Bee-utiful northern Queens!

I am pleased to say that I managed to produce a handful of bee-utiful northern Queens from my overwintered honeybee stock. What a rush to behold these long, elegant, dark beauties─not only for the marvel of nature that they are, but also for what they represent to my operation.

Note: If you missed my last apiary-update I invite you to go back and review that post: “Queen-rearing: if at first you don’t succeed“.

When we left off I had recently installed a third round of Queen cells. The bees chose 8 of those started cells to raise as Queens, and once they were capped I was able to install them into mating nucs I set up in my divided deeps. Because I didn’t use the grafting method I did not have the handy-dandy Queen-cups that commercial beekeepers like to use, so rather than plucking the cup with the Queen-cell off the frame I used a piece of dental floss to carefully free the cell. Then, with a sewing pin I stuck the cell to a frame in the mating nuc, careful not to pierce the Queen within.

Once the Queen-cells are installed the beekeeper must practice restraint and leave the mating nucs alone lest he disturb the process. 10 days is the guideline I’ve been adhering to, but it’s 10 days of anxious nail-biting for me hoping that things are going well inside the nucs.

With those Queens installed I was feeling like I had finally figured out the process. The nectar flow wasn’t over and I wasn’t anywhere near my goal of 40 Queens, so I decided to try for a fourth─and final─round. I made up one last cell-starter and prepared the frame with eggs for the production of Queen-cells. I left the thing for 24 hours before installing a frame with a number of started cells of started Queen-cells to my designated finisher hive. I was really pleased with that fourth batch of started cells.

When I went back 8 days later to rotate brood as scheduled, I was dismayed when I pulled out that Queen-cell frame to find that the bees had apparently decided they were done raising Queens for the season. Instead of finishing the Queen-cells I’d given them, they tore them down, built honeycomb and had begun filling it with honey. Such is the nature of beekeeping that you can set everything up to the best of your ability and in the end the bees─as a collective─can decide to do something totally different.

While I wasn’t able to produce the number of Queens I’d hoped for, I did learn the process and worked out the kinks so that I can be better prepared for next year. That in itself is a success to celebrate.

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