There is Still One

It is now August, and signs of the last part of summer are all around.  The county fair came and went, the school supply lists are out, and the leaves on the trees can be heard a little more as the wind blows through them. Minnesotans, although very fond of autumn, try not to mention its pending arrival.  We are soaking up every last drop of summer here.

In my last update, we had two awesome hives and I was daydreaming about a stack of honey supers taller than me on each one. We started to see fresh, capped honey.

With the changes in season come the usual changes to plant and animal life in the area. The corn is high, some of the flowers are going to seed, and the deer are out at sunset to eat up soybeans.  This isn't to mention how plump some of the toads have gotten:

Unfortunately, though, we have also had a change in our beekeeping season.

During one of the inspections a while back, we saw that the brood patterns were really healthy and we decided to not look into the bottom supers of our hives.  We justified this by thinking that we wouldn't want to disturb the main part of the brood and we should let them keep growing without our interruption. 

The problem was that the colonies were growing so quickly and with such strength that they were ready to reproduce another hive by swarming.  They had queen cells that we missed, and, by the time we noticed, it was too late. My hive had successively swarmed, meaning they made a new queen and half of the bees took off...and then did all of that again.  By the time we had made it back for another inspection, the numbers were low and there were queen cells and queen cups all over the place.

Mr. Bee read as much as he could about what happened, what to do, what to look for and how to split next year, and I contacted a couple of beekeepers, especially one from Canada who I follow on social media. We found what to look for and decided on how to work the bees for the rest of this season. My hive ended up having too low of numbers too late in the season and would not have enough resources to winter (or to produce much honey at all, for that matter).

We had considered adding the bees to the other hive, but we discovered drone (male) eggs scattered throughout the hive as well as a couple of other small signs that point to a colony that is not "queenright".  In other words, the workers started to lay eggs since there was still no fertilized queen.  This is a major problem since workers can only lay male eggs (read: not worker bee eggs) and, in this case, the hive is doomed.  It was very disappointing, but we have already cleaned it out.

On a more optimistic note, Mr. Bee's hive also swarmed, but we think they had a successful first swarm and have been building their numbers back up since then.

We wish we could have kept that first queen!  She had the best egg pattern we had ever seen. Below, though, is the great-looking pattern we saw when we searched to see if they did, in fact, have a queen (please excuse the extra white beekeeping sleeve).  This pattern is promising.

We never expect that every year will be a banner year, but it has been hard seeing such strong hives take such a turn due to our error. We lost one hive, but we are very hopeful that the remaining hive call pull itself around. We'll have a small harvest this year, but we are gaining knowledge and experience...and quite a bit of humility.

Despite the challenges, we continue to enjoy the time together and marvel at the complexity of these tiny creatures.

...oh, and we did also make sure to enjoy tasting the honey straight from the comb.

Our next step is to consider how to get this remaining hive ready for a harsh Minnesota winter. Even though we are again recognizing that we don't have ALL the experience and knowledge necessary for beekeeping, we are dedicted to helping the bees as much as we can. We are thankful for the support of many beekeepers and we hope to report more progress in the next post.