Lost Queen
PostPosted:08 Aug 2022, 17:55
On Saturday I was at my out apiary and noticed a few bees on one side of a hive. Lo and behold a young queen was there with a cup-full of attendants.
I marked her pink (wing as well as thorax!) for easy identification and she flew back to the side of the hive. It does look like a small mating swarm that perhaps got lost whilst I was stomping around the apiary?
Anyway, my guess was that she would fly off into the distance so with nothing to lose, I caged her and popped her into a mini-nuc and swept the bees in with her and left it by the big hive. Would they stay with her?
No.
The next day she was surrounded by only a few attendants so she has gone into a mini-nuc from which the queen had been taken from a few days earlier. With queen excluder over the entrance, I'll leave her in there for a couple of days and then let her fly. With luck she will come back.
Now the task is to find where she came from.
I marked her pink (wing as well as thorax!) for easy identification and she flew back to the side of the hive. It does look like a small mating swarm that perhaps got lost whilst I was stomping around the apiary?
Anyway, my guess was that she would fly off into the distance so with nothing to lose, I caged her and popped her into a mini-nuc and swept the bees in with her and left it by the big hive. Would they stay with her?
No.
The next day she was surrounded by only a few attendants so she has gone into a mini-nuc from which the queen had been taken from a few days earlier. With queen excluder over the entrance, I'll leave her in there for a couple of days and then let her fly. With luck she will come back.
Now the task is to find where she came from.
Way to stripy for my neck of the woods 
