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01/17/2006 Archived Entry: "Bleakness, hope, and confusion"

My bees are bastion of confusion to their owner. I am almost certain they are doomed and I am going to do everything I can to rescue them and just as I am about to complete it. I discover I may not need to.

Basically my bee numbers were dropping like flies (bad joke there). I knew there was no queen from the last inspection. Okay let me say 99% certain there was no queen. So after my discussion with Leonard from the Palm Beach bee keepers group at the fair. I got some numbers of some people who might be able to get me a queen. I called most of them to no avail. Then when hope is diminishing to utter bleakness, I try again and got in contact with a honey grower in my area. He will be more than happy to sell me a mated queen and some brood cell. Uphoria is mine. Not exactly. He doesn't have a queen cage and I also wanted some brood cells to go with it. Well here is my issue. I am worried just stuffing the bees in there may not be the best for my orginal bees. I know they have no queen and I am worried the tow sets of workers in the hive wil rage holy war. He explains to me that if my hive is weak then I will not really have an issue. Replace some of the frames with no bees in my hive with the brood cell and all should be right with the world. I am willing to try. The best part is since he has bees on the frames . I will need to borrow his box because of this . He has no problem with that and is very cool about answering my silly questions.

I will put the bees in the frame tomorrow as it is getting dark and I have to pull a night shift for work and a morning shift. So I leave the other bees alone in their box and place it in my yard near mine. Worst case I figure while I am gone the strong hive I bought will move into my hive.

I come home from work and I am all set to go into my hive do a final check and throw in some frames. I do a complete look over for a queen. No queen and then just as I am about to put the frame back I see it. A section of hive that looks like a peanut sticking out of the hive. A queen cell, my decimate, demoralized, tiny group of bees is not done yet!

My bees want to thrive and damn if they are not going to! Great brain boy, you go and buy a queen and bees and brood and now can't put them in there. So now I need to grab a quicky Nuc box and relocate the group I bought and give the other guy his box back and see about managing two hives. Also as a fallback if my first hive dies out even with the queen. I can still use the second group of bees.