The "Tom" and "McFadden" colonies in late April 2013

I was happy to find that the queen in the "Tom" colony was still laying. But I think I need to do something a little more aggressive to rebuild this colony.  This video is very short.  I just wanted a quick peek to see what was going on.

http://youtu.be/CTM6xC8BAvg


I'm sorry to say that this next video is a long one by my standards.  I don't like long videos because it is easy to lose interest.  I usually edit a lot out of the raw video and try to keep things interesting, but there is so much interest within the video that it remained fairly long.  Thanks to my lovely assistant (and wife), Ramona, for her help with the camera and the extra hands.

The purpose of the video is to show how I put wild comb in the bottom box of the McFadden hive into frames.  I am very glad I checked it out today because I found 2 swarm cells (cells in which the nurse bees are creating new queens).  I want the bees to clean up the mess I made of their comb before I stress them out again with swarm preparations, so I eliminated the swarm cells.  You will also note that their is a large amount of drone brood, this is also a sign of an imminent swarm.  You have to have a lot of drones to mate with a new queen.

This is such a strong colony that I want to split it and make two out of the one.  For this, I will need a swarm cell (queen cell) and lots of brood.  From the looks of things, that will be the easy.  I will have to pay very careful attention to this colony for the next few weeks, at least until I split the colony.  If they create more than one swarm cell I will use an extra one to re-queen "Tom".

By the way, this is the McFadden colony.  It is a feral colony that built its nest in a vacant hive on my friend Pat McFadden's farm.  Unfortunately, Pat was too ill to take care of the colony and they built 4 frames worth of wild comb to fill in the middle section of the box (there are 3 frames on each side).  If you need to monitor the colony for disease, swarming, or various other reasons, it is very convenient, if not necessary, to work with frames.  That is why I abandoned top bar hives during my first year of bee keeping.

The McFadden colony appears to be so strong and the queen lays such a great pattern that I want to purposefully make it a breeder colony to replenish my own apiary and help others too.

http://youtu.be/QuMeJz7Frvs