Queen bee

The bee saga continues.  Last time I was at Lynne's house we we there when the bees abandoned the hive and swarmed.  They were re-captured and put in a nuc (a temporary box where the queen is prevented from leaving).  Today Lynne and I were checking that the remining bees in the original hive were making queen cells which is what we wanted to see.

The photo shows the queen cells - larger than the others: worker bees feed the bee larvae royal jelly to make them into queens.  The first one that emerges will kill the others.  This is all good and it looks like, with at least 3 queen cells on the go,  the hive will re-queen themselves.

Afterwards we transferred the re-captured bees (with the original queen) into their new hive, which seemed to go OK.

It is so exciting!