At the Boojum Bee Yard: March

The Boojum Bees have grown!

This week Kurt Merrill, generational beekeeper and the executive director of the Boojum Institute, captured two recently-swarmed colonies. We hived the colonies, putting the captured bees into a box hive with frames, pollen, and syrup to entice them to stay.

The first swarm Kurt calls the "Swimmer Swarm", because he had to "swim" through a bunch of attic insulation to get to them. He couldn't wear his veil because it was too big, he would not have fit. So he vacuumed these bees with the special "bee-vac" without a protective veil! He didn't get stung though.

This approximately 4 pound swarm was about a week old. The girls had hung 5 hand sized pieces of comb from the room of this attic and the queen had laid them full with eggs already!

photo: Kurt Merrill

The swarm was put into a hive body with frames, a feeder (with sugar syrup) and a pollen patty.

photo: Kurt Merrill

Enjoying their new home:

photo: Kurt Merrill

The second swarm had settled into a cardboard TV box. He used a mesh tarp to wrap around the box to haul it off.

photo: Kurt Merrill

Opening the bottom of the nest:

photo: Kurt Merrill

Exposing the top of the hive. In this picture, Kurt has already cut out about 20 pounds of honey and half of the comb and bees:

photo: Kurt Merrill

The comb was cut out to be salvaged and then placed into a hive body. There was no brood (baby bees) but several caped queen cells were present, meaning that they had most likely recently swarmed.

 photo: Kurt Merrill

The empty box, a small nuc (center) with the honey I remove, and a hive body with most of the bees and come of the comb. It is hard to see but there were many hundreds of bees in the air.

photo: Kurt Merrill

I am not sure if this hive had a queen or not. I found these three queen cells (they are the cells that look like peanuts) in the hive. I pressed the comb into a frame of comb and placed it in the hive. If there is a queen - she will open these cells up and kill them. If not, one of them will hatch, kill the other two and assume her throne.

photo: Kurt Merrill

Close-up of the queen cells:

photo: Kurt Merrill

Taking to their new home:

photo: Kurt Merrill

People always ask me "how you tell the difference between the boys and the girls". The drones are circled in this picture. They are larger, have square back ends (with no stinger) and much larger eyes.

 photo: Kurt Merrill