From no queens to a mob of queens, many, many things are happening in the bee yard these days. For starters, my original hive that swarmed and raised dozens of queens back in early May is still raising baby queens. The story goes that after a month of waiting, I looked for signs of a laying queen, which I should have been seeing at that point according to the books. Alas, no signs were observed and I panicked and ordered a queen to be shipped overnight via USPS. That queen cost me $24 + $20 S&H and arrived in a screened cage the size of a matchbox with attendant worker bees to take care of her. What an interest thing to receive in the mail at work. When I went to install her immediately upon receipt, which was about two days after inspecting the hive and seeing no eggs, I saw eggs! This meant the the hive had raised a queen on its own after all.
I've never had a marked queen before and her royal blue dot is a relief on her bodacious bod, since she's much more similar to other worker bees in size and color than what I'm used to. I caught her below "piping" or making queeny noises (heard at the very end of the video). There's a lot of information out there about why queens pipe, but for queens introduced into an existing colony it can mean that she's trying to communicate her worth and willingness to fight for her honor.
I've never had a marked queen before and her royal blue dot is a relief on her bodacious bod, since she's much more similar to other worker bees in size and color than what I'm used to. I caught her below "piping" or making queeny noises (heard at the very end of the video). There's a lot of information out there about why queens pipe, but for queens introduced into an existing colony it can mean that she's trying to communicate her worth and willingness to fight for her honor.
Because I didn't want to waste such a fearless leader, I made the spur of the moment decision to use her and remove some frames from the swarm hive that I captured in May (that is doing phenomenally) and start a nucleus hive! Of course, I got carried away and gave this baby bee colony more room than what is typical for a nuc, and now I have more of less 2.5 hives.
Getting back to the original hive, I went in a week or so ago and saw the queen that the bees raised, pictured below!
Getting back to the original hive, I went in a week or so ago and saw the queen that the bees raised, pictured below!
She's going to be really easy to spot and looks Italian! After inspecting some of the frames in that hive, I came across a few swarm cells and removed them and noticed that there generally wasn't any laying room for her given that the bees previously backfilled all of the frames with pollen. Today when I went in to replace some pollen frames with empty frames to create more brood room, I saw swarm cells abound! Seven baby queens to remove - I feel horrible removing them all (but I did).
Those darn bees - they raise numerous baby queens and backfill frames with pollen to reduce the size of the brood nest, perpetuating problems when their new queen mates and doesn't have anywhere to lay! Ugh. My next goal is to start a queen bank that will rest nicely on top of a hive to keep some spare queens in case of emergency. I think I will prepare to go in for the next hive inspection and snag some of the frames with the swarm cells to create several 2-frame nucs. You never know when you'll need to supplement a hive with royalty.