Shirley, Bill, Mark, Lynda and Jon helped Peter with the apiary inspection on Tuesday.
There were four full hives and two nucs to be looked at so we split into pairs to do the work. Sun was shining and the bees seemed happy so things looked good. Sure enough the first 3 hives all had laying queens and needed 2nd supers. Shirley and Lynda found a new queen who was duly marked (red).
The two nucs had come from Dankas apiary beyond Drumelzier where the remote location is causing mating difficulties. The good news was that one of the nucs now has a laying queen – the red pen was in action again. The bad news was that the 2nd nuc was drone laying. Still a good result overall and the queen right nuc can go back home.
Shirley took some photos of the drone layer comb. You can just about see the eggs but can you tell if its drone laying queen or laying workers? Are the eggs central in the cell or stuck to the sides, are there multiple eggs?
The final hive caused the most work. No sign of the yellow marked queen that should have been in there. Soon we spotted a queen cell that was almost hatching as we watched, and a few more besides. We put the nearly hatched one in a nuc box with an extra frame of brood and one of stores. Mark took the nuc away to be looked after. Next we put another cell in an apidea – Peter took the apidea plus an extra couple of cells for apidea at home. Finally Jons persistent queen hunting paid off when he spotted a queen out and about. He nabbed her to take away for safe keeping. Still a couple of cells left in the original hive to keep it going.
That seemed like a good afternoons work so we called it a day. The bees seem happy in their new site and hopefully have got the swarming urge out their system by now and can get down to making some honey to pay the rent.
Here’s an interesting video – again many thanks to Shirley – showing 2 workers attending to partially capped brood cells. What are they up to?