LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta is a force of nature!
Her latest dispatch:
Patrick [above] needed a colony for his new custom hive. So we went to cut out a hive from a pomegranate tree which was really pretty but with twigs in it every which way.
The bees were very grumpy and possibly queenless as the brood was all over the place with lots of drones and no eggs. There were also several queen cells.
After we tied in the comb the bees seemed to really like Patrick's new hive. But we weren't sure if there was a queen so I thought adding some brood from a cut out might help.
This brings us to Peter, who had a wall hive that he wanted cut out because he started to hear the bees chewing the wall from inside the house: possible brood for Patrick's bees!
After cutting away the siding we found nice brood comb sandwiched between lots of honey. The bees were covered with the honey and they were busy cleaning each other off.
Patrick took some brood and I put some brood in a box with the hope that maybe the queen was in there but no such luck. The bees went back into the wall. So this cut-out is a work in progress.
—roberta
