<a href="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/queen-cell-20May.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6285" src="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/queen-cell-20May-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>I'm starting to wonder whether I'm cut out to be an apiarist. As you will have seen from previous posts that my dear bees swarmed two weeks ago despite my best efforts to manage them. I then took further measures by removing all the queen cells I could find bar one. All this was in vain because they swarmed on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. This can only mean that two queens had emerged and recognising there were further queens in the pipeline they took themselves off with a host of worker bees. Bearing in mind that two weeks ago I probably had 50,000 bees in the colony and each swarm takes half the colony then the numbers will have dropped below 10,000.

<a href="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/emerged-queen-20May.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6284" src="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/emerged-queen-20May-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>After the last swarm I once again removed another 3 queen cells and left just one as shown here. This story sounds familiar because I have done this before. As I was walking away from the hive with the discarded queen cells in my hand a queen emerged. It was wonderful to watch however I then had the dilemma as to what to do with her. Two options at that moment - put her back into the hive and remove the cell that I'd left in tact or kill her. It broke my heart but I killed her.

With hindsight there was a third option... I could have put her into my spare hive with some bees from hive #1 and hope she started a new colony. It was too late, the queen was dead, long live the virgin queen.