Oct . 2, 2011

I emailed some pics of the bee beard to Mike. He called me back suggesting the beard looked like it had a queen in it. Mike recommended that I install an emery board (don’t quote me on that name). It’s basically a one inch board that goes around the parameter of the hive between the top deep and the top feeder. The board has a little slot in it that allows the bees to go in and out of the hive. Mike thought that this small opening around the center of the beard would allow the bees along with the queen to reenter the hive. He said sometimes you get a 2 queen situation and one queen along with a bunch of bees go outside the hive. I guess they normally swarm to another location, but maybe the weather kept them close to the hive. Anyway, he said if I get both queens back in the hive they’ll battle it out resulting in 1 being killed! I put the board on today, but in the process a lot of the bees lost their grip on the hive. I managed to scoop most of them up and dumped them into the top of the hive after removing the top feeder. I’ll check tomorrow to see if they cluster on the outside again. I guess nothing is predictable with bees.