25 July 2015

We FINALLY having a working queen in the B-hive. This hive has been without a queen since we bought it (10 April). They raised a queen which couldn’t mate because the weather was too cold. We introduced a mated queen which they rejected. We kept the hive ticking over with brood from another, well functioning hive and last week it looked like they had a really good queen cell on the go again. And lo and behold, today we found plenty of evidence of a laying queen. Before the inspection we had discussed taking the bees from this hive and dividing them over the other two. But thank goodness that was not necessary.

We inspected the other two hives as well. The C-hive has the original, hard working queen which we didn’t spot today (but we did see new brood) and we added a half height honey super on this hive (in addition to the full height already there).

The A-hive has had a laying queen since last week – we did spot her and she’s working hard.

So in the space of two weeks we have three laying queens instead of one. This calls for bubbly tonight I think!