Hawaii to the Rescue…maybe

After requeening Rue’s hive on September 23rd, a mid-October inspection showed no brood or eggs and extremely aggressive bees. I received several stings to the ankles and pulled over 100 stingers from my gloves and shoes after checking on the hive.

This late in the year, it is extremely difficult to get new queens, so I had to resort to calling up Kona Queens in Hawaii to get a queen shipped to the mainland. I installed her on October 25th, and checked the hive today. The queen cage is empty but I did not do a full inspection as the bees are still very aggressive. I’ll check the hive in two weeks. Either it will be calmed down due to the new queen or the new queen wasn’t accepted and the hive won’t make it through the winter.

I’m hoping the new queen was accepted because it was very obvious during the mid-October inspection that this hive was the obvious culprit in the robbing and ultimate death of Knives’ hive.  The top four supers were all honey with only the bottom two being used as the brood chamber. If this new queen does not take, I’ll lose the last hive at Baab-Brock farms as well as over 100 pounds of honey. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.