Queen Bee

Spotted her?

Time for a complete hive inspection.

Went reasonably well - I didn't get stung, found 3 of the 4 queens (the fourth was clearly there somewhere but I couldn't spot her). Two hives are in full honey production. A third, the swarm from MrB last year, is at the point where I would have liked to have put on a honey box but I didn't have a queen excluder grille which prevents her from getting up to the honey cells and laying eggs.

Tomorrow the bee supply shop is open so would normally be no problem to wait 24 hours but I was rather concerned that the hive might be getting ready to swarm. There were a number of queen cup cells and one very large completed and capped cell. As I don't know how old the queen is and why she swarmed last year, I thought it best not to risk anything and split the box, the old queen in a new box and left the prepared queen cell to see if the remaining workers develop her.

MrB thinks I may have overreacted and he's probably right, but on the spur of the moment, with the knowledge from last year what it means to lose a swarm I didn't want to risk it. Will mean less honey this year but if it works, I do get to keep all the bees and will have 5 hives.