen that may have been the savior of my hive. Then I ruined her and a good two handful of bees.

Im still not sure why my girls are so hard on wanting to replace every queen they get, but lesson learned- let them do it. I also learned that two hives is better than one. I would have combined hives a long time ago after all this crap. I learned not to smoke too heavily and to not make drastic changes in the bee habitat. Especially all at the same time. And I also learned NOT to put a swarm back in a hive if they even remotely have the possibility of having a queen. I also learned a few tricks about how to put a small swarm back in without causing the guards to kill the non-queen females. Not that I may ever need it again, but I learned something new none the less.

For now I have a shallow super on top of my original brood box. I have queen cells that have been chewed through and for the first time in months I have drones popping up. Im not seeing drones in any alarming numbers so for now I dont think its a laying worker. Im hoping this new queen will be able to keep the peace during the winter. THey are getting testy from all this stress and are beginning to be difficult to work. No stings so far, but a lot more angry bumping my hood and buzzing my head. They also are more apt to come out and investigte me if I stand near the hive. They never did that before, not like they do it now. These girls are not being the easy to maintain girls I was told I was getting. ITs discourageing.