Spot the Queen

One of the main duties of the beekeeper at the moment is weekly checks of the hives to ensure everything going to plan and no untoward events. One can get a "feel" for how things are by simply lifting the lids off - things like warmth, condensation, activity will give an indication that the hive is working but in order to make sure the hierarchy, government, bureaucracy, production, family planning is as the beekeeper wants it, there is only one method. Lift out every frame and take a look at both sides. Here the state of each frame is checked in particular the "brood" cells where the future worker bees are developing.

During the winter the hive might have reduced to 10,000 worker bees, no male drones and one Queen. Now in the season when the worker bees only live six weeks, the hive needs around 50,000 worker bees and a few drones. That means one needs a very, very busy Queen, laying several thousand eggs a day, in to cells prepared by the workers, who once an egg is laid in, then fill it up and close it off to develop in to a larvae and then hatch as a bee.

So one thing most beekeepers like to find is the Queen herself and check she looks OK. This inspection is best done when it is very warm and as many as possible of the worker bees are out collecting nectar and honey, and the male drones are taking their midday flight looking for potential newly born Queens on their maiden flights. Then the numbers in the hive are at their lowest and spotting the Queen is easier.

The Queen and the male drones are larger than the worker bees and she has a longer body than the drones. It can be very frustrating finding her and I have often had to give up but today all went well and I found all three.Hives look to be in good shape, lots of brood but less honey than I had hoped. But I guess when one considers we had 20cm of snow a week ago, hardly surprising. And now the main source of food, dandelions, have been mowed away for silage. As I am personally not a fan of dandelion honey, it doesn't bother me too much. Just hope the weather plays along to let the girls get a good crop from the other spring blooms, e.g. fruit trees but the weather forecast for Whitsun is looking bad.

The status of a Queen in a bee hive is quite interesting - unlike some Queens, she can be removed by her folk if they don't consider she is up to the job and they will "vote/produce" a new Queen. A lot more democratic than some folk who claim they have true democracy. I happen to be a royalist, have great admiration for a certain very hard working and dutiful Queen but do not understand the claims that a country whose head is not elected, whose upper house of parliament is not elected, accuses other folk of being undemocratic and also criticise folk whose religions are lead by government heads.

In the Extra photo a close up of the bottom left hand corner of the main photo wth an arrow showing the Queen.working on brood cells, some empty, some capped. Honey cells look very different in colour.