2024 Cliffe Castle Bee Blog # 13
Oh dear! Today’s inspection found that our new queen had left the hive in a swarm. She had laid up an eighth frame before she went, and clearly the colony felt they did not have enough space to stay in the hive at Cliffe Castle. They did not know that we were planning to remove a frame of food and add a new frame of wax foundation today, to help relieve the overcrowding. Sadly, our fine new queen has taken half of the colony with her, to move to a new home, although there are still plenty of bees left to watch going about their business in the hive.
She had laid extra eggs while the colony was getting ready to swarm. The young house bees had chosen some to look after in a special way, to create a replacement queen after the current queen had gone. They draw out long cells from the comb to make sure that the new queen has enough space to allow her longer lower body (her abdomen) to develop properly. We chose the best of these special queen cells and destroyed all the rest. The colony can concentrate on raising just one new queen now.
We need to leave them alone to get on with this important work. Our next check will have to wait until 29 July. Please keep your fingers crossed for some better, warmer, weather in the next few weeks. Without this, a new queen will not be able to complete her mating flights and be ready to start laying eggs to build up the colony before winter.
Here are some pictures to help you understand what is happening:
You can see how long the queen’s body is, compared with that of the worker bee and the drone.
The long wax cells hanging down from this frame are queen cells – there is enough space inside them for a new queen to grow.
Not long now before the school’s break up for the long summer holidays. We will be having a Beekeeper by the Hive on Tuesday afternoons (1.30 to 3.30pm) to answer your questions about what is happening in the Observation Hive and pointing out anything of interest on the frames you can see on the outer sides of the box and in the tunnel where the bees go in and out.
You can meet a beekeeper on 30 July, 6,13,20,27 August and 3 September. After this, we will be taking the bees back to our association apiary for the winter.
Linda