Missing Monarchy

I told my bee hives to shape up or ship out and unfortunately, they chose to ship out.  Seriously? Unfortunately, this leaves me queenless in three of our five hives.  I am not impressed.  What kind of queen abandons her hive as winter approaches?  An irresponsible and negligent one, that's for sure.   I can think of many other suitable adjectives but you probably get my drift.

Bad bee

The unfortunate state of our hives warranted a call to the local bee supply store that, luckily, is managed by a very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper.  I explained about my queenless hives and (to my dismay) the very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper agreed that I was indeed in a sorry state.  Truth be told, I was hoping for an "it's not so bad" but that is not what I got.

It is pretty late in the season to have the hives grow a new queen themselves.  It is possible if the weather holds out but it is risky.  My safest bet at this point is to requeen my hives with a mated queen purchased for a whopping $26 per queen from the bee supply store.  I had a bit of a heart attack when the very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper said that it is also quite late in the season to secure queens and he was not sure if he would be able to get some for me.  Luckily he called back a few hours later and said he was able to get me my three mated queens after all.  They will arrive on Thursday.  Thank goodness.

I explained our latest bee conundrum to Ian over dinner and he wondered aloud if we are just unlucky beekeepers or if everyone has this many bee related problems.  I do not have an answer to that but regardless we will just keep powering through, learning from our mistakes and hopefully becoming more successful (or at least less unlucky) beekeepers next year.