La Reine est morte - vive la Reine!

Although on holiday, the bees of course are not, and even though it is not prime swarming season yet, I thought it would be good to keep close tabs on the bees as the weather improves. The Moon in particular had looked quite full last time, so I thought a more regular inspection regime might be in order.

Our scribe

It's great that in the school a number of staff have shown an interest in the hives as well. For me it is truly satisfying to be able to involve as many people as possible to make the hives belong to the whole school as much as possible. Lorraine, one of the kitchen staff of the school, wanted to accompany me with her two children; so, together with a friend from Austria, we inspected the hives together. Lorraine kept the records, Petra took the photos and the children, after initial reservations, were ultimately - thank God - enthralled. There is something about the bees that seems to draw in children and fascinate them. Having kept their distance at first, by the time we got to the second hive, the two children couldn't stand close enough.

And this time, no-one was stung (not even me)!

Having learnt from the last time, I made sure to have a smoker. Whether it was the smoker or the weather or the children, I don't know, but the bees were a lot calmer, although there were still plenty of them taking to the air.

Checking play cups for eggs

Main purpose of this inspection was to determine how many frames had brood on them and how many stores. When each frame has brood on them, you know the bees are close to swarming. Therefore, it's important to know where you stand (or how much the bees have covered). As expected (feared?) the Moon only has two frames of stores, one new frame with nothing in it as yet and all the rest was brood. Given this situation, I can imagine the Moon will want to swarm soon. We also found a number of play cups - the bees practising making a queen cell (which is larger than an ordinary bee cell)  - in fact, a frightening number of them. I made sure that none of them had an egg in them (which would have meant the bees were ready to swarm in a few days), but the sheer number of them means the Moon is getting jittery.

But the Moon had a surprise in store for us: by sheer fluke we found the queen, but it was an unmarked, unclipped queen, so a new queen and not the original marked queen I received last year. How, when or why the old queen disappeared and a new one came, I do not know. But the bees seem happy with her, she seems to be laying properly (so has also mated - when did all of this happen?!!?) and the Moon is as strong as ever. I will have to ask more experienced beekeepers what might have happened there. I do not think I have lost a swarm as the Moon as always had lots and lots of bees, so the original queen must have accidentally got lost somehow, sometime and the bees must have then reared a new queen, possibly even last year.

The new Moon queen - unclipped, unmarked and very happy!

The Moon was so busy that I have decided I will super up next time I inspect the bees.

A perfectly marked Star queen

The Star was a much more sedate, as was to be expected. We found the queen (marked), no problem, and saw brood as well as a few bees hatching. In the Star there are still many frames that are stores and only about half that contain brood. Both hives had drones and quite a bit of drone comb in them; the children loved letting drones walk over their gloved hands - there's no risk involved as drones have no stings. The fact that the bees are producing drone comb suggests that they might want to swarm soon, though the risk with the Star is smaller - there were only very few play cups here.

The Star showed a beautiful brood pattern (as did the Moon, actually). What this means is that you have an arc of honey and pollen at the top of the frame and then an elliptical area of brood, which moves out as more and more eggs get laid. The photo below shows this. What this means is that all is fine with the queen and that she is laying normally. So, a cause to smile and quietly thank her and the bees for doing so well.

A perfect laying pattern, with stores in an arc at the bottom,
some space to expand and the brood in a tight ellipse

In fact I am hugely grateful to the bees for being so
industrious and calm. All in all a very successful - and interesting - inspection which the children loved. And if they go away enthused by the bees and tell their friends, then more and more people will come to see what lovely and helpful little creature bees really are.