It's been 23 days I believe since I reduced the Africanized bee hive down by 50%. This was killing 50% of the hive and the queen by shaking the bee frames off the frames and into soapy water. This was done to reduce the behavior of aggression problems I was encountering. It's not fun when your being attacked by bees.
I did write of my attack last week that happened in less then 2 minutes. Lesson learned that any thing I do, I must dress in layers, and be fully protected as the bee hive does respond very quickly. What is going on? I would love to pop the top of the Africanized bee hive to pull a test frame I put in 8 weeks ago. I just want to see if they have drawn comb on it. If they do draw comb then great an inexpensive material for foundations. Since I don't have nurse bees I speculate that the comb is not drawn out, so no need to go rifling through an overly sensitive defensive bee temperament. I can wait for Spring time.
I speculate that a new queen is in the bee hive because it's 5 days past the 16 day emergence of a queen. Hopefully the bee hive did requeen. Since the population was full strength numbers and I culled out 50%, plenty of nurse bees to requeen and even if not the nurse bees enough bees were out of the bee hive when I did the shake some how hopefully who ever makes the queen cell with the pheromones was able to do it.
The queen is going to be a virgin as no male drones exist because they were kicked out of the hive when Fall started. I have seen drones in the other hive awhile back. Interesting thing is I had never seen a drone during inspections. It would be interesting to know if she lays drones specifically to mate and then winter. Since were in Texas I wouldn't bet against that happening. Were still having upper 70's and a few 80's. Nights are in the low to mid 60's. Not ideal to lay, but with the events that took place I speculate she's gotta mate.
Prediction
Spring will come in 2016 and in January on some warmer days that we have the queen will start to lay. This will start the bee hive population. February will come and it's coldest during this month.
March will come and flights will take place even though nothing is available until April when Spring Flowers emerge. We have an emergence of wildflower bloom that is spectacular. We've had fall rain that germinates the Spring flowers. Sadly we didn't have any rainfall or early fall rain, so not too much was available for the bees. I did a lot of feeding of the bees this summer due to the drought. I thought some flowers would be coming up with the rainfall, but that isn't the case. Not even the native bufflo grass is putting up seed stocks that we typically have. Great thing is that I don't have to mow. Anyone want to come mow where the bee yard is? Yes, I do suit up as I have gotten attacked on the mower when I last mowed about 2 months previously.
I will build my bee wooden ware. I will be putting on 3 honey boxes on bee hive 1. I hope to have 3 nucs ready to go for a split in the Spring time when I receive my queens from Louisiana or California. I am getting a Varoa Mite Resistant strain of queens that are suppose to be good population growth and honey producers. Varoa Mite is 1 of the many factors of bee decline. Basically it's a flea on a bee is the easiest way to say what it is. It weakens a bee hive. This strain of bees will cart larvae out of the cells and drop them off outside when the mites are present. This reduces the numbers of the bees, but keeps the population of Varoa Mites in check.
Plan is to split the Africanized Bees to 3 Nuc Boxes, leaving the existing bee hive to repopulate. Sell the Nuc boxes after 45 days and recover some of my initial investment. A little bit learned is I should have added another box to the bee hive sooner and that probably would have curbed some of the problems I had with the bee hive. Maybe they were too populated. Just didn't have the resources to build comb though as not much pollen. Very hard to build a hive up when mother nature throws nearly 4 months of no rainfall.
I will have my 2 bee hives. Just am not in the place I thought I would be in. I wanted 2 productive bee hives producing honey. I rather have the money though selling Nucs then the honey production. I might change that though come spring time and just requeen the bee hive to have 2 bee hives producing the amount of honey I really want. At sometime I will need to split bee hive 1 though is my thought. So who knows. Nothing is certain as anything can happen when you have bees.
Zak
No comments:
Post a Comment