Some days everything you plan in your bee yard goes like clockwork, and everything you prepared for happens just as it should. At other times you muddle though and make the best of what you find, or make the best of what you did last time! Today was firmly in the latter category!!!
I am rapidly becoming an expert "Accidental Beekeeper". I thought I had planned so well last week and I managed to reduce the numbers of bees in one hive by moving a single deep from the strong WQH to the adjacent weaker AQH! I nearly gave myself a slap on the back for being moderately smart! Big mistake!!
I went through my AQH this afternoon in order to check on their progress (last weekend I added a deep of bees and brood from my WQH to strengthen this). I made certain the queen wasn't present, so I was pretty sure the bees would be growing in numbers in the hive. Yes, the number of foragers would be down but that would be compensated for by the number of young bees. Anyway I went through the hive and pretty soon found the queen. An unmarked new queen! Clearly I didn't transfer just workers and drones, but the queen from the WQH as well! I think she must have disposed of the old white queen, and so now she has the hive all to herself. Still she has plenty if space to move into and with any luck the urge to swarm in this hive is now low!
Because of this "Accident" I was therefore very interested to see what chaos lay inside the WQH! Yes, there were still lots of bees, but more exciting (and I'm not sure if this is the best way to describe what I felt) I found loads of emergency queen cells AND swarm cells! On closer inspection one emergency cell had even recently hatched - I saw a neatly cut off, and still hanging cell cap. A new queen was somewhere at large in the hive. I spotted her - still a virgin I think - as she was much smaller than a normal queen, but still with a distinctly pointed abdomen.
Of the other queen cells in the hive, some were empty (and not vital) and some were closed (but I didn't remove them just in case they might be needed!). So what to do? I thought about transferring some frames with queen cells to a nuc to start a new colony, but in the end I just closed up the hive and let the new queen go about her hopefully murderous and promiscuous business!
So what did I actually end up doing last week? Well I think in accidentally moving the queen to the weak AQH hive I made an artificial swarm. As they lost their queen, the bees that were left in the WQH hive made emergency queen cells, but before these could mature (it was only a week) one of the swarm cells that I must have overlooked in the inspection I did on the Wednesday before last weekend must have recently hatched. This queen is I think the new virgin queen that is now roaming in the hive killing her sisters!
In a couple of weeks I will be getting some new queens. By then I hope there will be clear signs that the virgin queen in the WQH has successfully mated and is starting to lay eggs. If not, then I'll consider putting a new queen in the hive.
Anyway when all is said and done by artificially swarming the WQH I may have controlled the urge of this hive to swarm and also, with luck, the presence of a strong laying queen in the AQH should stimulate this hive and cause it to gain strength!
Serendipity or what???? Oh! and I might have to consider new names for the hioves now!
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