Honey, but no queen
Morgan and I have just carried out a bee inspection on our two hives.
Clettwr
The first hive (Clettwr) is the one in which the queen died a few weeks ago. We last saw here on July 1st when all looked goo, but on July 7th found her dead at the bottom of the hive. There were still some eggs and larvae though so we left them to it in the hope that they would build some queen cells from these eggs and raise a new queen. We took a look again on July 13th and they had indeed constructed a number of queen cells. We destroyed all but the best of these and then left them until today (12 days later) to see what they had done.
Bees
Today there was no sign of any queen cells so we can assume that a new queen has hatched, we couldn’t see her anywhere though, but the hive itself was pretty busy with loads of bees so we may have missed here. There wasn’t any sign of any new eggs yet either though so either they are still queenless or she has yet to start laying. I guess it can take somewhere between 3 and 4 weeks for a queen to be raised, hatch, mated and start laying and so far it has only been 18 days. Hopefully that means that in the next week or so there will be signs of queen activity once again, the weather has at least been kind to them recently.
It’s such a shame really as the bees and the rest of the hive seems to be doing well. Not only are there loads of bees now but they have started filling the super with honey as well. Only 3 frames so far but that’s a good start for these parts! The main problem is that there is currently no eggs and no larvae which means there will be no new bees hatching out for a few weeks. They should really be increasing in numbers so that there are plenty of bees to go out foraging in order to make the most of the summer weather, but with no queen to lay new eggs there are no new bees on the way. I think we’ll have to inspect again in a few days time and just hope that we start seeing some eggs. If not then we’ll have to seriously consider buying and introducing a new queen.
Honey and Larvae
Leri
The other hive (Leri) was looking OK though. It doesn’t have nearly so many bees yet and they haven’t ventured up into the Super but at least the queen is there, there are eggs and larvae at all stages of development and no sign of any queen cells or swarming activity. Both hives have bees bringing in plenty of pollen at the moment, including some deep green coloured pollen.
