New Virgin Queen at Hive #3 in Chanhassen

June 25, 2011

Today we did our inspection between rain showers!  It has been a strange month of June with lots of rain and many grey days. Our galoshes are wet and muddy most of the time! 

This mud must add a couple of pounds per boot!

Queen cell

 But most importantly, the honeybees don't like those conditions at all. They feel crowded and cooped up in their hive, even if they actually have lots of space. Thus they want to swarm (move out!). Every week we are reversing the deep boxes from top to bottom to relief the swarming temptation. In addition we remove many queen cells and cups at the bottom of the frames, an indication that the colony "feel" congested and wants to expand which is all natural for bees to do, but as beekeepers, we do want them to stay in our boxes.

Soon, the "swarming season" will be over when warmth and sun will be back. A new nectar flow will come, and the bees will go out again and forage, gathering nectar and pollen; somehow "forgetting" about leaving their hive.

Ben showing a beautiful egg laying pattern

Our 6 hives are doing well, some are perfect, and beautiful. This is due to a "text-book" queen, laying eggs one  at a time in a regular and precise pattern.  We also have some capped honey!

Marked frame inspected for queen cells in hive #3 Chanhassen

    We are also very happy to report that we have a new virgin queen at #3 in Chanhassen. Last week we had taken a frame of eggs and brood  from our best hive, and inserted it in the queen-less hive. We had marked the frame with 2 white dots. Today we saw many queen cells that the workers had made. They fed all queen cells royal jelly and hoped like us to "create" the perfect queen. And they did!

Many queen cells opened, but only one queen will survive

For survival and probably by instinct, the workers constructed more than one queen cell. Their effort was rewarded when the first new queen emerged healthy and ready to be their queen. Her majesty's first duty then, (because the eggs have been laid in succession and not at once) is to  kill without mercy any other contenders to the throne, leaving the first born as sole heir!  We knew we had a queen ,on our frame we saw 6 open queen cells with some still having a dead body in it. Obviously we did not see any eggs, or the queen for that matter but our other clue was the calmness and the soft humming of the whole hive like peace had finally descended upon the colony. It was really something to experience. The workers will do all the clean up while the queen will adjust to her new life. Soon, she will leave her colony and take her "maiden" flight.