Nice photo, Bridget. Clearly eggs on pollen.
Kitta
Nice photo, Bridget. Clearly eggs on pollen.
Kitta
I also saw a couple of eggs on top of pollen for the first time this week. Never seen that before so not sure what is going on. Very curious.
Well I'll bee.....eggs on pollen - its a first for me. Those bees are just not reading the books!
This must be a genetic trait of your bees Jon
Don't think so. But it's the first time I ever saw that for myself.
A sign of congestion Jon?
Well I'm in good company if Jon has the same occurrence - I was going to call it a problem but not sure if it is? It will be interesting to see if they develop though not sure they will have room. I'll try and take more photos. Certainly no congestion in the nuc - that frame was just drawn comb when I put it in a week or so ago and they have only put pollen in it.
BTW who ever it was that suggested filling a frame with syrup for a nuc that needed stores and stores close to them - what a great idea, it worked really well.
I agree, I think it is most often seen when there are fewer bees or the bees are older and less geared up for clearing a bit of nest space for the queen to lay, sometimes early in the season when the foragers are packing in pollen before decent numbers of young house bees hatch, and again I see it later in the year in mating nucs that have been a while without new young bees hatching. It takes a while for the colonies to sort themselves out to have normal looking brood and it can give the pattern a mighty strange, almost drone layerish, look before the nest re-establishes a more conventional look. Mini nuc frames are often ruined by it as they never get to the strength to properly clear the cells out , as the emerging bee from such a cell leaves a cocoon behind making the pollen quite useless and the cell in need of a bit of housekeeping. Such cells will sometimes result in very hard pollen the bees cannot remove.
It has been a great year for red mason bees. These queens just fancy trying it their way for a change. Doesn't work. Not enough mud in a honeybee colony.
I'm going to get a name for unhelpful posts if I'm not careful .....
That seems like a good explanation, MBC - my Irish queen was in a nuc and the other one in the daughter hive of an AS, and Bridget's was in an apidea.
If I have time ( ... if ...) I want to build a straw bale hive (not a skep) - there'll probably be lots of mud in there.
Kitta
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