Sunday, September 5, 2010

Queen Me

5My MooseBoots path sometimes takes unexpected turns for the worst.  As excited as I am about the bees, they are not doing well.  It was able to figure out that my hive had gone queen-less.  I don't know how it happened, it just did.  Of course, the real red flag was a dramatic drop in the number of bees.

So, I called around and found an apiary that had one last queen.  I promptly picked her up and installed the cage in the hive.  This all happened about 3 weeks ago.  I am waiting to see if the hive will recover.  I look in the window everyday.  I am really nervous how few bees there are.  Perhaps, I re-queened too late.  We will see.  Of course, if the hive does not survive this year, I will try again next ... I am still on the waiting list for New England raised bees.



These type of set-backs only reinforces that I have much to learn.  Really, is that not what life is all about?  My MooseBoots path continues....

4 comments:

  1. Yup, sounds your queen left with some of her followers..I hope your new one can get things back on track. I think your last comment about setbacks reinforcing our learning process hit the nail on the head. Sometimes it seems that we are doing everything "right" - we set the right intentions, we work hard, we give it our best shot - and it flops. Happened to me a few weeks ago at a one day market. I had worked for 2 days beforehand, baking and getting ready, and came home with almost everything I took to sell :(. The next step was to figure out, "What just happened? What am I to learn from this?"

    I'm glad I waited to see how you did with your bees before getting mine ;) I might just get a neighbour (4 miles away or so) to set up some hives on our property, in exchange for some honey, then I can still enjoy the bees...and the honey!

    Good luck, really enjoy reading about your MooseBoots journey... Julie

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  2. Julie, we'll see how they do. I understand that this has been a hard year for bees in my area ... it has been hot and dry. I have started feeding them again in hopes of helping them. Thank you for following along on my journey.

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  3. I think we've been queenless from the beginning and just had a laying worker. The bummer is that the laying worker only laid drone eggs and all of those drones ate all of the honey. Dang!

    I hope the new queen is able to reestablish the colony ... I hope there's enough time. Seeing that empty hive just makes my heart weep.

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  4. Wendy, we will see. I am pretty distraught as well.

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