10. Adam visits the apiary & the Queen emerges!

This weekend lockdown eased enough for my brother to visit the apiary. As I mentioned in our first blog post about how we became interested in beekeeping, he's been keen on the idea of keeping bees even longer than I have and I think he enjoyed meeting the little buzzers.

We did a general inspection and the overall update was that the queen cells in Kate and the nuc hadn't hatched yet. We were also a bit concerned about a lack of visible eggs in Laura, that being said there was a decent amount of larvae and a huge amount of newly hatched brood so we thought we'd wait until the next inspection to worry.

Today we went back for our next inspection. Again, we checked the nuc first ...

Nuc

• Weak strength

• Quiet temperament

• 1 brood box - 5 frames

• No queen, 1 queen cell (unhatched)

• 4 frames of brood (capped brood, no eggs)

• Mostly uniform laying pattern

• 3 frames of bees

• 2 frames of stores

• 4 foundation frames

• Saw signs of varroa (a parasitic mite that has swept the world and is one of the leading reasons bees are dying out, next to pesticides. They're dangerous because they pass diseases to the bees but they can be fairly easily controlled although never fully eradicated.)

• No need to feed as sugar syrup was still there and they didn't seem to be taking that much anyway. We decided to leave it on just in case as they're a such small colony

Actions taken = check on queen cell and colony in approx 4 day - make sure we bring icing sugar to treat the varroa.

Kate

• Weak-moderate strength

• Disturbed temperament

• 1 brood box - 11 frames

• 1 queen cell - HATCHED!!!

• 4 frames of brood (capped brood, no eggs)

• Mostly uniform laying pattern

• Moderate population for size

• 5 frames of bees

• 5 frames of stores

• 4 frames of brood

• 1 foundation frames

• No signs of disease

• Feeding well, we removed the feeder as they seem to have enough stores

Actions taken = Checked on queen cell

Now that we know a queen has hatched we need to seal up this colony for at least a week to allow her to make her maiden flight and mate with the surrounding drones. This is the only time in her life she will mate and she'll receive enough sperm to keep laying for the rest of her life - 5 years! (The birds and the bees!)

Next week we'll check on her to see if she is laying and if we can spot any eggs. If she is laying we just have to wait to see if she is laying correctly or if she is a drone laying queen. We should find this out about a week after she starts laying, once the brood begins to be capped. That will be the last hurdle and we then should have a queenright colony. We are keeping the queen cell in the nuc until we are sure we have a queenright colony or have established that the queen cell has failed (Greg thinks that as she hasn't yet emerged this may be the case) at which point we'll decide what to do with the nuc - whether to try again with some eggs from Laura or to contact our provider to supply us with either a new nuc or a queen to introduce to the colony. Still a lot to consider and have a go at before then.

Laura

• Strong strength

• Calm temperament

• 1.5 brood box - 11 + 11 frames

• Didn't see the queen this time

• Two queen cups (no larvae inside)

• 6 frames of brood (Eggs + capped brood + uncapped brood)

• 10 frames of bees

• 6 frames of stores

• 1 foundation frame (beginning to be drawn)

• Uniform laying pattern

• Some signs of chalkbrood (another common disease. This is a fungus which mummifies the bee larvae - nothing to worry about at this stage as long as she is laying well.)

• There does seem to be a decline in the number of eggs but this may be just because there is so much capped and emerging brood at the moment - she really was very productive in the beginning)

Actions taken = We put the under-super on top as they hadn't started drawing the frames underneath as we'd hoped. Putting it on top will hopefully encourage them to do this as the queen likes to be toasty warm at the top of the hive.

All in all, we're really pleased that a queen has hatched in Kate and are excited to see what happens next. Will check in again towards the end of the weekend.