fiat500bee
House Bee
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2020
- Messages
- 362
- Reaction score
- 252
- Location
- Nairn, Highland
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 2
As the question above....rephrased from a previous one about marking paint rubbing off.
Our green marked Buckfast queen from a June nuc seemed to lack that certain get up and go from the start. I put that down to the need to first get established.
In the last two weeks there has been a marked acceleration in laying activity and in the number of bees. I haven't looked for or seen the queen for around three weeks.
Today I spotted a queen centrally placed in the super box on larvae, eggs and capped brood (no QE).
This was after a "light touch" inspection of the deep brood-box where I would have been very lucky to have had the chance to see any queen.
At first I presumed the paint had rubbed off her, but as I have been reading that we are in supercedure season I'm wondering if that's what happened.
There appears to have been no interruption in service so could two queens possibly be operating at the moment?
It sounds a bit too soon for the queen to have beeen superceded in normal circumstances but if she was a poor layer might they have done so?
I did notice a solitary, capped drone cell among a sheet of capped workers when I looked at the playback of a recording of the inspection. Wouldn't that be another bit of evidence to support this possibility?
Our green marked Buckfast queen from a June nuc seemed to lack that certain get up and go from the start. I put that down to the need to first get established.
In the last two weeks there has been a marked acceleration in laying activity and in the number of bees. I haven't looked for or seen the queen for around three weeks.
Today I spotted a queen centrally placed in the super box on larvae, eggs and capped brood (no QE).
This was after a "light touch" inspection of the deep brood-box where I would have been very lucky to have had the chance to see any queen.
At first I presumed the paint had rubbed off her, but as I have been reading that we are in supercedure season I'm wondering if that's what happened.
There appears to have been no interruption in service so could two queens possibly be operating at the moment?
It sounds a bit too soon for the queen to have beeen superceded in normal circumstances but if she was a poor layer might they have done so?
I did notice a solitary, capped drone cell among a sheet of capped workers when I looked at the playback of a recording of the inspection. Wouldn't that be another bit of evidence to support this possibility?
