So first minor catastrophe in bee keeping: We went to check on the hive again to see if we can find the queen to mark her. Success, first frame there she is!
Pretty, isn't it?? Bees are so fascinating and we finally were ready to mark our Queen!
At that point, chaos ensues when the entire brood comb collapses and falls off the frame into the grass!
Time stopped for a second as we grasped what just happened before the following transpired:
With lightning speed, we grabbed the comb full of bees, honey, and whatnot, scooped it up, and put it in the now empty frame spot. It was instinct to put it back where it came from no matter how bad of a decision this may turn out to be (we don't know yet!). Chris started picking up bees off the grass that were sticky with honey and had a hard time moving and put them back in the hive. We put the hive back together, put the queen excluder on, and added the Super on top.
At that point, we came inside, snapped at each other for a moment out of frustration (Oh yeah! That's actually happened, lol), calmed down, and called Chris's nephew, who's an experienced beekeeper. He calmed us down quite a bit by telling us that the bees would clean the mess up and it would be OK. Once they clean everything up we can check and see if our Queen is still alive. If not, one of two things will happen. We will either re-queen our hive by buying a new queen, or the hive will create a new queen.
We ended up bringing the now empty frame inside, putting a bee wax foundation in it (so they'll have a head start when it goes back into the hive), and adding Rubber bands for comb stability (most folks wire the frames, but since we're beginners, we totally didn't know that, and the beekeeper nephew said rubber bands work just as well).
So now we wait. We wait to see if they clean up the hive after our mess, and we wait to see if the Queen is still alive since she was on the dropped comb somewhere.
Amazingly, the bees were calm enough, and while stressed when the comb bit the dust, neither of us got stung, and Chris was able to handle the individual bees (and help them not get pestered by Fire ants that, of course, caught wind of the situation.... opportunistic little bastards!) without issues.
I feel like Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart and I swear I stopped breathing for a minute lol ... that was definitely stressful but we've learned a lot of valuable lessons!
And now the lesson Chris learned:
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