MISSING QUEEN LOUISE AND A BAD BEAR

Last year all went so well for me as a new beekeeper.  One hive, a colony of bees, electric fence, an experienced beekeeper to mentor  me, lots of  sunny days, and I ended up with about 160 pounds of good honey.   It was a good year!

Not the case this year!  The hive seemed weak and upon inspection I could not find the queen or any  brood.

I needed a queen.  With the help of Poppa Jim, Hugie Smith, and Kathy Crowder ( all experienced beekeepers) queen cells were used to re queen the hive.

It's very much a waiting game, to see if a queen emerges, she gets mated,  then starts laying eggs.

At one point there was at least three queens, one in the new hive and two in the big hive (the hive was separated  into two)

Then again both hives seemed very weak and no queens could be found.  Big puzzle!


I was lucky as Jim (Poppa Jim) gave me a beautiful queen   I just had to call her Queen Louise after my Mom.  

 All was well in  bee world until scary big bear decide to bust through the electric fence July 4th at 3:00 am and push over the hive eating all the brood (eggs)  and Queen Louise.

As soon as it was daylight I quickly put back the hive.  The remaining bees were crazy mad and just wanted to sting everything in sight.  The silly neighbour dog came for a visit and was stung, my two dogs were stung and of course yours truly was also stung.  The bee inspector  came to write a report on the bear damages and a prince in shinny armour (Hugie Smith) came with two Queen Cells from his bee yard

The fence was fixed and all was well until about 7:30 pm when HUGE BIG SCARY BEAR came back.  I don't know if it was the crazy bees attacking his face or me banging two metal pots (my sister-in-law Brenda) told me to do that,  but he ran off and as of Friday at 2:00 pm I haven't seen him.  My bee world is calm once again!