BeeMail

I’m not sure if I were Roger I’d be giving me anymore queens. My record so far is not stellar. But I’m not Roger. He called from his office on Saturday to say he’d just watched a few virgin queens emerge. Good off-season use of the bird incubator he bought.

So again he came over with a queen. Unmated. Who knows if the workers will accept her. She’ll need to mate. Who knows if she’ll get eaten by a bird on her way back from mating. It’s mid August. Who knows if she’ll get established strongly enough to make it through winter. At this point it feels like I’d have better odds at the crap table.

I waited 48 hours before releasing the new queen Roger gave me and what did she do? She flew away! Unbelievable. Cage off, workers who’d chewed their way in to join her stayed quietly on the comb, while the darn queen took off into the air! She didn’t get far before she nose dived into the grass beneath the hive stand so I was down on my knees searching for her under the nuc. There was a dark movement in the grass, she flew up, I grabbed her (gently of course), and she wiggled out between my cupped hands and flew off into the air! I am so mad!!!

So as I mentioned that Roger called yesterday to say he had another VSH Carniolan queen for me only this time she was mated and had been laying eggs in a two frame nuc. A laying queen is great, though according to Roger she was a little spazzy-sometimes laying 1 egg per cell, but other times plopping out 3, 4 or even 5 eggs per cell. I hope it’s just a matter of

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In the past I’ve tended to either micromanage my bees or ignore them. If I was in micromanage mode I’d peek, move things around, go in every other day. In short I was so intrigued by what they were doing that I didn’t let them do what they’ve been doing for millions of years. If I was in ignore mode I either was on vacation, had a ton of work to finish, or decided that it was too hot to get into my suit. Ideally

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