Sweet, Sweet Success

Honeycomb, ready for crush and strain

Last week, I posted the results of the honeybee removal from the previous Saturday, and was pretty proud of how it had gone (you should read it, if you have not already).  In what was an extremely long day of work on a 24-foot ladder, Shannen and I:

• Opened the wall to expose the hive
• Removed eight combs of brood
• Removed 14 combs with honey
• Captured the queen (maybe - with the sticky mess, it was hard to tell)
• Vacuumed up the bees, and,
• Cleaned up

Pure honeycomb

 We split up the remaining tasks, with Shannen taking the job of dividing up the honey and comb, and me with the task of  installing the bees in the new hive.  Shannen did her job admirably: this weekend I received several large jars of honey and honeycomb from her part of the work.

In the interim, I took the bees over to Eddie Brooks' house, and inserted the queen and the comb and thousands of worker bees into a top bar hive over there.  From a few reports that followed in the next week, I heard that the bees were doing their thing, and in decent numbers.  But you just don't know until you open them up whether the queen is there, and doing her job.  You also do not want to bother her too much, too early.  But a week after installation seemed like a good time to check.

Worker bees hanging out at the Brooks' estate.

This morning, I called up and asked Eddie to take a look in on her - just to see if there were eggs and brood in the hive.  "Sure!  I'll do that this morning!"

About an hour later, I received a text.  

"Actually found the queen and watched her laying eggs."

Thumbs may never have been used to text sweeter words.

All along, it has been a source of concern for me that I was not successfully installing hives into new locations.  The removals were going well, but the installations were not successful.  Either the queen was hurt, or lost, or destroyed.  And eventually, the bees all left to join the circus.  Or a commune.  Or something. Whatever the cause, they did not stick around.

Without the installation success, what I am doing equals little more than extermination.  And that was bothering me.  It weighed on me quite heavily that I was not finishing the job.

But in this case, it went well from start to finish, and I have check marks by every goal I had.

Hive safely removed: check.
Honey removed: check.
Brood separated: check.
Queen recovered: check.
Queen installed safely: check.
Queen laying: check. (woohoo!)

Now the only thing that remains is for me to collect the: check.

I am so happy.  This is where I wanted to be.  Giving bees a chance.