Our First Swarm has arrived!

Bee Swarm Caught using a bait hive Video of the Transfer

Transferring a colony of bees from a swarm trap into a Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Inside the bait hive, we put a small super frame with old black brood comb and the bees absolutely loved it! As you can see in the opening picture, the black comb was a huge hit with the swarm! We also used lemon grass oil to bait them.

Queen Bee Piping!! Videos of our new Queen Piping!

First, I would like to say that I am quite gullible! I will believe pretty much anything Bryan tells me, so of course YES he does trick me sometimes and YES I do believe him! We ordered a queen bee for one of our colonies. Bryan put her into the top bar hive and what happened next brought on quite an interesting dialogue!

Dialogue as follows...

Bryan:  "Our new queen is Piping"

Abby: "Ok....wait, What!?"

Bryan: "Virgin Queen bees will make a noise (insert his impersonation of the noise here) when they enter a new colony and its called Piping".

Abby: (laughing, thinking this is really a stretch for him to make this up!) "WHAAAT!?!? Are you messing with me? Cause I really thing you are messing with me!?"

Bryan: "No Im serious. Shes doing it right now!"

Abby: "WHAAAT!" (while running for the camera!) 

Ok folks...As if bees could be any more amazing, they go off and do something like this!! 

Piping: "Piping describes a noise made by virgin and mated queen bees during certain times of the virgin queens' development. Fully developed virgin queens communicate through vibratory signals: "quacking" from virgin queens in their queen cells and "tooting" from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping. A virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards. Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive.

Piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive. It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight. It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support.

The piping sound is a G♯ or A♮. The adult queen pipes for a two-second pulse followed by a series of quarter-second toots.^[2] The queens of Africanized bees produce more vigorous and frequent bouts of piping."

Bryan was able to get several good videos of her piping...listen careful, its quite impressive!!

Ordering a Queen Bee Online

One of the swarms that Bryan has caught this year is without a Queen...they were not making a queen for themselves, so we ordered a Queen bee to add to the colony. We purchased her online from QueenBeesForSale.com. We have been very pleased with the Corniolan bees so we wanted a Corniolan queen for that hive.

Corniolans:  "It is favored among beekeepers for several reasons, not the least being its ability to defend itself successfully against insect pests while at the same time being extremely gentle in its behavior toward beekeepers. These bees are particularly adept at adjusting worker population to nectar availability. It relies on these rapid adjustments of population levels to rapidly expand worker bee populations after nectar becomes available in the spring, and, again, to rapidly cut off brood production when nectar ceases to be available in quantity. It meets periods of high nectar with high worker populations and consequently stores large quantities of honey and pollen during those periods. They are resistant to some diseases and parasites that can debilitate hives of other subspecies."

She arrived overnight UPS in a hard case along with a few nurse bees to accompany her on the journey. I was so excited when the UPS truck pulled up...I met him in the front yard and said "Oh yeah! Is this my bee!" To which he paused and said "Your What!?". Oh oops, you didnt know you had some bees riding around next to you all day! I just said Thank you and went on inside.

This container was inside the UPS mailer...so I opened it on up to check and make sure everyone arrived safely and unharmed. The while tube coming out of the top of the cage is full of soft candy. This way the bees from the new colony can eat through the candy to release the queen slowly into the hive. 

Here she is in the hive getting to know her new colony. 

Kenyan Top Bar Hive Construction

New YouTube Video Post on Kenyan Top Bar Hive Construction

Hive Inspection

Taking a look at the busy busy bees! The bees are doing great and are pretty much the only thing still thriving throughout the terrible heat we just experienced! 

I love seeing the new wax they are forming in an impressive amount of time, as well as the fresh capped honey!!

First Taste of our Capped Honey

While Bryan was inspecting his bee hives, he pulled out a few honey bars and let us all have a taste. Freshly capped nectar does not taste like honey that you will find in the store. It has the same texture as the honey we all know, it slightly tart but very fresh and smooth. The bees cap the cell and over time it will become sweet honey. Putting the tip of your finger into the capped cells will bring out this delightful little treat!

Extremely fresh and local honey!