beekake
House Bee
Last week I checked on a swarm I'd caught some weeks earlier...headed by a virgin queen. Lots of drone brood (not patchy), but the occasional sealed worker cell. The bees had drawn several queen cells in the middle of the frames, and on checking one of them there was a metamorphosed queen in there (not pigmented). For an experiment, I added a frame of brood from another hive that had a sealed queen cell on it (a wally shaw parent colony that are still not giving up building qcs but are not swarming either!). This week, the queen cell is open (as in, emerged) and there are no larvae or eggs anywhere in the hive.
I opened up another requeened colony that seemed to be struggling...same thing...drone brood mostly but with a few worker cells and a couple of queen cells. This time, I just left the queen cells and will see what happens.
Anyone else seen this kind of thing? I'm not hopeful they'll come to anything, but interested to see if they can sort themselves out before it gets too late. My alternative plan was to shake them out, but I always see that as a last resort.
I opened up another requeened colony that seemed to be struggling...same thing...drone brood mostly but with a few worker cells and a couple of queen cells. This time, I just left the queen cells and will see what happens.
Anyone else seen this kind of thing? I'm not hopeful they'll come to anything, but interested to see if they can sort themselves out before it gets too late. My alternative plan was to shake them out, but I always see that as a last resort.