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….
No comments:
Post a Comment