Bees in big trouble.

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Just to set things straight before we begin, this video was shot on April 5th of this year, and I think the logical question would bee why is it being posted 7 months after it was shot. Now, the answer to that question would have be that swarm season came on like a storm, and I posted video after video on all the swarms I was catching. By the way, and Rooster if you are reading this, it was more than 50 of them for me....not counting the ones in our own yards. OK, now that the mystery has been solved, I can move on to the topic of this video, saving bees in a tree.

I'm not going to mince words here, this was a very sad removal. The tree was felled the prior day, and the entire hive was exposed to the elements for over 12 hours during which time the temperatures dipped into the lower thirties for several hours. Not only had the hive lost thousands of bees when the tree initially hit the ground, but the cold took care of all the brood in the comb. By the time I got there, the bees had abandoned the comb and were clustering in the trunk of the fallen tree.

Still, as I am always hopeful, I started gathering bees and put them in a box that had old brood comb in it, searching for the queen against all odds. I probably got 5,000 bees to get into the box, but there was no sign of the queen. However, I did find a viable queen cell on the comb I had removed, and I placed it on one of the frames of comb I had brought in hopes the queen inside would emerge and bring this hive back.

The following day, I transferred 3 frames of bees and two more frames with comb on it into a 5 frame nuc, and I waited to see if the queen would emerge. After 2 weeks, the queen never emerged, and the bees were beginning to dwindle in number. It was at this point I combined the bees with a healthy hive in the yard. Needless to say, I was disappointed, but at least I gave it my best shot.

But on a brighter note, the out take on this video was shot in June, after we had processed and bottled our honey, and I wanted to credit the wonderful ladies who helped in that process. There is no way I could do all the work that is necessary for our honey operation by myself, and I rely heavily on the help of wonderful people like this continually. God's peace to all. Mr. Ed