Making increase with Mel Disselkoen's OTS, On The Spot Queen Rearing

 July 23 was the day to go back into the starts and check for new queens.  In May, I had one hundred percent success, queens in every start.  June 23 I dispatched all of the queens.  It took a lot of trust in the OTS system of queen rearing for me to leave every hive queenless, but I did.  From the nine hives I had, I increased to sixteen. I could have made more starts based on the brood I had, but chose not to.  On July 23, fifteen of those hives had newly mated OTS queens. These queens are also post solstice queens, mated after June 21.  I was able to break the brood cycle in each hive which in turn knocks back the mite population while the honeybee population  soars with a newly mated queen who won't shut down laying into the fall. Each hive will go into winter with younger, stronger bees.
I will give another week to the start that did not have a queen yet and check again.

Each start is building  up quickly and already needs a second deep box. I love to find the new OTS queens and see them draw out beautiful new comb! OTS queens that were raised by their own colony, mated naturally,  never touched by human hands, never shut down, never caged.  The bees do it all, the way they were created to.  I think that's why OTS is such a great success, it works with the bees and their natural behaviors. For more information on OTS, checkout Mel Disselkoen's website www.mdasplitter.com or his book, OTS Queen Rearing.

OTS Queen middle of picture. She had been near the brood, but scurried up to the honey near the top of the frame when we tried to get her on camera. Thanks to my bee buddy, Mary, for these great photos of my OTS queens.

Another OTS queen, just starting to lay. Look closely in the center of the cells and you can see the eggs she is laying.  It looks like a very tiny grain of rice.

A Swarm in July isn't Worth a Fly! HA!

Goodness gracious. Yesterday, I witnessed a swarm. Sad to say, it was my own. It was in one of my hives that I dispatched the queen in on June 23rd and had only notched one frame for queen cells.  I did not intend to split this hive, but wanted a post solstice queen. I had dutifully went back a week later and broke down all but 2 queen cells. I thought. I apparently missed some.
The queens should have emerged around July 9.  From what I can figure, the hive felt too congested and decided to leave with a virgin queen because with the timing she couldn't have been mated yet by July12. 
I was out weeding my flower beds on a lovely, sunny Sunday morning when I heard a loud roaring buzz?  I looked up and saw a cloud of bees in front of hive E.  More and more bees filled the air above my apiary and within fifteen minutes all settled on a dead pine tree branch at least 18 feet up in the air. I stood there watching the entire thing with my mouth hanging open. It was quite at sight to witness, I was mesmerized.
Once I realized, "Oh my word! My bees just swarmed!!"  I started to figure out how I was going to get them back. It took me about two hours to gather up what I needed and  lop all the dead branches below the swarm so I could get under them with a bucket.  Then our neighbor stopped by to chat. I thought it best not to mention the swarm of bees twenty feet away.  Once the neighbor backed out of the driveway, my husband and I commenced with our plan. He grabbed the long pole with bucket attached and I forged ahead with the tree branch lopper.  While walking to the tree our son pointed to the swarm and laughingly said, "You better hurry up, your bees are leaving."
I looked up  and sure enough, within moments they left the pine tree branch that only moments before they had been so attached to and in a large cloud flew up over our tree line, across the road, over the field and into the woods!!  Seriously!  I couldn't believe it.  I had just done all that work in preparation to retrieve them.  At least they waited until the neighbor left.
I had put a deep super of empty foundation on them 2 weeks ago, but they had not yet drawn that out. The 2nd hive body was full of capped honey and the bottom box with pollen, honey, a little capped brood and queen cells that had not yet emerged. There was still a decent amount of bees present even after the swarm. Today I took about seven frames of capped honey from that hive and extracted it.  That made me feel better about the whole bees leaving me thing. Still can't believe they swarmed!

See my bees betraying me upper mid to left in the dead old pine tree?  If you look close you can see where I lopped off a lot of other branches so that I could get underneath it with a bucket without anything obstructing me or the swarm.  Will never know if my plan would've succeeded as they flew off moments before I was able to retrieve them. The picture is only the top half of the pine tree, they were quite a ways up there!

There they are, all cozy, giggling at me. My first swarm. How touching! Honeybees, so unpredictable!