Jon

I had 15 cells due to hatch last Sunday 29th May and all of them turned out duff.
I opened quite a few and all the queens were dead at the purple eye stage which I reckon is about 4 days off hatching.
The cells had developed normally and were sealed at the right time – 4 days after grafting. I can only speculate that they were chilled. We had a huge storm on 23rd May and temperatures were low all week. Some beekeepers even had colonies blown over. My dad had one with two supers on blown clean over in his garden.

Not to worry. I had another batch of about 20 due to hatch on 3rd June. These were in two rows on a cell bar frame and I put rollers on the top row on Tuesday 31st. The cell bar frame has a design flaw and it wont take rollers on the bottom row unless you put a shallow eke below it. I was rushed for time and just did the top row, meaning to cage the bottom row the following day, still plenty of time in theory. And I had also grafted a second lot into the queenless colony on Monday 30th.

Wednesday I went up to put the rest of the rollers on and to my horror noticed that a couple of queens had hatched in the rollers on the top row. I started putting the bottom row into apideas I had loaded a couple of days previously. A queen came out of one of the cells as I had it in my hand. She flew up and landed back on my hand a couple of times but I managed to manoeuvre her in through the hole in the inner cover of an Apidea. I carried another cell across the allotment to replace a cell in an Apidea which had failed to hatch and this one got out of the cell as well but I managed to get her in through the hole. In all I got eleven queens sorted out into apideas. I took two queens home with me with attendants in rollers in the breast pocket of my shirt and I put these two in apideas earlier today. The queens looked great, black as yer boot and all progeny of a Galtee daughter mated with mainly Galtee drones so the majority will be 100% Galtee.

I thought I had got away with it but when I checked the queen rearing colony today there was only one cell left on the bar. I think there were about 10 started earlier in the week. I looked into the space from where I had lifted the cell bar and there was a black virgin sitting on the top bar of the frame below. She scuttled down into the bottom box. Bugger, so one must have got out. I removed the cell bar frame as this colony was now past its sell by date for queen rearing. No real harm done as the colony was queenless and now has a virgin from a colony I want to breed from. It’s just that I prefer to mate them in apideas and then requeen. They take far longer to mate in full colonies.

I set up another one for queenright queen rearing, basically a demaree system, and hope to graft into the top box tomorrow.

You should see the allotment. I have 16 of my own apideas set out under gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes and there are also another 7 belonging to members of the queen rearing group. The drones had better be up for it.

Earlier in the week I saw a virgin leave an Apidea and walk up the side. It was windy so she thought better of it and walked back in.
Yesterday I found one Apidea empty but on searching around I found a small cluster hanging from the branch of a damson tree. I held up the Apidea to the cluster and they went inside. They were still in the apidea today. I think that sometimes they all leave with the queen on her mating flight, maybe a pheromone problem.
Today I found a queen running around on the ground 3 feet in front of an Apidea. I helped her inside and it settled down.
Hopefully I will get a few of these mated. Tomorrow and Saturday look like good mating days.