Bianca's happy ending

lawrence and i checked our problem hive on friday, august 17th, and found eggs, larva and even a bit of capped brood.  we saw bianca II and she is very blond and plumpy.  she is the spitting image of her mom.  we stole a frame of capped brood from jamaica's hive and placed it in bianca's so that they are sure to have young bees sooner than later.  there is an over-abundance of honey in this hive, so there are no worries about having enough for the winter. for right now, they are all set.  

August Maintenance

we wanted to show you a perfect frame in regards to laying pattern. (see post of 7/26 for reference to laying pattern).  as you can see, the entire middle oval is filled with capped brood and there are top corners that are filled with capped honey.  there are a few cells on the right bottom that are not used, but they are probably filled with either nectar or eggs. beautiful job, jamaica!

Problems with Bianca's Hive

we inspected bianca's hive on 7/13 and found everything normal.  we saw her and lots of capped brood, larva and eggs. when we went into the hive on 7/23 (ten days later) we did not see her, we found at least six queen cups about halfway through their development (which we destroyed).  we consulted with peggy and richard about the situation in this hive and they instructed us to check again on 7/25, to see if we could spot the queen and eggs.  lawrence found a queen, but she was so small that i could not be sure it was bianca, so we argued about it. we asked peggy to inspect the hive with us on 7/30 and we all spotted a young, blond queen. peggy thinks this a successor to bianca, but very young and probably not even properly mated yet.  we think that the hive swarmed in mid-July, but went unnoticed by the nursery staff.  peggy recommends that we give her another week or so to see if she's started laying eggs. fine. we went into the hive on 7/9 and saw no sign of eggs, larva or anything, but did make this video of bianca II in action.  what she is doing is a mystery to all of us.  totally backwards for a queen, or as some might say, un-ladylike. we will check on her again in a week to see if we can spot any eggs. if not, it's time to re-queen. urrrgghh! sometimes, beekeeping is a conundrum!

miscellaneous bee activities

these bees were lined up in a cute little row with only their heads peeking out

over the edge of the deep. we have no idea what they were up to.

the bees are helping out our cucumbers.