The Honeybee Wranglers » queen

The Nuc – A Summary to Date

Liz Thompson — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 23:33:57 +0000

On August 11, I was expecting to house a queen from the Q7 round of queen rearing. I made up a 4 frame medium nuc from my orange colony (the primary swarm from the observation hive). When I went to pick up the queen, she was dead. Darn. The nuc was pretty strong with 2 frames of young brood, a frame of capped brood and a frame of stores so I decided to let them have a go a queening themselves.

On August 23, I fed and inspected the nuc. There were lots of bees and capped brood. There were also 5 queen cells that the bees were in the process of tearing down. I did not see a queen.

On September 6, I inspected the nuc and found all 4 frames full of either young uncapped larvae or eggs. I didn’t see the queen but left with confidence that she was there and doing well. I made a plan to move the bees to a double deep 5 frame medium nuc set up to attempt to overwinter them in that configuration.

Today, September 8, I put my plan in action. I preloaded the new set up with 3 frames of stores and 3 frames of open brood comb and headed down to the nuc. Imagine my surprise when I found the queen walking anxiously back and forth across the screened inner cover with her retinue below, following her every move and feeding her! I quickly captured and marked her. She’s a beautiful striped queen. I moved the bees to their new quarters and watched the queen run between the frames. Within 10 minutes everything seemed settled for the evening. What a close call!

Royalty Verified!

Liz Thompson — Wed, 27 May 2015 20:26:21 +0000

I’ve known she was in there due to the increased foraging of pollen and the general calm of the colony and the wonderful full smell of the hive. Today I got visual verification! Laying and everything!

Run, Queen, Run!

Liz Thompson — Mon, 18 May 2015 01:26:10 +0000

Yesterday evening I saw a virgin queen in the observation hive for the first time since this craziness began. She was running like a wild thing!

The reason soon became apparent. The bees balled her! Note the condensation on the hive glass. This point on the glass was considerably hotter than the surrounding surface.

This morning I found her on the bottom screen with a few workers attempting to move her carcass out.

Just a side note, After Swarm E occurred today. I looked out and saw the queen on the landing board. I attempted to catch her in a queen cage but failed. We messed with the swarm a couple times and I think we saw the queen return to the hive. The bees either dispersed or returned to the hive. It was quite small, maybe a cup and a half of bees.