Free bees!

[SharW75]

One of the families in our daughter's 4H group was wanting to get out of beekeeping. They had a wild swarm move into their empty hive last year, and those bees made it through the winter in great shape. Last weekend, we went to their house and took the bees, hive and all, home to our house. It was cold, so the kids weren't able to inspect the hive until Tuesday. When they opened it, they found LOTS of bees, but no queen. Thankfully, there were 4 new queen cells, and with so many bees, the kids were able to take two cells and several frames of bees and split the hive. So, we went from no bees to two new hives in a couple of days! We are letting them settle in, then the kids are going to treat them for mites before the package of bees we ordered arrive.

Neither of the hives we started out with last spring survived the winter. We had hopes our larger hive would make it, but sadly it didn't. We ordered a new package, to be shipped around the 2nd of May, so we will have three hives soon! It will be exciting to compare the differences between the wild bees and the strain (Buckfast) we ordered.

 

[Finnie]

One of the families in our daughter's 4H group was wanting to get out of beekeeping. They had a wild swarm move into their empty hive last year, and those bees made it through the winter in great shape. Last weekend, we went to their house and took the bees, hive and all, home to our house. It was cold, so the kids weren't able to inspect the hive until Tuesday. When they opened it, they found LOTS of bees, but no queen. Thankfully, there were 4 new queen cells, and with so many bees, the kids were able to take two cells and several frames of bees and split the hive. So, we went from no bees to two new hives in a couple of days! We are letting them settle in, then the kids are going to treat them for mites before the package of bees we ordered arrive.

Neither of the hives we started out with last spring survived the winter. We had hopes our larger hive would make it, but sadly it didn't. We ordered a new package, to be shipped around the 2nd of May, so we will have three hives soon! It will be exciting to compare the differences between the wild bees and the strain (Buckfast) we ordered.

How fun and exciting!

I don’t know about Ohio, I would think it would have similar weather to Indiana, but we had an exceptionally cold winter this year. Below freezing and sometimes below 0 with snow sticking on the ground for over two weeks at a time. I lost several perennial plants and a few of my trees are not looking so great this spring. So it doesn’t surprise me that it would be a hard winter for the bees.

It sounds like your wild bees are doing ok. Hopefully we will have a milder winter next year to make it easier for your new purchased bees.

 

[SharW75]

Thank you! Yes, we had a rough winter here too. We're in NE Ohio, so we get lake effect snow by the feet. We're used to the snow, but it's the bitter cold and wind that is hard.

The free bees ended up being not free because they just would not make themselves a new queen. We bought two new queens which they apparently didn't like and either killed or let die. Right now, that's where we stand. The kids combined the two splits back together and gave them a frame of brood from our other hive. Hopefully they decide to make a queen from one of those. We'll see. :-/

The bees we ordered were almost a disaster too. The company we ordered them from sent them USPS Ground Advantage, which is the slowest way to mail anything. Why they decided it was ok to ship live animals this way is beyond me. Anyway, they ended up lost and delayed for many days. When they finally arrived, about half were dead, starved to death because of the slow shipping. The rest were so weak, they couldn't even fly. Thankfully the queen survived ( barely), and we were able to give them honey from the hive that didn't make it through the winter. They are slowly recovering, but I am never ordering bees from that company again. It took them just about two weeks to issue us a refund too. Not happy.