The Italians are dead. Long live the Carniolans.

Well, the Italian hive is dead. They starved out, they tried to raise drones, but had no food. There were too few workers to transfer a brood frame to the hive. I put on a feeder to try to help them, but that did them in, they were raided by the Carniolans.

I'm leaving the Italian boxes as a swam box, if the Carniolans swarm maybe they will move next door. Though I should probably move it a bit away from the other hive. I've heard that will help if they swarm.

I put on a 3rd 9 frame super 1.5 weeks ago, and that now has 5 frames partially drawn. I put on a 4th 9 frame super with the queen excluder in between. I also moved 2 partially drawn frames up into the top box, we'll see if the bees move up stairs.

Hive update, Italians in bad shape

Did a quick hive check, the Italians seem to have lost their Queen. I only see lots of capped drone cells and a few larvae, no large quantities of larva.
So looks like they are queen-less. I'm considering ordering one of these queens:


Russian queens

Or I'll do this using a Carnoilan frame:

Queenless hive

The Carniolans are doing well. Quite well.  Might have even killed off the Italian queen.....

We'll put on a super this week.

Hives update

Did a quick check of the hives, they are both doing well, but they are different.

Some differences I see now are:

• The Italians are doing what I'm used to seeing, straight comb (even on a foundation-less frame), no burr comb between frames/on top of frames.
• The Italians are only storing nectar and pollen in the 2nd medium.
• The Carniolans have brood in the 2nd medium.
• The Carniolans will be leaving the hive when it is cooler outside, I've seen Carniolans leaving/coming into the hive while there is no activity on the Italian hive.
• The Carniolans are drawing burr comb on the tops of the frames and even between the frames. This makes it a bit of a mess.

It will be interesting to see how they progress.

Small hive changes

I removed my mid level entrances. With the screened bottom boards and the temps getting to 40's at night still, I was worried the cluster would get chilled to badly at night. I'll re-open the top entrances once the weather really warms up.

The bees are doing food. I removed the top feeder and the bees had built up burr comb under it, I

2 new Hives

I've hived the 2 packages of Bees I ordered. Went well, the Carniolans were much more active than the Italians.

The Carniolans are in the left hive: