My weekly inspections of the hive continue. With a new queen in the hive I have to find her and mark her. Last time I did this it took 4 or 5 inspections before I eventually found her and got her dabbed with a blob of colour. So I’m on the search again. There aren’t as many bees as there were in April due to the swarming but the new queen is hopefully laying over 1,000 eggs a day so in 21 days time there will be another 21,000 bees buzzing around. The increase in population has to be countered by the fact that at this time of year the workers only live for 42 days. I’ll let you do the arithmetic on the growth rate.
The main thing is the bees are thriving and are happy. They are far less aggressive and so I’m hoping the change in the gene pool with the new queen means they will be happier.
This frame has a lot of drone cells. The drones are the males and do very little apart from mate with queens from other colonies. They don’t do any housework in the hive or forage for food – they are only interested in sex (sound familiar?).
I had hoped by this time I would have a second hive of bees however the swarming weakened this colony and therefore I dare not split them. It’s important that they have sufficient numbers and honey to keep them going through the winter. Towards the end of August I will need to consider whether there is sufficient capped honey to extract some more.
