What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?

Exodus

Beeman moved his hives to a new location near the McDonald-Dunn Forest.  I have a little hive there, too.      

 

Today I was checking in on my virgin situation and noticed more activity than usual at the entrance to one of Beeman's hives.  His bees are usually busy on a hot day like this...

...but today they were acting weird.  Loitering, even.  And there were drones emerging, too.

 

Then they started pouring out of the hive like liquid, with the most incredible sound you can imagine. 

 

 

 

They kept coming, and COMING, AND COMING.

 Once in the air they appeared very disorganized. But be patient...

Bees have perfected the art of organized chaos.  Eventually a pattern to their movements became evident and I was able to determine which tree they had chosen. 

Maybe four or five minutes later, and the entrance is back to normal.  Minus a few thousand bees of course.  And the queen.  

 

They chose a tree not fifteen feet from their original hive.  Just for fun, I wanted to capture Beeman's colony and put it in my own hive. That is way too high though. 

So here they rest, clustered tightly around a branch, protecting the queen and weighing their options.  To a beekeeper swarms can be a frustration and represent a loss of hive productivity and honey-making potential. 

 

But in terms of the bees it is colony-level reproduction and a sort of cleansing ritual for the hive.  I have observed many swarms in flight, but I am still blown away that I was able to see this one come to life.   

The Virgin Diaries - Part I

This is what I love about beekeeping.  You never know what you're going to get when you open a hive.  In this case it was virgin queens, and lots of them. Beeman's hives are bursting at the seams, and this one seems a bit restless and unsatisfied. 

Swarm cells.  Supercedure cells.  Cells constructed and then abandoned.  Cells ripped apart by an emerging virgin queen.  Cells intact housing a virgin queen.  This hive doesn't discriminate. 

I removed a cell and opened it up out of curiosity.  There is the live queen, sitting in waxy darkness waiting to learn her fate.  She is small and unmated, with a slender abdomen not yet ready for egg-laying, and she's all mine. 

Into a queen cage she goes until we decide where to put her.  Imagine being suspended in a cage, in darkness, with thousands of others clamoring for your release, when you'll either be accepted as the future of the hive or killed on the spot.  What a game of chance.

This is the swarmy virgin-factory.  This hive is literally spilling over with bees.  Dripping, buzzing, crowded, restless bees.

I caught another live one just hatching.  In the cage you go. 

Sidenote:  to the beekeeper go the spoils.  Always reserve a taste for yourself.

Another nice queen cell.  Let's open it and collect another. 

By this time the hive has been open for a while. 

We ran out of queen cages, so for now they'll live in these jars.  When I dream of my perfect bedroom, there is an observation hive in the wall above my bed, and jars like these on shelves. 

That dark beauty is a definite keeper.  In fact, I may take her with me and make a split from my hive at home.  A virgin queen is a gamble - she has to make it out on a mating flight and then back again, but experimentation and a bit of uncertainty are the spark of beekeeping for me.

Beeman has incredible colonies.  The swarmy virgin-factory is one of his.

In all, we gathered six new queens from that hive that were healthy and strong enough to save.  Two are going with me, and four are co-habiting this nuc for the time being (two in cages and two unhatched cells).