Queen Cells.

I've just posted last Saturday's blip which is the first part of this story.


After the my second session of doing the beekeeping exhibition, I went back to my apiary to check on the queen cells. I photographed what was happening for, as I mentioned last week, the proprietory pictures that I purchased are not very good and it is nice to be able to show people illustrations when trying to explain the processes to them. As you can see, the cells look just like peanut shells and are about the same size. This year, in this area, honey bees are being rather enthusiastic about making new queens and it has been reported that a lot of beekeepers are being caught out; since this colony had no intention of swarming, the books say that they should only produce a few queen cells to replace their missing queen; they don’t put all their eggs in one basket but raise a couple of spares that they can dispose of if they aren’t required. I removed 14 cells, leaving just the second one from the left in the above picture, having made sure that there was actually a larva in it – which you can see in the first extra.
 
The larva will be sealed into its cell in a few days when she will spin a cocoon and spend just over a week as a pupa before emerging as an adult. It’s then another week before she’s mature enough to mate and will start laying as soon as there have been enough warm sunny days for her to have been out on her mating flights when she will mate with a dozen or more drones.
 
The second extra is of the complete comb with the queen cells, I might print it and replace the picture I have in the “virtual” hive.