Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - Part One

Dorothy is leaving!  Though she won't be going far - fellow Widcombe beekeeper Jessica is going to look after Dorothy and her bees, at Jessica's apiary on Lyncombe Hill.  So yesterday, I'd arranged with Jessica for her to collect the brown nuc (Dorothy's colony) at dusk.  Bees will fly until sunset, so if you're ever moving a hive or nuc, it needs to be done at dusk, so that all the foragers have returned safety to the hive.

I popped over to the apiary at lunchtime, just to check that everything in the brown nuc was OK.  Yes - Dorothy was seen, and there are plenty of eggs and brood.

I then checked hive #1, just to make sure they weren't working on any secret queen-cell production programme.  Nope - everything in #1 was also as it should be.

Then, even though there was no need or reason to, I decided to take a look in the blue nuc.  This is the one with the unmarked queen who started laying a little over a week ago.  Everything looked OK, until I got to the middle frame, which had a six-day-old queen cell on it.  This was very odd - the queen has been laying for less than a fortnight, and the workers have no reason at all to making queen cells.  And yet, there it was:

I decided to leave it until I'd found the queen.  I spotted her on the next frame.  Since she was now laying, and there are sealed brood, I decided it's time to mark her.  I got hold of the marking pen (red, for 2018 queens) and got ready.  Normally I use a marking cage (click this link for photos), but last week I'd marked one of Ian's queens by holding her legs between my thumb and forefinger.  Having done it once, I decided to get some more practice and have another go.

Basically,  it's a four-step manoeuvre:

• pick the queen up by her wings
• transfer to other hand, and hold her by legs
• dot the paint onto her thorax
• put her back into the nuc (or hive)

The thing about picking up a queen bee is that they wriggle.  So you can't hold by the wings for too long, you need to transfer her to your other hand and hold her by the legs.  The important thing to note is her wing muscles are stronger than her leg muscles, so holding her by the legs is easier.  Well, I made the rookie mistake of holding her by the wings for too long, so of course she wriggled free and started wandering around on my right hand.

To rescue the situation, I tried to encourage her to walk onto my left hand, so that I could try to pick her up again.  She was having none of it - and promptly whirred her wings and took off!  I saw her disappear into the buttercups at the front of the hive and, despite frantic searching both inside and outside the hive, there was no sign of her.

In part 2, to be published later this week, I'll let you know how the story ends...