The queen in hive #2 is only a week old, so I didn't bother to look for her this week. I checked if the bees have enough space for storing more honey (they do) and closed up the hive and left them to it.
In the nucleus, I opened up, lifted the middle frame, saw the queen, and... eggs! Great news, she's already laying. I've been feeding the colony all week, because the weather has been quite variable. They now have enough sugar syrup stored in the comb, so I can stop feeding now. I'm pleased to say that their temper seemed better, too.
So, Miriam. Regular readers will know that she is my favourite queen, partly because she gave me an excellent crop of honey last year, partly because she isn't "swarmy", and partly because her workers are usually nice and gentle to work with. Not last weekend. I don't know if it's because of the weather (thunder was forecast, although there was only a brief burst in the early hours of Saturday morning). Or perhaps because the colony has got so large (really, there are huge numbers of bees now). But their behaviour was distinctly moody. They stung me before I'd lifted the first frame, and hissed every time I used the smoke to try to calm them down (it didn't really work). And there was a squadron of 10 - 15 bees who buzzed around my head for the whole session, and regularly attacked my veil. Beekeeping for me is supposed to be fun - and it almost always is - but this week I seemed to be testing their patience, and they were certainly testing mine.
As an urban beekeeper, I have a responsibility to keep well-behaved bees. Not only are aggressive bees tedious to spend time with at the weekend, but they can become a nuisance to the neighbours and I don't want to lose the goodwill that we have built up in our local community. So, something had to be done. I had been thinking about managing the succession anyway - this is Miriam's third season, and I don't like to keep queens for longer than three years. I'd been waiting until the queen replacement in hive #2 was complete, before taking any action. Now that the queen in the nucleus is laying, and the queen in #2 should also be laying by next weekend, I decided I'd put it off long enough. It was time for Miriam to move out.
My second nucleus was empty, and so I moved it down next to the hive, braved the stings, and moved 5 frames of brood and workers into it. Now, with only half as many bees in the brood box, it was quite a bit easier (and safer!) to go through and look for Miriam. She was actually still in the brood box, so I swapped a frame out of the nuc, put the frame with Miriam on into the nuc, and closed it up.
The last job was to put 5 new frames into the hive, and close that up too. Within a day, the bees should notice that Miriam is no longer present and start making queen cells. I'll check at the weekend and see if they have.
So, I now have:
- A hive with a mating queen
- A hive with no queen
- Two nucleus boxes, both with laying queens
It's getting busy!
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