My beekeeping experience continues to be a steep learning curve and this week has taught me a lot. At this time of year healthy colonies will be looking to swarm as this is their natural way of propagating the species. For a swarm to happen the worker bees see that the colony is thriving and start making new queen cells. The beekeeper’s role is to spot these cells and then manage the swarming instinct by dividing the colony up. The original queen, food store and workers on three frames are moved into a smaller, cosy nucleus. I had one ready for this very purpose.
When I did my hive inspection on Saturday 2nd May I was looking for the tell tale signs but could see no queen cells with eggs in them however I obviously missed them because on Thursday 7th May the bees swarmed and I stood and watched helplessly as half the colony flew off and gathered 8 metres up a neighbours Eucalyptus tree. There was no way I could retrieve them. I hit an emotional low as I realised I had failed them. I left the remaining queenless colony to settle for a couple of days before inspecting again.
After taking the Supers off (they are getting heavy with honey) I saw there was a queen cell hanging from the wire framed queen excluder – see photo. The white shape is a large larval queen and I’ve exposed her so she won’t survive.
On further inspection I found several more capped queen cells which initially I was pleased about. Unsure what to do I phoned my mentor, bee consultant and good friend Gary. He explained carefully the next actions and also sent me an article from the Apiarist’s blog. His advice was counter intuitive to me – I had to go back into the hive and remove all the capped and well formed queen cells and just leave one early stage queen cell that had an egg or young larva in it.
With steely determination I went through the hive and effectively aborted several queens. Here are three (there were several more) that I cut away from the comb and as you can see the white is a queen larva. It broke my heart to do this. I know they are only insects but the life of this superorganism is so complex I remain in awe of them. If I hadn’t done this there is a risk that the first virgin queen to emerge would realise there were other queens in the offing and would swarm again taking more bees with her and depleting the strength of the hive further. I have left one fresh queen cell with an egg in it. When I inspect next weekend this queen cell should be well developed and hopefully capped. The virgin queen will emerge in 8 days and then in the following weeks will hopefully mate and start laying eggs again. There will be a 3 week period when I will not inspect them for fear of disturbing the new queen. Patience will be required.
The lesson from all of this is that I must be more observant and know what I’m looking for and why. I shall know in future and be better prepared. The learning curve continues and thankfully we never stop learning.
I mean, how can you do an inspection and miss Queen Cells. Honestly.
I inspected my hive today, perfectly routine……apart from that sealed Queen Cell I found ? and some unsealed QCs. ?? Honestly, how can I have missed them starting last week. Hello, is there an echo in here?
They haven’t swarmed yet so I might just be able to intervene and stop them doing so.
Beekeeping – remember Stay Safe!
It’s good to know that I’m not alone in missing queen cells. It’s what happens afterwards that matters. Bees seem to be very clever at hiding QCs until it’s too late and then bang they’re off.