one thing that this year has shown me is that no matter how interesting it seems, i am in no way ready to start rearing queens. luckily, all my girls so far have been pretty forgiving of my wacky unpredictable schedule. tried to get in them a couple of times last week, and SOMETHING always got in the way - including a trip to the er to get wil tyler's thumb x-rayed after an encounter with a hungry donkey.
1. POLYXENA CHRISTINA:
-a light super. i actually realized afterwards that i didn't inspect it, but there was definitely honey in it, though not much.
-lots of very busy bees in the brood box.
-no capped brood or larvae, and heaven knows i can't see the eggs, so who knows if there were eggs in there.
-lots of pollen and uncapped nectar.
-several emergency cells and one queen cell that i feel certain actually hatched. i'm guessing the others were cannibalized after polyxena christina the 4th or 5th hatched.
i did not see the queen. if a new one hatched, it had to have hatched recently based on the absence of larvae. they also had to be queenless for a while. last tuesday the 3rd was my 2 week mark to re-treat with apiguard. so, 17 days ago she had capped brood but i'm almost she had no larvae since i didn't make note of any.
now they've got me playing a guessing game. isn't this unusual? (the bee behavior, not mine - i'm always guessing it seems!)am i supposed to have brood at this time of year? i know the colony dwindles, but shouldn't they keep a few brood coming on to replace they dying ones?? so what in the world is going on? why would they hatch a new queen this time of year? it's not like she was an OLD girl!
-lots of very busy bees as well.
-no capped brood or larvae.
-a couple of emergency cells.
-uncapped nectar and lots of pollen. - bright orange and white. haven't seen white before.
-nectar and capped honey in super.
-i did not see the queen.
3.ESTHER:
esther had a bit of a surprise for me. remember that i put spacers above each brood box to allow for the mite treatment. when i removed the supers i found that they had built new comb diagonally across the frames, and there was capped brood in it! i didn't get into the brood box b/c i didn't want to disturb that new brood. what in the world is she doing? she apparently didn't get the memo that comb building only happens in the spring flow.
what to do? according to Laney, if i don't have a laying queen right now, my colony only has about a 50% chance of surviving the winter. i did see evidence of a new queen in polyxena christina's hive, so i feel confident that she'll get things underway soon. not sure about agnes. obviously esther is doing fine! in fact, i could wait until the brood in the new comb above the frames hatches, and then transfer a frame or two of brood from esther to the other girls - IF esther has enough to spare.
i did find out later that i probably should have treated for mites a few weeks earlier. there have been reports that, among other things, it stops queens from laying. also found out that this automatic re-queening -by the colony, not the keeper- seems to be the trend these days.
