Moon attacks!

Main focus of today's inspection was the Moon. Still, we checked up on the Star first, just to see whether all was fine.

Checking the honey collected in the super

First of all we leafed our way through the super, to check how much honey had been collected and whether any was ready to harvest. As the Star is essentially starting up, there was no frame that was fully capped, as was to be expected.

A pupil smoking - not normally allowed in schools!

A quick smoke and look into the brood box revealed the queen and that all is proceeding as it should in the Star. So, having satisfied ourselves that the Star at least was acting normally, we opened the Moon.

Capped comb with finished honey beneath.
If only all frames could be this way!

Here, we once again checked the supers first. The top super was not empty, but uncapped. The super below, which had been almost full last inspection, still defied the full house and too many frames had large uncapped portions for a harvest to be viable. At least, that's what I think. Maybe I'm wrong and, given it's rape, we should have spun out whatever's there. Time will tell.

The brood box was very interesting. Despite there not being a laying queen, the hive seemed very full and the colony strong. But, strangest of all, where there had been nothing the previous week, we were suddenly confronted by a mass of queen cells. What's more, the queen cells all had larvae in them. Where had these come from? A careful examination of the frames showed that there were no other eggs in the whole of the hive, only those in the queen cells. How can they be rearing queens? Well, the answer, in my opinion, is that some of the workers have started laying. Because they are unfertilized, they can only lay drone eggs. For some reason the Moon was fooling itself into thinking its workers could raise a queen from drone eggs, hence the queen cells. Sweet, but biologically impossible. But interesting to note that even bees indulge in wishful thinking.

Bees' castles in the air

Initially, not having thought the problem through properly, I thought I'd leave two queen cells and see what happens. But, on deeper reflection, I think the Moon should be given a queen as soon as possible. As the nuc queen is already accounted for, what I plan on doing is putting a frame from the Star with eggs on it into the Moon and then the Moon bees can raise a queen from one of those (they'll probably go for raising at least five, if not fifteen). That's something for the beginning of next week.
Meanwhile the Moon bees were starting to get distinctly aggressive. They were already having a bad day, what with them being queen-less and therefore doomed. Then we go and open their hive and snoop around. That can't have brightened their day and they started to show it in that inimitable way bees have.

Bees start their attack run

As quickly as possible we left the apiary, but the bees were properly upset and wanted us to know. In fact, they followed us for a good five hundred metres. And these are bees that generally are not followers!