Just Bees

I'm sensing a theme to my postings recently.....but it looks like things might have finally settled down on the bee front (fingers crossed).  The heat has been high over the past week, making manipulating top bars a bit risky (and *that* is how we've accidentally managed our first, small, honey harvest).

Yesterday's inspection was full of import, as it would tell us if we still had 'someone' laying, and what was going on with the 2 queen cells.  The bees have returned to a state of calm since the initial robbery and hive move, and I've been closely approaching the hive and watching them work (and deal with a very reduced entrance) over the past several days with no issues.

The emergency queen cell is still intact, and was covered with worker bees (their numbers enhanced by all of the brood from the Langstroth frame, which has hatched out completely). Careful examination, using a flashlight, showed that there were no eggs or larvae added to the comb this week. Our observations on Monday verified minimal larva that was three days old and more, with no evidence of eggs. Our thorough examination on Wednesday resulted in no visual of a queen, and we saw no evidence of a queen again.  It seems that we made a good call to leave the emergency cell where it was.  The potential swarm queen cell has been abandoned, and I saw no evidence of the larva that had initially caused me concern.

Given the information available, this queen should emerge today or tomorrow, perform her orientation flights, and mate within a week to ten days. She should begin laying within three days after mating.  We could have eggs laid in the brood chamber as early as next week, or as late as 17+ days from now. That 'late' calculation was why we waited so long to see results from our last queen, and then install a purchased queen - and that didn't work out either.

I'm hesitant to risk opening the hive again for the next while, to reduce the risk of killing the queen, or startling her into flight. The bees from our original colony will be nearing the end of their life-span now, and Jen's Langstroth workers are going to be hard-pressed to span the gap between now and the emergence of the new queen's worker brood ten days after being laid (2 1/2 weeks from now at least). A worker bee in summer can live to about a maximum of about 6 weeks. Here's to all the hard work going on inside that wooden hive body! And here's a view of their nearby pollen and nectar sources this morning:

Just in the backyard, there's borage still blooming in the garden, along with honeysuckle, roses, lavender, bergamot, vetch, trefoil (finally found that this annoying weed can feed rabbits *and* bees!), squash, cucumber, coriander, thyme, oregano and lemon balm (which I need to stop harvesting for the rabbits and allow to bloom).  Put a beehive in your yard - it's a good reason not to worry about the dandelions you have growing there.