Sunday, May 13, 2012

Sad news at the East apiary

We did some family camping this weekend down in Lisbon, so I stopped up at my dad's on Saturday to check on his bees. The bees at my dad's came from a swarm from a beekeeper friend's hive. It was moved about 30 miles before being put into place.

Opening up the hive, right away I knew something was wrong. The bees were humming loud and seemed agitated, though they were not flying more than other hives I have opened so far. When I opened it up, I noticed there weren't really many bees in there, though that would be the case on a swarm hived less than 2 weeks ago, as the new brood would not have hatched yet. Here's what the inside looked like:


OK so that looks pretty decent, but there was a big problem - no brood! No eggs, no larvae, no brood. That means no queen or at least no effective queen. What sad news! I did see something curious on one of the frames though:


I think that's a queen cell. All the pics of queen cells I've seen look something like this. Looking around, I didn't see much brood. When I got this picture onto my computer and blew it up a bit, I did see some eggs but I think I might have a laying worker because some of the cells look like they have two eggs in them:


I really regret not looking more closely when I had the hive open. I can't tell for sure if these are single or double eggs in cells. If I have a laying worker I am not sure what I should do - if it's even worth it to buy a mated queen and put her in there. I will consult the almighty Internets and see what they have to say.

Here is a blown up pic of that queen cell.





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