Our First Colony

About time for a bee update.

We have been very disappointed because the bees that we ordered to assure that we would get bees this spring, never got delivered. By now that guy is telling us it will be mid July. This is all due to being down on the a long list of customers for the guy selling the bees.

In the meantime we put ourselves on the swarm list to get a free local feral colony. With all the water we have gotten this spring the bees are multiplying like crazy, and it's now swarm season. We got a call Tuesday night, asking if we still wanted a swarm... Yes! The guy said "Great I'm going out to collect it in the morning. I'll call if it turns out to be a viable colony and you can come pick it up." Well in the morning we got call from person B asking if we wanted a swarm.. So of course I told person B that we were already getting one we hoped from caller A. She said "Ok, but a bee in hand is worth two in the bush" (I just made that up..) that is not exactly what she said... but I thought, humm what if the Guy A comes home empty handed or his swarm is not viable.... I'd better accept Caller B's bees. So Mike was off to pick them up.

We brought them home and put them in our waiting hive. Mike actually thought they were rather lethargic.

The next morning there were many dead bees on the door stoop of the hive. On Friday, when I returned from Albuquerque, I peeked in the window to find only few bees moving inside.. Bummer! On Saturday we opened up the hive and found piles of dead bees, about 24 live bees clustered together, but no queen that we can identify. We cleaned them up and tonight (Tuesday) there are still 24 bees hanging around, which I really don't understand since they are Queenless, but they are also not building comb, so need to ask someone about that.

When we called people in the bee club the concensus is that they must have been sprayed with insecticide before they called the swarm control, even though the people said they did not. But it is pretty abnormal for bees to die like that.

So we are back on the swarm list, and now we have cancelled our order for bees... so keep your fingers crossed. (Of course guy A told me too bad that I hadn't stayed with his swarm, because it was a HUGE swarm.... yeah whatever!)