06 | April | 2012 | Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm

*Sigh*… This afternoon we had a kit die. I had a feeling the little guy wasn’t going to make it already because he was most certainly the runt of the litter. Clementine feeds everyone best early in the morning. And this morning, as I did my nest box check, I noticed everyone else had big full bellies. Everyone else had also grown to twice the size of this little runt.

I wrapped him up and took him out to Clementine to get a little extra mama milk. I flipped Clemmy over and put the runt onto one of her nipples, and then another. He didn’t seem to be hungry and after a good ten minutes, I took him back inside and put him back in the nest box with his siblings.

When I checked back this afternoon he didn’t wiggle like the rest. He was cold. I tried to warm him up, but he was already gone. Poor dear. Rest little ruby-eyed white.

Last Wednesday during a routine hive inspection of our original hive of Carniolan bees, I discovered that there weren’t any eggs or larva in the hive and I could not locate the queen.

After the hive inspection, I found the queen on the ground outside the hive near the entrance. I had the choice of: buying a new queen, waiting for the colony to produce a new one (but I don’t believe there were any newly laid eggs to produce a queen from), or taking a frame from our second hive that the queen had laid eggs on and putting it in the primary hive. I chose the latter. The bees should begin feeding royal jelly to the new larva and build a queen cell to rear a new queen from the eggs.

If this process works, it will take about 22 days. At which time, the new queen will take a nuptial flight, mate, and return to the hive to begin laying new larvae. Her larvae will be Carniolan/Italian hybrids if she mates with a Carniolan drone, or pure Italian if she mates with a drone from the second hive.

So wish us luck! We will need it since a hive won’t survive without a queen…

- Trevor