Well, after a couple of weeks of indifferent weather, you might recall I had a surfeit of virgins (oh how I wish !!) queens that is, and having helped them out of the cells when cutting them out of a colony on OSR, I borrowed a few Apideas form a pal and we thought, well, the worst that can happen is they get rejected and it's a wasted exercise.
Well, took the lids off the Apideas today and am very pleased to report all three have a laying queen. I marked 2 of them, and one of them I also managed to clip (the other was extremely flighty to thought better to leave her until another day.)
The third nuc - well, it appears I have a laying queen in there but......having checked throughout (and there is only a cupful of bees in there) I believe she is a very small queen and as dark as can be.....so how does one go about finding such a small queen I wonder ?
It would be a shame to unite them into another colony, or shake them out and see what's left. I suppose I could sift them through a queen excluder, but I fear she is small enough to fit through.
I also wonder if she might be superceeded anyway once the colony is moved on to a larger nuc box next month...
hey ho, the fun of bees
and lastly, I had another enquiry from a villager locally about keeping bees, so fingers crossed we have a newbeek in the wings !
regards
S
Well, took the lids off the Apideas today and am very pleased to report all three have a laying queen. I marked 2 of them, and one of them I also managed to clip (the other was extremely flighty to thought better to leave her until another day.)
The third nuc - well, it appears I have a laying queen in there but......having checked throughout (and there is only a cupful of bees in there) I believe she is a very small queen and as dark as can be.....so how does one go about finding such a small queen I wonder ?
It would be a shame to unite them into another colony, or shake them out and see what's left. I suppose I could sift them through a queen excluder, but I fear she is small enough to fit through.
I also wonder if she might be superceeded anyway once the colony is moved on to a larger nuc box next month...
hey ho, the fun of bees
and lastly, I had another enquiry from a villager locally about keeping bees, so fingers crossed we have a newbeek in the wings !
regards
S
