Long Live the Queen

Getting Ready

With our suits zipped and tied down and smoker ready, we are going into the hive to see how things
are going with our new bees.  We've had them about a month and have been feeding them sugar water
to give them plenty of food as the pollen becomes plentiful.   Today we stop feeding and hope to find our queens.

Going into the Hive

I'm so excited.  We open the hive in the afternoon, because theoretically many of the bees should be out foraging.  That means less for us to disturb (I remembered that from bee school).  Whoa!  Check out all those bees!  This hive seems healthy and active.  The top frames are filling up with honey.  In fact, it's time to add another super for them to work on.  You go, girls!!!

As we go further down into the brood box (where the baby making is going on), we have a queen excluder on top.  This rack prevents her from rising in the hive and laying eggs where the honey is being made.   The workers can climb through it, but she's too large. 

We take each frame out- carefully, because they are very heavy and the last thing you want to do is drop the frame and upset all those bees.  

And the search begins.  "Oh, queeny...where are you?"  If they would just all stop moving, it would be a lot easier.  In the books, the queen looks very different from the workers and the drones.  She's larger and her body is shaped differently.  I've studied those books and felt sure I could spot her, but it's not as easy as it looks.

Finally we find her!  If you look closely at the bottom of the picture below you will see a yellow dot.

Awesome... we have a marked queen!

By all the activity in the hive, we knew she was in there, but it's so cool to actually see her.  With our mission accomplished, we carefully put her house back together and wait.  And watch.  And pray a little that all will be well until the next time we visit.