Marking Queens

Last inspection we'd seen the nuc queen and knew there was a laying queen in the Star; the Moon was queenless. Purpose of the inspection today was to see whether the nuc queen had mated and if so, to mark her. I was also keen on marking the Star queen, if she wasn't the green queen from the Moon and to see how matters had developed in the Moon.

The hive entrances were all busy so the bees are all foraging and bringing back pollen and honey. We saw some enormous pollen sacs on some of the bees.

Bees bringing pollen to the nuc - before they were disturbed

Bees trying to get into the nuc after the inspection - quite a crowd!
Note the bright yellow pollen sacs.

We opened the nuc first and discovered to our delight that the queen here has started laying. There were quite a number of eggs. The bees have also started messing around with queen cups, so the nuc may be one to watch for a mini-swarm (not sure that nucs swarm, but better safe than sorry).

If you look carefully, you can see eggs - little white specks at the bottom centre of each cell.

The queen - slim, brown and elegant - was spotted fairly quickly (after all, she only has three frames to hide on) and captured and put into the marking chamber, where she was dotted with a green dot. While queens should be marked a different colour for each year, I find this is not necessary for the two hives we have, as it is easy to keep track of them.

The queen, still free, about to disappear off the edge of the comb

The queen is inside the plastic chamber. This time some of the workers were splodged with paint, too.

The freshly marked queen

In the Star things looked much better than last time: gone was the awful smell and the colony has expanded well, moving centrally up: so in the brood chamber the central five frames are fully laid out and above them in the super the middle frames are also starting to fill up. As the hive is not that full yet, the bees have not expanded to occupy all the space yet. As to be expected in this circumstance, the bees have no thoughts of swarming.
But what did surprise us was that the Star has its own dark queen (well spotted, Goulwenn). So she must have hatched from the cell we put in two weeks ago and mated quickly to start laying. She was captured (with some difficulty) and processed like the nuc queen.

Trying to capture the queen

Dotting the thorax through the criss-cross marking cage

One newly marked Star queen

With two queens spotted and marked we were going for a hat trick.However, we did not see the queen in the Moon. The queen cell we had left from last time was empty, so the queen must have hatched. But she proved elusive. The colony is definitely queen-less, as we saw no eggs or larvae, but quite happily so. This means they are expecting a mated queen soon.
But looking back, I realize we had this same situation last spring: a sudden disappearance of the Moon queen with no evidence of swarming. What do the Moon bees do with their queen? Perhaps they are revolutionaries....

What ever their administrative preferences, one super is looking close to full now and we moved the not quite ready frames to the centre and the finished ones to the edges so that hopefully soon we'll have a full super to spin out. That will be mainly rape honey - delicious!

Queen Smells

After the confusion last week, I was hoping that this inspection would answer some of the questions concerning queen distribution that the last inspection had left open. With Mr. V and two pupils, we checked out all three hives.
The Moon once again posed a riddle. There was evidently no queen, as no larvae or eggs. The bees hadn't swarmed either, as they were everywhere in multitudes. However, we did find a cornucopia of queen cells, many of which were sealed. One frame had eight queen cells on one side!

Eight queen cells (the long dangly bits) on one side!

So the bees are obviously queenless and plan to raise a few, swarm with the first (and possible further ones as they hatch), and then stay with a subsequent queen, when they feel they've had enough of swarming. The fact that there is no queen in the Moon, suggests I moved her to the Star last time when I transferred the wild comb.
However, knowing the Moon is queenless meant I could stop them swarming in the near future, by removing all queen cells except one.

Apian regi- and infanticide!

As there are no more eggs, the bees cannot construct another queen cell. And until the new queen is hatched, mated and laying, there is no risk of a swarm. I think that's how it should work! The bees probably have other plans.
Looking in the super it is obvious a flow is on, as this was looking quite full of honey. To give the bees more space for honey and themselves (not that they have drawn out the brood frames exchanged for the ones I took out last time), we supered up. This might also tame their swarm tendencies a little.

The nuc was busy with bees. The queen here has hatched and looks lovely. She has not mated yet, which you can tell not only by there being no eggs in the nuc, but also by the fact she is still very slim.

The new nuc queen - check out her legs!

The Star was interesting, again. The first thing we noticed was a horrible smell that emanated from the eke and wild comb. Why exactly it had started to smell, I don't know, but it could be a mixture of lots of dead drones and some dysentery. That being as it was, we reluctantly decided to get rid of the wild comb. Pity, as I had been looking forward to harvesting wild honey from that.

Getting rid of the wild comb

A look into the brood box showed us that the Star has a queen that is laying (we saw eggs - many of them).

Larval proof there's a laying queen

I assume that means the green queen from the Moon is now in the Star as I find it hard to imagine the celled queen we put in last week would have mated already, especially as the nuc queen hasn't. My version of events is the green queen killed the new queen, possibly before hatching, as the colony is not strong enough to swarm. Indeed, it may be tight on stores, as the workers seem to have chased drones off; we saw many many dead drones.

Dead or near-dead drones

Anyway, at the end of the day it seems, the Star is fine with a laying queen (not that we saw her!), though the colony is not explosively strong (as is the Moon) and has yet to draw out the brood comb. Nevertheless, I might super up on Monday to catch the flow, if it is still on. The Moon is once again, like last year, somewhat inexplicably queen-less, but with one developing. The nuc has a queen that should mate soon. So, calm and happy days ahead, it seems. If only...!

Bees on the Moon

Star-stuck bees

Grass Plugs

Pulled the grass plugs out today. The bees seemed desperate to get out and generally the bees around the apiary were in high spirits and very busy.
Let's see what next week brings.

Queen Cells

Having discovered last inspection that the Moon was showing swarming tendencies, I was prepared for taking swarm control measures during the inspection today. I had a nuc box prepared, as well as the empty Star, as I wanted to rear two new queens: one in the Moon (after having transferred the old Moon queen to the Star) and one in a nuc box, as last year. Of course, the bees decided to be different and thwart my plans.

The weather has been rotten lately, so I was not hugely surprised to see them flying around in force in the sunshine today. As soon as I opened the Moon and started checking, I realized though that not all was fine in the Moon. The bees had not swarmed yet - that was obvious: we were inundated in bees. However, in the brood box I counted no fewer than twelve viable queen cells, three of which were sealed. Usually the old queen flies off before the queen cells are sealed, so obviously the bad weather had kept her inside. The playcups I had ignored last time had obviously been turned into full queen cells, though I still don't understand how the bees could have moved so fast to have sealed queen cells in the space of 7 days. There must have been eggs in some, though I didn't see any. Will have to read up on that again.

Three queen cells on one side - two of which are sealed

So, saved from losing a swarm by the bad weather, Goulwenn and I examined all frames carefully, looking for the newly-marked queen. Nothing. We went through all frames twice, but failed to find her. How do you do swarm control without finding the queen? I know there is some complicated method, but I didn't want to try that. As the bees starve the queen before swarming, so she is fit to fly, I thought maybe she had crawled through the queen excluder and was hiding in the wild comb. Of course we have no chance of finding her in that. She is certainly not laying as much, which is also standard procedure before a swarm.

Try finding a queen in this!

In the end we did the following:
First of all we destroyed all queen cells except for two.

This would have become a queen

We put one queen cell into the Star, together with three frames of bees, one queen cell into the nuc box, together with a frame of food and another frame of bees, plus some more shaken off a frame. I turned all entrances different directions and put grass into the entrances, so the bees would stay inside their new home for a day, to get used to their new surroundings. I destroyed all queen cells in the Moon, as I assumed, though invisible, that the queen was still in there. Then, in a fit of spleen, I put the wild comb onto the Star, too. In some way I think that should help me to find out where the queen is. If she is in the wild comb (and now in the Star), then there are too few bees there to swarm and she should kill the new developing queen and the Moon will raise a new emergency queen. If she is in the Moon, then the Moon might swarm, but there aren't that many bees left there, so they might not swarm (or do so later). Somehow, I am almost resigned to losing a swarm this year, but as long as I have two viable colonies at the end, I think I'll be happy.
I'm sure the bees will do everything differently, though. They always seem to.

The set up at the end; Star with wild comb, nuc and Moon

Throughout the inspection the bees were well-behaved and fairly calm. I was only stung once. The air was full of them though and half-way through the inspection I heard shrieks and screams from behind the hedge. Unsure of who was there and with not a lot I could do, I listened to the cries with some amusement. Someone was not having a good time with all the airborne bees. A few minutes later we saw the school's mountain-biking club emerge and pedal at top speed away from the environs of the apiary. The teacher in charge later told me they had been beset by bees, though not many had stung, it seems.