Marie Antoinette

Now that I know which queen is where and why, I inspected Moon, Star and nuc (or should I call it (mushroom) Cloud?) to see how they are doing.
The new Moon queen is laying beautifully with a good laying pattern (just as it should be) and some frames are completely laid out already. She's obviously on her 2000-a-day (eggs, not fruit & veg), as eggs seemed to be everywhere. Some frames are not drawn out and the new super is as yet unused. With so much to keep the bees busy, I hope they won't think of swarming any time soon.
I didn't see the queen herself, which is disappointing, also because I need to mark her.
As this queen is doing well, I thought I would exchange the Star queen with the new green queen, which I've been wanting to do for a while now.
The green queen is also laying fastidiously and the nuc is a lovely little colony.

Last view of the yellow Star queen - RIP

In the Star all is also well, though I saw lots of drones and took off a whole row of capped drone cells. As I wanted to introduce the green queen into the Star, I caught the yellow queen, which once again was not as easy as it should be. Somehow they never want to be caught...

Having put her to one side, I covered the brood box of the Star with newspaper, put an empty broodbox over it and filled it with the frames from the nuc. Newspaper on top of that separated the nuc bees from the Star bees in the supers. The theory is that the bees will chew their way through the newspaper and by the time they have, the Star colony will have accepted the green queen which I have foisted on them. Hope that all works that way.

Something for the bees to read

The Starscraper with newspaper separating the green queen and her court
from the rest of the Star colony

The Star hive now looks like a skyscraper, or more like the leaning tower of Pisa, as I have discovered that the brick on one side must have slid, as the hive is no longer level, but lopsided.




After having closed the Starscraper, I then had to kill the old Star queen. This was undoubtedly one of the more unpleasant things I've had to do in my life and certainly the worst thing I've ever done with the bees. Still feel sad and bad about it.