Surprise at the hive-the bees are back!

Wa-a-ay back in June we introduced the new queen Flora. Wewere so proud and happy.

And then, a month later, our hopes were dashed. We openedFlora, expecting a booming hive and found nothing. No sign at all that we had amated queen. Sure, there were bees working away, but where were all the eggs, larvae, and capped brood? All we could find were cells half full of honey.

Our mentors all suggested finding a queen-right swarm (aswarm of bees with their queen) and combining them with our now queenless hive.

About two weeks after our discovery, Doug Smith, beekeeper with the Santa Clara ValleyBeekeepers Guild (check out their blog here),let us know he was was cutting out a hive that had been living in agarage wall for the last six months. Did we want it?

Indeed we did! Doug graciously put those garage bees into one of our empty bee boxes, along with their garage queen and some combfilled with larvae and brood. Then in the evening, when all of the foragers had finally come home for the night,one of our favorite blog readers, Tina K. (Rescuer of Nugget) wrapped the wholepackage up nice and neat so we could take it back to Sunset that night.

The next day we opened up Flora so that we could combinenew hive and old hive, and what did we find?

The hive was bursting with brood! Queen Flora had laid eggsout to the edges of the frames, even taking over territory usually reserved fora ring of honey (that’s why Kimberley is smiling in the photo at the top of this post). Now the hive is full of bees, and every afternoon at 2, a cloud of young bees hovers at the entrance as they take their orientation flights.

Unfortunately, our old friends, the varroa mites, seem to be multiplying (see the little red bumps on the backs of the bees in the red circles?).

But as you can see, except for the mites, the Lang hives are doing well, with Fauna stacked taller than we stand. She’s filling those three supers with honey.

And we have this completely unrelated box fullof swarm bees that we are adopting (that’s the new hive, on top of the blue box that houses Flora. We have to make an ant-proof stand for her).

We’ll need a name for the new hive. Readers, any suggestions?