The Queen is Dead, Long live the Queen!

I've refrained from posting about our hive for a couple of weeks now, because our queen went AWOL. For those that are totally new to beekeeping reading this, one of the main reason's for opening the hive and checking through each frame of comb is to find the queen. You need to check she is laying by spotting very very tiny white eggs in the cells and also check that the worker bees are not raising a new queen.

If the workers are raising a new queen, they build the grub a palace (Queen cell - see pic) and feed that grub Royal Jelly. Yes girls, Royal jelly isn't just a gift set of smellies you get from boots at Christmas for your grandma. It's an actual substance with and actual function. If these queen cells start popping up all over your frames, it can usually be a sign that the hive could be getting ready to split and swarm... or your queen's reign has ended and she's popped her clogs. If she is still alive and kicking, you can knock these queen cells down to avoid a new queen hatching and the hive swarming off to start a new colony. However, if she is not laying you can leave these cells and the hive will crown a new queen. (Usually they raise a few and the first one to hatch goes on a murderous rampage and kills all the other unhatched queens... BITCH FIGHT!)

This is the tricky bit, there could be a cross over period. So the queen could die just before you open the hive. You spot eggs, brood cells etc and just assume you have missed the illusive lady amongst the other 60K+ bees. Then merrily go forth and knock down the queen cells. This is when a Jeremy Kyle (Jerry Springer for any American readers) state of affairs ensues and the babies are left without a mummy. This is exactly what happened to us :-(

So the past couple of weeks have been spent planning the coronation of our new queen, flown over from Greece and landing in...... Oswestry last Thursday.

She's in the hive, safe and sound in a little cage for now so the worker bees can get used to her pheromones and not bump her off for being a trespasser.

I ran a competition on Facebook last week to name her and can now reveal that she has been crowned... Queen Peggy. Well done Kathy, I'll get some Honey over to you at the end of the summer :-)