Natural Beekeeping

Top Bar ApiRevolution has begun! Lets make some inexpensive Top Bar Hives and let them be pesticide free on their own natural comb! Che Guebee is a rebel bee fighting for the survival of the Biodiversity we all depend on and which is seriously endangered by deforestation and mono-crop agriculture! What kind of teaching have you got if you exclude nature?

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Re-queening CGB-3 hive

As you can read in my last post I have re-inspected the hive CGB-3 and once again found only eggs and no larvae nor capped brood. Either the new Queen is not fertilised properly or the worker bees are behaving in an unorganised manner not tending for the eggs. Eggs need high humidity not to dry out which was the case in this hive. Once the egg would dry out the Queen would lay another fresh one into the cell until even that one dries out and so on and so forth ...
New Queen in a cage with 5 attendant worker bees to feed her
Two days ago I visited my local bee inspector and told him about this issue. He thought this to be very strange case and suggested to re-queen. He gave me one of his last year Queens to do so. He re-queens his hives every year whether the queen is good or bad. The queen I've got from him was from the strongest of his colonies, a very good queen that is.

I removed the original queen from hive CGB-3 and waited for an hour before I placed the new Queen into this hive. I left the attendant bees in the cage with the queen which is debatable; some say remove them, others say it doesn't matter. My father-in-law did both ways without issues. We will see how this goes.
This hive has only two empty combs for the queen to lay into, so I gave them another comb with capped brood from a strong colony in case they need nurse bees (young bees) and an extra empty comb (once the bees hatch)
I will inspect this colony in a week and update accordingly.
Bees are working Calendula at this time
 Its August and very sunny and warm. The nectar flow is over but most of my colonies are still very busy foraging. Mostly orange pollen is being brought into the hive. I suspect Calendula since I have lots of them in our kitchen garden and many neighbours also have them.

I have seen this flowering plant near the river and I see both Bumblebees and Honeybees working it. Not sure what it is but will try and collect its seeds and plant it in my garden. The Water Lilies are also starting to bloom.

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