Well Bee-hived Bees
That was nice, a hive inspection without any surprises. I’ve just been out to inspect both hives and the bees were particularly well behaved. Anna was at work and Morgan at school but we needed to check on the hives so I did it on my own today. Maybe having just one person inspect them was a good thing as the bees seemed a lot calmer today. I’m sure that makes sense as it must be better for the bees not to be harassed by two huge lumbering humans, one has got to be better. Also, I wasn’t talking to anyone so the whole process was probably quieter and calmer for them.
All looked good with the colony in the first hive (Clettwr). I saw Ffion, its queen, scuttling around on one of the frames, there was plenty of sealed brood, larvae in all stages, eggs and lots of honey stores. Also notable was a large amount of multi-coloured pollen on a couple of the frames. Much more than we’ve seen before which is a good sign. The bees all seemed happy and healthy (as far as I could tell) and there were no signs of swarming. All seems good.
The second hive, Leri, didn’t look too bad either. This hive houses the colony that we are fairly certain swarmed last Friday. As before there was no sign of Alice, the queen, and fewer bees than there used to be. The two queen cells that we left on our last inspection are still there and they don’t look as though a queen has emerged from either of them yet. There weren’t any new queen cells though which is a good sign and the bees still seemed remarkably calm considering the fact that they are currently queenless. By our estimates, we think the queen cells were probably sealed on the same day that the colony swarmed (last Friday). This is often the way it works and usually queen cells are sealed on the 8th day and then the queen emerges on the 16th day. According to these estimates she should therefore emerge on Saturday.
It would be nice to check that the queen has indeed emerged early next week, but at the same time we don’t want to disturb her too much if she has. The last thing we need is for her to get spooked and abscond as well. In fact many sources suggest that we now should just leave that colony alone for about 2 weeks. That will give the queen time to emerge (hopefully on Saturday) then she will go on her mating flights within the next few days (weather permitting). It then usually takes another week to 10 days for the queen to start laying. The minimum time from emergence to laying is 10 days and it is usually not more than 14 days. This means that if we take a look inside the hive two weeks from Saturday, if all is well we should start to see some eggs. Fingers crossed that’s what happens and the colony manages a successful re-queening.
