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Today was one of those days!!

muleman

muleman

Gone But Not Forgotten
Had a bad night trying to sleep as the dogs kept waking me. I got up and used the spotlight but did not really see anything except a few deer in the back field. Went out to get the cows in the barn and they were spooky as hell. While I was trying to entice them in I noticed the top box was knocked off the one bee hive. After almost 20 minute we finally got them in and then loaded them on the trailer. When we got to the butcher shop they were backed up with 3 other trailers waiting to unload. We ended up spending almost an hour and a half helping other folks get theirs off before we finally got done. When I got back a local guy who has bees came down and helped us check the hives. It appears the one a raccoon got into the bees had swarmed off. We decided to move the remaining hive inside the barnyard and that was no fun at all. Loaded them in the bucket of the skid loader and took them to the overhang for the barnyard. I got stung once and the old guy got hit twice. Hope they are more secure out of the wind and dry than where they were.
 
sorry to hear your day didn't go well, will the bees come back to the old hive if they are disturded? did the queen take off with the swarm?
 
No queen and not likely they would return. I will look in the woods come spring and see if I can find them.
 
Mama said:
Beats the heck outta me, I just hate that he lost his bees.
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It would be tough wouldn't it. And then there's no guarantee the queen would stay in the relocated hive, she might must pack up and leave again. Fickle bitch... :biggrin:
 
Raising bees is a lot like a marriage. Sometimes they just up and do what they want....... Actually they can sometimes be caught again if you catch them swarming around the queen. Otherwise you drop $100 to buy a new colony. Bees swarming and leaving the hive is a very common occurrence.
 
The old queen will leave the hive to start another colony. The remaining bees will feed a couple of the larva Royal Jelly to turn them into queens. A new queen will emerge and take over. She will immediately sting the other queens to death. Usually this takes place in the Spring. This is the wrong time of year for this to happen. Must be because of the hive being raided by the racoon. The sad thing is that they will die during the winter. No time to put in enough honey to last them through the winter.
 
We are thinking it happened a month or more before this. What we thought was extra activity in that hive could have been them taking honey back to where ever they went. That hive weighed nothing but the other one was easily 200 lbs. Took 3 of us to carry it about 20 ft' to the skid loader.
 
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