Saturday, April 9, 2011

Queen Installation

I picked up 5 queens this morning; not all for myself. It was especially interesting to hear them 'piping'.  I was reading that piping is common when there is more than one queen in the hive. So I wonder if they were piping because they sensed there were other queens nearby?

I put my two queens in the nucs at lunchtime, without any incident.  I even did it without wearing gloves! My first time this year.  I left the cork plug in place in the queen cagesand I will go back in a couple of days (probably Monday) to remove the plug and let the bees loose on the candy.  I hope by Wednesday the queens will have been fully released and accepted by the bees in the nuc.

STOP PRESS: The apparant nosema streaking I noticed the other day all seems to have dissappeared. Was the medication successful? Did the bees just get over it? or was the streaking just the result of the bees being "mightily relieved" after being cooped up for a couple of wet days?  Who knows, but it all looks good for now. I saw my first hive beetle yesterday - boo!!!

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