Bee and Kitten Update

I checked the hive this afternoon to see if the two hives had integrated yet.  Some of the bees from the queenless hive may have transferred to the larger hive, but many had not started integrating yet and the queenless hive had actually created queen cells from the brood comb I had transferred to them over a week ago.  The queen cells were pretty far along and one was even capped.  This means a new queen would be emerging soon and if she did, and the two hives had integrated, the new queen and current would fight to the death.  I'm pretty happy with the current queen, so that leaves me with two options I can think of.  One option would be to remove all the queen cells I could find on the queenless hive's comb and the other option would be to try to transfer the queenless hive back to its old location.  Either option had its downsides, but I didn't feel like killing the new queens and decided to go with the latter option.  Who know how this will work out.  

On a more positive note, the hive that already has a queen seems to be doing great and has grown in size dramatically.  The bees are making a mad rush for pollen and nectar and they've produced a lot of comb and brood.  Below are pictures of one of the combs I examined. 

 For a while now I've been interested in inserting electronic sensors into my bee hives to collect various types of data.  Last night I finally got around to ordering several humidity and temperature sensors from Mouser.  I also ordered the necessary parts to connect my AVR Dragon to the micro-controllers I want to program.  I envision having the temperature and humidity sensors equally distributed in one of the hives and controlled by one atmega which would consolidated the data into a single data-stream and feed it to a Raspberry Pi I purchased a while ago.  The Raspberry Pi would then store the data which could be remotely accessed via a wifi connection. 



Finally, the kittens have finally received a clean bill of health from the veterinarian and have gotten all of their vaccinations, so we've introduced them to the rest of the house and Joey Jo-Jo.  We made the introduction gradually with brief controlled interactions between Joey and the kittens over the period of a week, but yesterday we let the kittens out of there room for good and they've moved their base-of-operations to our bed. 

Bee Update - Big Pollen Day

Arrived home this evening to see the bees bringing home a lot of pollen. I'm not sure where they were getting it from, but it is apparently a very good source. 

 Also, two days ago, because one of the hives was lacking a queen, I decided to combine the two hives into one hive.  To do this I stapled a temporary divider (a single sheet of newspaper) across the center of the hive and placed the combs with their bees from the queenless hive into the back end of the other hive so they were essentially one hive separated in half by a sheet of news paper.  I also drilled a single hole in the back end of the combined hive to give the new bees a little more ventilation.  I'm not really sure if this will help of cause more problems in the long run. 

The combined hive (foreground) with the now empty hive in the background.  A few bees are still trying to stay in the empty hive, but most of them seem to be orienting themselves to the new hive. 

The new temporary rear entrance for the new bees. 

 And now, miscellaneous bee flight pictures!

Bee Update

Since their installations at the beginning of this month, both hives have been building comb and gathering pollen and nectar at about the same rate.   However, during a routine inspection this week, I noticed something that has lead me to consider the possibility of combining the two hives into one hive sometime in the next few days.  In one of the hives large portions of all of the combs are loaded with larva and pupa in various stages of development.  I can tell that this hive has a healthy queen and will be growing in population very soon.  In the other hive, however, there is no brood.  All of the combs are well built, but filled with honey.  This would indicate to me that there is either no queen or there is something seriously wrong with the current queen.  Either way, this hive won't last long.  During that inspection, I took one of the brood combs from the healthy hive and placed it in the sterile hive.  If the workers need a queen, they should be able to take some of the young eggs in the brood comb and raise them into queens.  Tomorrow I will check the hive and look for queen cells.  If there are any, I will let things move forward on there own, but, if things still haven't gotten better, I will seriously consider combining the hives. 

Garden Planted

 They say that, in spring, when the oak trees leaves have grown to about the size of squirrels ears, its time to plant corn.  Well, today the oaks leaves were just the right size, so my wife and I planted the garden. 

I ordered my seeds from www.nativeseeds.org and have been experimenting with the idea of saving seeds from one year to plant the next year.  So far I've identified a variety of corn, three types of beans, and a type of squash that seem to do pretty well in the eastern United States.  I'm not particularly wed to using only plants of American origin, but it just sort of turned out that way. 

In previous years I've been somewhat disappointed with the output of my squash and bean plants, so I'll be interested in seeing what kind of impact the honey bees have on these plants. Although there is currently nothing growing in the garden, a few of the bees seem to have taken a keen interest in the muddier parts of the garden.  I'm not certain, but I think they are interested in some of the minerals present in the garden soil. 

Kittens!

With the recent passing of one of our beloved cats, my wife and I felt a sort of emptiness in our live and worried that the surviving cat, Joey Jo-Jo Jr. Shabadoo, was becoming depressed.  For these reasons we decided that it would be best to add another cat to the family.  Selecting another cat that would be compatible with Joey Jo-Jo was a challenge.  Although Joey is a fairly big male cat (fixed too), he is very easily intimidated.  When I put on my shoes, he runs away.  When we open an outer door, he runs away.  When someone new enters the house he disappears.  You get the picture.  For that reason, we felt it would be better to get a younger cat that would be more open to other cats and wouldn't frighten Joey.  However, we were also very aware that younger cats can be a little annoying to older cats, so we decided that it would be best for us to get two kittens.

The boy-cat on the left is named Patrick and the girl cat (right) is Rihanna.

 We contacted a friend of ours who rescues stray cats and soon had two new very young kittens.  Initially, they had a lot of different illnesses and parasites to overcome, but, after a lot of medicines and good food, they are now healthy and big enough to be introduced to Joey Jo-Jo.  As I am finishing this entry (April 20th) we are going to introduce them to Joey tonight.  I hope things go well

Installing the second bee package - a totally different experience

 First, I checked out the previously installed package and things are not as bad as I previously thought.  The candy plug from the queen cages had been eaten away and the The bees were relatively calactively building

I made sure to have my smoker nearby and ready to go. 

Applying a few puffs of smoke at the entrance. 

Sorry for all the butt shots.  Things worked very smoothly this time.  I was able to check the comb building, remove the queen cage, check the syrup feeder level, and close up the hive in less than ten minutes.

 Once I closed up the first hive I then turned my focus on installing the second package in the neighboring hive. 

This second installation was textbook.  Everything went smoothly and quickly.  The bees were very calm and didn't become livid when I thumped the package.  The candy plug in the queen cage was nearly eaten through, but still intact.  The bees poured into the hive almost like water and immediately formed a healthy cluster around the queen cage when I briefly laid the cage on the mound of bees at the bottom of the hive.  I was probably able to finish the entire package installation in five minutes.