After four years of beekeeping, I still feel like a rookie sometimes. I saw something yesterday I'd never seen before.
Remember her? My pretty blue dot queen? She just flew away yesterday! I was working with her hive and she crawled up to the top bar, up on to my hand and then she was gone! Off into to the sky. What the heck! I guess there's a chance she'll find her way back but it was unnerving all the same.
To make matters worse, the hive she came from is not looking good at all. Maybe that's why she flew off? It was an 8-frame split that dwindled down to about 4 frames last week and now it's only 2! Yikes. The queen is laying eggs but there are so few workers that they can't raise the brood. So sad. My worker bees are MIA, the queen is AWOL and now that hive may be FUBAR.
Also sad is how the parent hive is not looking great either. The queen is laying but they have mites. They were treated last fall with Apivar and then with Formic acid a couple of weeks ago (but it was probably too cold for it to work). Sigh.
I'll end on a good note. The package is building up nicely. No mites on the sugar shake roll yesterday. Lots of nectar coming in. The original bees from the package will start dying off this month but the queen is laying lots of eggs so the numbers should start going up soon.
Lots of dandelions in the yard for them! I'm afraid that the honey harvest will be pretty puny compared with years past though. Has my beginner's luck finally run out??
