Category Archives: beekeeping

I believe Knives’ hive may now be Knives-less. I inspected the hive this past weekend and didn’t see any sign of the queen and, more importantly, no signs of eggs either. I didn’t see any the previous weekend, but my inspection was cut short by a rain shower before I got too deep into the hive.

Here’s a shot of me in my fancy new Ultra Breeze suit going frame by frame looking for some sign of a laying queen.

My only other thought is perhaps the hive swarmed and the new queen hasn’t started laying yet. I did checkerboard the hive in late February, but perhaps that didn’t do the trick to suppress the swarm instinct.

Luckily, I have a new queen coming next week so all his not lost with Knives. After the Large Marge incident, I decided it was best to go ahead and requeen this hive with known gentle stock. I should get one more inspection in this weekend to hopefully confirm or deny if my hive is queenright. If I do find eggs, I can look forward to the fun task of finding an unmarked queen to “retire” before introducing the new queen. Otherwise, I can be fairly certain I can requeen with a minimal of fuss.

Large Marge has now officially joined the Round Rock Honey empire. Last night, Konrad and Lance came out to Baab-Brock farms after sunset to get the hive all trussed up and ready for transport to a remote location where they can split and requeen the hive safely.

The first step was to give the hive a big blast of smoke to get all the bees hanging out at the entrance back inside. We then immediately taped up the front entrance to prevent any of the girls from deciding they weren’t going out without a fight.

We then applied a wrapping of tape along the seam of each super to prevent them from slipping while the hive was being moved. We started at the bottom and worked our way up until the bees decided to get smart and come out through the top inner cover. We had to quickly tape up around the telescoping outer cover and then we were good.

After all the supers were taped up, we then wrapped the hive in 4 straps to keep it securely together when we picked it up.

After that, we felt we were in no immediate danger from the hive. I’d also like to thank Knives for being chill during the whole procedure even though we were stomping around her hive as well.

Then it was just a matter of the three of us picking up the hive and making our way through the backyard and up to the truck. A six super hive is heavy, and it took all three of us lifting to make it work.

Here’s a final shot of me with Large Marge. I learned a lot about beekeeping with this hive, and it definitely makes me a little sad to see her go. I feel good though knowing she’ll be part of an excellent beekeeping operation

While we are still putting together a game plan on moving Marge’s hive, I thought it would be a good idea to run a post mortem on my experience with this hive. Not only will it help me formalize my approach to urban beekeeping in the future, but hopefully it will help some new beekeepers out there avoid an experience with an agressive and possibly AHB hive.

Talk to Beekeepers in the Area
If possible, get in touch with beekeepers who have hives in the general vicinity of where you plan on placing yours. Ask about the prevalence of AHB in the area, and if they personally experienced problems before. When I spoke to Konrad about Marge, he said that his hives south and south east of the river always seem to run hotter than his hives up north. Having this information ahead of time can help you make decisions on hive management and/or factor in to your decision on placing a hive in a certain area.

Requeening Philosophy
My initial game plan was to let my hives requeen themselves the old fashioned way with the thought of taking advantage of the feral bee population that had the genetics to survive the often extreme Texas seasons. In the case of Knives, this worked out well. The hive overcame a lot of initial hardships (pesticide poisoning, worst drought in 50 years, etc.), survived the winter, and is still mostly calm during inspections. Marge, not so much.

My new game plan is to requeen with known genetics for all my hives in urban areas. I’m lucky that Marge’s hive is in a location with no real neighbors on the sides or back of the property line otherwise the situation could have ended up a lot worse. My beekeeping friend said it best, “Queens are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” This is especially true if they are mating with drones of unknown and potentially AHB origins.

While it will be more expensive to buy new queens, the expense totally outweighs the pain (literally) and heartbreak this hive has caused. It can also give you a chance to experiment with a lot of different breeds that are now available to see which works best for your style and area. I mean, who wouldn’t want to tell their beekeeping buddies about the new Tiger Queen you just installed.

Summary
Urban Beekeeping is a great hobby, and I hope my posts about this hive don’t discourage anyone from picking it up. I’ll be sure to have a follow up on moving Marge, and if I decide to requeen Knives this spring or wait until fall.

When I wrote last week, I had a very harrowing experience with Large Marge’s hive and got stung several times on the neck. Her hive was very aggressive, and I went back the next morning when the temperature was just above 50 hoping the girls would not be as active. That was so not the case. Just opening the outer cover sent them boiling out of the entrance, and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and quickly closed up the hive.

I reached out to a bunch of experienced beekeepers in the area, and most believed that the new queen in Marge’s hive mated with an Africanized drone thus eventually turning the hive into the aggressive mess I dealt with last weekend.

My initial plan was to requeen following the instructions by Michael Bush. I was a little nervous about this process especially after reading this paragraph:

First, Be prepared to be stung. Be prepared to walk away for a while. Be prepared to run away for a while. I find running through some brush is a good way to get rid of clinging and following bees.

Luckily, my beekeeping friend Jim Hogg was going to walk me through the process as he has lots of experience in these types of situations.

However, plans changed when one of the chickens of Baab-Brock Farms was found dead a few days later. All the chickens got chased around the yard for several hours when Marge’s hive was stirred up. We didn’t find any evidence of the chicken being stung to death, rather we think her poor heart gave out from the stress. The other three chickens are still alive and will most likely need counseling from this ordeal.

At this point, I felt the responsible thing to do was move the hive out of the neighborhood. I ended up selling the hive to Konrad of Round Rock Honey who will come move it to one of his remote apiaries. The current plan to is to move it one evening this week weather permitting. I’ve never moved a hive before, so this will be a new learning experience and extra precautions will be needed. I will certainly try and get pictures and write about the process in my next post.