Guilfordbeekeepers.org

On September 3rd I saw a marked queen dying in front of one of my hives. It was a Wayne's Bee queen made by trap out bees from a Wayne's Bee brood frame. The bees were calm when I put a diagnostic brood frame in the hive on September 16th. The bees never did attempt to draw a queen cell with this frame, and today, I spotted a small, calm, unmarked queen examining cells in this hive. I do have hives here that are still housing small numbers of drones. I'm going to keep an eye on this one and hope she is mated and well enough mated to carry this hive through the winter.

This is not the best mated queen in the world. She is laying around 1 drone for every 20-30 workers. It is enough drone in worker cells to show mating issues but I am hoping she will produce enough workers to over winter. I marked her on 10/12/16 and checked the brood pattern shortly after that. I will probably take advantage of this upcoming warm stretch to get an updated look at the capped brood pattern.

I guess the bees know better than I do. This queen is still going. I put her in a nuc earlier this spring and the original hive has requeened and I have pulled 26 medium frames of honey from it. I moved the original queen into another nuc, and hopefully I have another of her daughters mated now. I will be checking toward the middle of this coming week.