queen3..jpg queen1..jpg queen2..jpg
I went up to check my bees this afternoon and found them to be flying well bringing in pollen.
By half past three it had cooled a little and all the colonies were quiet except one which seemed to have bees taking orientation flights.
This continued for 15 minutes even though the other colonies had no activity so I went to have a closer look and found the marked queen dead on the landing board.
This was the colony where I made a post about poisoned bees on 3rd October. I checked the colony on the 4th and the queen was ok. That was the last time I opened it until today.
When I checked today after finding the queen, the bees were giving out a queenless roar.
There were about five frames of mostly sealed brood in a good tight pattern including small larvae under 24 hours. I didn't see eggs but I just had a quick look.
I noticed they had started to draw out a queen cell.
There was no sign of a supersedure queen and the behaviour of the colony would not have suggested this anyway.
This was a 2009 queen which hatched in August last year. It is the mother (31) of most of those queens whose scattergrams I posted recently in the drawWing thread.
This queen was laying well a couple of days ago and must have died quite unexpectedly.
Any ideas?
If it was poisoning she laid really well for three weeks after the incident so I doubt if that were the problem. The only possible hint is that her tongue was out. (see pic above)
There was no visible problem with wings, feet or antennae and she did not look like she had been balled.
I have had half a dozen queens go missing since the start of September so I am a little worried. This is the first one I have found dead.
The colony is (was) one of my strongest and is packed out with stores.
PS Doris:
You asked in another thread about banding.
That is what I would call a queen with banding.
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