as you can see this frame was loaded with emergency/supercedure cells. some had been hatched out, most were intact and some were being chewed out on the sides by the workers. something had gone terribly wrong with Bianca. we saw no sign of her. we did find this little virgin queen running around on the frame.
i also saw a little darker queen running about that afternoon. there were nearly a dozen queen cells with some that had hatched. we had dropped in on the killing of the other unneeded queens. lawrence and i packed up the hive leaving everything as it was. we needed to consult with peggy and richard. after speaking with them, we had two options - requeening with a laying queen or merging the hive with Rosie's. we asked peggy to have a look at the hive on friday. we captured the little virgin queen that i had seen the day before and found nearly all of the other dead queens. peggy also noticed many bees with deformed wing syndrome, which is disease associated with varroa mites. the extent of disease in the colony was a big concern so we wanted to treat the hive immediately and not wait a week or so to introduce a mated queen. we were able to buy a queen on friday from a beekeeper in Yarmouth and she suggested putting her in a nuke with bees from the hive and at the same time, treating the main hive for mites. the following video shows a little parade of bees traveling to the nuke from the main hive only 20 minutes after we had set it up and placed the new queen in her cage in it. apparently, the bees were so desperate for a queen, word spread quickly about the new one and they all came running out, cramming into the little nuke.
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