Early signs of an unfertilised queen?

[gavin]

I have a few of these this year. Disappointing. It has been - until recently - on the cold side so the early virgins may not have had the enjoyment they should have had. Extra royal jelly, thick rims to the cells, the area noticeably raised. Drone laying queen, no?

A few of the early queens made it, and others have only eggs so I'm crossing my fingers that they were fertilised in the warm weather in recent days.





Or am I wrong? However there was a very fine common spotted orchid in front of the hives to brighten the already quite bright day.

[Jon]

When a queen just starts to lay the first few cells get absolutely flooded with Royal jelly. Give that one a couple more days and things will be clear.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Gavin
Lovely orchid you might try and help the seed get a hold later.
A big patch of those would look great

Bees are looking very happy with themselves
The comb walls probably were thick already
Round the pollen they look pretty thick as well
I don't know much about it but I wouldn't be worried
Overnight rain here hope that's not the weather breaking

[Jon]

I would tend to agree DR. I think that is worker larvae in old comb with thickened walls. We'll find out in a couple of days.

[gavin]

Ah, that would be good, gents. I like being wrong sometimes.

The orchid (one of half a dozen or more of this species this year) will get to spread its seed around as the orchard owner has an SRDP grant to fund biodiversity-sympathetic management. There have been a couple of Dactylorhiza fuchsii in the last couple of years and a good handful of Dactylorhiza purpurella - from what seemed like zero a few years ago. Both species are also present on some of the A90 road flyovers nearby - nice to see them spreading.

[Adam]

The brood looks quite solid - I would be expecting to see some of the drones being removed soon if a DLQ. I've had some badly mated queens (too cold) and a couple of drone layers this year. The badly mated had a spotty brood pattern with lots of holes. It looked like the workers were trying to remove the drone eggs from the drone layer in a nuc - the pattern was quite patchy - almost like laying workers. Soon rectified with a new queen; a lot of the uncapped drone brood was removed as soon as she went in, so the comb is pretty good.

[Jon]

If the photo was taken on the 9th that brood will be getting capped tomorrow as those larvae are between 1-2 days old.
Keep us updated Gav, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[Bumble]

Hope it's okay to add a question to this thread.

One of my colonies produced a new queen which should have started laying around the beginning of July. When I inspected 6th July there was a lovely brood pattern over 4 frames, but nothing was capped. Yesterday (12th) I found that much of the brood is drone, although there is a fair amount of worker in there too. It actually looks a bit of a mess, a hotchpotch of different cells. There's also a single uncapped queen cell, which I've left alone.

The comb wasn't newly drawn this year, but they've obviously altered the cells to accommodate all these drones. Would it be a good idea to give them a fresh start with new foundation so the new queen, when she appears, won't be tempted to lay too many drones in the existing cells?

It's too hot to disturb them again today to take a picture.

[gavin]

Keep us updated Gav, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Went through them today with half a dozen witnesses and yes indeed, I was pleasantly surprised! Its a goodie.

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[Jon]

Ye of little faith!