Starting Over in 2013

Several years ago I caught a swarm of bees in the meadow just north of Rose Hill House (the former Rouse House of the Lawrenceville School) so I got the necessary equipment and set up a little apiary right there, in a sunny spot in the meadow. The bees seemed to thrive, and one summer I extracted about nine gallons of honey from two hives. Later that summer both hives succumbed to wax moths. I tried to get bees again the next summer, but bad weather in Georgia interfered with my plans. Two years went by without any bees in my apiary. I decided my meadow wasn't sunny enough for bees. This year Jake Morrow offered a better location for my hives, in the meadow at Big Red Farm, just a couple hundred yards to the north of my old meadow. So I ordered three packages of bees from S&F Honey Farm and got ready. On April 18 the bees arrived. Jake and I drove to Flemington to pick them up, arriving back at Lawrenceville as the sun was setting. By the time it got dark, I had got stung three or four times (it gets hard to count after two or three) but we had three hives installed, in a neat row. Each hive has one deep hive body, a plastic division board feeder, nine frames of foundation including two or three with drawn out foundation from previous years. Hive 1, at the north, had quite a few dead bees in the bottom of the package. Hive 2, in the middle, nothing remarkable. Hive 3, at the south, was the one that stung me. I saw a small hive beetle in the package as we were opening it up. I killed it, and didn't see any more, and I sure hope there aren't any more of those. I forgot to remove the corks from the queen cages! On April 20, with the help of two Lawrenceville students, I opened the hives and removed the corks so the queens could get free. A few days later I checked back, and queens 1 and 2 had got out as expected. Queen 3 was still in her cage. I moved the cage to the top of the division board feeder to encourage her to get moving. That wasn't such a great idea! A few days later when I checked, it appeared she had taken up residence in the division board feeder. I removed the empty queen cage. April 28 Jake and I checked the hives and saw eggs and brood in all three, but also queen cells in hives 1 and 2. In hive 1, the bees had eaten away a lot of the old drawn out foundation and replaced it with fresh comb, all drone comb size-- bigger cells than usual. Queen 3 was laying eggs where she should be, not in the division board feeder. All is good! May 4, the queen cells in hives 1 and 2 are capped. There was capped brood in each, but I didn't see any eggs or larvae. Hive 3 had fresh eggs, larvae, and capped brood. Jeff Burd drove by and asked how they were doing, and all I could say was "I'm not sure!" Jeff kindly offered to look at them with me, and confirmed what I had seen: capped queen cells, but no eggs or larvae. What to do? Nothing; just wait. May 12, the queen cells in hives 1 and 2 have hatched. None of them is active anymore; evidently a queen hatched in each hive and proceeded to go around and kill off the competition. No sign of eggs or larvae, but I assume we are in good shape. Hive 3, however, is now in the same shape as the other two were last week: capped queen cells, capped brood, but no fresh eggs and uncapped larvae. All three hives are consuming 1:1 sugar syrup steadily. Hives 1 and 2 went through about a quart in the last week, hive 3 went through about two quarts in that time. All have some capped honey and are busily drawing out comb, but still have plenty of empty space in which to work. I am preparing a second deep hive body and frames of foundation for each hive.