Eggs.

Trying to organise a motley group of Facebook users, who have all responded to an invitation to come to a bee keeping club’s meeting, has left me in envy of a cat herder’s skills. It has been a testing week culminating with just three of the original 20 possible visitors actually turning up. Two more will be along tomorrow and another in a couple of week’s time while two families with three children each are trying to pick dates before the end of the school holidays. The result is that today’s Blip was taken under some stress; at least, that is my excuse for the focus not being quite “au point” – or even remotely near it.
 
It was, however, a very good meeting; there were interesting facets for the experienced members, and the three visitors went away full of enthusiasm; whether they will have enough to take up the craft remains to be seen, but they now know that what they thought were wasps buzzing around the hives weren’t, and that there are a heck of a lot of them in each colony.
 
The “wise old hands” threw up their hands on seeing the cells in the Blip with several eggs in each; a good queen lays one egg per cell but, if she fails by either running out of eggs or sperm, or more commonly by dying; misguided workers may try and take over her role. The thing is that, while they will lay many eggs in each cell, they are what is known as “short-arses,” so deposit their eggs half way down the cell wall instead of on the bottom of the cell. This colony had already superseded (replaced its queen) twice this year, and now appears to have done so again. We found the lady on the next frame, big, black and beautiful strolling regally across the comb; it is quite normal for a queen to be overenthusiastic (or maybe just lacking control over her ovipositor) in her first working week or two and the workers will tidy up after her. The one question in my mind is why, for several years now, I have been seeing colonies repeatedly superseding young queens, supersedure should only happen when the queen is past her use by date.