Year 1 Beekeeping failure

One of my latest hobbies is beekeeping but unfortunately Year 1 beekeeping failure is where we ended up.

Year 1 Beekeeping failure

I’ve talked about our beekeeping adventures over the past year as one of my hobbies, among other things.  Hobbies are great because it helps to clear your mind and even helps to keep depression away.  It does this by keeping your mind thinking about something else – rather than ruminating about what’s troubling you.  Plus, it’s fun to learn something new.

Sadly, though, year 1 beekeeping failure is the sad news to bring to you.  I thought we were doing so well.

What happened?

Late in the season, we accidentally killed the Queen – yeah, I know.  Awful, right?  It was unfortunate for several reasons:

1. We killed the Queen – the one that you absolutely have to have in order for the hive to survive.
2. Because it was so late in the season, it was hard to find another queen.  Luckily, we did – but…

(Note:  this photo shows her still alive.)

The problem was that bees are picky and they may kill a new queen you introduce into the hive.  That’s exactly what happened.

The good news is that bees are also amazing because they can make their own queen – which they did.  We thought, ‘Oh my goodness – that’s great’.  We never thought we’d have a year 1 beekeeping failure.  We were wrong but we didn’t figure it out until this past spring.

Why did the bees die?

We really were amazed that the bees made their own queen.  We thought, ‘Wow, we can do this’.  The bad part was (and we were told this) is that it was too late in the season for everything that needs to happen to happen.  We didn’t know what this meant – I mean, being first year beekeepers and all.  We figured it out in the spring, though:

Basically, the new queen that the bees made was fine and they accepted her.  The problem is that since it was so late in the fall, there was either no time for her to mate and / or no one to mate with.  So, they survived the winter but they were slowly dying and since the queen wasn’t mated, she couldn’t produce any eggs to sustain the hive.

During the winter, we would check on the hive to make sure they had enough food – which they always seemed to.  The reason why they had so much food was because they were dying so they weren’t eating it.  It wasn’t until March that we realized this.  We opened up the hive to find only a handful of bees.  That sucked.

We ended up having to buy a new set and start over.  I mean, we did have comb already built out on the frames so it wasn’t a total loss.  And, we got to keep more honey.  So, it wasn’t a total loss but it was definitely a learning experience.