Friday, May 27, 2011

Starting to worry

This morning I did a more thorough inspection, and still saw NO EGGS, LARVAE OR BROOD. I looked for over an hour and could not find the queen or eggs or larvae or brood. The hive was quite calm through all my poking around, but it is obvious that I need to do something... So this afternoon I purchased a new queen, likely Italian, from Jones Bee and after another thorough search for the old queen, installed her Majesty #2 in the hive. The hive was fairly calm until I started brushing bees off the frames (I was desperately searching for any signs of a queen at that point). But when I installed the new queen, the hive completely changed. They were obviously unhappy about this intruder. The bees covered the queen cage immediately and I don't think they giving her a very warm welcome. The entire hive became aggressive and very defensive. I decided to close up the hive and get out of there. I did however see a few capped honey cells in this ordeal.

One thing that happened before I got busy installing Queenie #2, which is REALLY NEAT, is that my kids and I were having a snack (with the new queen in her container on the table) when we heard this strange peeping sound. We discovered that it was coming from the container, and that it was the queen piping. Of course hearing this changed our relationship with this queen. She peeped herself a warm spot in our hearts. We're such suckers don't you think? ;-)

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