Goodbye, Queen Esther

Phil and I set up the sheep pens first thing this morning. It wasn’t until we actually reached church that we realized that we hadn’t opened the pen for the sheep, so they couldn’t access the new paddock we’d set up for them. We had planned to stay in town after church, but realized we’d have to go home.

This worked out well. We had about three hours at home before we headed back to Bible study. We all shared ice cream again, and Phil read to the boys and looked at the passage for Bible study.

I had decided, when I fed the bees this morning and noticed that the entire area was covered with yellow jackets, that I was done feeding bees. After over 200 pounds of sugar consumed in the last three weeks, I am ready to be done, especially if I’m just throwing good money after bad.

I went out to check the hives for the first time, really, since they arrived. I dressed in my water-proof pants and jacket, with the bee helmet on top. It was hot, but I felt more calm, because any bees that flew to my face couldn’t actually sting me. And I didn’t have little creepy crawls up my legs or pants.

The Queen of Sheba hive appeared in good health, though small. I saw the blue-dotted queen, and watched her for a few seconds as she crawled over some comb. I could distinguish what I was seeing: some cells with tiny pupae, some with little worm-like bodies, and many cells that had bees metamorphosizing. The female workers have flat covers, and the male workers have rounded caps, because they are larger. All very beautiful to see.

Then I opened the Queen Esther hive. I was surprised, first, to find almost no clear nectar, to feed the bee eggs. Last time I opened the hive, when I was stung in the face because I didn’t know what I was doing, there were whole comb filled with that nectar.

Next observation: many drones. I hadn’t seen any drones around the sugar water for weeks; I had no idea I had so many. Drones, as consumers who produce nothing but potential queen-mating, shouldn’t outnumber the workers.

And I couldn’t find the queen. Seems like a queenless colony to me. I left to read some more.

Based on the reading, the hive is queenless and has been for some time. I should have been checking the hives weekly, but I think I was so terrified to open the hive after my first experience resulted in an eye swollen shut for three days. Besides, I could peek up underneath, and all seemed okay.

The books recommended combining a compromised hive with another hive.

I headed back to give at least the mostly-empty frames to the Queen of Sheba hive. But I noticed one promising fact: the Queen Esther hive had made a queen cell, and capped it. Apparently, when a queen leaves or dies, if she’s laid enough eggs, the hive can take an egg and build a queen cell and feed it royal jelly so it becomes a temporary queen.

Based on the blog, it was 21 days ago that the bees turned ravenous. My guess is that the sheep knocked the hive and the queen either fell to her death or gave up and flew away. The hive lost its direction, but also began to build a queen cell. In the next day or two, we'll either have a new queen emerge, or we'll have an absolutely dead hive.

One of the signs of a queenless hive is two eggs per cell. Without a queen, all the workers develop sexually and lay drone (or unfertilized) eggs. We had a few cells with two eggs, and several more with five or six eggs! Poor, neglected colony!

Other than spending much extra money on unnecessary sugar, I think that, had I found a queenless hive three weeks ago, I would have been beside myself with grief. But today, it seems more like yet another bummer that I had hoped to avoid.

Like having a random mutant lamb as my first experience, before I knew what a regular ram lamb should look like, having both the queen of one hive vanish on the first day, and then having a queen go queenless after a month—it's just too bad. But I couldn't have planned for it, and it's okay.

BUT—may the Lord bless our orchard. May he grant that no bad unexpected nastiness befall our trees. My goodness!