My original hive is at it again. I don't know what those honey bees are thinking, raising swarm cells this late in the season! They're already swarmed at least once! GET OVER YOUR DESIRE TO SWARM ALREADY.
It's been a month since I've seen them. Last time I checkerboarded one of the hive boxes with empty frames to open up the space in the hive, give the queen more laying room, and give the worker bees more space to hoard their pollen. This entails inserting empty frames every two frames, to allow the bees more space and alleviate congestion. The frames that I inserted didn't have drawn out comb on them yet, so I thought that would really help to reprioritize the needs of the honey bees. On the other hand, the areas of extra room are not available yet to use, so I think this might be why they still want to swarm.
The only frame I pulled out today:
It's been a month since I've seen them. Last time I checkerboarded one of the hive boxes with empty frames to open up the space in the hive, give the queen more laying room, and give the worker bees more space to hoard their pollen. This entails inserting empty frames every two frames, to allow the bees more space and alleviate congestion. The frames that I inserted didn't have drawn out comb on them yet, so I thought that would really help to reprioritize the needs of the honey bees. On the other hand, the areas of extra room are not available yet to use, so I think this might be why they still want to swarm.
The only frame I pulled out today:
That's a swarm cell hanging past the bottom of the frame on the left and at the bottom on the right is the queen!
I'm not sure if queeny was murdering the swarm cell queen, but I did notice the hole on the side, pictured above.
I'm not sure what can really be done with these bees at this point. They're crazy if they really want more room. Since the yellow jackets were all over the place today and aggressively starting fights with the bees once I opened up the hive , I closed things up right away and decided to just continue to wait and see how things pan out.
Fingers crossed that they know what they're doing.
I'm not sure what can really be done with these bees at this point. They're crazy if they really want more room. Since the yellow jackets were all over the place today and aggressively starting fights with the bees once I opened up the hive , I closed things up right away and decided to just continue to wait and see how things pan out.
Fingers crossed that they know what they're doing.