Aum Amriteshwaryai Namah
We went out to the hives to see whether the two new queens had been accepted or not. In the first hive, this is what happened...
We then checked on the second hive. As we took each frame out from the boxes below the queen excluder and inspected it for larvae and eggs, our hope dropped a notch. In two boxes, absolutely nothing. We were quite puzzled, though, because the population in this very large hive looked like it was booming. When the queen's gone, it fades.
We had already started to talk about how we might order a third queen for the hive this season, and then we did an inspection of the honey boxes above the queen excluder.
Who would've imagined that the queen was above the queen excluder? As someone in our satsang put it later that afternoon, she is not playing by the rules! There a couple of ways it could've happened. Perhaps the new queen managed to get through the queen excluder. Or maybe the old queen did the same and when the new queen was placed in the hive, she was chased out.
My personal theory, and it's only a theory, is that in the absence of a queen, the bees had created their own queen upstairs above the queen excluder. And so, the queen we placed in the hive last week was chased out. We'll know for sure if it's the queen from the breeder if we ever catch sight of her and see that she has a white dot on her back, a mark from the breeder that is placed on a queen to help with visibility.
At this point, we are trying to figure out what to do next. In the meantime, we have removed the queen excluder. The purpose of a queen excluder is to keep her from laying eggs in the upper part of the hive. This is so the bees use those frames for honey only. Once honey is mixed in cells with brood, it is not used for human consumption.
Interesting!
Jai Ma!
We went out to the hives to see whether the two new queens had been accepted or not. In the first hive, this is what happened...
We then checked on the second hive. As we took each frame out from the boxes below the queen excluder and inspected it for larvae and eggs, our hope dropped a notch. In two boxes, absolutely nothing. We were quite puzzled, though, because the population in this very large hive looked like it was booming. When the queen's gone, it fades.
We had already started to talk about how we might order a third queen for the hive this season, and then we did an inspection of the honey boxes above the queen excluder.
Who would've imagined that the queen was above the queen excluder? As someone in our satsang put it later that afternoon, she is not playing by the rules! There a couple of ways it could've happened. Perhaps the new queen managed to get through the queen excluder. Or maybe the old queen did the same and when the new queen was placed in the hive, she was chased out.
My personal theory, and it's only a theory, is that in the absence of a queen, the bees had created their own queen upstairs above the queen excluder. And so, the queen we placed in the hive last week was chased out. We'll know for sure if it's the queen from the breeder if we ever catch sight of her and see that she has a white dot on her back, a mark from the breeder that is placed on a queen to help with visibility.
At this point, we are trying to figure out what to do next. In the meantime, we have removed the queen excluder. The purpose of a queen excluder is to keep her from laying eggs in the upper part of the hive. This is so the bees use those frames for honey only. Once honey is mixed in cells with brood, it is not used for human consumption.
Interesting!
Jai Ma!
No comments:
Post a Comment