Tag Archives: queenless hives
A Year of Backyard Beekeeping
Regular readers of this blog know that I once kept hundreds of hives in Florida and Saskatchewan. That was a long time ago. Now that I’m all grown up, I’ve got just two colonies in my Calgary backyard. Much more … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Yards, Beekeeping, Honey
Tagged Calgary, extracting, package bees, packing honey, queenless hives, Queens, skunks, urban beekeeping, wasps
9 Comments
Package Bee Population
Yesterday, I wrote about bee populations in a hive that starts as a package. The original bees slowly die while the number of new bees, arising from eggs laid by the package’s queen, rapidly increases. In yesterday’s example, the immigrant … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Queens, Science
Tagged Florida, package bees, queenless hives, Saskatchewan
10 Comments
A Depleted Home
A few days ago, a friend invited me to visit her bees. In one part of her apiary, there were three hives, neatly lined, single-storey. These hives had started the season as packages five weeks earlier. Two were excellent. They … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Queens
Tagged Alberta, package bees, pollen substitutes, queenless hives, Tolstoy
7 Comments
My Failure as a Beekeeper: Part IV
This is the fourth piece in my six-part description of my colossal failure as a beekeeper this summer. If you’ve been following this little series, you saw how I acquired a little queenless nuc, transported it to my home, and … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping
Tagged Alberta, Calgary, family, nuc, queenless hives, Queens, Tolstoy, weak hives
14 Comments
One Week with a Queenless Hive
Over a week ago, I brought a nuc into my back yard. Twelve days have passed, so there should be an emerged virgin queen inspecting the neighbourhood, looking for boys. My little nuc was intentionally built as a queenless hive. … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Queens
Tagged Calgary, queen breeding, queen cells, queenless hives
17 Comments
Sticking the Queen In
Over the past few days, I’ve written a little about identifying poor queens by examining brood patterns. Then we discussed finding and pinching her failing heinousnesses. The next step in your requeening saga is inserting the caged queen. Here in … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, History, Queens, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged Benton cage, queen cages, queenless hives
2 Comments
Good Queen; Bad Queen
Quite a few commercial beekeepers replace queens every second year. It’s a scheduled event, sort of like a birthday. Half the hives will get a new queen in 2017, the other half in 2018, then back to the first group … Continue reading
