Jon
the bees know best - pah
by
, 06-04-2014 at 10:28 PM (14893 Views)
Checked a colony on Friday which had a queen and brood 3 weeks ago.
All it had was a few capped cells on one frame and on opening a few they had chalk brood mummies inside.
The colony was really calm and had a single opened supersedure cell.
I thought maybe the queen had had a mishap the last time I opened it but if this were the case there would have been multiple emergency queen cells.
I could not find a virgin but the colony was very calm so I suspected there must be one in there.
I gave it a test frame from another colony. I checked it today - no queen cells.
I started looking and there was bright sunshine today so good conditions and a found a tiny little yellow virgin queen and nipped her. This colony has about 20% yellow workers. I combined it with a similar sized colony beside it over a sheet of newspaper.
I still have a couple of queens in apideas which overwintered. The two I introduced last week are laying.
The chances of a virgin queen mating here in early April are very slim and this one looked like a hybrid. Last year I didn't have mated queens until the end of June.