Friday, August 26, 2011

The Queen is Dead! Long Live the Queen!


I got a new queen from "Long Lane Honey Bee Farm" yesterday and popped her in the hive yesterday evening.  I really looked hard through the hive for the old queen – not a sign of her, but I did observe a new bee emerging!  The timing of this is really weird.  I came home from vacation on 22 July, went through my bees about a week later to find there was no brood, just a few drone cells and isolated workers.  I left some queen cells alone for three weeks and looked again, still no brood and no queen.  By way of comparison the hive next to this had lots of brood and larvae so it wasn’t as though the queen just shut down in the hot weather. 

So I took the decision to re-queen and the new queen is now in the hive.  Time will tell if she is the only queen there and is accepted by the workers.  I guess in a week I will know one way or the other!

Later today I plan to look through my city hive – the one that is really defensive.  I have a super to remove and some mite treatment to perform (Mite Away Quick Strips).  We’ll see how they behave.  It is a lovely dry day today so I hope the bees will be out of the hive and not inside waiting for me….

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