Sunday, June 15, 2014

Find the Benedictine queen

We took apart the Benedictium today to find evidence for a queen. We saw no eggs or larvae, although we did see plenty of uncapped pollen.

First we inspected every frame in the upper deep. As in the Valentinium, we saw nothing in our new, foundationless drone frames, and we saw few bees and little sign of activity in the upper deep at all.

The lower deep was much more crowded. As at the top, the drone frames were not being used. Well, there was a tiny bit of burr comb on one of them. In one of the foundation frames at the bottom. We saw five queen cups, one of them empty, but saw no sign of laying. That's a worry. I wonder how long it should take for a new queen to start laying? Our swarm was on June 2nd.


No comments:

Post a Comment