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Friday, June 14, 2013

A New Queen!

At the beginning of May, I split our overwintered hive.   I did an equal split, walkaway - which means I divided the hive in half into two new hives [One frame for this, one frame for that - dealing the frames like cards] The Tardis had the old queen, which means the lang had to make a new one.  

The lang started with 3 frames of brood and a lot of field bees.  I checked on things a couple of weeks later and gave them another frame of brood, just in case.

I checked them again last week and lo, and behold, I found a hive with 4 frames of good brood:  eggs and larvae at all stages.  This means a queen!  And then I found her.  Large and very golden. She's in the center of this pic. 

Bonus:  These bees are very calm.  They only got disturbed when I took this frame out of the hive.  The rest of the time they were very calm. 

She's got a good laying pattern for a new queen and here's hoping they make us a lot of honey.