Splitting and Requeening

My original hive that I started in 2006 from a B. Weaver package has been situated at my friends’ home in Plano for quite some time now. No doubt, the original queen was superceded because I noticed after a time that the bees had become more aggressive. My goal going into this season was to requeen this hive. If you watch the video you can see what I have done already. About a week-and-a-half ago, I took the 5 supers and divided them into 4 hives. A few days later, I took two of the honey-bound supers, leaving just three hives. The queen ought to have been in one of the supers, I just didn’t know which. After taking the video, I went to work.

I started with the smallest hive on the far right. It was very small, being just one shallow super. I noticed that there was brood present, and quickly saw a queen/swarm cell. These are larger cells that the bees make to create a queen bee. It’s shaped almost like a little peanut dangling off of the comb. They feed a very young larva royal jelly so as to change her destiny from mere worker bee to queen bee. As I went through the frames I saw several more queen cells. This was a strong indication that no queen was present in this hive, else the hive would have no need to create queens.

Moving on to the middle hive, consisting of one medium super, I noticed a lot of honey in the frames. Then some brood, and then most importantly, I noticed eggs. Eggs look like a small white bar in the bottom of a cell. Since it had been over a week, the only way there could be fresh eggs in this hive is if the original queen were in it. So this was the hive with the queen.

The last hive on the left was the largest most powerful hive. It consisted of one deep super, and because it was in the original hive position, most of the bees stuck with this hive. There was a lot of capped brood in this hive (larvae that are pupating and forming into worker bees), no signs of very young larvae, and no eggs that I could see. This meant that there was no queen. I didn’t look through every frame, but among the ones I saw, there was no queen cell. If in fact there wasn’t a queen cell in this hive, that would mean that this super had no eggs/larvae young enough to form a queen. Without an introduced queen, this hive would be doomed, because it would be unable to produce a queen. Eventually a worker bee would start laying eggs, which would not be able to develop into a worker bee or a queen bee–they would only form drone bees. And the hive would eventually collapse from too many men, and not enough work being done (I hope you are chuckling). Evolutionarily, I suppose you could consider this a last ditch maneuver of a colony to dispense its genes by sending drones up to mate with queens.

Anyway, hives without queens (i.e. not queen right) are known to be nasty and irritable. And this hive was no exception. I sprayed them quite liberally with sugar syrup as I inspected them, but they were not happy.

Three hives and only two new queens. I would not be able to requeen all three hives, and I wasn’t prepared to combine hives (special techniques required). I decided I would prefer to kill the old queen in the middle hive, but during a second inspection I could not find the queen. So I made the decision to requeen the small hive on the right, by first destroying all the queen cells, and then placing the queen cage. Doing this was interesting, as I was using pliers to remove these large fat larvae in the queen cells. Culling. It’s not something that us non-farmers are used to. But it’s the job that must be done.

I placed the other queen in the large hive on the left and shut everything up. So the old queen lives in the middle hive, her day of destiny yet to come. Most likely I will try again to destroy the queen and then do a combine with the smallest hive. Another option would be to move this hive to someplace else. Time will tell, but I prefer the former.

I’ve learned a lot as a first-time splitter and requeener. Back at my home, I checked the two hives that I had previously requeened last week. In both hives the queen cages were empty and eggs were present. Exactly what I had hoped for. Now time will tell on how the hives will progress. It’s been a lot of work–everything from driving out to Paris (Texas, not France) to buy woodwork and supplies, to gluing and nailing, to painting, to purchasing queens, and so forth. It feels like I am progressing from someone that just keeps bees to being an actual beekeeper, and I ought to take some satisfaction in that.